Your Weight is the Least Interesting Thing About You: Why Person-First Language Changes Care
language matters
Words shape how we see ourselves. And how medicine sees us.
At The Shift Clinic, we use person-first language like "person with obesity" rather than "obese person", because your weight is something you're experiencing, not something you are. It's one aspect of your health, shaped by genetics, environment, hormones, and decades of life. Language that centres your humanity isn't just polite, it's part of better care.
the distinction
Grammatically, the shift is small. Clinically and psychologically, the shift is significant.
When we say "obese person," obesity becomes the defining characteristic. Your identity becomes your diagnosis. When we say "person with obesity," the condition becomes something you're experiencing. It’s just one aspect of your health picture, influenced by multiple factors far beyond your control. It's what you have, not what you are.
The Obesity Society, the European Association for the Study of Obesity, and the American Diabetes Association's 2025 Standards of Care all advocate for person-first language in obesity medicine. These aren't arbitrary style preferences but responses to evidence showing that stigmatizing language creates measurable barriers to care.
what research shows
Weight stigma doesn't motivate people to change; in fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Weight stigma has been shown to affect eating habits, leading to increased calorie consumption. A 2021 observational study of Irish patients with obesity found that prior experiences of weight bias led to missed or cancelled follow-up appointments, as well as an escalation of harmful behaviours related to food and physical inactivity.
Clinicians may inadvertently perpetuate stereotypes by making assumptions about a patient's lifestyle, likely treatment compliance, or overall health behaviours. They may attribute all medical issues to obesity and focus solely on weight reduction rather than addressing comprehensive healthcare needs.
A 2020 joint international consensus statement published in Nature Medicine brought together experts from ten scientific organizations to address this issue. The research indicates that weight stigma can cause physical and psychological harm, and that affected individuals are less likely to receive adequate care. Weight stigma damages health, undermines human and social rights, and is unacceptable in modern societies.
It's about being accurate and effective.
the perspective piece
At The Shift Clinic, we use the MAP Framework — Metabolism, Appetite, Perspective — to organize our approach to sustainable weight management. Language falls squarely in the Perspective category.
Perspective is "how you see yourself, your body, your capacity, and how you navigate setbacks." Perspective headwinds (the forces that make your wellness navigation more difficult) include weight bias, trauma, and internalized diet culture.
How you're spoken to affects how you see yourself. How you see yourself affects whether you can actually engage in change.
This is why The Shift explicitly rejects these diet culture premises: that thinness equals worth, that certain foods are morally "bad," that willpower is the answer to biological complexity, and that weight loss should be pursued at any cost. The framework aligns with research showing that shame-based motivation actually increases eating, stress, and weight gain, while compassion-based approaches create lasting change.
When a clinician calls you "the obese patient," you're positioned as a problem to be solved. When a clinician acknowledges you as a person experiencing obesity, you're positioned as a human being navigating a complex chronic condition, one that involves your genetics, your hormones, your environment, your history, and your choices, but never only your choices.
You are not broken.
the internalized version
Weight stigma doesn't only come from external sources. Many people internalize it so thoroughly that they become their own harshest critics.
In The Shift framework, we call this voice the Inner Critic, the mean voice that lives in the murky, distorted part of your mind where everything feels catastrophic and urgent and TRUE, even when it's not. The Critic says things like: "You shouldn't be hungry already." "You're so weak for wanting that." "Everyone else can do this except you."
The Critic is often fuelled by internalized, outdated cultural messages about body worth and safety. It trades in perfectionist, black-and-white thinking, feeding you very old stories that were never true and certainly aren't true about who you're becoming.
The Critic doesn't just make you feel bad, it hijacks your nervous system, taking your prefrontal cortex offline and making appetite regulation impossible.
When person-first language is used consistently by healthcare providers, in media, in public health messaging, and eventually by you toward yourself, it helps interrupt this cycle. It creates a cognitive gap between who you are and what you're experiencing. That gap is where change becomes possible.
beyond politeness
Some people dismiss person-first language as political correctness, and that misses the point entirely.
Using person-first language isn't about being polite.
Obesity is a chronic, complex condition influenced by genetic predisposition, hormonal regulation, environmental factors, socioeconomic conditions, medication effects, and neurobiological processes. Reducing a person to "obese" as their primary descriptor is scientifically imprecise as well as humanly diminishing.
People living with obesity experience bias and stigma across their lifespan and across settings — home, schools, workplaces, media, public spaces, and healthcare environments. Stereotypes persist that people with obesity are lazy, unmotivated, and lacking willpower. These stereotypes lead to unfair treatment in schools, workplaces, and healthcare settings.
The prevailing view that obesity is a choice and can be entirely reversed by voluntary decisions to eat less and exercise more undermines public health policies, access to treatments, and research.
When medicine uses language that conflates a person with their condition, it reveals outdated thinking: the assumption that weight is primarily a behavioural choice rather than a multifactorial chronic disease. Accurate language reflects an accurate understanding.
why The Shift uses this language
Every word we use at The Shift Clinic is intentional.
We don't moralize foods as "good" or "bad." We don't chase numbers on scales. We don't use restriction and punishment. Instead, we build Appetite Literacy, honour internal cues, and navigate toward values.
And we absolutely don't say "obese person."
We say: person with obesity. Person experiencing this condition. Person navigating appetite dysregulation. Person learning to understand their own hunger signals.
Your weight is something you're experiencing. It's influenced by your genetics, your hormones, your nervous system regulation, your history, your environment, and — further down the list than you've probably been told — your daily choices. It's one aspect of your health picture. It doesn't define you.
the clinical difference
When you work with a clinician who speaks to you as a person experiencing a chronic condition with the same respect they'd use discussing hypertension or asthma, something becomes possible that wasn't possible before.
You can actually engage with your care. You can hear feedback without defensiveness because you're not bracing for attack. You can learn about your own physiology without shame because information isn't being weaponized against you.
This is when real clinical work becomes possible. Not when the patient is performing compliance to avoid judgment. When they're actually present, actually engaged, actually collaborating in their own care.
The Shift Clinic exists because you cannot rescue people into health. You cannot shame them, starve them, or optimize them into wellness. You have to build something entirely different: evidence-based obesity medicine delivered through coaching, strategy, and a new paradigm.
You are not broken. You do not need to be fixed. You need to be seen, guided, and equipped.
moving forward
You deserve care that recognizes your full humanity.
You deserve language that positions you as a capable person navigating a challenging condition, not as a diagnosis walking through the door.
And you deserve to extend that same linguistic kindness to yourself. To notice when you call yourself names. To recognize that the way you speak about yourself shapes how you treat yourself.
This is Perspective work. It's not separate from the Metabolism and Appetite dimensions of weight management; rather, it's foundational to them. You cannot sustainably change something you're at war with.
That's what The Shift is about.
Want to understand the full story behind this approach? Read how The Shift Clinic came to be.
Ready to experience care that treats you as a person, not a problem? Explore The Shift Clinic.
Not sure where you stand? Take the quiz to find out whether weight loss medications might be right for you.
