Inflammatory comments and being reported to your employer

in Uncategorized | 135 responses

Comments made on this blog are passionate and often inflammatory. Big Fat Blog went so far as to complain about a commenter to his employer.

Apparently, BFB was referring to this post where the comments were “lined with fat hatred”:

While he might be stating a fact, I think a lot can be read into the tone of the post. After all, if he wanted to just say that the table could support a fat person he could just say so; instead he chose to compare this to the tools used at a zoo. Ridiculous.
There’s also a second post Kate_P pointed out that includes more fat-bashing comments from alleged physicians and non-physicians.
Kate_P argued that it was good to see these comments out there to get a bead on what some physicians are thinking, and start asking what we can do to change the way physicians are taught to work with fat people. If a physician is respectful to your face and then posts about you (indirectly) on a blog somewhere, that’s rather unprofessional, no?

Update -
Apparently, some people on BFB think this may have gone too far:

If what he said was soo upsetting, why not contact him directly and tell him why his comment was offensive?!? Why not contact the owner of the blog and complain about the posters? WTF!Does his workplace have to do with anything? Nothing! Seems to me he was a scapegoat for the other awful things the annon posters wrote. But what jmar did is far more offensive to me than what any of those people on that board said.
* * * * *
Since when did Fat Activism turn into harassing medical professionals at work for doing nothing more than having a supposed opinion that a person doesn’t like? Especially with the second comment in question, which is hardly grossly offensive. If you’re looking for revenge on the true jackasses posting in that community, don’t look for the ONE person you can identify and try to crucify them with their employer. There is no good — NONE — that can come out of that kind of overreaction.

Comments

Anonymous
Obviously some blog readers are unable to separate the context of a comment posted to a blog commentary thread from a comment made in the ordinary conduct of professional practice. Blog threads, unless they promote themselves otherwise, are non-professional activity. Posters should feel free to post frankly and without being held to some narrow–and usually subjective and arbitrary–notions of professional conduct. Blog threads are not professional encounters nor should anyone reading them expect them to be held to those standards.
The appropriate response of the University of Kentucky should have been to say that Dr. Coupal was not speaking for the University and that his comments were not University business. Period. Indulging a whiny blog reader who draws offense at another’s posted comments and who then presumes to seek redress through that poster’s employer is as inappropriate as the complaining reader’s expectation that another poster’s employer is an appropriate forum for complaint. Even if Dr. Coupal had expressed outright disdain for obese people, as long as that was not done in the course of business for his employer the complaint to an employer is not appropriate. The reader should seek other redress, if only complaining to the writer directly.
Clearly the BFB site has an accommodating apologist’s bias toward obesity and the obese. Would they be as solicitous to a reader who wanted to complain to another poster’s employer about critical comments about any other personal behavior that had adverse health consequences?
Anonymous
The complainer needs some skills development in reality testing. So does the host and moderator of BFB. Since when does a posting to a blog thread count for a professional encounter? Is the offending writer being paid for the commentary? Is he doing this as part of his representation of an employer? No. This seems like nothing more than sour retribution against another poster because she doesn’t like what she reads.
Could I complain to her employer because she is a fat-sympatico whose “advocacy” is enabling obese people to suffer early chronic disease, disability and death? Consider what that costs our nation. Perhaps a call to Homeland Security would be better. That kind of sympathizer clearly is harming the national security. Very un-American.
Anonymous
Well jeez BFB/Kate I am sorry Dr. Coupal hurt your feelings. Did that really mean you needed to file a complaint against at his place of employment FOR A BLOG COMMENT. The simple fact obesity has come to the point where we not irregularly use the same scanner for the morbidly obese and zoo animals and livestock. What should he do, lie to make you fell better (he didn’t)? Maybe you and Kate need to focus a little less on your feelings getting hurt and a little more on what you need to do to minimize your risks of SEVERE health consequences secondary to morbid obesity.
PS: After the “sleuthing” by Kate I will always be an anon here.
Anonymous
We’ve finally reached the point at which everyone expects to be accepted just as they are. Sure, this is a wonderful ideal, it brings back the whispy sounds of the Coke commercial(http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/ccmphtml/colaadv.html) from 1969; if we all just drank more high fructose corn syrup the world would be a nifty and cheerful place, our swords would melt into plowshares and we’d all have inner peace.
But that is not how the world works. We expect people to seek to improve themselves. This means that they will study harder and achieve in school, strive for economic betterment, work at better family life and pursue personal wellness. The vastly expanding girth of Americans can only be explained by poor personal behavior; the genes and biology hasn’t changed in a thousand millenia but in the span of just one generation we’ve swelled to be roughly the size of a hippo. That’s right, there are lots of American’s who consume massive quantities of calories and have absolutely nothing wrong with their endocrine system (at least not as the cause of obesity).
So America, get off the couch, but don’t move to the kitchen. Eat modest portions of food prepared from real ingredients (no boxed, packaged, or otherwise industrially ready to eat manufactured foods), stand when you could sit, walk when you could drive, run when you could walk.
Diora
Political correctness run amok… Don’t write anything on the blog (or anywhere in the internet or in any company) that can offend the most sensitive of us.
Oh just don’t use your real name.
Anonymous
“PS: After the “sleuthing” by Kate”
Good word choice. She went to a lot of trouble just to be offended in the first. What’s the old joke? “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Then don’t do that!”
On a [somewhat] similar note: Suppose you open the daily newspaper to find a letter to the editor written by one of your patients. He/she/it doesn’t mention you by name, but does describe a situation that you recognize as involving your office, and the writer is clearly not pleased.
Will you see this patient again if s/he calls for an appointment?
Anonymous
Fat bashing?
How does this grab you, you fat Jabba the Hutt reject? You have nothing better to do all day than cram your piehole full of the most carbohydrate, sugar and fat laden of meals and then have the nerve to cry about a lack of acceptance? Perhaps you should spend a bit more time greasing those doors such that the city doesn’t have to bring in the wrecking ball to knock the walls down when you get stuck again.
attitude adjustment
Or, god forbid, comments about a doctor in a negative light.
I’m sorry, but the blog comments at issue did reek of disdain and disgust at blubberous patients and their need for tables that can do double-duty at the zoo.
I think it’s a justified concern of fat people that they face doctor’s who don’t respect them and resent having to treat them, and that this negative opinion affects the objective quality of care received and the subjective quality healer/patient relationship – which, to be optimal for the patient, doesn’t include the patient being judged and despised.
Response here is knee-jerk defense of attitudes that make life suck hard for fat people.
I’m very slender, though I’ve had times in my life when I put on weight and had to work hard to take it off.
I’m terrified of what life will be like for me after thyroidectomy…should by hypothyroidism be undermanaged. Terrified. Will I be looked down on, blamed, judged, hated because I put on weight?
Chris, RN
Oh sure, being fat is a thyroid problem.
I am sorry to hear what happened to Dr Coupal because of a post on Kevin, MD.
Anonymous
What makes life difficult for the rest of us is having to tolerate the whining and crying from the fatties. We do not have to tolerate you, respect you or accept you. We most certainly do not have to accept your “its a glandular problem” excuses “or I need a feed bag and trough because I am depressed” excuses. The problem with you fatties is that your caloric intake exceeds your caloric utilization. It is a very simple equation. Food goes into the piehole and is then converted into rolls and rolls of massive adipocytes. What is even worse is that because of your inability to control your gluttonous appetite, the rest of us have to deal with utter vapid cr*p such as proposals for “fat taxes.” Instead of flapping your lips, show the same level of gumption as the person that tracked down Coupal and use it to stop cramming your piehole and get some exercise.
Anonymous
ok i didnt read all that was in this post. but i want to make a comment of some recent observations. my family loves going to the outback steak house. for about 11$, you can get a 7-8oz piece of steak…. enough for anyone…. every time i go to the outback steak house, i see majorly obese people and they order the LARGEST STEAK ON THE MENU. the last time we went it was so bad, the guy weighed over 500 pounds and was loud and boisterous. sitting at the table next to us. my whole party was annoyed… now i understand people who are obese have trouble losing weight etc, but i have no sympathy for these peopel who order the largest portion and then later on jam up the medical system. you know its happening!!!!!
