Weight Isn't The Problem With COVID-19. How We Talk About It Is.
Messages about the perceived association between weight and COVID-19 risk are everywhere.
On the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, there’s a page dedicated to “Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19,” in which the agency blatantly states that “obesity worsens outcomes from COVID-19.”
The page goes on to say that while obesity is complex and is associated with systemic factors like poverty, education, housing and racial inequality, people should prioritize “eating a healthy diet,” “being active,” “getting enough sleep,” and “reducing stress.” These things, the CDC says, can help promote weight loss and prevent weight gain, which can then reduce “the risk of severe illness from COVID-19.”
This type of messaging is covertly stigmatizing. While the CDC talks very matter-of-factly about obesity and COVID-19, the underlying message is that fat is bad, and that fat people should prioritize ridding themselves of their fatness above all else.
But that thinking may be partially flawed: The research on weight and COVID-19 has some limitations. In an April 2020 story for Wired, dietitian Christy Harrison explained that none of the studies backing this link “control for race, socioeconomic status, or quality of care — social determinants of health that we know explain the lion’s share of health disparities between groups of people.”
They also don’t take into account comorbidities (other health conditions an individual might have) or the fact that health care professionals typically have a strong bias against fat people, which affects the quality of care they provide.
Here’s another thing to take into account: Evidence shows that the vast majority of people can’t lose weight and keep it off for more than a year, and it’s not for lack of willpower. Intentional weight loss has been shown to cause adaptations like lowered energy expenditure and leptin production (a hormone that signals fullness), and...
