Lindo Bacon, PhD

Diets. Don’t. Work. And here’s the irony – dieting has probably contributed to why we’re fatter these days than ever before. It’s actually a well-established predictor of weight gain, as has been shown repeatedly in research. Dr. Linda Bacon explains how dieting really affects our bodies and why the best way to win the war against fat is to give up the fight. If you’re considering a diet, watch this first!

If yellow teeth are common among people with lung cancer, do yellow teeth cause cancer? Of course not. Common sense tells us that yellow teeth, like lung cancer, can result from smoking. Does fat kill? Will it make you sick? In this video, Dr. Linda Bacon delves into the research and comes up with some surprising results. When you suspend your preconceptions about weight, a very different picture emerges, one where it is the machinery of weight stigma that needs dismantling.

The war on obesity is causing untold damage to people of all sizes. By stigmatizing larger bodies, it’s creating stress and supporting discrimination. By inducing us to invest in so far useless efforts at weight control, it has resulted in rampant preoccupation with food and weight, disordered eating habits and billions in wasted dollars. And, by focusing the medical community on fat over other factors, it’s causing us to overlook more pernicious – and more curable – sources of disease. Here’s the final irony – it’s probably also made us fatter than we would have been otherwise. This video by Dr. Linda Bacon will convince you: it’s time to put health – and caring – back at the heart of health care.

While diet and exercise are two of many factors that matter in our health, even combined they are not the main determinants. In fact, all tolled, health behaviors account for less than a quarter of differences in health outcomes between groups. What is the main determinant? The answer may surprise you. In this video, Dr. Linda Bacon makes a convincing argument that blaming illness on behaviors and weight stops us from addressing the policies and systems that shape our lives in inequitable and unhealthy ways. The real crisis lies in the toxic stigma placed on certain bodies and the impact of living with inequity—not the numbers on a scale.