Samson Isberg
I’m the one with the “blubber” comment – I must have forgot to sign off that one…well, now I’m out of the closet and she can try to find me and tell my employer about me…she’s welcome to it.
Anonymous
Jeesh. Aren’t most of you physicians? Comments here show that the “doctor as good guy” stereotype is dead and buried.
Samson Isberg
Don’t know about the others, but I am a physician. As for stereotypes, if you’ve managed to get rid of one of those, good for you. Then this post wasn’t wasted after all.
Diora
Anon at 4:45 – in another “obese” thread below somebody berated me for a comment similar to yours – because I mentioned that on one cruise I dared to notice how much some people ate. Just wait — somebody is going to tell you, you are counting other people’s portions and putting your nose into their business…
I am with the first anon about the appropriate university response. I don’t think the subject at hand has anything to do with it. Whatever one writes and does it one’s spare time shouldn’t be the employer business – provided that it is clear that the opinions posted are those of the poster and not the employer (and that there is no conflict of interest or divulging company’s secrets, etc.). You don’t like the post – argue with it, ridicule it, ignore it, boycott the whole blog, whatever. But calling poster’s employer is outrageous. The only exception is someone’s planning a crime, but then the employer wouldn’t be the appropriate choice.
Oh well, I am not a doctor, nobody knows my employer, and my pseudonim is taken from a fantasy book.
Anonymous
“Just wait — somebody is going to tell you, you are counting other people’s portions and putting your nose into their business…”
When these beasts start paying for their own healthcare, stop joining my risk pool for health insurance, stop their “I can’t control myself” fat tax cr*p and stop causing me pain and suffering from having to look at them is the day I will stop expressing my opinions of them. My mind is still numbed by the sight of the vast brood of these land whales lining up at the buffet line at the casinos in Las Vegas.
Anonymous
The tactical munitions designers need not expend any more funding when it comes to developing bunker buster bombs. Any one of these walking lard buckets would do the trick when dropped from high altitude. The impulse associated with the change in momentum from taking one of these behemoths from terminal velocity to zero velocity coupled with their pig fat splatter would effectively castrate the Hizbollah terror gang.
Anonymous
You stay classy, Anon. Know wonder people don’t respect physicians.
Anonymous
Yes, yes doctors. Keep telling yourselves that it’s OK to be disrespectful of the people who pay your bills, that comparing human beings to animals is acceptable.
You are PROFESSIONAL people. If you want to THINK this way, it’s bad enough. But when a person who is paid by a PUBLIC institution to perform a job makes a comment that indicates that he has an unprofessional bias toward a group of people he deals with professionally, it IS about his job. Because how can a person who would make such a derogatory comment about a group of patients possibly treat them with the courtesy and professionalism they deserve? The simple answer is: he can’t.
Think about it for a minute. Do the obese patients in your practice really get the same level of care and concern as the slim? Do you take the same time to address their concerns and conditions, or do you merely think to yourself “well, if he/she/it would just lose some weight, the problem(s) would all go away.” When an overweight person presents with symptoms, do they get the same treatment as a thin person, or are they told to lose weight and that that will resolve the condition? I feel sorry for anyone with a BMI of over 19 who is seen by any of you.
In some jobs, you have to deal with people who are repellant to you, but that doesn’t give you the right to make fun of them. Someone asked in an earlier post if a physician would give an appointment to a patient who wrote a letter complaining about harassment to the local paper. It’s sheer hubris on your part to think that a patient who would complain publicly in a letter to the editor would even WANT to make another appointment with you. People do have a choice in healthcare providers — it’s a shame more of your patients can’t read the nasty, snarky comments you post here.
I’m sorry you couldn’t all be plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, giving nose jobs and cheek implants to the already beautiful. But your lack of compassion and your outright hostility to these patients is totally out of line. You really need to do some looking into your hearts and think about whether you should be doctors or beauty pageant judges. Because from your comments, sounds like the latter would be a more suitable profession for most of you.
upcoming thyroidectomy
Hey, Chris RN, hypothyroidism causes lots of bad things, including weight gain or difficulty losing weight.
I said I was slender – but I fear the fat. I really do. What if the pounds creep on, and I can’t get them off? Look how hated fat people are, how people just assume that they are of low moral character, or stupid, and don’t deserve to be treated as well as others who are thinner.
Sad to see physicians buying into that.
Anonymous
Anon. 8:54 PM:
Your overwrought notion of what constitutes professional activity is wholly unconvincing. Comments on a blog thread are not professional activity. Those who post aren’t ever required to satisfy any standards of any profession. They are allowed to post whatever they think. Your option is to decide whether you want to spend your time reading it or not. You do not have a right to anything else at all. No one has to post things that make you feel good or that must pass your own personal sniff test for political correctness. Too bad that they are doctors whose ideas you think aren’t sympathetic to fat people, that doesn’t matter. You aren’t a patient in this setting, and your moral and professional expectations carry no weight and should not be given even a moment’s consideration. The blog is not an organ of the public institution you speak of, and the poster was not acting in any public professional capacity by posting.
The employer should have told the whiner to go away once it was obvious that the comments were made outside the professional scope of that poster’s employment. And no, you, dear reader, don’t get to define the scope of professional activity for someone else’s job just because you want to or because you think your cause is so special and that your sense of entitlement to complain deserves an extraordinary forum.
A small point
Anon 10:09, but wasn’t the doctor commenting not about golf, or “Snakes on a Plane”, or somesuch, but his experiences in his professional capacity as a doctor? Expressing disdain and distaste for a fat patient as opposed to say, a fat actress?
I mean, he’s reflection on how he thinks and feels in his professional capacity. So it’s kind of disingenuous to say his public remarks about how he goes about his job is irrelevent to his job.
Anonymous
Anon 10:09
Apparently, the UoFK believes that public comments made by its researchers that suggest that they have a bias toward some of the patients used in their research — whether as part of their duties or in their “private” lives — are cause for concern. And since such comments might someday cause the results of Dr. Coupal’s research to be questioned (because of his potential bias), which could result in the invalidating of work that took years and many dollars to complete, they couldn’t just respond with a simple “what he said has nothing to do with us.”
Academia doesn’t live by the same rules as the rest of society. It’s far more politically correct. Dr. Coupal has chosen a career in academia, and should expect to play by its rules.
Anonymous
10:27:
Expressing disdain for fat people, fat patients, a fat actress in what amounts to private correspondence unconnected to the poster’s job does not constitute professional activity, no matter how badly you want to think that it is. The same goes for opinions about stinky people, people who are on particular insurance plans or whatever other kind of behavior is being discussed.
>>”I mean, he’s reflection on how he thinks and feels in his professional capacity. So it’s kind of disingenuous to say his public remarks about how he goes about his job is irrelevent to his job.”
Wrong. By your standard any statement made that could have if even only speculatively some bearing on someone’s work would be subject to screening for political correctness. Fat people don’t have a special privilege to impose on others’ scope of protected speech merely because they think–in this case in a highly tangential way–that speech biases thinking that might affect work with patients. Doctors are allowed their convictions, and they are allowed the right to express them. They are even allowed to express disapproval of what they see as moral failings of others, including fat people who they might think of as gluttons. That freedom is their right and not the privilege of the overly-sensitive obese reader to limit merely because she doesn’t want to think of herself as being seen with disdain.
Anonymous
Anon 11:06
By what definition do comments posted to a blog that is open to reading by anyone who wants to read it and posting by anyone who wants to post to it constitute “private correspondence”?
Anonymous
It is private by being privately originated, no different than writing a personal letter to the editor of the newspaper. His employer didn’t ask him to write a statement on their behalf. It would be no different than if he got up in front of a group in his church or social club and expressed his personal opinions there.
You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to like what he says. As long as it isn’t related to what he is doing at work (and no, a contorted construction about how you think he thinks might possibly affect his work doesn’t count–that is speculative) then it is private action. Remember, the whiny fat-advocate did sleuthing to find out where he worked–he wasn’t posting under the name of his employer.
