Being shamed for obesity by a doctor is being health shamed not fat shamed. If a doctor learned i smoked I’d expect to be dressed down too.
What do they want to hear? “Ack you’ll be grand, keep whacking the pies into ye”.
“The problem is so widespread around the world that health professionals need to be taught as students that excess weight is almost guaranteed in modern society and not the fault of individuals, so they treat people more sensitively, according to the authors of the study, who have shared their findings with the Guardian.”
Bit of a cop out, at the end of the day you are responsible for what you do with your body.
>Or a nurse that will be bothered by the patient needing a different set of scales to take down their weight.
I think it’s always best to treat the issue tactfully, but if you need a different set of scales to measure your weight, shouldn’t that scare the shit out of you?
Edit: For those looking to argue with someone that believes in fat shaming, there are many people in this thread to do that with, I’m not one of them. Make sure you read the first line of my comment before you reply, in fact read it twice.
I’m tired of this “body positivity “ , “I’m fat but healthy” , coddling attitude. It’s dangerous .. it’s unhealthy. If someone is over drinking , we tell them they have a problem and are killing themselves. We now have an agenda of people saying I’m big and happy and i can eat what I want. You’re killing yourself! And the health service is strained enough
The objective reality that obesity is unhealthy and prettymuch exacerbates any other condition seems too much for some people’s feelings.
Obviously actual abuse wouldn’t be on like calling a patient a fat feck or something, but it’s not exactly a secret that excess weight is detrimental to health.
Your doctor’s job is to help you keep healthy, so it would seem weird if they didn’t encourage patients into weight loss if possible.
Yo, did any of you read the article?
People are missing crucial appointments because they feel anxiety about their weight. Online appointments weren’t being missed.
We don’t need to argue whether being overweight, something that unfortunately applies to most in the modern world, is unhealthy.
We need to make sure that people aren’t becoming more unhealthy.
I know loads of people who haven’t been to the dentist in years and will need dentures in the future because they know their teeth are currently shit and don’t want to go to a dentist because they will tell them their teeth are shite. This is basically the same thing.
The article is basically calling for less stick and more carrot so people don’t get more sick because they are afraid a doctor will give them shit for not losing weight. Yeah, being overweight will increase your chances of getting sick, but so will missing a pap smear.
I went to see my gp a few months ago. I’ve had trouble with my mental health and wanted to ask about my meds.
She told me I was overweight. I said I know, but I’m also worried about my mental health. She told me I would do better if I lost the weight and that my mental health wasn’t that big a deal. I told her I was really worried about my mental health, and I told her I was worried that if it got worse I was scared I’d do something stupid.
She told me again that I was overweight and needed to read mindfulness books.
I left, had a panic attack and didn’t eat for 3 days. Then booked an emergency appointment with my counsellor and got back on track. I’m doing much better now, with the help of my counsellor who sees me as more than a fat person. I’ve even started losing weight.
Fat people know they’re fat. But they can still have all the regular medical complaints that others get. They can still find lumps and be worried, fall over and break a leg, catch a chest infection etc etc. When every conversation with a doctor becomes about your weight, it feels like there’s no point in trying to talk to your doctor about anything else. It feels like all the doctor sees is your weight, and they can’t see anything else.
It’s threads like these that show people don’t really read the articles on Reddit. They see a title made to incite response and just argue against that alone.
I’ve done a lot of travelling around Central Europe the past year and the amount of people in Ireland who are noticeably overweight or obese is shocking by comparison. I’m not claiming to be a bronze skinned Adonis but a lot of people in Ireland have no sense when it comes to diet or nutrition.
Also more needs to be done about childhood obesity. This might sound a bit radical but childhood obesity should be classed as abuse, same as if someone beat their child or underfed them to the point of malnourishment. These people crying about being weight shamed will cry harder when the day comes they’ve to get an amputation due to type 2 diabetes or they keel over from a heart attack.
It happens to me a lot, i have PCOS which doesnt help. My knee’s sore.. obviously that’s the extra weight you’re carrying- no it feckin isn’t, I hurt it while doing the c25k.
Need to get bmi down for gallbladder surgery, lost weight and inches, wasn’t enough apparently. I did cry because I’m in so much pain, the surgeon’s response.. don’t be going home now and eating all the weight you’ve lost.
Here is the [original research paper](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.13494) if anyone wants to read it. Healthcare students nowadays are taught about health promotion and how things like obesity are due to the environment we live in (such as cheap unhealthy food, access to safe exercise etc etc) so hopefully things will change a bit in the future. I agree that some people (like my own father) are put off going to the GP if they are overweight as they feel that any illness will be blamed on their weight (whether that is true or not).
