The Fat Doctor Podcast

Send us Fan MailIn 1944, a group of healthy young men volunteered to be starved in the name of science. What happened to them — physically, psychologically, and socially — is one of the most important pieces of evidence we have about what dieting actually does to the human body. Evidence that has been ignored for 80 years. This week, I break down the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, asks why medicine continues to prescribe a treatment it knows causes harm, and make the case that forcing fat people to diet isn't medical care — it's cruel and unusual punishment.Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeWEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyMASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Send a text Cancer Research UK calls being fat the second biggest cause of cancer in the UK. It's a claim built on manipulated statistics, false assumptions, and funding from the weight loss industry - and it's actively killing people. In this episode, I show why the evidence for weight and cancer doesn't come close to the evidence for smoking, why population attributable fractions are a chocolate teapot, and why the breast cancer data is far more complicated than anyone is letting on. If you've ever been told your cancer risk is your own fault, this one's for you. The study on weight stigma as a barrier to cancer screening: Amy NK, Aalborg A, Lyons P, Keranen L. Barriers to routine gynecological cancer screening for White and African-American obese women. Int J Obes. 2006;30(1):147-155. Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeWEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyMASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Send us Fan MailDisease mongering has transformed human body diversity into a medical crisis requiring pharmaceutical intervention. When Ray Moynihan wrote that "there's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick," he exposed a corporate strategy that reaches its most devastating form in the creation of "ob*sity" as a disease. This wasn't accidental harm caused while trying to help people - this was intentional pathologization of natural human variation, funded by pharmaceutical companies and legitimized through corrupt alliances between industry, doctors, and supposed patient advocacy groups. In this episode, I expose how the disease creation itself causes harm separate from any treatment: social exclusion, healthcare denial, psychological trauma, economic exploitation, and the erosion of bodily autonomy. We created a disease whose only "treatment" doesn't work and causes the very harms we attribute to the disease. They didn't just gnaw away at our self-confidence—they gnawed away at our right to exist. Moynihan, Ray, Iona Heath, and David Henry. ‘Selling Sickness: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Disease Mongering’. BMJ : British Medical Journal 324, no. 7342 (2002): 886–91. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.324.7342.886.Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeWEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyMASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Send us Fan MailThe Mediterranean diet has become medical gospel—promoted by diabetes organizations, heart health foundations, and doctors worldwide. But when I looked at the actual evidence, I found something shocking: the one major study proving its benefits was so flawed it had to be retracted. And when NICE updated their cardiovascular disease guidelines in 2023, they admitted there was "no available evidence" comparing dietary interventions to normal diets, so they made recommendations based on "clinical experience and expert opinion" instead. In this episode, I expose how decades of lifestyle advice rest on a foundation of observational studies that can't prove causation, one retracted trial, and guidelines that openly admit the evidence doesn't exist. I explore why we ignored Japan despite identical findings, how the Mediterranean diet reflects Eurocentric superiority rather than scientific rigor, and why telling Black, brown, and indigenous communities to abandon their cultural foods for olive oil is racist as f*ck. The evidence doesn't support what we're being told and it's time we started demanding better.Ge, Long, Behnam Sadeghirad, Geoff D. C. Ball, et al. ‘Comparison of Dietary Macronutrient Patterns of 14 Popular Named Dietary Programmes for Weight and Cardiovascular Risk Factor Reduction in Adults: Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Trials’. The BMJ 369 (April 2020): m696. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m696.Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeWEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyMASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Send us Fan MailMedicine has built an entire mythology around weight as the root cause of disease, including diabetes,  sleep apnea, and arthritis. In this episode, I introduce you to three fictional patients whose stories expose the fatal flaws in this narrative. Through Madison's diabetes diagnosis, Mason's struggle with sleep apnea struggle, and Morgan's joint pain dismissal, I dismantle the logical fallacies that confuse association with causation. The truth is simple. Your weight didn't make you sick - but being blamed for it, denied treatment, and forced into weight cycling absolutely will. I challenge you to ask: if weight causes these conditions, why doesn't weight loss cure them? And more importantly, who profits when doctors prescribe weight loss instead of evidence-based care? Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeWEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyMASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

A fast-paced history lesson tracing wellness influencers back centuries. Stories of 18th and 19th century health fads, from anti-meat pamphlets to calorie-counting crusades. Examination of how moralizing language turned larger bodies into public threats. A critique showing modern wellness trends as recycled ideas dressed up as new.

They unpack why blaming individuals for body size is wrong and highlight genetics and epigenetics as major factors. They explore how pollutants, urbanization, and intergenerational effects shape weight. They discuss how chronic stress, trauma, discrimination and social systems drive physiological changes. They call for shifting responsibility from individuals to institutions and policy.

A sharp critique of how medical committees keep recommending restrictive diets despite admitting they fail and cause harm. Covers historical conferences, shaky evidence, biological backlash to calorie restriction, and how guidelines and politics keep ineffective practices funded. Calls out economic shortcuts and institutional incentives that perpetuate harmful recommendations.

A dive into how BMI cutoffs were invented and the shaky history behind labeling fatness a disease. Investigation of pharmaceutical funding and PR that pushed policy changes at the WHO. A challenge to whether adiposity meets medical definitions of disease and who financially benefits from medicalizing weight.

The podcast explores the myth of a 'healthy weight,' revealing how weight categories originated from profit-driven motives rather than science. It delves into the dubious history of BMI and how arbitrary standards have been imposed. The host questions the lack of evidence linking weight to health risks, using a thought experiment to showcase the absurdity of medicalizing body size. It stresses that no proven healthy weight exists, challenging long-held beliefs and inviting listeners to reconsider societal norms around body size.