Anonymous
My alma mater had an issue a while back when it was discovered that a physics teaching assistant was a member of a skinhead death metal rock group in his spare time. The BSU on campus rallied to have him fired, because it was argued that black students in his class would be uncomfortable now that they knew about his private activities. The university ultimately ruled that he could not be fired on the basis of what he chose to do in his personal time (so long as it was not illegal nor against any university codes of conduct) and that racist beliefs were the right of private citizens to hold as long as there was no evidence that his beliefs translated into active discrimination in the classroom.
This discussion reminds me a lot of that controversy, although it is nowhere near as extreme. Whether or not he was expressing disdain for fat people or merely stating the fact that the equipment could also be used in zoos is ambiguous and open to interpretation. Besides, the more important point is that you just cannot assume someone’s personal lifestyle and/or beliefs will impact their professional behavior.
Anonymous
The fact that this discussion is even happening is evidence of how far our society has fallen. As much as I have an issue with the allopathic medical profession, this issue is not one of them. There is nothing good that can be said of a society that gives a moment’s notice, in the least, or credence, at the worst, to the whining and crying of these corpulent mounds of self-indulgence. I remember when I took gross human anatomy. The students that got stuck with one of you fat beasts had so much difficulty finding in obtaining clean dissections they all cursed the day that they were born. If only you Michael Meyer’s dwarf eating fat b*stards could see first hand how sick and disgusting the innards of fat people are, you might consider taking some of that effort you direct to “fat acceptance (WTF)” and direct it to muzzling your pieholes and buying some jogging shoes.
Anonymous
Anon 8:54
The engorged adipocytes from your panniculus must be migrating to your brain, given as this is the only explanation for your lack of ability to form a logical thought. Just like at the buffet line, when it comes to healthcare, it is the fat beasts that hog more than their fair share. “Wah, I have a pelvic floor collapse.” “Wah, my knees and hips hurt from having to carry that bloated Twinkie storage facility around.” “Wah, I didn’t know I was pregnant – I thought it was just fat.” “Wah, I have some odd skin condition between rolls 234 and 235.” One thing for sure, fat beasts are an insurance company’s worst nightmare and a physician’s cash “cow.”
Anonymous
12:06
“The university ultimately ruled that he could not be fired on the basis of what he chose to do in his personal time”
What about Docs. that make all these inflammatory remarks when they are at work? You guys all post on this blog while you are working or you don’t have jobs.
There is something very screwy and disturbing about crazy doc. on here..Mainly is the fact that, Yes, he is anonymous. But he also knows that Kevin can easily obtain his IP address and from there find out where he lives and works but yet he isn’t afraid of that happening.
Samson Isberg
I have visited the BFB again now, and it seems to me that there are some really weird people over there. They seem to have formed the conviction that obesity is something you are born with and can’t change, like your skin color, your sex or Down’s syndrome. On that bizarre basis they are feeling persecuted and are – in the rather pathetic manner we now have seen – trying to make a show of “striking back”.
This is denial at its worst. This is human nature at its lowest ebb.
For my sake, obese people can be as obese as they pretty well please, if they only leave me alone. But they don’t. They use up more Healthcare $$ than even heavy smokers or drug addicts do, have significantly more complications than normal-sized people and yet they are notoriously resistant to even ordinary logic – even the first law of thermodynamics won’t fly with them, it’s always a thyreoid condition, previous pregnancies, heavy bones, genetics or some other obscure reason why they can weigh in at 150 kg (that’s around 300 lb) and still claim straight into my face that “I eat virtually nothing!”
Anonymous
This is Kate P.
I am terribly sorry for what happened to Dr. C. I deeply regret having linked to this blog at all. What happened as a result was wrong.
I posted two links to comments on Kevinmd in a private, password-protected forum on Big Fat Blog. I didn’t realize that any of the people who commented on your site had used identifying information. My purpose was to discuss hatred of fat people in the medical community. And, yes, I wanted to vent, but I did NOT predict the personal witch hunt.
Shortly after I posted, one poster responded she was going to contact various employers, the AMA, etc. I asked her twice not to, telling her I believe it is absolutely wrong to contact somebody’s employer for private thoughts.
Here is what I posted to her – in toto:

“Whoah. I think we should cool it on the complaints.
I mean I’m that mad too. Obviously. But doctors are allowed free speech just like everyone else. And I like the idea that they feel free to voice their opinions – no matter what they are – in a public forum without fear of retribution.
What we need to think about is what’s going on in medicine: in medical schools, in the culture, and in the type of messages they’re getting about fat – to cause this kind of hatred?”
When she said she was going ahead with it, I posted again:
“I’m strongly against going after these people’s personal and professional lives, primarily because I think it’s fundamentally wrong to call up somebody’s boss and try to destroy their career because I don’t like what they said online. Something they’ve said as a private citizen – which every doctor has a right to do. But also because it does nothing for us. If a few doctors stop saying what they think online it’s purely cosmetic, this huge hatred is still going to be there affecting patients, but we just won’t know about it and we can’t engage it, argue with it or educate against it.”
After that, I stopped posting to that thread hoping to speed it’s death, and until today I thought it had.
I’ll apologize further. I was too diplomatic, too nice. I should have beem more forceful. But I’m not sure it would have done any good.
I’m guessing she’s just a kid.
Yes, I’m worried about the impulse to dehumanize fat people that some posters on this blog seem to have.
But personal attacks, attacks on free speech and personal retribution are more immediate problems that trump these concerns.
And I agree it’s entirely unfair to expect doctors to be saintly in all aspects of their lives – pure of mind and heart and spirit – and not allowed to be ordinary rabid, frothing human beings like everyone else.
What happened on Big Fat Blog was much worse than anything that happened on Kevinmd. No question. No equivocation. I wish I could take my post back.
I don’t know how to put the genie back in the bottle though. I am asking the moderator of Big Fat Blog to please take Dr. C’s name out of his public post so that it won’t affect Dr. C’s google results.
Anonymous
Well, someone told me before that it’s only a comment, that nothing will happen because it’s just a comment. There you go! Even if you go ANON, someday, someone will go after you, ok?
The ANON commenters here are the worst in all medblogs. You don’t sound like doctors/interns/med students.
A commenter here who signs as ‘b’, even defended that ANON who wrote slanderous comment about a poster and even bragged that even the blog owner will not be issued subpoena. He/she forgets about ‘third party’ issue. The blog is being used, so owners have the responsibility to monitor! Can you imagine being accessory to these inflammatory comments?
Oh I forgot, they didn’t teach “compassion” in med school. Go on with your inflammatory comments and you’ll be next.
I am sad it happened to Dr. Coupal BUT I am equally happy this happened, to prove that one needs to be tactful. A little respect.
Anonymous
Compassion does not equate to enabling the beasts to continue with their self destructive and societally destructive behavior. If someone in your lives had told you that stuffing your piehole full of cr*p was your problem and given you a swift kick in the keister, you might not be the blubbering mound of lard that you are today. Here is a start: It is not a glandular problem. Food is not an emotional crutch. Genetics pale in comparision to the gross imbalance between your caloric intake and caloric expenditure. A mumu is not a fashion statement. There is no such thing as a BBW – it is a corpulent landwhale beast in a mumu. McDonalds, Hostess pies and ice cream are not sentient entities that decide to tie me down and then jump into my gullet.
Do all of us a favor. Instead of tolerating, accepting or loving your mounds of butter greased lard rolls… stop harassing others and use that initiatve to get some exercise and put a muzzle on the piehole. The only thing that you are victims of is your own behavior. You are the only ones that can change said behavior.
Anonymous
Good, y’all know your first law of thermodynamics. In four years you’ll be ready for med school. In the meantime, though, here’s some biology.
Some CME for you from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about:
the drive to eat is to a large extent hardwired, and differences in weight are genetically determined….the change in weight attributable to any recent change in our environment…is much smaller than the enormous differences in weight that can be observed among individuals living in today’s world…
…Indeed, the heritability of obesity is equivalent to that of height and exceeds that of many disorders for which a genetic basis is generally accepted.
…The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight. The power of this drive is illustrated by the fact that, whatever one’s motivation, dieting is generally ineffective in achieving significant weight loss over the long term. The greater the weight loss, the greater the hunger and, sooner or later for most dieters, a primal hunger trumps the conscious desire to be thin.