There is a bigger problem. Especially in Ireland. The weather sucks and you just won’t be happy doing your jogging every day in the morning. Weather is frigging depressing. So a lot of people are looking for dopamine shots overeating. However mental health services here suck balls. The whole situation helps create a a lot of depressed people that don’t feel anything positive unless they will eat something. It’s the same thing with alcoholism. You don’t think about food as a necessity needed to sustain your biological function. You think about food as a quick fix to get your dopamine shot. No one sees that as a problem globally.
I was fighting cancer since 2010 (btw the fastest weight loss ever – 19kg in a month when it went to stage 4). After that long battle my hormonal system was shot to pieces. My insulin levels were shooting through the roof. Result? Always hungry. And almost every calorie eaten that wasn’t burned RIGHT NOW – straight into the fat, which couldn’t be burned because high level of insulin. Result? Weight gain. After 5 years finally endocrinologist figured it out. And gave me a drug to further increase insulin production. Of course got depressed in the meantime, mental health services gave me a few drugs that fixed it…. Not. They killed the rest of my hormonal system, got further weight gain.
The only person that was able to help me was a personal trainer at the gym that gave me my confidence back and even got me back to running for some time. However she had to leave due to maternity and after few months I went into depression spiral again. Other trainers were just checking if no one is stealing gym equipment and basically I had the feeling of being a nuisance. Which didn’t help.
Why am I saying all this? The problem with obesity is that it’s not just obesity problem. In most of the cases it has additional issues. Am I fat? Yes. Do I want to lose the fat? Yes. And then comes an evening, getting blue again after the whole day fighting idiots. And that piece of sourdough bread with a two slices of ham/turkey gives me my dopamine shot. I know I shouldn’t be doing it, but it’s irresistible.
My Obesity is down to illness, depression and childhood trauma/bullying. I’m sure part of it is my own fault, but mostly it was beyond my control and the best I’ve managed is to get my BMI down from severe obesity to regular obesity.
Did any of ye actually read the article? This isn’t about a doctor saying you’re overweight and hurting your feelings, it’s about the fact that doctors will treat overweight patients as lesser. It took me 3 years to actually get diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Before that my previous GP was insisting it was because my eating habits were bad and I was just lazy. I worked two jobs at the time and was constantly on my feet, I made my meals from scratch most days. He assumed I was exaggerating this too.
Imo people who are binge eating to the point of obesity should be treated in the same way as people with anorexia who undereat to the point that they’re severely underweight. They’re both doing terrible things to their body but I don’t think that makes them unworthy of respect
I work in weight management specifically weight loss surgery in the NHS.
The shaming people receive from healthcare staff is frankly disgusting. We had a lady who said “if I went to the GP with my head hanging off they would still blame my weight”.
I have seen the extremes of obesity which I would say is predominantly in the lowest socio economic class.
People come to see us who couldn’t tell us what a carbohydrate is. Its hard to make a healthy choice if you don’t know whats in the food you’re eating.
Education is key but how we deliver this is difficult. Behaviour change and responsibility are also key factors but sustaining and changing old habits is so difficult. Life still goes on and those triggers will still be there.
People who are overweight and living with obesity know they need to do something 99% of the time but what resources are out there to help them.
In Ireland I belive the waiting times to be seen in a specialist metabolic and weight loss clinic is something like 5 years!!
We know people can lose weight and diet but it’s the maintaining the loss thats the difficult part. Bariatric surgery is still only a tool and trust me it is NOT the easy option.
Shaming and humiliating someone doesn’t work even telling someone you could get heart disease, diabetes or cancer still isn’t a driver. Empowerment and setting their own health goals is a start.
I’m going to be down voted to oblivion here but I’m fat, I’m working on it, it’s hard, I was abused, I have a therapist, I AM WORKING ON IT. I exercise a tonne, I do my best.
And when I go into a doctors with a complaint not related to my weight it is frustrating to then get told I need to lose weight instead of… actually addressing the problem. A fun statistic is that women who are fat are 4 times more likely have breast cancer that goes ignored because they’re too scared to go to a doctor or the doctor literally ignores symptoms. This is a problem.
I went in to a doctor once because my birth control was making me suicidal. I get told to lose weight. I went in another time because I was deeply depressed. I get told to exercise with no follow up.
The comments here are just depressing and pretty much why I stop coming to r/ireland….
