Medical professionals advice: "be realistic"

rheddmobile

I'm not seeing your doctor's response as realistic, honestly. Having PCOS and being apple shaped suggests that you have insulin resistance which is helped greatly by losing weight and eating a lower carb diet. That's perfectly doable. People do it all the time, and they are real people, not figments of anyone's imagination.

Doctors and dieticians base their advice on what they are used to seeing. The dietician I was referred to after my diabetes diagnosis is a highly respected professional in charge of nutrition at one of the largest hospitals in the Mid-South. She gave me absolutely bogus advice, because she's used to seeing huge fat people who have given themselves diabetes through their bad decisions and have no intention of making any lifestyle changes. Her advice was basically not to drink Big Gulps and eat whole buckets of fried chicken. She told me to only eat three carbs per meal by which she meant, one baked potato, one piece of bread, one serving of French fries equals three carbs. The doctor told me not to bother monitoring my blood glucose because it didn't matter. He didn't even send me home with a monitor.

I blew both these naysayers off, educated myself, and as a result my A1c is in normal nondiabetic levels now and I've lost 105 lbs.

You're in the right place to make real sustainable changes. Start by logging everything and see where you are now, then figure out where you want to be and how best to get there. Good luck.

zeldon919

I think "don't diet" means eat healthy, don't follow a specific diet. Diets often don't work and result in weight being put back on. You're overweight but not obese and if there are no underlying health conditions, there's no immediate medical need that necessitates radical change.

If I had to guess "be realistic" means don't become obsessed with a specific number. You can be a little overweight and very healthy, and depending on genetics and other conditions that just may be what makes the most sense for your body and lifestyle.

Do you have knee problems, or a fear of it? Same with prediabetes. If so, scratch the above.

I've had MDs tell me that the only number they cared about was waist size(less than 80cm/32.5in for women, 90cm/35in for men). Never weighed me once, genuinely didn't care about the number on the scale. I've been told that as long as I'm not gaining, and ideally losing at any rate (I started with 90lb to lose) however slowly, then I'm doing ok.

ahamm002

vinerie wrote: »

At my GP's office, all the rooms have this poster on the door highlighting the point that 95% of people who lose weight eventually gain it back. I seriously don't understand the point of these posters, because it definitely is not very motivating! I have read that doctors are quite hapless at discussing weight loss with their patients.

The point of those posters is that crash diets usually don't lead to sustained weight loss. You're better off losing weight by making lifestyle changes.

rickiimarieee

lacyphacelia wrote: »

I've been to the doctor and talked to them about losing weight. Needless to say, a lot of the "advice" hasn't been helpful, but there was a visit that made me pause. At one visit, the nurse practitioner (who was seeing me for a semi-related issue) said "I think you need to be realistic about how much weight you can lose." I'm 166 lbs, 5'4" (and YES I know I'm fat)-- and said I'd like to lose 35-40.

Now to the pausing part. If medical practitioners are telling me to "be realistic" and my general practitioner said to "avoid dieting," what should I do? Half of me says screw this and be happy and eat how I want, and the other half is telling me the extra weight is bad for my knees and prediabetes. That's why I went to the doctor and asked for help-- and wasn't given any. Maybe I need to be "realistic," whatever that means? What, 10-15 lbs max? It's still overweight and I'll still have a lot of extra fat.

This really isn't a good picture but I'm 5'4 and I weighed the most at 158. I was big! Not saying anyone that weight or over is big because we all have different bone structures and we all hold on to fat differently in different places in our body but I was big, my doctor never told me it was bad to lose weight! They encouraged it! I was overweight. I'm now down at 127-128. It's not unrealistic at all!!

vingogly

vinerie wrote: »

At my GP's office, all the rooms have this poster on the door highlighting the point that 95% of people who lose weight eventually gain it back. I seriously don't understand the point of these posters, because it definitely is not very motivating! I have read that doctors are quite hapless at discussing weight loss with their patients.

You need to ask yourself: what is different about the 5% who DON'T eventually gain it back? That's where the motivation should come from - be like the 5%, not the 95%.

Unfortunately, most doctors see obesity as a disease, and once you've lost the weight they're done with you because the "tumor" has been "removed". That's the problem with disease-focused approaches to behavioral problems. And the reason why people backslide is really pretty simple: they return to the behaviors that got them into trouble in the first place. Make a permanent change to your behaviors, and you won't be among the 95%.