… Obesity is not a personal failing. In trying to lose weight, the obese are fighting a difficult battle. It is a battle against biology, a battle that only the intrepid take on and one in which only a few prevail.
So where do we get the idea that it’s genetic? That it’s not our fault? From information. From reality. It’s some of you doctors who are confabulating to mask the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Anonymous
You know, you alleged doctors who think that using respectful language constitutes “enabling” fat people to be fat and fatter are deluded. Self-centered, self-important and deluded.
Do you think that it’s possible in this society to live and move everyday as a fat person and not have to hear about how wrong and broken, how disgusting and pathetic, how morally bankrupt, how ugly, how dirty, how smelly, how much like cows/pigs/whales/elephants/hippos/large animal of choice we are?
Do you think that a single morsel that a fat person eats in public (or, often even in private) isn’t scrutinized, judged and determined to be gluttonous even when we are eating the same meal in the same portions as thinner family members or dining companions?
Do you think that there is a single day that goes by when someone, somewhere doesn’t try to shame us for our bodies, whether it’s the doctor we’ve seen for an ailment that has nothing to do with our fatness (like a broken finger or a chronic sore throat or hay fever) or the aunt who says “no wonder you’re still single, no one would want you as fat as you are.”?
Do you think that it’s possible for a fat person to workout in most “health clubs” or gyms, to bike, to walk on a track, to even walk (especially in a vigorous manner that’s clearly exercise) on a public street without being demeaned? Laughed at, stared at, pointed at, taunted, yelled at by intelligence-lacking bystanders and passersby?
You know what? Come up with a solution. Because the average fat person? We’ve dieted. We probably started dieting during adolesence, if not younger. We’ve tried caloric restriction, carb restriction, The Zone, Atkins, South Beach. We’re the ones making Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers and the like into a $40 billion a year industry. We’re the ones who have endured cabbage soup for weeks on end, liquid meal replacements that do not satisfy mind, spirit or body. We’ve plumbed the depths of anorexia (especially the women) with skipped meals and days of subsisting on celery and saltines and we’ve seen results that lasted just until we started eating normal food again.
We’re the ones who have destroyed our metabolisms and damaged our cardiovascular systems and destroyed our gallbladders with years of weight cycling.
We’re the ones who have longed for a solution, who have bought into the charlatans (especially the ones with MD behind their name) who have gone to every length imaginable to become slimmer.
You can laugh and insult and demean and belittle all you want. You know what you cannot do?
You cannot come up with a solution.
95% of people who lose weight on a diet will regain all of that back. Most will gain it back and then some. And it’s not simply a matter of returning to gluttony after the restriction, as weight gain occurs in those who move to “maintenance” plans and continue to consume limited food. It even occurs in those who have mutilated their organs via “weight loss surgery” and do not have the physical capacity to eat in the quantities that they may have once done.
So tell us, good doctors, what we are to do? Diets fail. You know it as well as we do. Weight loss surgery is a “solution” only for some and the complications (including death) reduce quality of life so significantly that most people would rather face the increased risk of disease that is correlated to obesity than day after day of nausea, irregular bowel activity, neuropathy, diffuse abdomonal pain and more, if they survive the surgery to begin with, which 2% do not. (That’s a mortality rate on par with triple cardiac bypass, did you know that, doctors?)
So what are we to do? Do you have any answers?
Or just the virtriolic language of third graders and frustration you wish to vent, with a convenient and large target to aim towards?
Anonymous
Specific to the issue of whether it’s justifiable to punish someone for expressing their opinion in an appropriate forum: NO.
I say that with a lump in my throat, however. A few years back I sent a letter of “constructive criticism” to the Patient Relations office of our area clinic (an office which is promoted as being the place to take complaints). They simply forwarded it to the doctor involved, who promptly replied with a termination letter blocking my access to the only three specialists in town who accept my insurance. Sweet.
Free speech isn’t always free. If you believe something strongly enough, you’d better be prepared to pay a price.
Samson Isberg
Anon 9:30, if I were your doctor I would have done the same thing. Sending a letter behind my back to the Gestapo, medical council or patient relation office instead of talking to me in person constitutes the highest degree of cowardice and sneakiness imaginable, how can you build a doctor-patient relationship (based on trust) with behavior like that? Unfortunately, I work in a socialist country so I have to take whatever patients the Government sends me, no matter how they behave. American doctors do have privileges we can only envy them, no matter how much they’re bitching.
Anonymous
“Anon 9:30, if I were your doctor I would have done the same thing. Sending a letter behind my back to the Gestapo, medical council or patient relation office instead of talking to me in person constitutes the highest degree of cowardice and sneakiness imaginable, how can you build a doctor-patient relationship (based on trust) with behavior like that?”
You’ve made an incorrect assumption. I DID try. This is exactly what I’ve learned to dislike most about medical providers as exemplified here: An overeagerness to assume the worst of your clientele.
I worked extremely hard to develop a good relationship with the provider in question. Prior to writing the Patient Relations office, I asked the provider if I could have five minutes of his time to discuss a few questions that were left unaddressed following treatment. I also offered pay a consult fee. This followed a 2-year, 23-appointment course of treatment during which I did every damn thing the doctor told me to, with mixed results.
It was only after that request failed that I wrote a letter.
I had every right to register a complaint. What would you rather I have done, file a frickin’ frivolous lawsuit? And yet you blast me for writing a letter. Jesus Christ!
Anonymous
“So tell us, good doctors, what we are to do? Diets fail.”
Exercise! Expend more calories than you consume. No it is not easy. Yes you have to do it every day. My whole family on both sides could become beached whales easily but exercise has become a passion and lifestyle for most.
Most importantly, teach this to your kids. If it so terrible to live life being fat then why do I see fat people shoving Cheetohs and doughnuts down their 3 year olds that are already waddling around with rolls of fat. If you won’t make a lifstyle change for yourself out of self respect then for God’s sake at least do it for the love of your children.
Anonymous
11:06:
You should have saved yourself some time and just found another doctor. You can’t seriously expect that once having written a letter to someone you thought was over the head of that doctor that everything would somehow work out all hunky-dory, did you? You tried to make trouble. What you got was a termination letter. Had you done something like that to me, I would have sent you the same thing. The last sort of person I want around my practice is a dissatisfied complainer, and least of all one with a peevish desire for retribution. What makes me wonder is why you didn’t write to the doctor first; after the 24 visits you say you made, that couldn’t have been that much trouble for you, if it was so important.
Your own account betrays you as an un-satisfiable troublemaker. I can’t blame them for wanting you gone.
Anonymous
“What makes me wonder is why you didn’t write to the doctor first; after the 24 visits you say you made, that couldn’t have been that much trouble for you”
Again, you automatically assume too much. I sent him an e-mail and left a message at his office. I was not trying to do anything behind his back.
Not that it matters. The point here was that it’s supposed to be OK to have opinions if you express them in the proper environment. That’s what Dr. Coupal did, and he should not have been attacked. If a Patient Relations office exists with an open invitation to help patients negotiate difficulties with providers, then patients who seek their help should not be attacked by the providers involved.
However, if the providers cannot comply with that, fine…do away with the Patient Relations office.
Have a good day.
Diora
anon at 6:42:
Not to attack fat people – hey, my mom is overweight and I would be too, had I not made a conscious decision to pay attention to my weight and to keep it off – but I have problems when you blame obesity on genetics for several reasons. 1) this generation is considerably fatter than the previous one – has something changed in our genes? have there ever been as many obese kids as there are now? Is this genes? 2) Europeans are not as fat as Americans, although they are starting to get there – is this genetics? 3) immigrants come into this country slim, but after a generation or so they gain weight – is this genetics? 4) I’ve never seen many fat people in places when food is scarce – and I travel a lot. My parents and relatives (especially my aunt who survived the Blockade of Leningrad) experienced real hunger during the second world war, and there have been no obese people there. I think when you guys start claiming that you experience hunger when you eat less you just have no clue what the real hunger is like.
