Glossary

Anti-Fatness: Seen by some as a more accurate way of describing and discussing fatphobia.

Diet culture: Elements of our social, personal, monetary, medical, and political world that reflect the value that thinness is ideal and weight loss is a direct and tangible route to thinness. Relies on the sale and efficacy of products to maintain weight loss and pursue the thin ideal.

Fat: Scientifically, adipose tissue that occupies the human body acting as insulation. Also found in foods in various forms; trans and saturated fat. Politically, a term used by some higher weight people to self-identify.

Fatphobia: Reflects individual and societal fear of becoming fat/higher weight; reflects discrimination of higher weight people in social, political, medical and other spaces through exclusion or unfair treatment.

Healthism: The value that health is the priority focus of body shape and size, and that healthy bodies or perceived healthy bodies are prioritized socially over (actual or perceived) unhealthy, diseased, disabled bodies. Healthism has roots in ableism and is often the overlapping source of 'pity' given to disabled bodies or people.

Health at Every Size: A framework developed by Dr. Lindo Bacon, used by dietitians, counselors, and eating disorder recovery specialists.

Medicalization: The assignment of pathology or disease model to higher weight bodies. Used to explain the correlation (and incorrectly, the causation) of weight with disease. The medical industry developed terms such as obesity/overweight, which are often terms used by health officials when discussing higher weight people.

Thin privilege: Unearned social and cultural benefits associated with living in a thin body, which is the ideal in Western society. Thin or "straight sized" privilege can include: not paying extra for seats on a plane, having several stores to shop in rather than small, segregated sections of stores, being treated for their ailments or illness rather than first being given weight loss advice.

Body dysmorphia: a person experiences body dysmorphia when their perceived size is different than the actual size, shape or weight of their body.

Weight stigma: a cultural and social belief that weight is the cause of illness; a normalization or 'leaning in' to the stereotypes that higher weight people are lazy, incompetent, or less intelligent.

Internalized weight stigma: when weight stigma (see above) is internalized, it is often because a person who is in a higher weight body feels that they are lazy, incompetent or less intelligent due to their size, shape or weight.