The Irish Times headline is a bit alarmist, the article is about finding better ways for healthcare workers to deal with the issue of weight with patients. This line seems key to me :
>There is a need to move away from a solely weight-centric approach to healthcare to a health-focused weight-inclusive one.
There is no point telling someone not to smoke, to drink, to take drugs or to eat badly. We all know what we *should* be doing. You need to motivate a patient with something positive that they will get out of it i.e. if I change my diet a bit, I will feel better, and maybe I will lose weight too. The weight is a only a symptom of something else going on.
Obviously being overweight or obese is a clinical issue and needs to continue being treated as such, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about clinicians lacking the communication skills to deal with patients with weight issues, or treating weight issues differently to how they’d treat other clinical issues (e.g. being judgemental or making assumptions about lifestyle).
I am well aware I’m fat. I’m well aware the issues that’s causing and I’m working my ass off (literally) to change it. Thankfully I never ballooned to a point where I needed special scales or couldn’t move around I was just at a point where it was difficult to.
I’ve dealt with a number of medical professionals. Some of which objectively discussed my weight, the issues, things I can do etc. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I’m there for! Happy days.
Some made me feel less than human. I remember one nurse in particular was so cruel that I just sobbed in my car for 20 mins afterwards. I felt like I didn’t deserve to exist because ‘my weight problems were a drain on the health system’. It was awful.
Weight issues need to be discussed. Burying your head in the sand is of no benefit, however being obese doesn’t mean you’re any less valuable as a person and anyone that makes you feel that was is a cunt.
Lets try interpret the title better… Doctors try to help obese people by not lying to them.
I’m overweight and actively working on it. Every time I’ve gone to the doctor’s they put everything down to my weight. Even though I have multiple health conditions and am on multiple medications that both make it hard to lose weight and side effects of both the medication and conditions are weight gain.
My lowest point was when I was referred to a specialist when I was 16 for a disease that ran in my family, he looked me up and down and said I’m too fat to be suffering from said disease.
My dentist was also convinced I had an ED because I was overweight, losing some weight and had poor enamel on my teeth. Which wasn’t true, it’s genetic and I had health issues as a baby that caused it also but their first thought was an overweight teenager must have an ED
Headline: ‘Patients with obesity‘being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses’
Almost every comment on Reddit, ‘Yes, let’s get them, by slagging them even more’
If the word “shame” is used in pretty much any capacity in the last few years, it generally means the story is nonsense and someone is looking for (unjustified) attention.
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That said, as someone who was hitting 22 stone last year, ‘put the fork down, fatty’ only works on so many people. You can be almost 100% guaranteed that anyone who weighs significantly more than the average person, is quite likely dealing with completely different issues and the weight gain is just a by-product of that (but one that compresses all the other issues and becomes an issue in it’s own right).
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There’s not a man, woman or child in the country that doesn’t know that being obese is bad for you. Not only in the medical mumbo-jumbo world, but also in the ‘real world’, in terms of activities you can/can’t do and what you can participate in.
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When I was at my heaviest, I simply wouldn’t agree to meet people out and about as I was always afraid chairs/seats in cafes or such wouldn’t accommodate my size, and then you’re down a whole different rabbit hole where you just stay home (and eat!) all the time.
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It’s a very difficult issue to deal with, and it’s not helped by either the “call them a fat slob” brigade who just hurt people’s feelings and keep them feeling bad for themselves, not the “fat is beautiful and healthy” brigade either, who are just misleading and deluding people.
My experience with carry a “little extra weight” by my Dr was next to useless…never worked and was only putting on more weight, until I went low carb/keto…dropped 5 stone in 12 months and all my blood numbers vastly improved
Would mean nothing to me, I already know and acknowledge I’m a fat bastard.
I know the overall response to this will be “well its unhealthy to be obese” and we all know that at this point.
Doctors and nurses can be extremely insensitive and sometimes outright rude to people struggling with obesity, obesity is not a clear cut “just lose weight” situation, there are huge psychological and physical barriers preventing many people from doing that.
Patients should be informed of the dangers of obesity, and staff should be trying to show them all the possible paths they can take to lower their weight, but respect is the most important thing here, and a patient will ultimately not listen to a doctor or a nurse who is being judgemental or rude towards their current condition.
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There is multiple more things involved with this whole “weight bias” stuff, many times obese people will get misdiagnosed based on their weight, when in reality the issue is mostly unrelated (but obviously the weight will usually always compound upon that issue)
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tl;dr be nice and be understanding. Don’t jump to assume that weight is the core issue and try to help your patient understand the risks of obesity without making them feel anxious or experience self hatred.