Besides, do you really only eat to satisfy hunger? Do you always stop when you are no longer hungry? Would you tell me that when you take this one extra danish or muffin to satisfy hunger? If so, why not take something more satisfying and with less calories? That you never ever eat just because this ice cream looks great and you cannot resist it, and, after all, this is just because of this special occasion? I’ve seen how some overweight people eat, by the way, and it doesn’t at all look like they only did it to satisfy hunger.
A mumu is not a fashion statement.
mumus are very convenient in summer. I am size 5 now and I still like Hawaiian mumus at home or walking around in summer — they are not constricting, and you don’t need to wear a bra under them, even if you are a size C. So you feel cooler in them.
Anonymous
Fat bashing would be mean if it didn’t affect society and individuals.
-obesity increases health care premiums and costs for all.
-obesity is a large factor in many “disabilities” leading to increased demand on social security, welfare payrolls, etc.
-ever been charged extra on the airline because your suitcase is 5lbs over then get sandwiched between two stinky sleep apneic 300lbers in coach class? Who is being inconsiderate of their fellow man here?
Anonymous
Exercise! Expend more calories than you consume. No it is not easy. Yes you have to do it every day.
Research has shown that those who are in the narrow 3-5% of “successful” dieters have one thing in common: they take between 10,000 – 15,000 more steps, every day, than average cohorts (along gender and age lines). Assuming a step span of 30″, that’s approximately five miles a day.
If you do not run, which is something that many formerly fat people cannot do even once slim (and which is a recreation frought with peril to ankles, knees and hips regardless) how long does it take to walk 5 miles? Do you have that kind of time in your day? Do you think you’d prefer to have a lifestyle which has time for family, household, friends, religious activities, etc. or one that requires you to spend hours walking for the sake of walking every single day?
Exercise is wonderful. In fact, fat people who exercise are routinely healthier by all quantifiable measures (cardiovascular efficiency, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc.) than sedentary thin people. I am hardly discounting the role of exercise in a healthy life.
I am discounting, however, the idea that fat people will be transformed into thin people and remain thin people without a level of exercise well beyond that which is normal or approachable by the majority of people, particularly those who are — as most of us are — already plagued with demands upon their time and hardly have hours to spare each day. Hour, singular, perhaps. But you’re not getting in five miles in an hour unless you’re running at a level on par with many hobbyist marathonners. It’s not where most people are or ever will be.
shiver
I find it telling that some of the people spouting the worst vitriol against the overweight in these comments are doing so as “anon”, too cowardly to show their small-mindedness with their real face. Bravo to Samson for having a set of balls, which the rest of you anons clearly lack. Samson’s willing to say it, AND OWN IT, which is more than the rest of you spineless jellyfish can claim. So significant, that you have hide behind the internet before you can say what you really think.
Such nasty remarks against fat people are no less “-ist” than racist, sexist, homophobic…ist, antisemetic-ist comments would be. I’m sure that to you, not only are all fat people losers who deserve to be called beasts, but also all gay men are walking repositories of AIDS, all black people are on welfare and sucking up your hard earned tax dollars, and women are a bunch of hormonal whiners who just need a good session of masturbation to cure their ills. So tragic to see that the compassionate side of the clinician is dying a horrible death.
Anonymous
The veil of anonymity is obviously a needed one when it comes to the anit-free speech Nazi fat beasts. I would like to thank every beast enabler out there. Look at what you have done. You have turned the despicable sin of gluttony into a sob story victicrat condition. Being born black and being born racially Jewish are not choices that the person being born has the ability to make. Turning into a butter dipped lard battered adipocyte donation farm, is something that you have control (please, save the PC CME for the enablers).
Diora
… then get sandwiched between two … 300lbers in coach class? Who is being inconsiderate of their fellow man here?
Once I had a seat next to an obese man who started by lifting the separator and then occupied 1/3 of my seat. Thankfully, it was only a 2 hour flight. If you cannot fit in a single seat – buy another one. Buy business class. Why do some of you feel you have a right to lift the separator between seats? The separator is there for a reason – it separates the space you bought from mine. You cannot fit – it is your problem, why do you feel you have a right to make it my problem?
What about my rights not to be squashed and suffer real physical harm like
this woman. What about her rights? Did the obese passenger that crushed this woman spared a thought about what she was doing to her neighbour?
As far as not having time walking for 2 hours every day – it is really the matter of calories consumed vs calories spent; so if you exercise less you need to eat less. Cut out only the sweets and see if it’ll help.
Anonymous
“Do you think you’d prefer to have a lifestyle which has time for family, household, friends, religious activities, etc. or one that requires you to spend hours walking for the sake of walking every single day?”
At a very young age I remember looking at the lard on both sides of my family and vowing to not follow that path. You just have to freaking make time for it. I would not abandon an exercise program during college finals, medical school finals, or during 100+ work hours during residency. I realize that if someone has been obese for a long period of time that even with exercise one is unlikely to become “thin”, that is why it is important to do this with your kids early on. If you go through puberty without slimming down adopting a healthly lifestyle most Americans are doomed to an unhappy, unhealthy, debilitated existence and society has to pay for directly and indirectly in many ways.
Anonymous
4:55 who are you ro determine that all overweight people are unhappy? LMAO…You are in a make believe world where somehow your thoughts have become absolute reality…Honestly, you are a pathetic man or woman.
M
Reporting Dr. Coupal to his employer wasn’t right. I don’t see anything wrong with him, or other doctors, posting what they really think on blogs.
In fact, as a patient, I find it rather useful. I’d rather know what doctors really think about persons with certain conditions. It’s been an eye-opener. Although, some of the comments I’ve seen from doctors aren’t a total surprise; I’ve had a sense from some of my own visits to doctors that some of them hold prejudicial views.
As for the vitriolic nature of comments on this blog – I’m never quite certain if these are truthful or hyperbole. However, it’s comments on other doctor blogs, where the discourse is far more civil, that concern me. When I have read things where a patient is being judged due to the type of person/type of condition they have – i.e., not having insurance, being deaf, having a history of depression, having Down’s syndrome, being a single mother, being poor, being working class – it gives one pause.
I know now that if possible, I’ll hide my history of depression, I’ll dress in elegant clothes, make certain the doctor knows I have insurance, that I am college-educated, that although I am single I have no children, and conceal that my maternal great-grandmother weighed 250 lbs (true).
Anonymous
So according to this, one can assume that it is the FAT people who have the most medical problems by far, right?
The most HTN, heart disease, strokes fatty livers, etc, etc…I imagine the list goes on to cover almost all health issues ever known to the world.
Because, see, all the healthy, SKINNY normal weight people don’t have health issues. They get up and eat their “Weaties”, stop at the gym at 5:00Am to do their workout, before showering and heading to work in their office as a physician or whatever. Then they get to see all the fat cows of the world all day and give them useless information, while biting their tongue from not telling them what they really think of them.
Do I have this right?
Fat people=many medical conditions (many reasons to see MDs)
Skinny people= healthy people (no reason to see MDs)
So, when you talk about all the cows shoving their faces full of food and calling them all these disgusting names, that even street thugs don’t often use, you are really biting the hand that feeds you?
The facts are there. Based on exactly what you guys have all said. So now, it is time for you, to shut your pieholes up, and move on to something of much more importance.
Chris, RN
I too am disturbed by a fat lobby that hopes to normalize this type of behavior. If your BMI is 40 or >, you’re a wildebeast in my opinion. Your body was not meant to carry an extra 100-150#. Amazing this fact never seems to enter your consciousness. (G-d help the doctor who tactfully tells you to lose weight.) Just imagine carrying around an extra person everyday, and you wonder why your back hurts?? You wonder why you have “the sugar disease.” You wonder why your hips, legs and feet hurt? Get off your butt and quit asking doctors for “disabled” license plates so you can park in front of the door instead of walking 10′.
When I first entered nursing, I worked in OBGyn. We had to call in 1-2 extra staff for c-sections to hold the pannus back to get the baby out. Not only do fat people require bigger gowns, bigger beds, bigger wheelchairs, bigger doors, more staff, they were always the first one on the call lite to have the nurse do the simplest tasks that should be performed by the patient after surgery.
Most doctors want you to lead long, happy, healthy lives. Obesity stands between you and your “real” life, the life you were meant to live. Quit hurting yourself.
