[Diet Culture IRL] Do you need to be weighed at the doctor? Setting weight and food boundaries navigating healthcare (378)

Julie Dillon

[Diet Culture IRL] Do you need to be weighed at the doctor? Setting weight and food boundaries navigating healthcare (378)

September 10, 2024

Discussions of upsetting doctor’s appointments and giving birth

Julie Dillon

Julie sits down with Rachel Popik and Coleen Bremner to discuss navigating systemic medical fatphobia and how to advocate for yourself and set boundaries at the doctor’s office. Rachel shares a recent experience she had with an endocrinologist and how she handled the very harmful interactions she experienced and Coleen discusses how she believes that her weight played a part in how the doctors treated her while she was in labor, giving birth to her daughter.

Discussions of upsetting doctor’s appointments and giving birth

Julie sits down with Rachel Popik and Coleen Bremner to discuss navigating systemic medical fatphobia and how to advocate for yourself and set boundaries at the doctor’s office. Rachel shares a recent experience she had with an endocrinologist and how she handled the very harmful interactions she experienced and Coleen discusses how she believes that her weight played a part in how the doctors treated her while she was in labor, giving birth to her daughter.

Show Notes

Guest Bio:

Rachel Popik (she/her) is an anti-diet chef, cooking instructor and the founder of Stay Doughy. She is also the community manager of the PCOS Power Forward community. Based in Philadelphia, Rachel is a lover of food, nature, foraging, gardening, and nature. She’s happiest when she’s in the kitchen, using cooking as a creative outlet, a way to care for her community, and heal her relationship with her body. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok @StayDoughy and find her offerings on her website at staydoughy.com

Coleen Bremner is an empathetic and driven professional with experience spanning various fields including body liberation, advocacy, marketing, management, recruitment, and operations. An effective communicator with high emotional intelligence, she feels most fulfilled in her work when she is collaborating with a team and innovating new ideas. She enjoys listening to stories from others and helping turn those stories into meaningful connections. Her people-centered work style, ability to empathize, and panache for pizazz make her the perfect fit for the Julie Duffy Dillon Team. Coleen graduated from Southern Oregon University with a Bachelor of Science in Communication, minoring in Journalism, and holds a Master of Public Administration from Middlebury Institute of International Studies. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Coleen is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion at the intersection of sustainable philanthropy. Outside of work, Coleen is a voracious reader who enjoys singing showtunes while cooking and traveling with her husband and two cats.

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Podcast Transcript

Julie: Hey there, welcome to episode 378 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. I hope I’m finding you at the right time. This episode is created for you if you are wanting to go to the doctor or navigate any part of healthcare and want to maybe, maybe for the first time, try to ask to not be weighed. Why would you do this? Well, there’s many different reasons. Maybe you are recovering from an eating disorder and knowing your weight really fucks with your recovery. Probably could even be deadly. So, you you want to access healthcare because you’re wanting to like promote health, not fuck with it. Or maybe you are trying to repair your complicated history with food and that includes diets and pursuing weight loss. And you know, it’s going pretty well not knowing your weight and you want to continue that. Or maybe you are someone who’s like, holy shit, this world has so much anti fat bias. I want to not contribute to that. And maybe this is a place that you want to experiment and advocating for yourself and for others. This is a really challenging thing for many people, especially the first few times.

Is it ever easy? Probably not, depending on what life you’re living. If you have a body that is experiencing lots of different ways that make it not safe in the world, I would imagine this is something that’s probably gonna always have its challenge to it. And I hope this episode, where I am speaking with Coleen Bremner and Rachel Popik, two people that work with me behind the scenes on this podcast.

I hope it helps you to feel one, more support, and two, gives you more ideas on just like how to do it, and three, affirm why you deserve to have weight inclusive, accessible healthcare no matter what. So we are going to get to this conversation in a little bit. We’re gonna have a very brief sponsor break and then we’re gonna jump right into it. So we’ll be right back.

Julie: Welcome back. Hey, Coleen and Rachel, how are you? I’m great. I am so excited to talk about this. Where should we start,

Coleen: Hey!

