Kristal’s POV

Speaker: Kristal Hartman, Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) Chair of the National Board of Directors

What has your journey with obesity care looked like?

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I actually had a physician that was able to start diagnosing some of the hormonal issues that I was experiencing.

I had PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome and I also had thyroid issues, and both of those are very common issues in women’s health. And so throughout my twenties it became a struggle to become a parent- I wanted to become a mom. I had, you know, fertility issues and issues getting pregnant, issues staying pregnant with some miscarriages in there.

In my thirties, by then I was at a BMI of 42 and I was on 14 medications for my comorbidities of obesity. That was a huge challenge because I was sick all the time, it wasn’t the life that I envisioned for myself as a mom of three young children.

That’s when I had bariatric surgery which really turned my life around, it was the best decision I could have ever made and ultimately it helped me lose a hundred pounds.

I still need every tool in the toolbox. In this time, ten years since my surgery, I have needed mental health care, I have needed help from dieticians, nutritionists, and people helping with vitamins and health issues, I have needed allied professionals to help me with exercise and to understand how to safely move my body. And certainly I am on a GLP-1 because when weight gain started to creep back up and my food noise got really, really loud and I was just obsessing about food— I always say that they cut out 3/4 of my stomach but they didn’t do brain surgery—my doctor put a GLP-1 on board and I was able to lose back down to my normal BMI range to be able to at least maintain my weight loss.

So the most important thing I think here is that as women, we have all of these different issues we’re going through, through all of these decades of our lives, a lot of those have to do with hormones, and certainly obesity is impacted throughout all of our lives in different ways.

So that’s how my life has been impacted by the chronic disease of obesity, and regardless of what the scale says today, I am a person living with the chronic disease of obesity and I will always be a person living with the chronic disease of obesity.

What barriers do people living with obesity face when accessing care?

I believe the most significant obstacles that people face I would say are kind of two fold.

A non-supportive healthcare provider that does not believe that obesity is a disease, that has all of their feelings about obesity stemmed in weight stigma and weight bias.

Versus, having a healthcare provider who understands that obesity is a chronic disease. It’s so so important for people to be able to find those healthcare providers, and allied healthcare providers, who understand obesity as a disease. Not everyone has access to that.

The second thing in accessing obesity care that I think is an obstacle is insurance coverage. Whether we’re talking about Medicare patients, Medicaid patients, or people who are buying their own insurance on the health insurance exchange, or someone whose employer covers healthcare, across the board we still see and face significant obstacles in obesity treatment, whether that’s appointments with a dietician, or access to FDA-approved medications, it’s still really hard for people to get the treatments that they need.

We need access to every tool in the toolbox to treat obesity as a lifelong disease.