Medicine is based on trust. If you weight shame someone in a medical context, they will avoid medical care.
Shame and bullying is not effective for changing behavior. If it was, no one would be fat.
Food addiction is real and a type of eating disorder.
If we are going to help obese people, we need to change our negative and unhealthy food culture.
I’m gonna go on a bit of a personal rant but here’s a TL;DR:
TL;DR I’ve been both skinny and obese, weight was never taken into account for any of my medical symptoms while I was skinny but as soon as I got fat and had the same symptoms continue suddenly losing weight will cure me of all future and past aliments. Doctors and nurses do misdiagnose and judge obese people and even shame us at times because we’re fat.
I feel like a lot of the comments here are understandable and I agree with a lot of the points but I feel like they are coming from people who are not or have never been overweight in their life, let alone saw a doctor while they were obese and as someone who was both skinny and is currently obese but working on it this has been is my experience.
I was skinny as a teen up until 17/18ish when I started putting on more weight, I was skinny because I starved myself but my weight was never brought up by doctors whenever I had other illness’s, I was never met with “maybe you have these symptoms just because you’re skinny”. As someone who is obese now but actively trying to lose weight for my health, every time I go to a doctor for any type of aliment I’ll be met with “maybe you should lose weight and change your diet because it’s unhealthy to be that big at such a young age”, even if weight has nothing to do with the issues I’m having and regardless if I’ve been having said issue since before the weight gain. I agree being overweight is unhealthy but to dismiss concerns and solely blame every symptom on “it’s because you’re fat” is dangerous. I’ve heard of other overweight people ending up in A&E because doctors told them their concern was weight related when in actual fact it was a burst appendix or something serious where they ended up needing emergency surgery. Doctors will dismiss legitimate concerns and automatically think it’s because you’re fat rather than address a potential problem.
I also have very thick and tough skin (which was diagnosed and has nothing to do with being obese, I’ve always had it) and small veins, which runs in my family and these are always an issue for nurses taking my bloods even when I was skinny. So much so that they would usually would give up and take bloods from my hand instead which is v unpleasant) so I usually give nurses a head up that it can be difficult to find a good vein so they are aware and to semi prepare myself in case they’ve got to go through my hand. I told a nurse this during my triage in A&E once and she looked at me like I had three heads as if to say “pfft yeah right THAT’S why it’s difficult suuuure” and then continued to say she disliked taking blood from fat people aka me because it’s super difficult and kept bringing this comment up while digging around my arm to find a vein while proceeding to laugh. This has stuck with me ever since it happened and I’m always super self conscious of telling nurses this fact now for fear they’ll pass me the same judgement.
I can 100% get where some of these comments are coming from and I am in no way supporting the health at every size philosophy but it’s pretty upsetting and dishearting reading comments on here saying “well yeah what do you want them to say” or “I doubt they’re actually being judged harshly, it’s more likely that the person’s feelings are hurt because the doctor is drawing attention to their weight which is understandable”. Doctors do judge and dismiss obese people’s concerns and it has to stop. Yes being overweight/obese is unhealthy. Yes it’s good to bring attention and alert someone to their unhealthy choices specially if you work in the medical field. What’s not okay is to dismiss health concerns or judge someone’s health based solely on their physical appearance alone/mock patients for it and tell them their concerns don’t matter and that they’re problems are nothing more than something losing weight and a diet change won’t fix. It’s dangerous practioning and just an overall douchey thing to do. Obese peoples health concerns matter and are just as important and valid as someone of a healthy size and dehumanising someone because of their weight (which a lot of these comments are doing) is wrong and honestly has got to change.
Went to GP for depression, could be summed up as “you’re overweight, go for a run, bye, come back if you have anything serious”.
I’m not opposed to doctors being blunt, but if weight is the effect not the cause then it’s problematic.
In my experience: people come to me with seperate issues, lets say tendinitis. Ofcourse i’ll treat the issue they came in with, but as a health professional i HAVE to mention that these problems are more likely to happen to people with a debilitating weight problem. Most of the time, they aren’t interested in doing the work, they just want the quick fix and continue to eat themselves to death.
American here.
Friend of a friend’s doctor told him, tactfully, “oh boy, we have a lot of work to do”
I thought it was too nice, my friend thought it was rude.
The fact is, if he doesn’t change, he’ll be dead in 5-10 years and his newborn daughter will not have a father.
Sometimes people need hard truths.
Gonna be honest, when I checked what sub this was under I did not expect ’Ireland’.
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Being shamed for obesity by a doctor is being health shamed not fat shamed. If a doctor learned i smoked I’d expect to be dressed down too.
