Hey, I seem to remember that appointment… twice. And I hated it so much, and was so ashamed to go to the doctor, that I very nearly didn’t go back to get my thyroid tested and finish treating my hypothyroidism.

Maybe doctors don’t tell their patients that they’re fat so that their patients might actually come back to the them for treatment of problems that are actually treatable. I’m a feminist, a fat activist, and usually quite outspoken, but something about the doctor’s office just puts me in a vulnerable place. Shame me about my weight, and, if I’m having a good day, I’ll find other doctor. If I’m not, I might just leave the problem untreated rather than go back to be shamed again. I know how much I weigh, thanks. I can read the numbers off the scale, too, you know.

Oh, I agree with you. I was more thinking, given the standard of care at the Mayo Clinic, I suspect that Dr. Warren Thompson’s idea of how a patient should lose weight is a whole lot different than idiot Dr. Gupta’s, which seems to be, “Hey, if you tell the person they’re fat, magical weight loss will begin!”

I remember that my friend’s doctor felt that she was gaining too much weight with her first pregnancy, but the doctor had actual medical reasons to be concerned: her blood sugar was getting out of whack and she had a family history of Type II diabetes. Totally different than if the doctor had decided that the problem was that she was too fat rather than seeing it (correctly) as a symptom, not a cause.

Gupta’s just a lazy hack.

I had almost exactly the same problems with my first pregnancy. I started at 5′10″ and 160 lbs (not really heavy at all–now I’m at about 180, still not all that heavy for my height) and gained 50 lbs with my first one. And every time I saw my doctor he would lecture me about gaining too much weight. However, I also saw the other doctors in his practice while I was pregnant, and one of them caught my low amniotic fluid, I delivered the next week, and my 5 year old is also healthy and starts kindergarten on Tuesday (sob–my baby is growing up). I switched doctors with my second pregnancy, and I love my new guy. He was very matter of fact with the weight gain (again, 50 lbs) and when I brought it up, he basically said that as far as the fetus is concerned, as long as I don’t develop diabetes or anything, the fatter I get, the happier it is. It’s only if I car about losing the weight after that I should worry, and even then, 50 lbs isn’t that out of the ordinary and lots of women gain that much or more during pregnancy and lose most of it after. I absolutely love him.

Sure, but all too often, if you get any kind of medical advice about losing weight, it’s some kind of xerox copy of a diet thrown at you, or just shaming that you’re fat. Doctors tend not to be very helpful in that regard.

But Gupta’s article seems to argue that the only way that a fat person could even conceive of doing something to lose weight is to talk to their doctor about it. Which is bullshit, because we are surrounded by people offering advice and assistance for losing weight. It’s just more of the “fat people are too stupid to know they’re fat, and too stupid to know how to lose weight unless a doctor tells them” attitude.

Hang on a sec — a commercial diet and a weight-management program are not the same thing, especially to doctors. I’m pretty sure that no doctor is under the impression that, say, Slim-Fast is something their patients can do for the rest of their lives. In theory, a medical weight-management program should include appointments with a registered dietician at an absolute minimum, if not appointments with a whole range of other medical personnel, like an exercise physiologist.