Creating Welcoming, Inclusive Health & Fitness Environments for People with Obesity [Podcast Series]

• [:54] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Rachele Pojednic

  • Dr. Pojednic is Assistant Professor and Program Director of Exercise Science at Norwich University.  

  • She is also a research associate at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a certified health and wellness coach, and has been a fitness professional for over 20 years.

• [1:23] Providing programming and services to people with obesity

  • “[T]he industry sort of sees them as a target population to change, rather than thinking of them as a target population that can be a part of our community. And so, I think, as we are entering into a space of inclusivity and acceptance, I think this really presents a timely opportunity to expand our community beyond what we've traditionally been seen as.”

• [2:35] Language and framing

  • “What vocabulary are we using in order to sell programming in order to, you know, entice people to come to our facility? And until recently, it's been very much about, make your body smaller. And I think that that is a really terrible way to sell the wonderful thing we all know as exercise.”

• [5:36] Creating community

  • “And so I think that as we shift to this new language, and create an inclusive environment rather than an exclusive environment, and I mean that in every sense of the word, then we are creating these communities, which are making people happier, making people healthier, and at the end of the day, keeping them around and helping our businesses stay afloat.”

• [7:01] Creating welcoming, inclusive environments

  • “But, when you are a person that is traditionally or has traditionally not been included into a community, when you walk in, seeing people that look like you is such an important element. Having somebody walk up to you with kindness and say, hi, I'm so and so, we're so glad you're here. Rather than giving you the side eye of, oh, look at this person, you know they need to be here because they have overweight or they have obesity, right?”

• [10:21] Reaching the 80%

  • “Like we've got 80% of the population that isn't coming to the gym or isn't coming to our facility. And part of the reason is because it doesn't feel welcoming…”

• [11:49] Representation and role models

  • “And yet in our industry, if you were to walk into a yoga class or a spin class or a Zumba class and the instructor has overweight or obesity, you can see eyebrows raising in the room, right?  And immediately, in our biases, disqualifying this person from having expertise, from having fitness, from having value in the space, and I think we have got to get over that because, again, it's creating an exclusive environment and an unrealistic expectation of what exercise and fitness really is.”

• [13:23] Messaging inclusion

  • “Walk into your fitness center, walk into your studio, and if there isn't clothes that have your branding that are going to fit your clientele, you are automatically sending a silent message that people don't belong there.” 

• [15:16] Stages of change

  • “So creating that environment, whether it's clothes, whether it's representation, whether it's language, whether it's space on the floor, all of those things are going to help people move from that action stage into the sustained change stage.”

• [17:05] Industry change

  • “And if we want to truly make a change—and as I said a second ago, we want to truly do what we as fitness instructors, what we as public health professionals say that we want to do and to change—we have to change so that the other people that we are trying to include actually feel included. I think it's incumbent upon us to change not to change the people that walk through the door.”

• [20:41] Health benefits of physical activity

  • “I think people are becoming more concerned with health, but that also presents an opportunity to show how the wonderful feelings and experience that you have with physical activity, with exercise, align in a parallel fashion with health. And it doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other.”

• [23:12] Joy and physical activity

  • “And so the joy, the energy, the community, that has to be—in my opinion—one of the first things that we offer people, otherwise they're not going to come back.”

• [24:14] Health and fitness as separate from weight loss

  • “And again, I think that we, we steal that from people that have overweight and obesity because the first thing that we tell them is, you need to be exercising in order to lose weight.”

• [25:22] Meeting the needs of people with obesity

  • “So I think the first skill that every single one of us needs to have is the skill or the experience or the understanding of empathy. I think that is, without a doubt, the number one practice that we all need to have.”