What do they want to hear? “Ack you’ll be grand, keep whacking the pies into ye”.
“The problem is so widespread around the world that health professionals need to be taught as students that excess weight is almost guaranteed in modern society and not the fault of individuals, so they treat people more sensitively, according to the authors of the study, who have shared their findings with the Guardian.”
Bit of a cop out, at the end of the day you are responsible for what you do with your body.
>Or a nurse that will be bothered by the patient needing a different set of scales to take down their weight.
I think it’s always best to treat the issue tactfully, but if you need a different set of scales to measure your weight, shouldn’t that scare the shit out of you?
Edit: For those looking to argue with someone that believes in fat shaming, there are many people in this thread to do that with, I’m not one of them. Make sure you read the first line of my comment before you reply, in fact read it twice.
I’m tired of this “body positivity “ , “I’m fat but healthy” , coddling attitude. It’s dangerous .. it’s unhealthy. If someone is over drinking , we tell them they have a problem and are killing themselves. We now have an agenda of people saying I’m big and happy and i can eat what I want. You’re killing yourself! And the health service is strained enough
The objective reality that obesity is unhealthy and prettymuch exacerbates any other condition seems too much for some people’s feelings.
Obviously actual abuse wouldn’t be on like calling a patient a fat feck or something, but it’s not exactly a secret that excess weight is detrimental to health.
Your doctor’s job is to help you keep healthy, so it would seem weird if they didn’t encourage patients into weight loss if possible.
Yo, did any of you read the article?
People are missing crucial appointments because they feel anxiety about their weight. Online appointments weren’t being missed.
We don’t need to argue whether being overweight, something that unfortunately applies to most in the modern world, is unhealthy.
We need to make sure that people aren’t becoming more unhealthy.
I know loads of people who haven’t been to the dentist in years and will need dentures in the future because they know their teeth are currently shit and don’t want to go to a dentist because they will tell them their teeth are shite. This is basically the same thing.
The article is basically calling for less stick and more carrot so people don’t get more sick because they are afraid a doctor will give them shit for not losing weight. Yeah, being overweight will increase your chances of getting sick, but so will missing a pap smear.
I went to see my gp a few months ago. I’ve had trouble with my mental health and wanted to ask about my meds.
She told me I was overweight. I said I know, but I’m also worried about my mental health. She told me I would do better if I lost the weight and that my mental health wasn’t that big a deal. I told her I was really worried about my mental health, and I told her I was worried that if it got worse I was scared I’d do something stupid.
She told me again that I was overweight and needed to read mindfulness books.
I left, had a panic attack and didn’t eat for 3 days. Then booked an emergency appointment with my counsellor and got back on track. I’m doing much better now, with the help of my counsellor who sees me as more than a fat person. I’ve even started losing weight.
Fat people know they’re fat. But they can still have all the regular medical complaints that others get. They can still find lumps and be worried, fall over and break a leg, catch a chest infection etc etc. When every conversation with a doctor becomes about your weight, it feels like there’s no point in trying to talk to your doctor about anything else. It feels like all the doctor sees is your weight, and they can’t see anything else.
It’s threads like these that show people don’t really read the articles on Reddit. They see a title made to incite response and just argue against that alone.
I’ve done a lot of travelling around Central Europe the past year and the amount of people in Ireland who are noticeably overweight or obese is shocking by comparison. I’m not claiming to be a bronze skinned Adonis but a lot of people in Ireland have no sense when it comes to diet or nutrition.
Also more needs to be done about childhood obesity. This might sound a bit radical but childhood obesity should be classed as abuse, same as if someone beat their child or underfed them to the point of malnourishment. These people crying about being weight shamed will cry harder when the day comes they’ve to get an amputation due to type 2 diabetes or they keel over from a heart attack.
It happens to me a lot, i have PCOS which doesnt help. My knee’s sore.. obviously that’s the extra weight you’re carrying- no it feckin isn’t, I hurt it while doing the c25k.
Need to get bmi down for gallbladder surgery, lost weight and inches, wasn’t enough apparently. I did cry because I’m in so much pain, the surgeon’s response.. don’t be going home now and eating all the weight you’ve lost.
Here is the [original research paper](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.13494) if anyone wants to read it. Healthcare students nowadays are taught about health promotion and how things like obesity are due to the environment we live in (such as cheap unhealthy food, access to safe exercise etc etc) so hopefully things will change a bit in the future. I agree that some people (like my own father) are put off going to the GP if they are overweight as they feel that any illness will be blamed on their weight (whether that is true or not).
