Made on a Generous Plan Coaching

Meredith Noble is a food & body peace coach for plus-sized people. Part intuitive eating coach, part body image coach, and fully guided by the principles of Health At Every Size, she helps people who struggle with emotional eating, binge eating, and chronic dieting reestablish healthy relationships with their bodies and food.

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Intuitive Eating & Allowance

Intuitive eating is NOT a weight loss technique. Period.

One of the most harmful pieces of misinformation out there in the non-diet, body positive world is the idea that intuitive eating can help you lose weight. I want to clarify things once and for all. (Not sure what intuitive eating is? Read What is Intuitive Eating?)

Intuitive eating should never be used as a way to lose weight. Losing weight should never be a goal for anyone, ever, because there is no known permanent way to intentionally lose weight.

Despite this, the myth persists that intuitive eating can help you lose weight. There are a lot of reasons for this.

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Reason 1: Some people do lose weight when they begin eating intuitively.

It’s true, some people do lose weight when they start an intuitive eating practice. It’s easy to want to generalize this to everyone. But the truth is that other people gain weight, and still others stay roughly the same weight as when they started.

What’s the reason for this? It’s because eating based on intuition does one key thing: return you to your “set point weight”.

Simply put, your set point weight is the weight at which your body is happiest. It’s actually better described as a set point weight range, because your body is happy to fluctuate within about 15-20 pounds. Your set point is controlled by a part of your brain called the hypothalamus, which controls your metabolism, your food intake, and your movement to keep you within its preferred weight range.

Every single person has a different set point weight. We have little control over it: it’s determined by a multitude of factors, many of them genetic.

Little Aside

What can increase our set point weight? Diets.

Yes, it’s true — unfortunately, there is evidence that one very easy way to increase our set point weight is to diet.

After losing weight on a diet, many of us put the weight back on plus a little more. That “little more” is our set point weight being pushed a little higher.

I recognize this can be a difficult fact to learn, and as such it’s something I try to spend time working through with clients. It can bring up a lot of self-blame, but I want to reassure you that none of us are to blame for what dieting culture taught us or what it did to our bodies.

Intuitive eating returns us to somewhere within our set point weight range. If you are above your set point when you start eating intuitively (say, because you’ve been stressed lately), you may lose weight. If you’ve been below your set point because you’ve been restricting food or over-exercising, you may gain weight when you start feeding or resting your body appropriately. Or, you may already be in your natural weight range and roughly stay put when you start practicing intuitive eating.

I want to emphasize that we can never really predict what direction someone is going to go in. Part of the process is giving up the idea that any of it can be controlled. If we work together, I am here to support you as you take this leap into the unknown.

Bottom line, because some people do lose weight as they start this process, people sometimes misinterpret their outcome as being generalizable to anyone who eats intuitively. This is not true.

This is why, while we work on intuitive eating and allowance of all foods, we simultaneously work on helping you feel comfortable with whatever body size and shape you end up in. Any size you end up at is equally lovable and worthy as any other size. It may be hard to believe that now, but I am here to hold that belief for you while you work on believing it yourself.

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Reason 2: Taken the wrong way, intuitive eating can feel like a diet, and diets are for losing weight.

Newcomers to intuitive eating sometimes treat it like just the newest diet they’re on. They see it as a list of rules, and think they need to “master” it and do it “perfectly”. This means that, for instance, they feel guilty if they eat when they’re not hungry, or if they eat when they experience difficult emotions.

It’s really easy to understand why this happens; for many of us our relationship with food has only ever existed in two ways, (1) dieting and (2) saying “fuck it, I’m eating whatever the hell I want!”. It’s only natural that we would look at intuitive eating as a diet, because we literally don’t know anything else. The tricky bit is that because it can feel like a diet, we extrapolate to think it can lead to weight loss as well.

Unlike dieting, intuitive eating is not about perfection. We do not aim for A-pluses in any of the intuitive eating tenets! Try to think of intuitive eating as simply an approach to food and eating — a philosophy, if you will. There are no “rules”. We should never grade ourselves on it.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no food behavior that anyone should ever feel guilty about when eating intuitively. Your body wanted a certain food in a certain way, and that’s all there is to it. I eat even when I’m not hungry a lot. There are times I choose not to stop the moment I get full. It’s called being human! The key is that I trust my body to sort it out for me.

Furthermore, it’s important to realize that intuitive eating is a practice. Feeling comfortable around food can take some time, particularly for those of us who have struggled with disordered eating for a long period of time.

We need to have deep compassion for ourselves as we start to tune into what our body is saying. Tuning in takes real practice, because diets teach us to completely disconnect from our bodies.

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Reason 3: A lot of people confuse intuitive eating with mindful eating.