Rachel: Good, how are you?

Coleen: my gosh. I think this one, there’s going to be a lot to unpack, as there always is with healthcare and healthcare things. I know as Rachel and I were kind of preparing for this one, we were thinking it, it drags up a lot, like for both of us. And I’m sure like for you listener, that like, you just, I don’t know, there’s things that you think about. But Rachel, I would love to hear about your experience recently and get a little bit of a better understanding about kind of what happened with that and chat through that. And then maybe Julie and I can ask some follow up and chime in.

Rachel: Yeah, sounds good. I guess I first want to start off by saying I’ve been relatively lucky that I don’t have, I’ve practiced a lot of boundary setting and I set pretty solid boundaries when I go to doctors and I’ve been lucky that I haven’t experienced a ton of like overt fat phobia while going to the doctor. But recently I, and by recently I mean like six months ago. decided I needed to see a new endocrinologist and so did a bunch of research, got a recommendation for like HAES (Health at Every Size), aligned endocrinologist, know, tried to schedule an appointment, five months out. So like, first of all, I’m like, we could go into the issues with the healthcare system that you have to wait that long to see a doctor to begin with, but I’m waiting five months for this appointment and I’m going in pretty confident because my primary care doctor recommended her and my primary care doctor is great. So I was like, I don’t really have anything to worry about. I didn’t bring my partner with me because I was like, I was feeling good. So then I go in, they try and weigh me. There’s like a note on my chart that says like, know, history of eating disorder, don’t weigh this patient. Rarely do they just to let that slide. And normally they asked to weigh me but I set my boundary, I don’t get weighed. And normally they’re like, okay, good. So the medical assistant seemed pretty confused, but didn’t push back. But then they had this medical fellow come into the room first and immediately just started launching into this weight -based line of questioning about, have I gained weight? Why do I think I’ve gained weight? How much weight have I gained? Why am I worried? All of these things. And so I like reset my boundaries. Once again, she literally said, yeah, I see a note on your chart. Like referencing the note that says like, don’t talk about weight and then continued. So I like stated my boundaries again. And I basically told her like, you know, you’re on two strikes, one more strike and like, I’m going to walk away.

Rachel: Like I was getting to the point where I literally was preparing myself to leave this appointment. And then she, you know, she seems like kind of flustered and apologized. And then she asked me a few questions and then she goes, well, has the shape of your face gotten rounder recently? And I was like, that’s first of all, that’s literally like a weight based question. Like you didn’t say the word weight, but like what a weird effing question to ask. And when I like, obviously got angry, she was like, well, I’m just trying to like come up with some diagnoses for you based on the face of my like the shape of my face. And so at that point, I was like, okay, you need to leave the room. Like you, you need to leave and like go get the doc.

Coleen: Good for you.

Julie: Wow. Wow.

Rachel: So she did. And at this point, I’m like texting my partner, like I’m trying to decide, should I just leave? Should I stay? And I was like, okay, I’ll stay just for a little bit to see how it is with this doctor because the doctor is the one who I was told was good. So the doctor comes in and is very apologetic and says something to the effect of, well, we’ve had issues with this fellow in the past, so I’m not surprised, which begs the question, you’ve had issues with this thing with this fellow in the past. Why did you send this fellow into a patient’s room unaccompanied when you know this is an issue?

Rachel: But, and while the doctor was like very kind and very apologetic, she did not look at my chart at all. She didn’t like suggest any labs to be run. She literally looked at me and was like, I understand you don’t want to like talk about weight loss. I respect that. So like, what can I do for you?

Julie: so that was the only option she was willing to explore.

Rachel: Yeah, it was like, okay, I’m respecting that you’re saying this is not an option, but like, then what do you want from me? And I was like, well, you’re the doctor, like you. Right, like you.

Julie: And not only that, an endocrinologist, endocrine hormones.

Coleen: Which Rachel, can you, I was gonna say, can you also for our listener maybe who isn’t familiar with like what an endocrinologist does like in layman’s terms, can you like explain maybe what the purpose is of one?

