I sometimes post about Health At Every Size®, both the concept (which is trademarked by ASDAH) and the book Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight, by Linda Bacon. So I am pleased to see that ASDAH has updated its HAES® Principles to be more inclusive of different abilities and backgrounds. Weight bias and weight discrimination is explicitly called out. Supporting individual choices is more explicitly encouraged. A brief framing of the Health At Every Size® Approach has been added, as well, noting that health is NOT “simply the absence of physical or mental illness, limitation, or disease.” It also states that
[H]ealth exists on a continuum that varies with time and circumstance for each individual. Health should be conceived as a resource or capacity available to all regardless of health condition or ability level, and not as an outcome or objective of living. Pursuing health is neither a moral imperative nor an individual obligation, and health status should never be used to judge, oppress, or determine the value of an individual.
I suggest you check the full statement on the ASDAH site.
I like the changes. I feel that they are making a real effort to include everyone & not to pass down a list of ‘commandments’, things that we ‘should’ do to be healthy, as if the same things work for everyone & as if health is all about ‘personal responsibility’, or as if each individual somehow owes it to the culture to live ‘right’, etc. I feel much more personally comfortable with & able to identify with this definition of HAES.
Cool beans! I’ve always been a fan of the concept, and now the stated principles are even better.