There is a similar myth out there that being mindful when eating will help us lose weight, and because intuitive eating and mindful eating are often mistaken for each other, their myths become shared as well!

The idea of mindful eating leading to weight loss is based on the concept that we’re eating “too much food” because we’re not paying attention. Many believe that the moment we start tuning into our meals when we eat, we will naturally eat less.

I am not 100% convinced that someone who is already eating intuitively and has a healthy relationship with food will eat less when they eat mindfully. I also don’t think that eating less is the goal; our body wants what it wants, and its sole goal is to get to its set point weight. So even if a person naturally eats less when eating mindfully, it doesn’t mean that they will necessarily lose weight.

Also, while I think paying attention to what we eat can help us slow down and, by extension, increase our enjoyment of food, I am very hesitant about recommending it to those I work with because it can be another practice to judge oneself on.

For instance, in the past, my internal voice went something like this: “Did I eat mindfully at all my meals today? No. Shit, I failed again!”

These kinds of thoughts are so extremely counterproductive but I find those of us who struggle with disordered eating like to turn everything into a checklist of tasks to be completed and achievements collected.

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Reason 4: Past editions of the book Intuitive Eating actually did discuss it in the context of weight loss.

The authors of Intuitive Eating, Tribole and Resch, have changed their own minds about the relationship between weight loss and intuitive eating as they’ve learned more about Health At Every Size and the most recent science. Some people have been slow to adopt their new thinking. (If you buy the book, please be sure to buy the 3rd edition!)

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Boom, myth debunked.

There we go! There are many reasons this myth persists, but I hope I’ve convinced you that intuitive eating should never be used as a tool to pursue weight loss. It may happen naturally if you happen to be above your set point weight, but weight loss is never an intuitive eating goal. Let me know if you have questions below!

Warmly,

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About Meredith

Fat liberation and intuitive eating coach Meredith NobleI'm Meredith Noble and I'm a fat liberation, Health At Every Size® and intuitive eating coach.

If you have struggled with chronic dieting and the challenges of being fat in a fatphobic world, I'm here to help you finally feel at home in your fat body.

