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Health at Every Size


Health at Every Size (HAES) is a theory advanced by certain sectors of the fat acceptance movement. It is promoted by the Association for Size Diversity and Health, which owns the phrase as a registered trademark. Its main tenet involves rejection of the scientific consensus regarding the link between excessive calorie intake, a sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical exercise, improper nutrition, and greater body weight - and its effects on a person's health.

HAES advocates argue that traditional interventions focused on weight loss, such as dieting, do not reliably produce positive health outcomes. The benefits of lifestyle interventions such as nutritious eating and exercise are presumed to be real, but independent of any weight loss they may cause. At the same time, HAES advocates espouse that sustained, large-scale weight loss is difficult to the point of effective impossibility for the majority of obese people. Evidence to support the view that some obese people eat little yet gain weight due to a slow metabolism is limited, and often false, as studies have shown that obese individuals incorrectly self-report calories consumed; on average, obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their healthy-weight counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body mass. HAES proponents believe that health is a result of behaviors that are independent of body weight and that favouring being thin discriminates against the overweight and the obese. Efforts towards such weight loss are instead held to cause rapid swings in size that inflict far worse physical and psychological damage than would obesity itself.

As part of the wider fat acceptance movement, HAES includes also a significant social and psychological dimension. Proponents view the common wisdom that obesity is unhealthy as part of a general stigmatization of the obese, and especially of obese women; thus, the movement has strong connections with feminism.


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