Welcome to HAESUK. We’re a growing group of people who have found HAES® through different paths and who share the common aim of helping raise awareness in the UK of what HAES® is all about.
Many of us first came across HAES® through our personal experiences of dieting and body hatred. We found a way to start to let go of the struggle with food and weight and begin the journey back to making friends with our body and nourishing ourselves.
A good number of us heard the dieter’s story of shaming, self-blame and eating distress repeat itself time and again as we listened to clients referred for weight loss. We knew then that we wanted to find another, no-harm, approach to work with people as dietitians and other health professionals.
Then there’s those of us who had been looking for a practical way to make sense of social determinants of health in our one-to-one consultations, and who were trying to get handle on ways of working that would challenge inequalities rather than normalising the status quo.
Through this equality lens, size discrimination is clearly understood as a human right issue, and as with all forms of oppression, as one that is a significant health hazard.
In HAES® we found an ethical, effective approach to improving personal and population wellbeing through promoting respect and health-gain. It’s evidence-based, inclusive, and rewarding. HAES® combines mindfulness, compassion, critical thinking and nutrition science into a framework that supports people in living well in the bodies they have right now, and building a fairer world.
About HAES UK
HAES UK is an independent non-profit group based in the UK supporting the HAES® (Health At Every Size) approach to health care and policy. It is open to all who support its mission:
HAES® promotes wellbeing through equality and compassionate self-care. It recognises that people of all weights benefit from healthful behaviours and being treated with respect, and so shifts its focus from weight-control for some to health-gain for all.
HAES® advances:
- Respect, including promoting body diversity and fostering size acceptance: respect everybody and challenge all forms of stigma.
- Compassion in healthcare and self-care: supporting people to develop a healthy and happy (mindful/intuitive) attitude towards eating and other aspects of wellbeing.
- Criticality: Recognising the impact of bias on societal assumptions about health, weight and lifestyle, learning to think critically about equality and build a useful and inclusive evidence base for practice.
[Aims last updated: February 2014]
If you support the HAES® approach to health, then you are invited to join us: please email info@healthateverysize.org.uk for a membership form (it is free to join).
Health At Every Size® 