Doctors comments...GUTTED!

[jendot]

Hi,

Just wanted a shoulder to sob on!

Im a pretty big girl.Age 31 Size 20 and only 5ft2" tall..I was bigger but lost about 2st last year and have managed with a struggle to keep 90% of it off. Am not actively dieting at the moment just maintaining. I have bad days, really bad days and good days.
We have just moved to a new area and I had to change doctors. I went in this morning to get my pill...she refused to prescribe it to me as I am too 'fat' and has put me on the mini pill (bit miffed as have been really settled on it and have had lots of probs with contraception in the past but if it's not safe to be on the combined pill then I guess it's not safe). Then she spent half an hour telling me how 'obese' I was how I obviously eat far too much and how I should excercise more (just to point out she was matchstick thin and has obv never dieted in the past!). I have been referred to the 'weight management' clinic..GULP and have been sent for blood tests to ensure I haven't done myself any long term harm being so 'obese'!!

Im so gutted

I know Im fat..I really do. I have lived with it every day for 15years. I really could have done without someone being quite so brutal about it. You know when you walk out and just sob!

I then ended up in Mc Donalds eating the hugest fattiest burger and mozzarella dippers to console myself...and now feel fatter than ever!!!

not 'the' her - at the end of the first sentence!

thanks tb
god its hard to lose weight even if its only a stone in my case.
but oyu ned to KNOW its hard and man up and GET on with it.

My sister has lost 4.5 stone but its taken her a year and she still has another 1.5 stone to go.

Its been hard but she's done it the sensible way - started going to the gym and just eating healthier and cutting out the crap.

She found it useful to keep a food diary initially just to see what she was eating - all the little snacks and leftovers etc.

I think some GP's can 'prescribe' a gym membership to aid weight loss so may be worth asking about that too.

I've lost weight in the past year but have to be constantly vigilant to keep it stable.

Most doctors surgeries have the SW referral option (according to my group leader) as well as gym membership. These are the things that will help re-educate people about food and exercise.

I always yo yo around the ten stone mark, beinga natural pig tbh, when i started work and got to 11 stone 2 and a half(! pure piggery) i lost masses with ww 9 never as low since !!) and found it good to motivate

shineybootsofleather - "I am not convinced by the weight management clinic tbh. I suspect it is some rubbish part of the "Change for Life" scheme designed to tick boxes. If anyone has been to one of these clinics I would be interested to hear their opinion. I think groups like WW and SW are the best way to lose weight as you have lots of support and people who are "in the same boat"."

I have been going to a drop in weigh in session with the dietitian every week, and have a longer dietitian appointment every 6 weeks. I find it a lot more helpful than WW was. On WW and SW I was sticking to someone else's plan and sticking to their rules. I was always thinking about how many points I had left for the day or whether something was free or not and the constant thinking about food made me hungry all the time. I also felt deprived and I resented someone trying to flog me crappy low fat chocolate bars.

At WW the leader spent loads of time going on about the plan, whereas the dietitian talked to me about why I binged.

Now I try and stick to general healthy eating principles, but ones that work for me. Because there are no concrete rules, I have nothing to rebel against or no reason to feel deprived.

I know some people have a fantastic loss with WW or SW but they weren't for me.

Ooops, pressed post too soon. Just telling someone they're fat and not suggesting anything else is not useful. You can't always shame someone thin. I have had this issue with GPs in the past. I am lucky to have a family GP now who actually cares enough to help her patients constructively. It is bloody hard of course and most people know what to do roughly, but lack of cash, time and cooking skills can affect their weightloss and it is easy to become disheartened.

flibbertigibbert Is that part of the weight management clinic then? I think help from a dietician would be fantastic if that's the case. Agree about the flogging of crappy choc bars at SW. Tend not to buy them/ignore the gumpfh and make food from scratch and follow some of their recipes.

Agree, analysing how you think food makes you feel is good. When o was dieting recently I thought "will this make me happy long term"

Alaska, are you sure you are not referring to the size of your feet?

Jendot? You need to stop all this dieting malarky and concentrate on eating healthily most of the time.

shiney - The 15 min appointments every 6 weeks were because of a referral from the GP. The dietitian told me about the weekly 'Drop In To Weigh In' scheme.

I feel a lot happier taking advice from someone with a Master's degree in Weight Management than I do from someone who has just had to attend a few training weekends.

I also like having one to one time with the dietitian and find it a lot more helpful than a few minutes at the beginning or end of a meeting.

Hmmm not sure I feel any better about myself after all that

It really was half an hour..I was in there for 40 minutes! It was a booking in/ healthcheck appointment at a new surgery so was scheduled to be 30mins.

Doctor had OBVIOUSLY never been fat. Her attitude about fat people was that if you are fat you eat like a pig and sit and watch tv all day! She was honest but in a brutal kind of way. I would have better handled it had she been a little more tactful. It didn't help that at the end she marched me to the waiting room and said " can we sign JENDOT up to the weight management clinic asap" infront of the entire waiting room!

