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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2024 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Body Image. 2023 May 24;46:48–61. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2023.04.008

Table 2.

Themes and Illustrative Quotes of Weight Stigma in ED Risk and Development Periods

Weight Stigma in ED Risk and Development Periods
Pediatrician Pathologizing Body and Weight
 Carly: 99.9% of the things… medical professionals [said] are less than helpful. Like “Ooh, you’re not even on the growth chart?” ...But it wasn’t until I think, like, the doctor said something that it was, like, a “problem we have to fix” …because it’s shameful… “You’re not trying hard enough and there’s something wrong with you.”
 Gaia: My weight was like 99th percentile plus, so he didn’t quite tell me that I was fat, but really, really pointedly told me that that was a lot. And I was like, “Oh, okay, I guess I weigh too much.”
 Sonja: It set in motion this idea that, like, your body size was actually something that you could control, because, you know, your pediatrician is telling you, “You need to control this.”
Compounding Messaging from Family and Medical Community
 Mary: So, I was too fat for the regular doctor, but not fat enough for the fat doctor… My mom and I resolved we’d just take care of it ourselves, which, I think, is the point at which we started trying our own brand of Weight Watchers, and later, Atkins.
 Joanna: Both of my parents were in medicine, and they are both very diet-oriented and fat-phobic… I think my experience would have been a lot different if all the adults in my life besides medical practitioners had been able to look past my BMI and look at behaviors.
 Elizabeth: I guess the stuff around weight with my mom. But I think my mom initiated that. I don’t think the doctor initiated.
Pediatrician Recommending Weight Loss
 Joanna: I thought that my primary care physician was doing the right thing by recommending Weight Watchers and warning me that if I didn’t get a handle on my weight now, as a teenager, that it would snowball and be out of control… Now I know that they were actually harmful.
 Chelsea: I first discussed diets with a healthcare provider when I was like 16 years old… He suggested Weight Watchers.
 Elizabeth: He [MD] recommended Children’s Weight Watchers… So that was back when I was nine or 10.
Provider Triggering Disordered Eating or ED
 Sonja: I was already getting messaging from my parents that my body was too big… [pediatrician] just reinforced whatever fears that I had that my body was wrong… that’s when the real thoughts of restriction started to really settle in.
 Carly: I was at the doctor for… chronic ear problems… and left with a diet… I think that probably started my ED journey.
 Ari: [My pediatrician] be like, “Looks like your weight’s going down” …I was restricting. I remember she told me that I was… still overweight… I had been going through the fasting… that was the first time I went home and purged.