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My Instagram Feed

I took part in an event recently with a variety of I took part in an event recently with a variety of students in healthcare fields. They were all future doctors or other allied medial professionals. And I was so disheartened by the fact that extremely few of them had been disabused of the idea that fat people are fat because they either haven't thought to diet or haven't tried hard enough to diet.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Even the most basic advice we fat people are given by healthcare providers to help us lose weight, such as "eat less and move more", DOESN'T WORK. In reality our bodies undergo a series of metabolic changes that sabotage our ability to maintain any weight loss — this includes making food literally tastier to our tastebuds and reducing our energy level so we move less. (Look up the Minnesota Starvation study for more details, and note that 1500 calories was considered a "starvation diet" for the participants.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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So reader, in case your medical provider has tried to advise you to lose weight, I just want you to know that you are able to care for your health and wellbeing without chasing a number on a scale. Dieting of any kind, and by that I mean manipulating food and movement in any way to purposefully lose weight, does not work in the long-term. But caring for yourself in a weight-neutral way does.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Yes, we can be fooled into thinking these weight loss tactics work — how many times have you heard someone say, "I lose X pounds in the last Y days?!" But research shows that at the one, two, three, five year marks — people have regained the weight, and usually have gained past their initial starting weight. I can't wait for more of the healthcare providers in the world to catch on to this.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Made on a Generous Plan ・ Fat liberation coaching ・ Online and in Portland, OR ・ Visit generousplan.com for more!
Please don't put so much pressure on yourselves to Please don't put so much pressure on yourselves to have an unconditionally positive relationship to fatness as a fat person. You don't have to aim to go through your life saying "everything about fatness is the cat's meow and I'm never going to let this get to me." Allow me to explain.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I would love for you to find ways to thrive in your fat body and feel kind, compassionate, and even loving towards it. I would love for you to find joyful ways to feel embodied, and for you to know that you have the same worthiness regardless of the size and shape of your body. I want SO badly for you to have those things and I've devoted my life to supporting people as they find new ways of relating to their fat bodies.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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BUT: I also want you to know that being fat positive doesn't mean you're never impacted by the shittiness of the world. Being fat positive doesn't mean fatphobia is supposed to run off you like water on a duck's back. Never get down on yourself for your grief about having to live in a fat body in a world that is inhospitable to it. Never get down on yourself for your sadness and anger about having to miss out on opportunities that are inaccessible due to your size. Never get down on yourself when you notice you're gaining weight and you feel afraid of what the consequences might be in terms of medical care, access to clothing, how your family/colleagues/friends might treat you, etc. etc. etc.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Being fat positive is about your relationship with YOURSELF and your relationship TO OTHER FAT PEOPLE. It's about accepting yourself and accepting others, and that's it. It has nothing to do with how you feel when other people treat you poorly for being fat, or how you feel when the built environment doesn't accommodate your fatness. Focus on your relationship to yourself and other fat people in your healing, and don't hold yourself back from feeling your oh-so-valid emotions about fat oppression whenever they arise.
Your health status and size have zero bearing on y Your health status and size have zero bearing on your worth or your lovability. They do not impact how much compassion you deserve, how much patience you deserve, or how much kindness you deserve. PERIOD.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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If you are fat and have health conditions, I see you. I AM you. Please be kind and gentle with yourself, and seek out others who will also be kind and gentle with you. Although they can be hard to find, HAES-informed medical providers do exist, and connecting with HAES community can help you figure out who in your community is safe to see as a fat person.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Made on a Generous Plan ・ Fat liberation coaching ・ Online and in Portland, OR ・ Visit generousplan.com for more!
The stigma around diabetes is strong, particularly The stigma around diabetes is strong, particularly type 2 diabetes, which is considered by many to be the result of "poor lifestyle choices."⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Here's the thing: you are not to blame for your health conditions, diabetes or otherwise. You think you're to blame for them because our neoliberal society (particularly in America) has taught us that we are responsible for our health. Making so many things our responsibility makes things easier for the state — it means the government doesn't have to work as hard to care for its citizens, and that we still stay productive and produce and consume capital as it wants us to do.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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(These are all ideas put forward by Michel Foucault, or built on Foucault's ideas. For more information, look up governmentality, responsibilization, neoliberalism, and healthism.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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By the way, most people ignore that type 2 is HIGHLY genetically influenced and is even more genetically influenced than type 1. Furthermore, fatphobia originally led scientists to assume that fatness caused type 2 diabetes, and now evidence is showing that metabolic changes lead to BOTH weight gain and the development of type 2. (Look up Peter Attia's TED talk for more. But stop there because he's now a diety biohacker, eww.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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But what about lifestyle factors, you ask? First—and this is important—eating sugar and other simple carbohydrates does NOT cause diabetes.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Second, some sources claim that moving your body regularly can stave off the development of diabetes. I am not enough of an expert to know if this is true (particularly after fatphobia in research is accounted for), but hey, it's plausible given what we know about how movement impacts blood sugar. Here's what I know for sure though: even if movement could theoretically stave off type 2, people who don't move "enough" STILL aren't to blame for their type 2 diagnosis.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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CONTINUED IN FIRST COMMENT
You may have heard of the concept of setpoint. It You may have heard of the concept of setpoint. It is defined in Lucy Aphramor & Lindo Bacon's Body Respect book as "the weight range that your body likes best." Sandra Aamodt has also begun calling it one's "defended weight range", to account for the fact that it's not a single number, it's a range.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Setpoints are a real thing, no doubt about it. But I also kind of hate the concept, because when we're steeped in our own fatphobia, it can be hard to believe that our setpoint might be higher than our current weight. This is particularly true if we're fat. It's easy to convince ourselves that our body can't possibly want to be fat, and therefore our setpoint must be lower than our current weight.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Sadly, some writers have also introduced the idea of aiming for the "lowest part" of your setpoint range. This concept is steeped in fatphobia and encourages us to move out of relationship with our bodies and aim at a number through effort. In other words, this concept tends to encourage us to engage in diety behaviors.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Hoping that our setpoint is lower than our current weight and trying to get to the lowest part of our natural setpoint range can get in the way of having a caring relationship with our body. It can prevent us from trusting our body's intuition around when, how much, and what to eat, and when, how much, and what kind of movement feels good.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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If you think this concept of 'setpoint' is throwing you for a loop, I urge you to ditch it. Your body is going to land where it's going to land, period. Focus on the path of rekindling that relationship with your body after years of denying it what it wanted while dieting. Whatever size your body lands at when you're caring for it in a non-diety, non-disordered way is where it's meant to be. And technically that is your setpoint but ironically, you might have better luck by not getting distracted by it.