Yes I am fat and as everyone has kindly confirmed. I obviously eat more than my body needs and don't excercise as much as it needs otherwise I would not be fat. I get that. What's not as easy to do is lose it and keep it off. I have been fat since my late teens. That's 15years of fat fighting... I have learnt every trick in the book with the important exception of actually losing alot of weight and keeping it off long term.

Do I wan't to lose weight...of course!! Do I want to starve myself and be miserable for 2 years to lose it all only to have boinged back to a size 20 before you can say 'chocolate cake' no not really!!

Im not sure why I posted. I guess I had just hoped for a little understanding. Not sympathy- its my fault and only I can change it. Just some understanding from others who know what a blow it is when someone actually does that to you.

"What's not as easy to do is lose it and keep it off. I have been fat since my late teens. That's 15years of fat fighting... I have learnt every trick in the book with the important exception of actually losing alot of weight and keeping it off long term."

You need to unlearn all those tricks as they do not work. Think back to before you became fat and start to think like you did then. Did you starve yourself then? No.

Interesting flibbertigibbert. TBH, the weight-loss nurse at my docs was very dismissive of the system they have which sounds similar. I think theirs was called Counterweight. She said losses were not as good as with slimming groups. Obviously that will vary from surgery to surgery though.

Jendot - I do understand how you feel about the GP. It has happened to me as well. Unfortunately, on here you will get a lot of people who will just say "just get on with it and lose the weight" with no understanding of how it really can be for someone with a weight problem. Yelling across the waiting room is definitely not on IMO. Good luck with everything. Hopefully we will both post on here in a year saying we've reached our target weights!

Perhaps the doctor has your best interests at heart, afterall if you'd walked in pissed out your head, stinking of ciagrettes she would have told you about the dangers. Trouble is when you're overweight you are a walking advert about what you consume and your exercise routine. I imagine she's not just a bitch but thinks you need no sugar coated way of saying lose weight and the clinic will help you.

One MacDonalds won't kill you, but you do need to know what damage being overweight has done.

I wish you all the best.

PS My DH lost three stone just by running, eating fruit for breakfast, and Paul McKenna....amazing how much less food he ate just by sitting at the table, chewing properly and putting his knife and fork down.

Posie - I imagine she did have her best interests at heart, but the methods she used to "persuade" her of this fact clearly did not work and demoralised her.

Jendot have you tried India and Neris Idiot Proof Diet book? I have just started it and found it really good in terms of it's approach. It looks at the emotional reasons why we eat as well as just providing the diet, it also has a guide to eating out, going to party, Christmas etc.

I have literally just started it so can't say whether or not it'll definitely work but it makes sense and they have a support forum too.

Maybe she's demoralised right now, but perhaps tomorrow she'll feel differently. I know that when someone has told me about my behaviour at first I'm hurt and then I consider it carefully.

Being nice and fluffy about the @OP's weight has not made her healthy has it and being that large is serious, it's heart attack at 30 territory.

I think you are resigned to beign fat by the sounds of it. If you've been fat for 15 years, you've not spent 15 years fat fighting have you? You need to get into the mindset where you want to lose weight. And only then will it happen

Agree with the harsh approach actually. You need to realise that you need to lose weight and pussy footing around it aint going to help.

Go along to the weight clinic, and maybe ask how you can address comfort eating. I have always been a great comfort eater, in times of stress and panic i would literally sit there and wolf a load of crap to soothe. 6 particuraly stressful months I had earlier this year and I would go home via a petrol station and buy a load of junk food and snarf the lot in the car before going home.

You need to address the route cause of why you overeat.

I don;t think doctors should be rude about these things. They are not excused from basic courtesy just because of their profession! It's important that she )he?) was honest with you and pointed out the health risks of being overweight - that's her job. But certainly no need to bang on and on about it and make you feel bad about yourself.

Do you comfort eat? it sounds like it. Maybe you need to get to the bottom of why you scoff McD's when you are feeling low (and I say that as a comfort-eater myself, who is slowly learning to break the habit).

No-one is suggesting she should be "nice and fluffy", but shouting across a waiting room about referring the OP and banging on about it as Reasonable Doubt said does not help. I am getting mightily p#ssed off with this shout at fat people attitute that a lot of GPs and people in general have.

The trouble with food is you can't avoid it. If you have a problem with alcohol or drugs or cigarettes or any other kind of addiction, it's possible, once you've decided to give up, to avoid these things and to cut them out of your life eventually. You can't do that with food.

Your GP probably thinks she's doing you a favour but her manner stinks. Would she march an alcoholic or a cigarette smoker or a drug user out into the waiting room and humiliate them in front of the other patients? They're all addicts by 'choice' as well aren't they?