To expect fat nurses to have some insight?.

[Vikingess]

Just had a routine health check today at my GP surgery. Two nurses - both considerably overweight - dispensing advice on diet. I
am not overweight -AIBU to expect health professionals to demonstrate the the standards they recommended or at least admit to falling short.

About their own health? Because they know much more than any nurse possibly could, by the virtue of being the owner of the body AND having much superior medical education.
I just assume it was extreme virtue signalling that went too far on that post.

Very few nurses could study medicine and that is the barometer

Nurses study nursing. It’s a completely separate profession.

*doctors are out having their jollies and doing their yacht club dinners.

As a fulltime nhs doctor, I am clearly missing out! Where is my nearest yacht?!*

😂😂😂

Apart from anything else that was massively tactless. If you had PND losing your previous body and bearing the scars (literal and metaphorical) of childbearing can contribute to that and comments about your weight could really tip you over.

They can’t win, really - if slim, they would no doubt be accused of not understanding how difficult it is for others to control their weight; and if fat, they are fat f*ckers themselves who have no right to comment.

Either the advice they give is correct or it isn’t. Any other reaction you have to it is your own gross over-sensitivity.

my doctor (I am not in UK) is obese. He is a very good GP but he is fat. He knows it, we know it. It cannot be unseen. He doesn't generally give dietry advice, nor do his staff, unless it is to benefit some condition that isn't simply fat/obesity. And if you ask him for health advice because you think you are overweight, he will say (because i have asked him in the past) something like: "well i am not a good example but you could try x, y, or z. But you are an adult, it is not beyond you to work this out for yourself."

I suppose it depends how the advice was delivered. Sure they have no right to patronize you, but I don't see how their weight can prevent them delivering matter of fact medical information.

Unless it was the F*ing food pyramid.......

I think it’s a fair point that if medical professionals are dispensing advice they don’t or can’t follow that raises questions whether the advice is actually effective.

For their own sake, it'd be ideal if they could follow their own advice. However, people come in all shapes and sizes, they're only doing their job and if we don't have any overweight people working in the NHS we'll really struggle to get treatment more than we already do.

I think the judgemental people on here should be automatically removed from care with any “fat” medical professionals. They can wait for a suitably sized one while the rest of us get on with our health care appointments. 🙂

yabu
I would expect healthcare professionals to give the current health body endorsed health advice.

I wouldn't expect the diabetes nurse to have diabetes or an oncologist to have cancer...

I have to agree with the OP. People are very sensitive about this, but it all stands to reason that if someone is in a position of authority, their advice is better received if they aren't a hypocrite. Same as receiving advice from anyone really.

While I understand life gets in the way and none of us are perfect, you can't fault people for this basic human response.

If I was attending addiction counselling, I would find it very hard to give a shit about what the counsellor was telling me if they were clearly actively using.

Practice what you preach, or don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

As a personal example, I wouldn't expect my students to take what I said about lab safety seriously if they saw me in the lab breaking the exact rules I had just been lecturing them on. Which makes sense to me.

What did you want them to do? Apologise to you for being overweight? Who do you think you are?! You have no idea what is going on in their lives - perhaps they have lost weight and are continuing to do so, perhaps they are on medication that hinders weight loss, perhaps they overeat because they are stressed or perhaps they just don’t give a damn. In any case it really doesn’t have anything to do with you.

I’m not sure whether I’m surprised or unsurprised at the number of posters justifying overeating as a mechanism for coping with stress. It doesn’t work! It just makes things worse.

Yes exactly or blame a thyroid issue....which would be flagged up and medicated generally

If I was attending addiction counselling, I would find it very hard to give a shit about what the counsellor was telling me if they were clearly actively using.

Fair point, would you ever take abstention advice from an active drug or alcohol user. At the very least it indicates the strategy ineffective.

So nurses should get the sack if they’re overweight
Dentists get the sack if they eat sweets
Doctor gets the sack if she smokes
your logic is broken

My dad always said go to the hairdresser with the worst haircut as they wouldn’t have been able to do it to themselves 🤣

This is a really interesting interview with Dr Giles Yeo, professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the Medical Research Council Metabolic Diseases Unit and scientific director of the Genomics/Transcriptomics Core at the University of Cambridge.

Very educational and quite challenging for some of our pre-conceptions.

I just found it quite patronising and hypocritical it the way the advice was delivered
OP I think you just found them annoying, and focused on their weight because it would have been fun to retort, "What would you know anyhow, cakeface" 😆 Some healthcare practitioners are just incredibly patronising and dispense advice as though to a 10-year-old.

So I am an nhs professional- an overweight one who gives out diet advice in the course of my role
However I previously have lost 60kg- put 40kg back on due to stresses of life (hubby's2nd brain injury and covid)- and am battling to get it back off.
We know what healthy eating is- but the stress of working in the health service at the moment doesn't help with stress eating..... or the amounts of biscuits/chocolates bought in by patients/family or reps....

Don't agree. My dad was a surgeon who smoked at least 20 a day and drank. He died young, but he was a good doctor. My sister's children train with a famous Belarusian figure skating coach, Nina Moroz, look at her pictures online, no comment. One of the best hair stylists and hairdressers - Nicky Clarke has the most ridiculous haircut I have ever seen, but look at his creations for other people! And Edward Enninful - he was the best stylist for other people, but himself he looked like a freak. Yes, and the best teacher I and my dc ever had were confirmed childless bachelors and spinsters.

I've known nurses that have nursed for decades and have stated the NHS is the worst it's ever been and the most stressful time. Cut us a break...shift work, stress, a lot are on antidepressants

YANBU. My FIL was recently told by an obese nurse to lose some weight. He's quite slender, too. He thought it was a joke because it smacked of double standards. But then if it weren't for double standards they'd have no standards at all.

Surely a diabetic nurse is best placed to give advice and likely to be really helpful from their own experience? Why wouldn't you expect them to have diabetes? It's not something that stops them from working!