The winter issue of Women’s Health magazine features an article with information about how to approach getting the right healthcare.

Fact No. 4 of the article talks about the weight stigma that often prevents women from seeking medical help.

We’re all used to getting on the doctor’s scale pre-visit. Per the WH editors you can tell your doctor to not have the assistant weigh you at all. Or at least weigh you after the exam.

No grown girl should weigh 97 pounds in only a hospital gown when she’s going for a procedure. And even though I weighed 102 pounds recently I don’t think any adult women should weigh less than 110 pounds unless they weigh that much naturally.

And if you’re thin but flabby—what one M.D. calls TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) that’s another thing entirely. Either way the obsession with the number on the scale is terrible. Who wants to be humiliated when an M.D. is fixated on that number too?

Weight sensitivity training and a HAES—Healthy at Every Size approach—should begin in medical school coursework.

Do you know what it’s like to be told you’re too thin? I have. And though I don’t weigh 200 pounds I don’t like people commenting on my weight either. Other women not men are the ones who do this.

I say: tone down the talk about weight. Use reflexive statements as in: “I weigh 155 pounds, and that’s OK.” Instead of referring to how much someone else weighs or used to weigh.

We don’t know their story. The issue I take with the WH Fact No. 4 is that they talk about what if you consider yourself a “normal weight.” I detest that they used the word normal. Even if it was in quotation marks.

The perpetual hang-up people have with being normal must end. Today I don’t weigh 102 pounds anymore and I think this is far better. I’m going to have the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle dessert at Applebee’s when friends gather for lunch.

What heated me up–and I care even though others think I’m thin–is the Netflix series Virgin River. I watched a couple episodes then quit tuning in. The love interest characters were extremely thin. Maybe like I referred to above they were naturally a lower weight. Okay–fine.

Why can’t we see 200-pound love interests on Netflix?–or anywhere else for that matter. People who love each other love each other. And that’s a beautiful thing in our One Big Messed Up World where people tend to hate and judge in evergreen expressions of belief about the worth of you and me.

Let’s throw the critical caustic comments in the garbage can. Those of us on the receiving end of body-weight barbs shouldn’t have to develop the thick skin needed to let those digs roll off our backs. The haters should not be flaming us to begin with.

“You’d be so pretty if you lost the weight” is not a compliment. It’s like a microaggression. Everyone is pretty darn beautiful even if our pounds are the source of other people’s pain. Why do they care?

This is their problem not ours. So fire away–order the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle and have fun with friends.