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One of the ways that the diet industry is trying to squash the weight-neutral health and fat liberation movements is by using their money, clout, and enmeshment in the healthcare system to re-brand themselves as weight stigma experts, including at conferences, panels, and other events. This can be done by large weight loss industry representatives like the Ob*sity* Action Coalition or by individuals.

It is imperative that we do not let this happen, because their goal is to co-opt the concept of eradicating weight stigma and use it to sell weight-loss interventions that risk the health and lives of higher-weight people (which, in turn, increases weight stigma by perpetuating the idea that being fat is so terrible that it’s worth risking fat people’s lives and quality of life in attempts to make them thin.)

So, here are four major red flags that an event that claims to be about ending weight stigma may actually be about co-opting anti-weight-stigma work to sell dangerous, expensive “treatments” for fat people.

There are no (fat-positive) fat people speaking

There is absolutely no excuse for this, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hear them. I think my personal [least] favorite is “we are looking for experts rather than lived experience.” This is wrong in every way I can think of. First of all, lived experience of stigma gives one expertise that cannot be gained in any other way. Beyond that, unless by “experts” they mean “thin people” then there is literally no type of expert that does not include fat people. Doctors, academics, researchers, statisticians, whatever they are looking for, they could find a fat expert. The idea that someone is either an expert in weight stigma or a fat person is weight stigma.

Bottom line: If there are no fat-positive fat people speaking at an event, then this isn’t truly an anti-weight-stigma event. I will say that I have consulted with people in situations where they were speaking at such an event as a harm reduction tool after they tried to get a fat speaker booked and failed, but this shouldn’t be happening.

Representatives from the weight loss industry are speaking

They could be representing the weight loss industry directly, through one of their programs (like Novo Nordisk’s absolutely ridiculous “It’s Bigger Than Me” campaign,) or through an astroturf organization like the “Ob*sity Action Coalition.”

This is also why in the first category I specifically said “fat-positive fat people.” Fat people are allowed to want to eradicate fatness in themselves, including as a way for them to try to escape weight stigma, but that doesn’t make it an anti-weight-stigma view, especially if they are representing the weight-loss industry or claiming to represent all fat people. (To me, as someone who is both fat and queer, it would be similar to an anti-homophobia panel with a bunch of straight people and one gay panelist who was undergoing so-called “conversion therapy” to become an ex-gay and was representing the interests of the companies selling the therapy.)

They are using stigmatizing terminology

If they are using terms and/or aligning with concepts like

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