Where do we start?

I make no secret of my conviction that the anti-obesity movement is misguided and harmful. Yes, I know that sounds as if I'm saying let's all sit on the couch and eat chips and donuts - I'm not. I'm saying we really don't have any known way to permanently reduce weight and we really don't know how to measure healthy weight even if we did. We do know how to promote health, and that is what we should be doing: ordered eating of a variety of foods served by adults and eaten as a family and with pleasure, an active lifestyle, regular sleep, managed stress, and life with purpose.

The risk of this anti-obesity mania is also well-known. Stigma for larger people, rampant and unhealthy disordered eating, and possibly the triggering of eating disorders. Personally painful: it masks real mental illness by making it seem rational when someone becomes ill. And this: it is causing so much misery out there for no purpose. Let's promote health instead, and stop using weight as a proxy for every damn thing wrong in life.

Want a perfect example of how toxic this is? This note came from a reader, Whitney, and this journalism is just what we don't need: it describes heinous parenting behaviors and doesn't give a clue to how wrong it is. It buys into the certainty that obesity is self-imposed and worse than any fate in life. 

"Hi, Laura. I’m a follower of your blog, and came across this story which I thought was truly horrendous and sick:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/fat-babies-parents-put-fat-babies-diet/story?id=12216642


For some reason, I thought this might be of interest to you, blogging wise. If there IS anything “good” out of this article, perhaps it’s the short mention that your children are most likely going to develop their eating habits from their parents. As someone who battled anorexia, I can assure you my parents never did anything to “endorse” the sick rituals I went through, but DID help me rediscover my own healthy, recovering “normal”—which happens to be very similar to theirs"