There is a bigger problem. Especially in Ireland. The weather sucks and you just won’t be happy doing your jogging every day in the morning. Weather is frigging depressing. So a lot of people are looking for dopamine shots overeating. However mental health services here suck balls. The whole situation helps create a a lot of depressed people that don’t feel anything positive unless they will eat something. It’s the same thing with alcoholism. You don’t think about food as a necessity needed to sustain your biological function. You think about food as a quick fix to get your dopamine shot. No one sees that as a problem globally.
I was fighting cancer since 2010 (btw the fastest weight loss ever – 19kg in a month when it went to stage 4). After that long battle my hormonal system was shot to pieces. My insulin levels were shooting through the roof. Result? Always hungry. And almost every calorie eaten that wasn’t burned RIGHT NOW – straight into the fat, which couldn’t be burned because high level of insulin. Result? Weight gain. After 5 years finally endocrinologist figured it out. And gave me a drug to further increase insulin production. Of course got depressed in the meantime, mental health services gave me a few drugs that fixed it…. Not. They killed the rest of my hormonal system, got further weight gain.
The only person that was able to help me was a personal trainer at the gym that gave me my confidence back and even got me back to running for some time. However she had to leave due to maternity and after few months I went into depression spiral again. Other trainers were just checking if no one is stealing gym equipment and basically I had the feeling of being a nuisance. Which didn’t help.
Why am I saying all this? The problem with obesity is that it’s not just obesity problem. In most of the cases it has additional issues. Am I fat? Yes. Do I want to lose the fat? Yes. And then comes an evening, getting blue again after the whole day fighting idiots. And that piece of sourdough bread with a two slices of ham/turkey gives me my dopamine shot. I know I shouldn’t be doing it, but it’s irresistible.
My Obesity is down to illness, depression and childhood trauma/bullying. I’m sure part of it is my own fault, but mostly it was beyond my control and the best I’ve managed is to get my BMI down from severe obesity to regular obesity.
Did any of ye actually read the article? This isn’t about a doctor saying you’re overweight and hurting your feelings, it’s about the fact that doctors will treat overweight patients as lesser. It took me 3 years to actually get diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Before that my previous GP was insisting it was because my eating habits were bad and I was just lazy. I worked two jobs at the time and was constantly on my feet, I made my meals from scratch most days. He assumed I was exaggerating this too.
Imo people who are binge eating to the point of obesity should be treated in the same way as people with anorexia who undereat to the point that they’re severely underweight. They’re both doing terrible things to their body but I don’t think that makes them unworthy of respect
I work in weight management specifically weight loss surgery in the NHS.
The shaming people receive from healthcare staff is frankly disgusting. We had a lady who said “if I went to the GP with my head hanging off they would still blame my weight”.
I have seen the extremes of obesity which I would say is predominantly in the lowest socio economic class.
People come to see us who couldn’t tell us what a carbohydrate is. Its hard to make a healthy choice if you don’t know whats in the food you’re eating.
Education is key but how we deliver this is difficult. Behaviour change and responsibility are also key factors but sustaining and changing old habits is so difficult. Life still goes on and those triggers will still be there.
People who are overweight and living with obesity know they need to do something 99% of the time but what resources are out there to help them.
In Ireland I belive the waiting times to be seen in a specialist metabolic and weight loss clinic is something like 5 years!!
We know people can lose weight and diet but it’s the maintaining the loss thats the difficult part. Bariatric surgery is still only a tool and trust me it is NOT the easy option.
Shaming and humiliating someone doesn’t work even telling someone you could get heart disease, diabetes or cancer still isn’t a driver. Empowerment and setting their own health goals is a start.
I’m going to be down voted to oblivion here but I’m fat, I’m working on it, it’s hard, I was abused, I have a therapist, I AM WORKING ON IT. I exercise a tonne, I do my best.
And when I go into a doctors with a complaint not related to my weight it is frustrating to then get told I need to lose weight instead of… actually addressing the problem. A fun statistic is that women who are fat are 4 times more likely have breast cancer that goes ignored because they’re too scared to go to a doctor or the doctor literally ignores symptoms. This is a problem.
I went in to a doctor once because my birth control was making me suicidal. I get told to lose weight. I went in another time because I was deeply depressed. I get told to exercise with no follow up.
The comments here are just depressing and pretty much why I stop coming to r/ireland….
For anyone interested in the scientific article itself, [here it is.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.13494)
The Irish Times headline is a bit alarmist, the article is about finding better ways for healthcare workers to deal with the issue of weight with patients. This line seems key to me :
>There is a need to move away from a solely weight-centric approach to healthcare to a health-focused weight-inclusive one.