Anonymous
The issue is not a “fat lobby”, it’s whether a physician should treat his patients with respect. Physicians continually whine about how bad they have it and how people don’t respect them. Why should they receive a level of respect they do not grant others?
If one can’t tell which of the following statements in this thread is a professional one, then one has no business being a physician:
From Anon 1:37:
“So America, get off the couch, but don’t move to the kitchen. Eat modest portions of food prepared from real ingredients (no boxed, packaged, or otherwise industrially ready to eat manufactured foods), stand when you could sit, walk when you could drive, run when you could walk.”
and,
Anon 2:56,
“How does this grab you, you fat Jabba the Hutt reject? You have nothing better to do all day than cram your piehole full of the most carbohydrate, sugar and fat laden of meals and then have the nerve to cry about a lack of acceptance? Perhaps you should spend a bit more time greasing those doors such that the city doesn’t have to bring in the wrecking ball to knock the walls down when you get stuck again.”
Anonymous
And which of the two statements is most likely to hit home to one of these wilderbeasts in human clothing?
Professionalism is not the equivalent of being tactful and using PC terminology. It has obviously not worked given the increasing rates of multimorphic activity in the American populace as humans morph into tubs of lard. Instead, by using PC terminology, we have somehow turned what used to be considered gluttony into a namby-pamby mushy victicrat set of actions. It is about time someone took the kid gloves off. If you wish to blimp – that is your perrogative. It is when your actions affect the rest of us with your incessant whining for “acceptance” or “tolerance,” overflow into our airplane seats, support junk lawsuits against food manufacturers, support taxes on the rest of us because of your lack of impulse control and somehow make it onto the rolls of our healthcase insurance pools and drive up the cost of healthcare for everybody does your self-destructive behavior, like your engorged panniculus, become an issue for the rest of us.
It is time for you folks to take some responsibility for your own actions. The kid gloves approach has certainly done nothing to foster this and, one might argue, has led to the mitigation of the same.
Anonymous
And all that out of the mouth of a physician that practices defensive medicine. Driving up cost of healthcare and leaving thousands of people with no healthcare whatsoever.
Anonymous
I never in my life would have thought it possible for me to believe that physicians were of the same class as street trash. But you are, you truly are!
this website right here is doing its fair share of corrupting peoples opinion of the medical profession.We are seeing you guys for what you really are. Its not a pretty sight!
Laura
Do doctors speak about smokers and alcoholics in these vitriolic terms? Those behaviors are at least, if not more, voluntary than obesity. What words, applied by medical professionals to smokers and drinkers, are equivalent to “wildebeest” or are fat people singled out because they are more unpleasant to look at?
Anonymous
Well some of these are obviously trolls who believe obesity is the result of insufficient abuse. The Wildebeest poster probably views himself as a sort of unsung Albert Schweitzer.
I think the next phase of their plan involves pistol whipping fat people as soon as they set foot out of their house.
Thin person
I don’t know that it isn’t right to report a professional for shocking comments made in public about matters directly related to his professional life.
In a public forum anything you say under your own name is fair game. If someone wants to bring that to the attention of your employer because they think its relevent to what your employer will think of you, maybe you shouldn’t say things that reflect poorly on you in public.
And even in a private forum, there are some behaviours that just can’t be excused in some people.
A cop, or realtor who talks smack about black people, and indicates he treats them differently because they are black while he is at work could find himself out of a job.
I don’t think there is any reasonable expectation of privacy about remarks made anywhere in public under your own name.
In this case the complaint to the employer was based on a doctors remarks about his WORK and about his PATIENTS. It wasn’t about how he hates country music, or even how he hated his country.
I’m sorry, but if I could find out the identity of the super-unhinged (alleged) doctor who posts here, I would report him to anyone that could get him fired.
I actually think as a fellow professional, it’s Kevin MD’s duty to do something about an unhinged doctor who actually practices on patients. It’s not my blog. If it were, I’d make sure that warning signs of substance abuse or mental illness in a doctor were heeded, and that patients were protected from him.
That’s quite a bit different than a doc who offhandedly notes tables are large enough to serve double-duty for fat patients or zoo animals.
However, fat people don’t want to be treated like animals. Because, you know, they are actually human beings. Someone might get the idea that a comparison was being made and resent it.
People do hold doctors to a higher standard of though, word and deed.
I seem to recall a quote being bandied about here about how doctors should be treated with a near-relious awe. Put shoes on your feet of clay if you think that’s how you should be viewed.
Once word of advice – employers sometimes look on the internet themselves. They have a right to take you to task if they don’t like what they find.
Anonymous
Not only are the fat beasts such corpulent monstosities that strain the healthcare system, but then we have to deal with their ingrateful comments. Any healthcare worker that has to deal with one of you fat piles deserves a king’s ransom in payment. There is nothing worse than a fat tittering 4Fer when it comes to about every single characteristic that can be defined from a human perspective. You beasts shouls praise the day that there exists enough compassion in the healthcare field such that there are people willing to put up with your massive panniculi and your non-stop whining and crying.
Anonymous
“That’s quite a bit different than a doc who offhandedly notes tables are large enough to serve double-duty for fat patients or zoo animals.”
Perhaps because equipment designed for use by normal sized humans would be unable to withstand the stress placed upon it by the corpulent whalebeast? Trying to squeeze a wilderbeast onto human sized apparati is a lawsuit in the making. When compared to the miniscule size of some of the ruminants found in a typical zoo, one would have to have some serious faith in the vet med equipment in hopes that it also would be of sufficient size and strength to accomodate one of the beasts.
“However, fat people don’t want to be treated like animals. Because, you know, they are actually human beings. Someone might get the idea that a comparison was being made and resent it.”
Human beings are not animals? Really. If the beasts wish to stop the comparision to large animals then the first step is to stop resembling them. The beasts can resent away. Good luck finding another doctor who is willing to tolerate the whining behavior of the fat pile and who has a facility with equipment that could easily replace pieces found on a typical construction site.
Anonymous
I smell a troll.
The really sad thing is that while physicians will, as the Pou threads show, jump to the defense of any perceived attack on their own regardless of how little they know about the facts, they are loathe to condemn even trolls like this masquerading as a physician.
Protecting each other has trumped their duty to the public.
Anonymous
You haven’t been reading this blog long. Everyone condemns this troll. Now we all just ignore him/her.
There was a doctor in our area who really tried to help these people. he did bariatric surgery on the most risky cases and on those without grade A insurance. He had a higher complication rate than the norm. The fat apologists slapped him with lawsuits and reported him to the medical board. Now he is broke, can’t practice medicine, and can no longer try to help these people. that is what you get for trying to help.
A poster way above keeps whining “What are the doctors going to do about it?. How are you going to help us?” I am sorry, I can’t. Personal responsibility.
Anonymous
Obviously everyone DOES not just ignore him. I can’t understand why Kevin allows this guy to continue this behavior, on a board that he has spent a couple of years and hundereds of hours working on.
Anonymous
“Obviously everyone DOES not just ignore him. I can’t understand why Kevin allows this guy to continue this behavior, on a board that he has spent a couple of years and hundereds of hours working on.”
This matter has been discussed before and addressed by Kevin. He has taken a restrained position on policing opinions written here, and has explained why. Personally I think that is refreshing and is one of the particular strengths of his blog. I really hope that is one thing that never changes about this page.
For those who want censorship, other blogs will satisfy. Why not go to BFB for starters? If you don’t want to read what is written here, surf elsewhere.
This is a blog, not your desktop wallpaper.
Anonymous
I personally don’t want to critisize. Just pointing out that he is allowing this guy to run wild causing damage to the reputation of his blog. It seems very strange that you enjoy hearing a physician repeat over and over that he hates patients. That leads people to think you might be as sick as he is or that maybe you are him.
The thing is, Kevin post alot of useful information and imporatnt information, but obviously this board is being overtaken by the less than professional peers of the medical field. Now there are even others who claim this board as being their’s to the point that they feel comfortable telling people “If you don’t like the incredible smut here then move on”
Anonymous
The idea of a medical blog hosted by a non anonymous physician, allowing what you refer to as it’s “strength”, being a lunatic deranged psycho doctor is a sad commentary.
