Expert. The word means “a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.” We like to think we can trust experts, don’t we? I mean, they have that name for a reason. They must be particularly knowledgeable, schooled, learned. But what if the experts really ought to have an adjective applied to them, an adjective like… so-called? When it comes to weight-loss and health experts, I believe a lot of them deserve this adjective.
You keep using that word,
but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Where this especially comes into play for me is with health and wellness experts… or, even worse, weight-loss experts. Let me tell you something, people: If someone claims to be an expert in weight-loss, run away. Fast. Because while they may be able to help you get thin temporarily, anyone who uses the words “permanently” or “for life” is just flat-out lying to you.
A friend of mine sent me a newsletter that she received because she sits on the wellness committee at her work. The newsletter is from the Wellness Council of America. That sounds pretty impressive and expert-y, doesn’t it? They provide health and wellness information and resources to over three thousand workplaces. Okay, that seems legit. Well, the cover of their latest newsletter looks like this:
Ah, yes, right there in giant letters: FOR LIFE. And the graphic? That’s another warning sign, the visualization of “good” thin-people food (salads and water) on the left and “bad” fat-people food (burgers and soda) on the right. Already my Spidey senses are tingling.
Inside, we hit the trifecta! Not only is the newsletter promising permanent weight loss, and making assumptions that fat people eat non-nutritious food, but we have my biggest pet peeve of all: Thin people trying to school fatties on not being fat anymore! The newsletter (actually a thinly-veiled advertisement for a new book by the author) is written by Dr. Ann G. Kulze. Dr. Ann has her own website, where I learned that she looks like this:
Edited caption: Fatties, have you ever even BEEN to this part of the store?
I gave her the benefit of the doubt and read her bio, thinking maybe she was in that miniscule fraction of people who were very fat and then got and stayed very thin. But there isn’t anything in her biography to indicate she was ever even moderately fat. So… she’s…. just another naturally thin person letting us fatties know what we’re doing wrong because we don’t look like her (answer: everything).
The newsletter actually has some good health-related suggestions, like eating lots of veggies and getting enough sleep. But why does this advice have to be aimed at making us thin, when in reality it would go along way to making a lot of us healthier, no matter our body size? I already do most of the things Dr. Ann talks about, and I’m fat. Guess I must be doing them wrong.
One other thing I found really interesting? Dr. Ann employs words like “strict,” “restriction,” “the plague,” “hefty dose,” “militant control.” That’s a great way to encourage people to adopt healthy habits – make it seem awful!
I walk the line, but Dr. Ann crossed it.
The bottom line is this: Just because someone claims to have figured something out, doesn’t mean that they have. Just because it arrives in a professional-looking newsletter with classy graphics and pretty, thin, stock photography models in it, doesn’t mean it’s filled with wisdom or truth. And if you sit on your company’s wellness committee and are expected to pass this information along to your colleagues? Doesn’t mean you have to. And I hope you don’t.
Just because someone is a medical professional, that doesn’t mean they know everything about the human body works… especially your body… and especially if their body has never looked like yours. No one’s “expert” opinion trumps your lived experience. You know who the best expert is about your body? Not Dr. Oz, not Bob Harper, not Tony Horton, and not Dr. Ann. It’s you. And you can believe me… because I’m an expert on me.