There is no point telling someone not to smoke, to drink, to take drugs or to eat badly. We all know what we *should* be doing. You need to motivate a patient with something positive that they will get out of it i.e. if I change my diet a bit, I will feel better, and maybe I will lose weight too. The weight is a only a symptom of something else going on.
Obviously being overweight or obese is a clinical issue and needs to continue being treated as such, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about clinicians lacking the communication skills to deal with patients with weight issues, or treating weight issues differently to how they’d treat other clinical issues (e.g. being judgemental or making assumptions about lifestyle).
I’m diagnosed with Binge Eating Disorder (Getting treatment. Doing well. Losing weight!)
I am well aware I’m fat. I’m well aware the issues that’s causing and I’m working my ass off (literally) to change it. Thankfully I never ballooned to a point where I needed special scales or couldn’t move around I was just at a point where it was difficult to.
I’ve dealt with a number of medical professionals. Some of which objectively discussed my weight, the issues, things I can do etc. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I’m there for! Happy days.
Some made me feel less than human. I remember one nurse in particular was so cruel that I just sobbed in my car for 20 mins afterwards. I felt like I didn’t deserve to exist because ‘my weight problems were a drain on the health system’. It was awful.
Weight issues need to be discussed. Burying your head in the sand is of no benefit, however being obese doesn’t mean you’re any less valuable as a person and anyone that makes you feel that was is a cunt.
Lets try interpret the title better… Doctors try to help obese people by not lying to them.
I’m overweight and actively working on it. Every time I’ve gone to the doctor’s they put everything down to my weight. Even though I have multiple health conditions and am on multiple medications that both make it hard to lose weight and side effects of both the medication and conditions are weight gain.
My lowest point was when I was referred to a specialist when I was 16 for a disease that ran in my family, he looked me up and down and said I’m too fat to be suffering from said disease.
My dentist was also convinced I had an ED because I was overweight, losing some weight and had poor enamel on my teeth. Which wasn’t true, it’s genetic and I had health issues as a baby that caused it also but their first thought was an overweight teenager must have an ED
Headline: ‘Patients with obesity‘being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses’
Almost every comment on Reddit, ‘Yes, let’s get them, by slagging them even more’
If the word “shame” is used in pretty much any capacity in the last few years, it generally means the story is nonsense and someone is looking for (unjustified) attention.
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That said, as someone who was hitting 22 stone last year, ‘put the fork down, fatty’ only works on so many people. You can be almost 100% guaranteed that anyone who weighs significantly more than the average person, is quite likely dealing with completely different issues and the weight gain is just a by-product of that (but one that compresses all the other issues and becomes an issue in it’s own right).
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There’s not a man, woman or child in the country that doesn’t know that being obese is bad for you. Not only in the medical mumbo-jumbo world, but also in the ‘real world’, in terms of activities you can/can’t do and what you can participate in.
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When I was at my heaviest, I simply wouldn’t agree to meet people out and about as I was always afraid chairs/seats in cafes or such wouldn’t accommodate my size, and then you’re down a whole different rabbit hole where you just stay home (and eat!) all the time.
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It’s a very difficult issue to deal with, and it’s not helped by either the “call them a fat slob” brigade who just hurt people’s feelings and keep them feeling bad for themselves, not the “fat is beautiful and healthy” brigade either, who are just misleading and deluding people.
My experience with carry a “little extra weight” by my Dr was next to useless…never worked and was only putting on more weight, until I went low carb/keto…dropped 5 stone in 12 months and all my blood numbers vastly improved
Would mean nothing to me, I already know and acknowledge I’m a fat bastard.
I know the overall response to this will be “well its unhealthy to be obese” and we all know that at this point.
Doctors and nurses can be extremely insensitive and sometimes outright rude to people struggling with obesity, obesity is not a clear cut “just lose weight” situation, there are huge psychological and physical barriers preventing many people from doing that.
Patients should be informed of the dangers of obesity, and staff should be trying to show them all the possible paths they can take to lower their weight, but respect is the most important thing here, and a patient will ultimately not listen to a doctor or a nurse who is being judgemental or rude towards their current condition.
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There is multiple more things involved with this whole “weight bias” stuff, many times obese people will get misdiagnosed based on their weight, when in reality the issue is mostly unrelated (but obviously the weight will usually always compound upon that issue)
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tl;dr be nice and be understanding. Don’t jump to assume that weight is the core issue and try to help your patient understand the risks of obesity without making them feel anxious or experience self hatred.