Rachel: Yeah. Yes, of course. So an endocrinologist, like Julie just said, is like your hormone doctor. So for someone with PCOS, as I have, you oftentimes will see an endocrinologist kind of just for more like specialized focus on your hormones related to your PCOS. And so I have a reproductive endocrinologist who deals with infertility, but that’s like a very small niche. And so between my primary care doctor who felt like she wasn’t specialized enough and my reproductive endocrinologist who was too specialized, they were like, you should see someone in the middle.

Coleen: Mm -hmm. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that.

Rachel: Yeah, of course, of course. So yeah.

Julie: What did you do then at that point when she was like, so I’m plum out what.

Rachel: I was stunned and basically the appointment ended there. She was like, well, you could see one of our dieticians. And I was like, no, thank you. That seems not, if I wanted to see a dietician, this is not where I would do that. And then she also told me that in no uncertain terms that if and when I become pregnant, I would need to be put on insulin because I was pre -diabetic. like, again, she had not, at this point, she had not looked at my chart at all.

Rachel: but like in no uncertain terms, basically come back when you’re pregnant because we’re gonna have to put you on insulin.

Julie: So the only thing that she knew how to attend was to, and when I say this, please know this is not what I believe, but what I think is probably going through this person’s mind. The only thing that I’m here to do as an endocrinologist is correct her behaviors, because obviously that’s behind the problem, which.

Julie: You’re there to figure out what the problem is, but she’s already defined it based on her eyeball checks. geez.

Rachel: Mm -hmm. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, at this point, I, she again, like, apologized and said something about like, well, you know, this is basically a good reminder that the office needs, like, sensitivity training.

Julie: I wish they knew what that meant.

Rachel: Which, first of all, I wish you knew what it meant. And second of all, there’s something that really pisses me off about the word sensitivity when it like, because it implies like, exactly, exactly. Not like medical fat phobia or no, like sensitive.

Julie: I know, it’s your fault, not theirs. Yeah, yeah.

Coleen: Yeah, there’s no accountability or ownership over their actions.

Julie: Yeah, and also like there’s the something too about this that I think they missed the mark on like, it’s not about never talking about weight. It’s like, the weight is not like the way we diagnose the problem. It’s not a way to know how someone is behaving in their life. And it’s also something that the world is harming this person based on stereotypes and stuff. like, there’s a way to talk about it. And I think that’s the thing about

Julie: hearing it as a sensitivity issue is because they think they can never talk about it. And it’s because we’re just too sensitive.

Rachel: Right, exactly. Yeah, so. Yeah, it was a pretty shitty experience. And I will say, I don’t wanna necessarily put this doctor on blast to the whole world, but if anyone’s listening who is Philly based and wants to send us an email, I can give you this practices information so you can avoid them.

Julie: Rachel, that sounds so awful.

Julie: Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. What looks like support for you in these moments? I don’t know if you need anything right now or you did right after the appointment. I don’t know if there’s anything that comes up for you.

Rachel: Yeah, I don’t think anything right now. mean, I after the appointment, I had a good long cry and kind of just like got the anger and frustration and and stress because there’s I mean, there’s something that’s so when you set boundaries, or at least when I set boundaries, I have this like, underlying fear of disappointing people where I think it like, there’s this, like, I feel bad setting boundaries. So there’s like, On top of just standing up for myself, I feel this guilt. right, there’s so many icky feelings. And then I had a good long talk with my therapist about it and wrote a long review of the appointment and sent it to my primary care doctor. And was like, please don’t recommend this endocrinologist to anyone.

Julie: Yeah, it’s already there before you even start the interaction.

Julie: good. Did you? Go ahead.

Coleen: Which thank you for that. Like that’s not something that should be like on your list of things to do. Like again, the burden falls to you, but like, I just want to like say thank you like, because you may very well have saved someone else from this like terrible experience and doing that. And again, like that’s not your responsibility to do. And that’s not like the burden shouldn’t be on you, but it’s like so bad ass that you did that.

