📖 Table of Contents: Introduction
This Is Not a Diet Book. This Is a Survival Guide.
The Shocking Truth
Beyond Blame
Why This Book Exists
A Note About the Next Generation
This Is Not a Diet Book. This is a survival guide.
If you are living with obesity or excess weight, you already know what it feels like to carry the weight of stigma as much as the weight on your body.
You’ve heard the comments. You’ve felt the judgment. Maybe you’ve even avoided the doctor’s office because you couldn’t face another lecture that ignored your actual health concerns.
You’re not alone. And you’re not imagining it.
The Shocking Truth
By adulthood, the numbers are staggering:
About 40% of U.S. adults are living with obesity.
1 in 10 adults live with severe obesity.
Obesity contributes to ~500,000 deaths annually, that’s ~1,370 lives cut short every single day.
Severe obesity can shorten life expectancy by 5–20 years. Class III obesity has been shown to take away up to 14 years of life.
These aren’t small numbers.
They’re decades.
And we’ve seen the cost in names you know:
Latonya Pottain: star of My 600lb Life, died of a heart attack at age 41.
John Candy: beloved comedian and actor, died of a heart attack at age 43.
James Gandolfini: The Soprano’s actor, died of a heart attack at age at age 51.
The sad reality is that each of these lives lost very likely tried and “failed,” a thousand times, to “eat less and move more.”
No one has tried harder to follow this script than those living with this disease.
But this isn’t just about celebrities.
It’s personal.
Both of my grandparents died from complications of type 2 diabetes before I was even born.
Think about how many loved ones you may have lost too early, to something that could have been treated if only the right tools had been available.
Beyond Blame
Obesity doesn’t just affect physical health:
People living with obesity are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and disordered eating.
They face workplace discrimination, social isolation, and stigma in healthcare.
And when they do seek care, they are too often dismissed with “just lose weight” instead of receiving real treatment.
Society tells us:
“Eat less, move more.”
“No shortcuts.”
“If you just had more willpower…”
But science has proven obesity is a chronic, complex, relapsing disease.
It cannot be explained away by calories alone. It cannot be fixed with shame. And it will not be healed by silence.
Why This Book Exists
This book will not hand you a diet plan.
It will not give you a workout routine.
It will not shame you into submission.
What it will do is give you a warm hug and teach you how to hold your head high.
It will give you the words, the knowledge, and the confidence to move through this world without apology.
Shame is not the answer.
Advocacy is.
The STRONG framework is one of the many tools you will be armed with by the end of this book.
A Note About the Next Generation
Obesity does not only start in adulthood.
Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. children already live with obesity
80% of teens with obesity will carry it into adulthood.
Kids face the same stigma, the same food noise, the same mental health risks, and even higher risk of early death. They deserve tools to fight back too.
I’ve met many mothers who are fierce advocates for their children in this space, advocating for access so that their children don’t have to grow up under the same cloud of stigma, depression, and shame that they endured their whole lives.
That’s why I’m also working on GLP-1 Strong: Kids Edition and GLP-1 Strong: Teens Edition.
These are guides that will give young people their own tools to self-advocate, shut down shame, and grow up with confidence.
But this book, the one in your hands (or on your screen) comes first because we can’t teach our children to advocate for themselves if we don’t first learn to advocate for ourselves.