Medicine is based on trust. If you weight shame someone in a medical context, they will avoid medical care.
Shame and bullying is not effective for changing behavior. If it was, no one would be fat.
Food addiction is real and a type of eating disorder.
If we are going to help obese people, we need to change our negative and unhealthy food culture.
I’m gonna go on a bit of a personal rant but here’s a TL;DR:
TL;DR I’ve been both skinny and obese, weight was never taken into account for any of my medical symptoms while I was skinny but as soon as I got fat and had the same symptoms continue suddenly losing weight will cure me of all future and past aliments. Doctors and nurses do misdiagnose and judge obese people and even shame us at times because we’re fat.
I feel like a lot of the comments here are understandable and I agree with a lot of the points but I feel like they are coming from people who are not or have never been overweight in their life, let alone saw a doctor while they were obese and as someone who was both skinny and is currently obese but working on it this has been is my experience.
I was skinny as a teen up until 17/18ish when I started putting on more weight, I was skinny because I starved myself but my weight was never brought up by doctors whenever I had other illness’s, I was never met with “maybe you have these symptoms just because you’re skinny”. As someone who is obese now but actively trying to lose weight for my health, every time I go to a doctor for any type of aliment I’ll be met with “maybe you should lose weight and change your diet because it’s unhealthy to be that big at such a young age”, even if weight has nothing to do with the issues I’m having and regardless if I’ve been having said issue since before the weight gain. I agree being overweight is unhealthy but to dismiss concerns and solely blame every symptom on “it’s because you’re fat” is dangerous. I’ve heard of other overweight people ending up in A&E because doctors told them their concern was weight related when in actual fact it was a burst appendix or something serious where they ended up needing emergency surgery. Doctors will dismiss legitimate concerns and automatically think it’s because you’re fat rather than address a potential problem.
I also have very thick and tough skin (which was diagnosed and has nothing to do with being obese, I’ve always had it) and small veins, which runs in my family and these are always an issue for nurses taking my bloods even when I was skinny. So much so that they would usually would give up and take bloods from my hand instead which is v unpleasant) so I usually give nurses a head up that it can be difficult to find a good vein so they are aware and to semi prepare myself in case they’ve got to go through my hand. I told a nurse this during my triage in A&E once and she looked at me like I had three heads as if to say “pfft yeah right THAT’S why it’s difficult suuuure” and then continued to say she disliked taking blood from fat people aka me because it’s super difficult and kept bringing this comment up while digging around my arm to find a vein while proceeding to laugh. This has stuck with me ever since it happened and I’m always super self conscious of telling nurses this fact now for fear they’ll pass me the same judgement.
I can 100% get where some of these comments are coming from and I am in no way supporting the health at every size philosophy but it’s pretty upsetting and dishearting reading comments on here saying “well yeah what do you want them to say” or “I doubt they’re actually being judged harshly, it’s more likely that the person’s feelings are hurt because the doctor is drawing attention to their weight which is understandable”. Doctors do judge and dismiss obese people’s concerns and it has to stop. Yes being overweight/obese is unhealthy. Yes it’s good to bring attention and alert someone to their unhealthy choices specially if you work in the medical field. What’s not okay is to dismiss health concerns or judge someone’s health based solely on their physical appearance alone/mock patients for it and tell them their concerns don’t matter and that they’re problems are nothing more than something losing weight and a diet change won’t fix. It’s dangerous practioning and just an overall douchey thing to do. Obese peoples health concerns matter and are just as important and valid as someone of a healthy size and dehumanising someone because of their weight (which a lot of these comments are doing) is wrong and honestly has got to change.
Went to GP for depression, could be summed up as “you’re overweight, go for a run, bye, come back if you have anything serious”.
I’m not opposed to doctors being blunt, but if weight is the effect not the cause then it’s problematic.
In my experience: people come to me with seperate issues, lets say tendinitis. Ofcourse i’ll treat the issue they came in with, but as a health professional i HAVE to mention that these problems are more likely to happen to people with a debilitating weight problem. Most of the time, they aren’t interested in doing the work, they just want the quick fix and continue to eat themselves to death.
American here.
Friend of a friend’s doctor told him, tactfully, “oh boy, we have a lot of work to do”
I thought it was too nice, my friend thought it was rude.
The fact is, if he doesn’t change, he’ll be dead in 5-10 years and his newborn daughter will not have a father.
Sometimes people need hard truths.
Gonna be honest, when I checked what sub this was under I did not expect ’Ireland’.