Rachel: Yeah, thank you. And I mean, think that it absolutely it’s no, it should not be on anyone who’s receiving shitty care to like, then advocate, share that story, etc. I’m lucky in that like, I process through writing. So I had already like written everything kind of just to like process it through. So it was pretty easy to kind of take that step. But you’re right. It’s not the burden. It should not be the burden of the person who’s experiencing that care to have to like say something about it.

Julie: Do you mind if I ask a follow up question about the boundaries? And I wonder if the three of us kind of experience it in the same way or different, but you mentioned like how already there’s like this feeling of guilt with asking for a boundary or just communicating one. What do you think, maybe this is for all three of us to unpack a little bit, but like, what do you think’s behind that?

Julie: What led us to believe that? And Coleen, I don’t wanna speak for you, but I’m like, ooh, that spoke to me. Does that speak to you at all? Okay.

Rachel: I mean, I think part of it is like just being socialized as women and like, you know, the caretaking role, the appeasing role, the like kind of mentality of like don’t ruffle feathers, that kind of thing feels like it sits at the basis of it, for me at least. I don’t know what you guys think.

Julie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think about same like being socialized as a woman. What I’ve like noticed is what comes with that package is this or this like order to be easy going. Take it easy. Don’t Yeah, don’t ruffle the feathers and but Boundary setting can be like almost like hurting the vibe, you know, it’s it’s getting in the way of an easy interaction. Putting tension in there. Fuck like it’s no like that’s that’s the thing is like anyone who’s needing to set a boundary is already feeling that fucking tension. We’re just needing to like name it. So then it’s just not all on us, you know.

Coleen: I had this like mind blowing experience where someone told me once that boundary setting was actually the way to be true to yourself and to honor your true person. And that literally blew my mind because I have always been a people pleaser and always been someone who like sought, you know, the approval of other people to somehow prove my own worth.

Coleen: And when I stopped believing that my worth was tied to someone else’s view of me is when I was finally able to say, no, a boundary that I set is actually me standing up for who I truly am. And if that person doesn’t like that, they don’t get to have space in my life, regardless of if that is a family member, a friend, a care provider, anybody that that. they don’t get to be in my circle and that’s on them. That’s not on me.

Julie: Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yes. Yes. There’s a few other things about your appointment, I think, about what a listener may be wondering about, like deciding to stay or go, which, of course, I mean, I know the three of us all appreciate how there’s privilege with that experience. Some people are just stuck with whoever they get if they get anybody, because there’s definitely people who can’t.

Rachel: Yes, absolutely.

Julie: endocrinology, let me just sidebar for a second, is its own special fat phobic shit show. Okay, because like so many endocrinologists, as you all probably know, won’t even schedule appointments with folks over a certain BMI. reproductive endocrinologists are especially known for this one. Yes, because they’re like afraid of their numbers not being as good for reproductive medicine, but yet they’ll still see someone who’s of advanced maternal age and older, which is only 35. Well, I know, but also like there’s more research on how getting pregnant older has less outcomes than body size. yet, I mean, there’s still like cutoffs, right? But like still they doctors will see people to like their 50. So  Anyway, I could do a chronology as its own like special shit show. So yeah, like, how do you decide or maybe it’s even like has anyone ever left an appointment? And how did you know it was time to go? versus just staying and experiencing more of that harm?

Rachel: I have never left an appointment. This is the closest I’ve ever come to leaving an appointment. And honestly reflecting back on it, I mean, I understand why in the moment I rationalized staying because, right. But I mean, hindsight’s 20 -20. I do wish I had left.

Julie: Yeah, six months, you guys wait almost six months for this appointment.

Rachel: And in that period of time when the fellow had left the room, but the doctor hadn’t come in, I really like went back and forth a lot and kind of ultimately felt that, which I think is probably not uncommon, that kind of like frozen in place feeling where I was like, yeah, like I think I want to leave, but I don’t think I can.

Julie: Yes, yeah, you were traumatized, yeah.

