Willing To Be Wrong

In this episode, I get to talk with the incredible Callie Thorpe about the stigmatising backlash that followed after she was featured on the cover of the February 2021 issue of Cosmopolitan.

Show Notes

TW: weight stigma

In this episode, I get to talk with the incredible Callie Thorpe, who is a speaker, writer and model who most recently featured on the cover of the February 2021 issue of Cosmopolitan. You may have seen one of the many stigmatising news articles, television segments and concern trolling social media posts made about why the cover was supposedly 'promoting ob*sity' (spoiler alert: that's not a thing), but did you notice that almost none of the discussions actually involved any of the individuals who were featured in the article? Better still, did you notice that most of the people giving the discriminatory 'hot takes' hadn't actually read the article but just seen the cover picture? Funny that eh?

I want to thank Callie for being so candid with what was a difficult and emotional topic to cover. Please do look her up on social media (@calliethorpe) - positive messages of support and encouragement mean more than you might think.

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My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online (Amazon, Book Depository and elsewhere). Do come and join me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.

What is Willing To Be Wrong?

Fancy being wrong about something? That's a rhetorical question, of course, you don't... no one does. The thing is, once the initial discomfort has passed, it's truly the best way way to grow as a human being.

Welcome to Willing To Be Wrong, a podcast with the intention of doing just that. My name is Dr Joshua Wolrich and I'm an NHS surgical doctor, nutrition MSc student, author and accidental influencer. Like all healthcare professionals, I was taught by a system that practises medicine in a weight-normative manner, where a focus on body weight is used to try and define health and wellbeing. After internalising the weight stigma I'd been subject to for years, I left medical school believing that I couldn't be a good doctor if I were fat, prompting further disordered eating and a damaged relationship with food.

After a difficult couple of years of being challenged on my beliefs by people far cleverer than me, I now believe that healthcare has to become weight-inclusive if we're ever going to change the massive problem of weight stigma and the both direct and indirect harm it does to patients. Join me as I talk to guests about a wide range of topics from the complex nature of weight and health (and why neither should be treated as a personal responsibility), to nutribollocks such as 'celery juice detoxifies your liver' and why it's utter bullshit. The guests aren't all experts (as that wouldn't be fun) and the questions are rarely pre-prepared, but true conversations tend not to be.

My debut book, Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutribollocks & Escape The Diet Trap, is now available for pre-order online on Amazon, Book Depository, and elsewhere. For more information, you can find me on social media @drjoshuawolrich.