As a former fat person, I have a thing about weight. Alas, doctors also have a thing about weight, but for the opposite reason. Let me explain, in brief, why this is a daily focus of mine. At the age of 20, I carried 230 pounds on my 5’3” frame. Diets had failed me. In fact, diets had only made me fatter. So, if diets didn’t work, what did? I created my own plan, lost the weight and have kept it off for decades. As a private weight loss coach, I help compulsive eaters change their habits, refocus their thinking about food, exercise regularly and lose the weight once and for all.
Because I am a former fatty, I feel the need to defend my fellow Americans against the medical profession. First and foremost, doctors know exactly nothing about weight loss. Do not let them lecture you, hand you diet printouts, demean you or insult your intelligence. If they were so smart about weight, they’d all be thin, right? Of course, here we omit the cardiologists whose waists are so taut you wonder how they have time to operate between crunches at the gym and obsessively running par courses before work. These people are obsessed about the growing national waistline, and given their work and the fat-clogged arteries they see daily, I am not about to argue with them. I won’t say they’re wrong about obesity being a medical issue, but you can’t blame everything in life on being overweight.
As a nation, I have watched my fellow Americans grow larger and larger and larger. When I see what people eat, frankly, I am not surprised. Blame enormous portion sizes. Blame agro-business. Blame fast food. Blame a sedentary lifestyle. Blame food subsidies where the price of a fast food meal is cheaper than a cauliflower or a pound of apples. Read a book on what they feed cattle or the conditions under which chickens are raised, and you will stop eating these foods forever. It’s truly stomach churning. You wouldn’t go to your local sewage treatment plant to dine out. Well, sewage is about the level of animal feed these days. Garbage in, garbage out. But, that is the subject of another blog. Just think of it this way, if animals are given feed that is supposed to make them grow bigger, fatter, faster, what is that going to do to you when you eat said animal? Got it?
So, how do doctors deal with this growing epidemic of obesity? Let me explain. A few months ago, I offered to go to a doctor’s appointment with a much beloved friend who has had 2 bouts of life-threatening MRSA. MRSA is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This bacteria can show up anywhere on the skin, especially a cut in the skin, and it can also live inside moist areas of the body. My friend’s MRSA first appeared under her eyebrow after she’d been to a spa to have her brows plucked. The red spot looked like a big clogged pore or a boil. It looked painful and uncomfortable, but hardly serious. Unfortunately, MRSA bacteria can get into the blood stream through a tiny cut, a plucked eyebrow pore, or any moist area of the body. If it invades the body, it can cause a life-threatening staph infection, pneumonia and death.
Although my friend was successfully treated by both oral and IV-antibiotics, the problem with MRSA is that it is a wily bacteria that has become more and more resistant to treatment. As a result, when the MRSA recurred less than 6 months later, my friend was referred to an infectious disease specialist. I did not want her to go alone, even though just the thought of walking into an Infectious Disease Clinic made my skin crawl. Who knew what these people had, and if someone brushed up against me, was I was going to have it, too? Was the waiting room there like
The doctor, who was bone-thin, arrived on time and seemed delightfully anxious to share the lecture he clearly gives at conferences world-wide. He was well-prepared and well-rehearsed. And, frankly, he was very informative. By the end of his talk, not only had I learned a great deal about MRSA, but I was terrified to touch anything ever again. This talk was enough to turn the worst slob into a person with clinically-diagnosable OCD. I wanted to grab a surgical mask and bottle of disinfectant and start spraying everywhere. But, since the doctor had kindly pointed out that “MRSA is everywhere—in the gym, in the supermarket, on doors, elevator buttons, moist areas of all fellow humans, well, just everywhere,” I was barely able to steady my hand to take notes. After all, I was holding a pen. That pen could be harboring MRSA. Then what? “Go to your yoga breathing,” I told myself when I realized I was holding my breath because I was having an anxiety attack. So much for being a strong support system.
At any rate, everything was going fine. The doctor was informative, full of useful, practical advice for his patient, willing to answer questions, etc. However, then, he committed the cardinal sin. He noted my friend was overweight. What has MRSA, which we’ve now to our horror realized is everywhere, got to do with a person’s weight? Well, my friend knows exactly what she weighs to the pound. Yes, to the pound because before the nurse weighed her, she told the nurse her weight, and it was right on the money. She is slightly overweight, not fat, not obese, not in my former category by any stretch of the imagination. This is a woman who has MRSA. This is a young woman with a husband and 3 children, a woman who could have died, twice, due to a deadly staph infection, and he’s talking about her weight? As far as I’m concerned, we’re here to get life-saving information, not discuss body size or BMI’s. So, now, I’m ticked. My friend is ticked. We’re both angry at the doctor. He was doing just fine until he got onto my friend’s weight.
Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, which is rare for me. I felt that the doctor did a great job as far as the MRSA was concerned, so why raise the subject of his patient’s weight? Given my previous experience with doctors and their need to pick on me because of my weight, I was instantly irritated, but remained silent. I did, however, wonder how my friend felt about this clinical coda to her office visit.
Once we were out of earshot of the doctor, I found out. My friend was even more steamed about the specialist’s comments about her weight than I was. I explained to her that whenever a doctor lectured me about my weight, I had a rejoinder. It was called, “If I had an eye in the middle of my forehead, ….” Here’s the story behind that:
When I was fat, doctors blamed everything on my weight. If I had hives, it was due to my weight. If I had an earache, I was fat, so what could I expect? If I got bronchitis, it was too much pressure on my lungs because my fat cells were choking off my breathing capacity. No matter what the malady, it was always the path of least resistance to cite the dreaded number on the scale. Sometimes, I’d imagine myself being brought to the hospital after an accident and instead of worrying about clean underwear, nope, I’d be expecting the weight lecture instead of the Last Rites. “If you hadn’t of been fat, etc….Repent, All Ye Fat Sinners!”