Coleen: That ties into some of my story as well. So good, good segue. So if you heard our last episode, you may have heard that I am a new mother. I have little baby B who is seven months this month, which blows my mind. And I experienced some fat phobia.

Rachel: Yeah, which I want to dig in to.

Coleen: during my own care in just getting to the actual delivery of her. And one of the things that I noticed happening a lot, so for anyone who may be thinking about growing their family or anything like that or is on the path and whatever the case may be, something that was really challenging was them wanting to assign something to me because of my weight. So I did get weighed in my appointments. I hadn’t been weighed for a very long time in a lot of my doctor’s appointments. And for some reason in my mind, I thought, because I have this other life inside me, I need to make sure that everything is OK. You know, I’m a first time parent. And I think that there is a lot of fear around like, just being a first time parent, I think I might approach things differently if I decide to have another, but I really wanted to be like, okay, if this weight means this, then that means that baby is growing how they should be. But during, as we progressed and weight was captured and things like that, there were so many comments made about, well, I’m surprised you don’t have gestational diabetes.

I’m surprised that you don’t have preeclampsia or like you’re not showing, but you know, towards the end of my pregnancy, I ended up delivering a week and a day past my due date. They were like, well, like we won’t let you go any farther because like it’s too high of a risk with preeclampsia or it’s too high. And there were so many comments made that I wondered, I wasn’t diagnosed, nope.

Julie: Wait, but you weren’t diagnosed with those, right? Okay, so they were assumed by looking at you. Okay. man.

Coleen: assuming by my weight and by my appearance that like I was going to have some sort of like pregnancy issues. And I had a very healthy pregnancy. I was, I had great energy. Like I felt very, very lucky to have the pregnancy that I had. And then I had a pretty traumatic birth of my daughter. And I wonder without you know, diving too much into the details of like going into labor and dealing with the gosh, the rotating door of doctors that I dealt with because I was there for so long and trying to deliver for for days. I wonder how much of that happened because of, you know, whether it was how people made opinions about my way or how people, you know, I wonder how much trauma I experienced due to their own biases about my weight. Because there were many decisions made, even though I had an amazing doula. Shout out to her, Kayla, who is Rachel’s sister, actually, and who is a fierce advocate for me and helped empower me to like talk through things and not rush into decisions. But I ended up doing every intervention I didn’t want to do because

Coleen: I think to Rachel’s point in the moment thinking about like, well, what would I have done differently in hindsight is 2020. It’s like in that moment, the doctor is still the person that you trust because they have the training and the experience. I have no other choice in the moment other than to like trust this person. And. It’s that’s that’s a really vulnerable place to be in, and it felt very vulnerable  .to be someone who prides themselves on being, know, trying to educate themselves on lots of topics and trying to, you know, be as prepared as possible to deliver this baby. I felt like I had done all of my due diligence. again, like speaking from a place of privilege, I was able to go to birthing classes. I was able to have a doula. Like I had lots of resources at my disposal.

And yet when push came to shove, literally, I hit a certain point throughout, I think I was in labor for, I don’t know, two or three days. It’s a blur now. I haven’t even gone back and listened to my voice memos because I haven’t had the capacity yet to do that. but I did at a certain point hit a spot where I was pushing and pushing and pushing. And finally the doctor came in and was like, okay, I’m going to give you one more hour. And then you’re going into a C -section and.

Coleen: that at that point, it felt like, okay, I no longer have a choice. I did every intervention I already didn’t want to do. I did all of the medication I didn’t want to do. And like, at that point, it was like, what I have no, I lost, I think, in that moment, sorry, I’m probably gonna get emotional. I lost what felt like my own body autonomy, because I didn’t have a choice anymore. And it was like, okay, now, like. there’s some stress on the baby’s heart or which is what they told me. So I have to assume that it’s true. But a big part of me now wonders, did I actually need to have a C -section or did I get to this point because it was the fastest way that they could get me like out of their operating room and into the like recovery room? yes.

Julie: Or if you were in a smaller body, would you have been given more time? Yeah. Yeah.