Anonymous
What is sick is the whining and enabling and the confusing of a professional activity with posting on a blog. In the end, it is you beasts that have to live with yourselves. Some of us will rest with the comfort that you creatures only exist in order for procedures to be conducted upon.
Anonymous
“Some of us will rest with the comfort that you creatures only exist in order for procedures to be conducted upon.”
OMG looks like Greg Critser’s off his meds again.
Anonymous
>>”It seems very strange that you enjoy hearing a physician repeat over and over that he hates patients.”
Who said anything about enjoyment. I simply prefer this to the kind of censorship where politically-correct thought police blot out anything that doesn’t pass their petty sensibilities. I have no idea whether the poster is as angry and irrational as you say, and I really don’t care. I find it just as disturbing that others want it squelched. I suppose it shouldn’t be beyond your imagining that some physicians reach the point of burnout and frustration with clinical practice that they do hate their patients. Better you learn that than foster the silly notion that all doctors are endlessly and tirelessly tolerant and accepting of patients, no matter how they behave. Learn and adapt.
>>”Now there are even others who claim this board as being their’s to the point that they feel comfortable telling people “If you don’t like the incredible smut here then move on”
Please. Why should we give you any more consideration? And “smut”, that is utterly laughable.
Maybe it’s time you took a break to iron your doilies.
Anonymous
God, your as insane as what he is.
Anonymous
You just have to freaking make time for it.
Well tell you what, doctor. I’ll take three hours out of my day to walk five miles. That’s about how long it would take me. What should I give up?
Three hours of work? Hmm, my boss might not appreciate that, and my clients surely won’t. I work a constrained schedule as it is, in order to spend time with my family.
So giving up three hours daily with my children is right out. I suppose that some might think that they’re all old enough to raise themselves now, and if they have problems they can talk to their friends, and they can look up the answers to their homework on the internet. But I don’t.
Maybe it should be the three hours I spend sitting at home watching television every night. Oh, wait, I don’t own a television. If I spend three hours sitting in an evening, it’s to do work I brought home and it’s broken up with housework. That time’s not open for other things.
Maybe it’s the time I spend making meals (vegetarian meals, that is, with real food, not stuff from boxes)? Hmm, if I don’t do it, then my kids will be eating stuff from boxes and so will I. So that’s right out.
Maybe I should walk to and from work. I mean, clients won’t have a problem when I’m either drenched with sweat on a morning when it’s 80 degrees before the sun is even out, or frostbitten in the winter. And of course, I can live without the sleep, (no studies showing that inadequate sleep hampers weight loss, none at all) since I’d have to start walking around 5 a.m. to get into the office on time. and wouldn’t get home until 8 or maybe 9 every night. Maybe I could carry a gun for safety – no public health implications there.
Maybe I should ditch my professional office job for 8 hours on my feet in retail or something. Oh wait, I did that in college, and I weighed more than than I do now at age 40, having had four children.
Make the time? Do you actually talk to your patients? Do you actually know how people live? Do you have idea what kinds of demands are on the average person’s time, how busy our lives are?
Freakin’ make the time? As the psychotic actor said to the pseudojournalist, you’re glib.
And you’re still not offering solutions, just mouth service.
fat nurse
“And you’re still not offering solutions, just mouth service.”
What do you want from your doctor? To watch your kids and cook their meals?
Do you imply that doctor’s don’t have real lives, real jobs, real spouses, real kids, real bosses, real friends and actually don’t have to eat, cook, sleep, shower, shave.
Anonymous
The 8:35am anon has found every excuse in the book. Who said it’s supposed to be easy? But this fixation you have on walking 5 miles/3 hours a day as being the only way to lose weight is insane. Improvise. If there is a will, there is a way. You have decided that unless you have 3 hours a day to devote to it, you will do nothing at all. Try doing some calisthenics exercises for 15 minutes every day. You know, ab crunches, squats, leg lifts, bends and thrusts, and the like. You don’t need to leave your house/apartment to do these.
Anonymous
And when did vegetarian become synonymous with healthy? I am seeing way to many 300-pound vegetarians. Two pounds of pasta on a lunch plate may be vegetarian but it ain’t healthy. Half of an apple pie for dessert may be vegetarian but not healthy. A green salad buried under a bucket of blue cheese salad dressing is vegetarian but not healthy. The poison is in the dose. Eat smaller meals.
Anonymous
Haven’t got three hours to walk five miles per day? How about this: Stop stuffing your face. That takes NO time at all. Then you can devote yourself to making wholesome organic veggie meals for your kids from scratch.
Diora
I simply prefer this to the kind of censorship where politically-correct thought police blot out anything that doesn’t pass their petty sensibilities.
ITA. I found other blogs boring, and some of them – like webMD blogs for example plain condescending towards patients – like they specifically write what they want us to read.
Anybody who has ever read unmoderated newsgroups on usenet knows how to ignore trolls. I don’t know or care if this guy is somebody venting his frustration who is actually a pussycat in real life, somebody crazy or on drugs or just someone who gets his kicks from people being angry at him i.e. a troll. But nobody forces anybody to read posts they don’t like.
(And this is from someone who was called a concubine by this guy – not that I care).
Well tell you what, doctor. I’ll take three hours out of my day to walk five miles
I am not a doctor, but I did loose weight, and I didn’t took 3 hours out of my day to walk while doing it. I granted I’ve never been obese (although if I hadn’t stop gaining weight and lost it as soon as I did, I could very well became obese in time), but loosing any weight is difficult if you have a sedentary job no matter how many pounds you need to loose. It requires commitment and some willpower – like not touching any of the cake that they have at work during some “special occasions” that come way too often.
I don’t know where you got the idea that you cannot loose weight without walking 3 hours a day. Yes, this is what some people recommend, but plenty of people lost weight with less. I lost weight, and I exercised for an hour 3-4 times a week, longer on weekends. And there are plenty of high intensity exercize where you loose a lot of calories without huge impact on your knees – like swimming laps for example. There are also some machines in health clubs that reduce impact on your knees while still allowing you to loose a lot of calories e.g. those that simulate skiing movement. So you will not loose weight quickly – I was loosing only about 1 pound a week, but it still better than nothing; certainly way better than gaining.
As far as vegetarian meals are concerned – muffin is vegetarian, but it is high in colories. Sugar-loaded cereals are vegetarian too, but they certainly not what you want to eat to loose weight. Why not just cut out sugar or just significantly reduce the amount? Potatoes by the way is also vegetarian, but they are not something you want to eat a lot of if you want to loose weight. Bottom line is – if you consume less calories than you spend, you’ll loose weight. If you exercise less, you need to eat less. You can avoid being hungry by reducing stuff that raises your blood sugar, like potatoes and processed grain, and eat whole grains instead.
And who says your time with children has to be spent sitting down? Why not hike together or skate together in winter or play ball? You want your children to be fit and healthy, don’t you? And if you spend time with your wife/husband, why not take up dancing? There are plenty of physical activities that could be fun. As a child I really liked walking with my mom – we could talk about things and she taught me stuff while walking. Exercise doesn’t need to be a chore.
Obviously, loosing weight is more difficult than gaining it in the first place.
One other thing – I don’t know how old you are, but the older you get the more difficult it’ll become. Even those of us who had no trouble staying thin when we were young, often have trouble controlling our weight when we get into middle age – like my mom, for example. So if you don’t loose it now or if you allow your children to gain weight, it’ll be so much more difficult to loose it later on.
triathlete md
Agree with Diora. I like the articles Kevin links to but, I read this blog for the entertainig comments. It is not for professional advice and consultation.
I can’t help but notice that the nurses and secretaries around that are always talking about this diet and that diet or the ones that are eating ALL DAY LONG.
Anonymous
“And you’re still not offering solutions, just mouth service.”
With your lifestyle and activities, my recommendation is for you to consume only 1200 calories a day and you will lose one pound a week.
-amd
Moderation will do it
A 1200 a day calorie diet can be pretty satisfying. If you average height and frame, are active like you say, and the weight still doesn’t start to come off little by little, something is the matter with your metabolism.
