I absolutely agree. Being slim does not mean you're healthy. We should focus a lot more on nourishing our bodies and a lot less on how much we weigh.

It is interesting to note that a lot of the healthy weight guidelines don't actually work for people more than 2 standard deviations from average height, they have recognised that ethnicity and build also make the guidelines useless, and of course the guidelines are just a quick measuring tool, not what they are actually trying to measure.

For example, the BMI is a relationship between weight and height. This is meant to predict how much fat you are carrying. But it doesn't measure fat, so people who are muscular, taller or shorter than average, or have heavy or light builds, can end up with a false measurement. Ideally medical practitioners would measure bodyfat itself, but that is harder to do accurately, so BMI and waist measures were developed by correlation.

So it is important to understand the health standards and what they actually stand for.

Excellent piece Cat. I myself have been told, when visiting the doctor for an injury I got while riding my bike "You need to exercise and lose weight." No matter how many times (or what way) I tried to express that I had got this injury WHILE EXERCISING, all this doctor saw was FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT. It was like she was sticking her fingers in her ears and going LALALALALALALA!

Encouraging all people, regardless of their size or current level of health, to nourish their bodies and find joyful activity that they enjoy practicing regularly is the only truly healthful practice. Bodies are not perfect, they don't always look or behave the same, but unless we care for them as best we can without shame or vilification, they are only going to get less healthy, not better.

Great piece, so true. I can relate to Kath's post about being told that an injury I got while exercising was because I needed to exercise more because I'm fat... in my case, a shoulder injury from swimming laps (obviously caused by fatness rather than being an injury from exercising) and another was a back injury caused by yoga (according to the GP, it was clearly caused by sitting around doing nothing).

I also had a doctor in Indonesia blame a water-bourne illness common in developing countries on my weight and another doctor question whether I should move to a developing country because I would sweat a lot there because I was fat. Even though I had lived in developing countries for a number of years before and had climbed volcanoes, gone on jungle hikes etc etc.

I think this kind of shaming and blaming is most damaging to teenagers and young kids who are fat. By shaming people, you actually discourage them from taking part in exercise, team sports or physical activity. It's a completely ridiculous approach to take when you are trying to encourage people to live healthy lives.

I am more than happy to have a frank evidence-based discussion with medical practitioners about my weight and health. But its the shaming and the false assumptions that are the issue. If we were focusing on health rather than size, perhaps some of this institutionalised stigma would be reduced.

Ms Pause, prior to reading this article I don't think that I had any sort of attitude towards fat people. There was the occasional moderate annoyance at fat people who blocked up the footpath and occasional alarm when I observed fat women unable to perform a hand cross over on the steering wheel of their vehicles because of the size of their breasts and an equal degree of alarm when I observed fat men lying almost prone behind the wheel in order to accommodate their stomachs. But apart from those infrequent experiences I took the view that fat people were entitled to live their lives according to their own lights.

I therefore read your article with some real alarm at the idea that you intend, according to your profile, to "... create(s) paradigms for the development of fat acceptance and celebration within mass culture."

As a registered nurse with more than twenty years experience in the public hospital system I think that your argument is out of touch with reality. I have witnessed the post surgical agony of numerous fat people forced to undergo hip and knee replacement surgeries which were directly the consequence of life long obesity. The joints were simply ground to paste due to excess load bearing. Ankles can wear out too presenting difficult surgical issues and real post surgical mobility problems.

Far from inadequate celebration of fatness there is not enough discussion of the physical reality of fatness - from the groin excoriation caused by urine caught in folds of fat that no amount of hygeine can address to the inability of some people to wipe themselves because they cannot reach their nether regions around their buttocks to the excoriation that can occurr in summer under pendulous breasts.

I cared for one of the fattest men ever admitted to a NSW public hospital. His condition prompts me to ask you at what point does fatness become a disability and a health issue instead of a cause for celebration? He remained an inpatient for nine months because we couldn't locate a care facility with a lifting machine adequate to his weight. He had a fat apron down to his knees and seven inches thick. Cathetrisation had to be performed under anaesthetic by surgeons because, where his penis ought to have been, there was a hole in his fat apron. His penis was somewhere inside the fat apron. It took six people to manipulate him for purposes of standard cleanliness.

Celebrate this? You are kidding.