Coleen: Exactly, like there are so many questions I have now about just my own, like, yeah, my own body. And now, like, even recovering, like, the speed at which, like, I felt like I should be recovering, like, did my body affect that because of its size? Like, I now am dealing with some internal struggle and trauma over the birth of my child, which…

Coleen: I had this idea of what it would look like and now looking back, like it’s pretty traumatic. And rather than thinking about this time with my daughter that I should have been like very celebratory and wonderful and like that I should have been bonding and all these things that I feel like I should have been doing. I now look back at those first two weeks as being like, I like barely could survive during that time. Like I barely made it through that time. And so, Again, like the onus should not be on the person that experiences these things. And Rachel, that’s why I wanted to highlight that. But now I feel like, like I want to kind of reach out to a patient advocate. I’m thinking about things that I can do now that it feels far enough away. I mean, obviously it’s, it still feels very fresh, but it’s feels farther away enough now that I can look back and say, okay, what can I maybe do that this won’t happen to someone else? Because I want everyone to look back at that time and maybe, I don’t know, maybe that’s like volunteering to be a patient advocate at some point. Like maybe, I don’t know what my role is yet because I find a lot of joy and purpose in my life and helping others. So I probably will think about ways that I can do that, but I would love to. And I think that, yeah, there’s just a lot of space in our healthcare system.

Julie: I could totally see you doing that.

Rachel: Absolutely.

Coleen: It’s so funny, it’s a space full of education, but to have more education around ways to be a more fierce advocate for people in marginalized spaces in a variety of ways, right? So, yeah.

Julie: sending you lots of love, Coleen. That’s a lot. and I think about what would that education look like? Because when we think about what Rachel, what you were saying about how they said it was a sensitivity issue, like it’s it’s missing the mark unless people are willing to really name their role in it like how there’s this personal and like collective responsibility to see like where the problem actually is, not the person’s behaviors or body size. Like that’s not the problem. And even if it was like a behavior things, like it’s not getting to it because no one’s asking the questions. Man. Yeah, there’s so much that needs to happen. so, listener, if you ever have an experience like this and you’re like Rachel and you like in that moment able to write something eventually after processing with your therapist, know it causes a ripple effect. And Coleen, I know you’re in a place where you’re like trying to decide what’s next. And let’s just say for the sake of like the opposite, like you decide that you’ve done enough. and or like that’s just, that’s all that’s gonna happen. And I hope you and or if you’re that person that chooses to do nothing else afterwards, that’s the right thing. That’s the next best step because yeah, that’s not on you. It’s on the rest of us.

Rachel: Yeah, I think, and as, as much as I wish that the healthcare system took better care of people in marginalized bodies of all types, the fact of the matter is it doesn’t, but I think to the point of deciding what to do, kind of to care for yourself after, like really, I hope you have a support network that can also care for you. But you have to look out for yourself as number one and like do whatever is best for yourself. So if that is shouting from the rooftop, what happened if that is, you know, keeping it inside, processing in whatever way you need to, like all of those options are valid.

Julie: Yeah, all of them. Yeah. wow. There’s a lot that I wish we had a magic wand just to fucking fix it. Right.

Coleen: Yeah, truly.

Julie: What advice or maybe advice is just the right word, but like if someone is listening and they found us because they wanna try for the first time to navigate healthcare and they maybe wanna try for the first time to set a boundary, maybe for the first time to go to a doctor’s appointment and when they’re triaged in the beginning and they’re getting their temperature and their blood pressure and their weight taken, is there anything that you all would say to like, to them, for someone doing it for the first time, any advice you’d have.

Coleen: Rachel, do you want to start?