✨ Third in my series of the very specific, life- ✨ Third in my series of the very specific, life-changing ways fat people are impacted by weight stigma. ✨⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Fat people are consistently denied fertility treatment on the basis that they cannot or should not conceive while fat. Fertility clinics have wildly different policies, but I've heard of cutoffs  starting as low as a BMI of 30. (Note: the BMI is bullshit and racist and I'm only mentioning it here because it's part of these medical criteria.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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These cutoffs are 1000% rooted in fatphobia. Fat people have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies ALL THE TIME. And since we know how harmful weight loss attempts through dieting and surgery can be, it is unethical to prescribe these as a precondition to treatment.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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If you are a fat person interested in matters of fertility, I highly recommend checking out the work of my friend Nicola at @fatpositivefertility.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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In sum, medical fatphobia harms fat people every minute of every day. Fat liberation is about seeking justice for fat people in every corner of their lives. This is what separates fat lib conversations from conversations about body positivity. Finding our self-worth is one piece of the puzzle. It helps us feel worthy of seeking justice and it improves our day-to-day lives as fat people. But it is only one piece, and this is why we fat activists fight so hard for these messages not to be drowned out.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Made on a Generous Plan ・ Fat liberation coaching ・ Online and in Portland, OR ・ Visit generousplan.com for more!
This is the second in my weight stigma series, whe This is the second in my weight stigma series, where I try to make weight stigma less abstract and more tangible for folks who are not affected by it. I can’t decide whether to continue this series as the first post didn’t get much traction — so please let me know your feedback if you feel so inclined.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Second up, because I saw this mentioned the other of day and the horror of it is fresh in my mind: some people are denied life-saving organ transplants because they are deemed too fat. Unless they can successfully advocate for themselves and/or have someone advocate on their behalf, they may be faced with trying to lose an immense amount of weight rapidly in order to qualify. NO ONE should have to deal with this. Losing large amounts of weight is not possible without starvation. It can be very, very hard on the body (not to mention temporary) and can lead to malnutrition and muscle wastage before a surgery takes place—meaning a person is WEAKER rather than stronger.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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So yes, to get super, super specific, when we are fighting against weight stigma one of the things we are fighting for is humans being able to access life-saving surgeries regardless of their size. Let's not let our activism ever get abstract or watered down.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Made on a Generous Plan ・ Fat liberation coaching ・ Online and in Portland, OR ・ Visit generousplan.com for more!
✨ Fat people who follow my feed: much of this se ✨ Fat people who follow my feed: much of this series will not be news to you, particularly if you are large or superfat. But for everyone else's benefit, I wanted to get super, super specific about what the costs of weight stigma really are. I hope it's beneficial. ✨⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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It's a bit of a distancing term, really... "weight stigma". It feels abstract, general. But it has devastating consequences. REAL HARM. PEOPLE DIE.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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First up: fat people earn less than non-fat people. There have been numerous studies showing this; one, for instance, showed fat women aged 18-25 earned 12% less than their thinner colleagues (1).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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For a woman earning the median U.S. individual income of $33,706, that's a loss of over $4,000 a year.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Now, just to get a better sense of things, let's assume that woman earns the same amount every year over a 45 year working career (say, from age 20 to 65) and is impacted similarly by her fatness throughout her lifespan. In that case, she has lost over $180,000 simply by being fat.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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This doesn't account for inflation and it makes a ton of assumptions for a back-of-the-napkin kind of estimation, but I think it still serves the purpose of providing a sense of just how significant these impacts could be in a person's life.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Weight stigma is REAL and its very significant impacts need to be acknowledged so that we can CHANGE it. Please let this inform your day-to-day actions in advocating for fat people.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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(1) Register, C. A., & Williams, D. R. (1990). Wage effects of obesity among young workers. Social Science Quarterly, 71(1), 130.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Made on a Generous Plan ・ Fat liberation coaching ・ Online and in Portland, OR ・ Visit generousplan.com for more!
For those not currently aware, it is Weight Stigma For those not currently aware, it is Weight Stigma Awareness Week. This week was founded by the amazing folks at the Binge Eating Disorder Association, and the week was taken over by the National Eating Disorder Association (of the US; @neda) when the two organizations merged a couple of years ago.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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When the two organizations merged it was with an understanding that NEDA would work to reform the organization to be more social justice-minded and to support and advocate on behalf of all marginalized people (rather than just the thin, white women who had traditionally been the face of the eating disorder community).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Unfortunately, despite some EXTREMELY dedicated fat people from BEDA working within the organization to create reform, the organization has evidently decided to lampoon its social justice mission, and along with it, the founder of BEDA, Chevese Turner. When powerful ED community members complained about new social justice efforts within the organization, NEDA buckled and ousted the person who was the loudest champion of them. Chevese’s compatriot Joslyn (the only other fat NEDA employee) resigned in protest on Tuesday.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The problem is that fat people, BIPOC people, queer people,  trans/non-binary/gnc people, low SES people, rural people, and neurodivergent people are all receiving substandard care in the ED community each and every day. Marginalized people with EDs need CONSISTENT, DEDICATED advocates to protect them and make change in this field, not fair-weather friends who relent when powerful people don't want to give up their power.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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We as a HAES community are banding together to demand better from NEDA. We need accountability for all of their actions, and we damn well need (and DESERVE) a commitment from them to do BETTER in the future.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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