Anyway, the ironic point about the eye in the middle of my forehead lecture is that its genesis did not occur until after I’d lost the weight. I had lost 100 pounds, was a perfect Size 10, and frankly, I thought I was fabulous. What’s not to like? I knew how far I’d come in the looks department. I was nothing but proud of my continuing hard work and effort on a daily basis. My figure was “not a genetic gift” by any means.
Well, I hurt my back shoveling icy snow after two recent blizzards in
When I went to this highly-recommended orthopedist, I did not realize that his time was clearly more valuable than mine. I was shown into a small exam room, told to strip down to my underwear and wait. The nurse handed me a sheet. Fortunately, I had a book, so I stood and read for awhile. Standing was preferable to sitting because it put less stress on my lower back. I draped the sheet around me like a strapless dress, but it was dragging on the floor, and I nearly tripped over it. So, I rearranged the sheet like a toga. That was better, but still not comfortable. Since the air conditioning was going full blast, I finally covered my head with the sheet like some sort of Halloween ghost. Playing with the sheet was passing time, but my back was getting worse and worse. I have learned, since, that my best strategy is to simply lie down on the exam table. Why not? I’m going to have to lie down on it at some point anyway, right?
Well, 2 hours later, I am in horrible pain and fit to be tied. By that point, I am really in a bad mood. The orthopedist strolls in with his nurse. If he had said, “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but I was at the hospital,” all would have been forgiven. If I had had any inkling that he was taking care of a sick patient, I would have understood. Instead, he looked as though he’d taken a long lunch.
The doctor asked about my symptoms, looked at my X-ray and explained the narrow spacing at my L-5 S-1 discs. This, he informed me, was bound to become herniated at some time in the future. But, in the interim, he wanted me to take up running. Running? I mean, this was
So, I explained that I walked nearly daily, did yoga for flexibility and also danced each evening. I got enough exercise, and I was careful that when I was dancing, I wasn’t leaping about and pounding my spine. I went on to state that running, on hard pavement, could not possibly be good for my back.
Then, he committed the fatal error. He looked me up and down and said, “You’re fat. You need to lose weight.” He proudly proclaimed he was a runner and a marathoner at that, “Well, if you take up running, you’ll lose that fat! The fat is what is putting pressure on your lower back, and the pain isn’t going to go away unless you stop being fat.” He then had the temerity to reach over and pinch some loose skin around my waist. Now, that loose skin was there precisely because I had lost a lot of weight, not because I was fat.
At that point, I was so exhausted, in so much pain, I exploded. “FAT!” I literally screamed at the top of my lungs, the word reverberating around the tiny exam room. “FAT!” I roared, moved closer to the nattily-dressed doctor and nearly pressed myself into his suit jacket. “You’re calling me, me fat?” I asked incredulously.
The nurse stepped back. She was literally standing near the door ready to flee. I had cornered the good doctor, so he could not escape unless he knocked me over. I glared at him. “I’ll tell you about being fat, doctor. I’ll tell you,” I bellowed.
“I used to be fat. Yes, really fat. I weighed 230 pounds when I was 20 years old. If I’d seen you then, well, yes, I would have been fat. But, I’m not fat now, am I? I’m a Size 10. I weigh 132 pounds. I’m perfectly fine, doctor. Just fine.”
“You know,” I dropped my voice to a normal range as I moved in for the kill, “It always amazes me how doctors who don’t know how to help me blame everything on my weight. I swear that if I grew an eye in the middle of my forehead some moron, just like you,” the nurse put her hand over her mouth to stifle a snarky giggle, “yes, some moron, just like you, would surely tell me, ‘If you hadn’t been fat when you were younger, you would not have that eye in the middle of your forehead.’”
The nurse started to laugh so hard she had to leave the room. The doctor just stood there. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again. “I am not fat. I am not a runner. All I have gotten out of this office visit is more back pain from waiting two hours, insults and useless so-called professional advice. I’ll be forced to pay your bill, but a note will be attached to it so if the insurance ever evaluates you, they will know you had a patient who was not pleased.”
Then, I moved away so that he could make a hasty retreat from the exam room while I dumped the sheet and got back into my clothes. As I left, I noticed all the nurses smiling at me in silent approval.
The sad reality is that
At this juncture, there is no magic pill or magic formula that helps people lose weight. Moreover, as hard as it is to lose the weight, it’s far harder to keep it off. That is the key to my program—keeping the weight off once you’ve gotten to a realistic and healthy weight. So, for those of you who are struggling with your weight, I wish you good luck. Be honest with yourselves about your choices, what you are eating and how much. Learn to handle your emotions without food as a way of soothing yourselves. Get creative about cooking, and do try to cook at home. But first, get moving. Take a short walk. Eventually, if you want to take up running, I wish you well. You can do this. Yes, obesity can lead to diabetes, heart disease, certain types of cancer, joint problems and other serious health issues. However, lecturing people on their weight only depresses them and causes them to eat more to comfort themselves. Handing them diets is a recipe for further weight gain.
I have written a book titled Weight Loss for Life that gives people a step-by-step program to end compulsive eating. Why isn’t it published? Because I do not have a “hard credential.” In other words, I am not a doctor or a nutritionist. Therefore, I cannot know what I’m talking about. Well, over many decades I have gone from a Size 2X down to a Size 4. I dropped from 230 pounds to 110 pounds. What more proof do you need to have that I actually understand how to help others do exactly what I have done? Look, if losing weight were easy, everyone would be thin. It is not easy. However, it is possible to lose the weight and keep it off for a lifetime. I am living proof of that, and I wish my fellow overweight Americans well.
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