Rachel: Sure. So thinking back to what kind of helped me in the beginning, I rehearsed, I started with just the boundary of I don’t want to be weighed. And for me, it kind of helped that I had a quote unquote justification, which you don’t need to have, but that I could kind of be like, I have a history of eating disorders. I will not be weighed. And I think I like said that out loud to myself so many times before the first time I like tried to put that boundary in place. I like wrote it down. I, you know, like really solidified my ability to just like say those words out loud. and just kind of practiced saying it and also giving myself permission to like, if someone were to push back on that boundary. And I then like, quote unquote, gave in and like allowed myself to be weighed, that didn’t say anything bad about myself. Like there were times, especially in the beginning where it was like, I don’t want to be weighed. And they’d be like, well, you have to be. And I’d be like, okay. And, you know, not kind of taking that as something against myself. That kind of is how I started and then started to feel more confident in continuing to like push back on that.

Julie: Mm hmm. Yeah, practice it like practice saying it out loud as many times as you can. And then it also practicing it in real time, it may take a few times or certain people to actually see the boundary respected. Yeah.

Rachel: Yeah. And I also think, especially given that we live in a world where so much is electronic, like before you go see a doctor, if it’s easier to set, like, you know, send a message or somehow like put it in your own portal as a note, like before you even go into the appointment, just to kind of get that baseline out there, I also think that that’s kind of helpful.

Julie: Yeah, yeah. What about you, Coleen? Anything come to mind for you?

Coleen: So, so good, Rachel. I think to Julie’s point, if you are even thinking about it, you’re already doing something. So I think that’s huge. So like pat on the back for you, do it right now, give yourself a little squeeze. Because it’s just, that’s a big deal. And if you end up getting there and you just think it, even if you’re not able to vocalize it yet, it’s so important. That’s like, of your first step, right? Like it’s internal, you’re thinking about it. It’s okay if you can’t get it out yet. There have been so many times when I’ve wanted to say certain things back to a healthcare provider and I’ve certainly thought it, but I just couldn’t vocalize it yet. And I think that’s also so okay. Like, again, you are your best advocate and however you can support yourself best in the moment is the best thing for you. So I would say to just in conjunction with that. If for some reason you do say like, don’t want to be weighed. know the first time I did this, shot my heart rate through the roof. I had a super like physiological response to doing that. And then my blood pressure was super high. So if you can ask them to take your blood pressure at the end of your appointment. which hopefully you have a good appointment and nothing else gives you a physiological response in the appointment so that you can maybe give your, give your nervous system, just a little bit of a break to take your blood pressure again. But, yeah, I think that’s my two cents. It’s, it’s also okay to just have it internal for a little while as well as you figure things out. Yeah.

Julie: Yeah, like let it take its time. Like your progress may look differently than you’re expecting. Yeah, so much of like the mind body kind of connection. Just like, yeah, just naming it and thinking about it is such a big step in itself. So have lots of compassion as you’re trying to navigate it. Thank you so much, both of you for like sharing your experiences and I mean, just sharing them is such a heavy lift already, but also just know like it does cause that ripple effect. So thank you.

Coleen: And if you do want to share a story with us, like we will hold your story and keep it safe in our inbox. And if it helps and is cathartic to you to write it out, please do that. Like I, if you feel comfortable and want to, we are happy to read and hold that in our, in our space as well with you. 

Julie: Yes. Thank you. Thank you all.

Julie: So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Coleen and Rachel as we unpack navigating healthcare and so much that comes from that experience. I hope it gives you just a little bit more insight on what possibly could happen and extra tools as you’re navigating it all along the way. So be on the lookout for some bonus episodes this week. I have a continuation from last week.

If you missed last week’s episode. I had an interview with Jesse Spence, who is a therapist who also has been using a GLP -1 to help manage their diabetes, and they wanted to share their experience. And I hope it helps those of you who are supporting people in the anti -diet space who are exploring different ways to manage their health conditions. And maybe if you’re also someone who’s just thinking about that or wondering about…

GLP ones and if they are going to have a fit in your life. Yeah, we just hope it helps you to have more information and these bonus episodes are from experts who work in the field of diabetes and also just have more experience with this medication. Again, my intention is to have just more information for you to find, especially if you are looking for information that’s nuanced along the lines of weight inclusive care and

Yeah, so anyway, look for those episodes. They are coming very soon. Actually tomorrow, to be exact. And we hope you enjoy them. And until then, take care.

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