If it takes 3 hours to walk five miles, you need to just go as far as a half-hour will take you. Or get some music you like and just dance around like a fool till you break a sweat. When you have a bit more stamina, add some resistance trainging with rubber bands or weights.
When you’ve lost a bit, if you can get a trainer who will work you hard, that can be really great for learning the ropes of serious core training or weight lifting.
Then you can do it on your own for the rest of your life. Unless you have something wrong with your metabolism. Rude comments by people who ought to know better notwithstanding, there are conditions that interfere with weight loss, even when a reasonable diet and excercise program are implemented.
But be honest with yourself. Cut the calories – if vegetarian, you might be eating too much heavy fat high calorie cheese or oils, nuts or dried fruit.
You mnight need to splash out and make/buy meals that the rest of the family doesn’t eat. I find it takes very little effort or extra time.
For a vegetarian who isn’t gluten-intolerant, a big 140 calorie bowl of stone-ground oatmeal or oatbran can be prepared with water in 3 minutes flat in the microwave. Add a bit of salt and some berries and enjoy. You will be full for hours, and the carbs release slowly, so you don’t get a big sugar spike. The soluble fiber helps sop up cholesterol if you eat the oat bran every day. And it’s delicious.
Try some lowfat or zero fat greek yogurt. It’s very filling and tastes better than regular yogurt.
One nonfat single serving tub is 80 calories – 2% is 130 cals.
Stop eating sucrose sugar and honey and high-fructose corn sweetener. If you ever drink soda, just cut it out completely and drink fizzy water instead.
Well, this isn’t aconsult room, apparently. But it’s NOT THAT HARD to eat lighter and get more activity.
If the weight still won’t budge, you may have an underlying problem.
But it will budge, most likely. Bit by bit by bit. In a year, you will be way thinner.
Anonymous
“And you’re still not offering solutions, just mouth service”
There was a local surgeon who did bariatric surgery to try to help these people. He took medi-cal insurance and others less than grade A insurance and took the high risk cases. He had a complication rate higher than normal, collected some lawsuits, and was sanctioned by the medical board. Now he is broke, can’t practice, and can no longer try to help.
Anonymous
“Anybody who has ever read unmoderated newsgroups on usenet knows how to ignore trolls. I don’t know or care if this guy is somebody venting his frustration who is actually a pussycat in real life, somebody crazy or on drugs or just someone who gets his kicks from people being angry at him i.e. a troll. But nobody forces anybody to read posts they don’t like.”
The level of utter delusion that you beasts have sunk to is just amazing. You have been so coddled throughout your beastly meaningless lives that you are unable to accept unabashed criticism for what it is. Instead you attempt to find excuses and play pretend rather than face the unabashed truth. First of all, having the wilderbeast angered at me and my commentary is of little consequence. The moment that the purulent sacks of rotting adipose tissue stepped over the line with their demands for fat acceptance (the only place acceptaning fat is the rendering plant), lawsuits against food manufacturers and vendors, fat taxes and finally this latest act of fatnaticism. Who in the hell do you fatties think you are, causing problems for a physician? All of this fat coddling has gone to your heads, along the same vein as the crate of Hostess Pies going into your massive pieholes. Enough is enough. Dr. Bennett was absolutely correct in the manner that you beasts need to dealt with.
Anonymous
…and the weight still doesn’t start to come off little by little, something is the matter with your metabolism.
so, people who have poor metablolisms (read: cannot help the fact that they are unable to lose weight) are still fair game for fat-bashing and fat hatred? why is it ok for you “professionals” to call them “beasts”, “lardasses”, and “dirty animals”? i can only imagine what you’d call an overweight black woman as she leaves your office. something tells me you don’t hold back with the racial and sexist remarks along with your fatphobic namecalling.
Anonymous
Why is it such a big deal when someone you don’t care about makes a snide comment about you. Is this the first time in this person’s life that they have been fairly or unfairly criticized? Am I the only one not living in kindergarten? Grow a spine.
b
Anonymous
Let us look at an extreme from the anals of human history. Internment camps. From the caloric intake perspective, each an every such camp (from the Civil War military prison camps for Confederate soldiers to Jasenovac to Japanese POW camps for Allied soldiers) can be viewed as a situation in which caloric intake is grossly inhibited and heavy labor is instituted. Can anyone, and I mean anyone, show me a single picture of a victim from one of these camps in which said victim is STILL a fat, lumbering landwhalebeast? No. There are no such pictures. The total sample size from these horrid camps is in the millions with all ethnicities, both genders and all races. You can not even start with the arguement that the population only contains people that were “selected” for those that had no metabolic disorders. In this sample population, regardless of “genetic predisoposition” every single victim was skin and bones. Given this, we still have beasts in our modern day society claim that they can’t loose weight?!? Give me a freaking break. What you beasts need is to have your caloric intake drastically cut by shutting your pieholes and get some hard work in the form of cardiovascular exercise. People in other countries are starving to death (no metabolic disorders in sub-Saharan Africa, eh) while you beasts eat enough food to solve world hunger four times over. On top of this you zoo animals have the nerve to threaten physicians? What nerve. What audacity.
Our common ancestors are rolling in their graves thinking that they hunted and were hunted just so that their genetic spawn cut become lumbering mounds of self-important flab.
Artemis
No way the posters here are really medical professionals. They’re obviously very young narcissistic bodybuilding dickheads who have no life outside the gym. That’s a good thing too, because then they’re soo pumped up on steriods they’re impotent! So YAY to THAT!! There’s enough sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, agist, sizist assholes around, they don’t need to breed and make more! So please, do be the thinnest one in the cemetary! I’ll be the first to applaud you!!
Anonymous
I think they might also be spolied brats who after growing up in luxury, connected to moms breast for about 15 years, was then sent off to college and med-school, who absolutely cannot function in the grown up world.
They are recent graduates or recently working their first real jobs and have suffered no real life tradgedies or experiences yet to make them lose their extreme arrogance and have any real compassion for people. I have grown kids who all have professions. if ever they talked to anyone the way these guys do I would still slap their mouths for them.
Its obvious these clowns are substance abusers. They sound like coke heads.
They remind me of the street thugs that hang out at “Bert’s Bar” while the real professionals hang out at the “Country Club.” This is the web log of “Kevin And His Addicted Peers”.
Anonymous
“the anals of human history”
Anonymous
There is an obesity epidemic. Not just in the streets of America where semi-tame wildebeest wander the street looking for the next lard laden confection to stuff into their gaping craws, but also on this blog. It would appear as if the beasts and the beast apologists have come out in force as if driven by a primal urge to migrate to fresher pastures. In addition to the whining regarding “fat acceptance,” “beast loving,” etc. we now see either an intellect level on the part of the bests/beast advocates that is inversely correlated to the size of the beasts or proclaimed psychic powers on par with the ever-expanding panniculi of the beasts (actual psychic powers correlate inversely with beast size).
“No way the posters here are really medical professionals.”
And your logical basis for this comment is what? Healthcare providers are the most patient and understanding of all people, but there comes a time when finite compassion and finite patience run dry. It is the enablers in the community that have aided in creating this beast problem. Excusing the voracious appetites of the bipedal hippopotami secondary to metabolic disorder diagnoses has created the incentive for feed bag and feed trough use resulting in caloric intake that would shame any prize winning Heifer at a local county fare. If the beasts wish to turn themselves into animals only fit for veterinary use than that is their prerogative. When their beastly behavior negatively impacts others secondary to their insistance for “fat acceptance” and over-utilization of healthcare services are the problems present today created.
“They’re obviously very young narcissistic bodybuilding dickheads who have no life outside the gym. That’s a good thing too, because then they’re soo pumped up on steriods they’re impotent! So YAY to THAT!!”
Yeah that is what it is. The sad part of this quoted commentary is that, if made by a beast, it most-likely represents the greatest amount of caloric expenditure not associated with a concomitant engorging on high calorie beast fare that the poster experienced during the day. The poster would do well, if remaining grounded in reality is a goal, to save the lucid dreaming for the fields of Twinkies and Hostess Fruit Pies.
“There’s enough sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, agist, sizist assholes around, they don’t need to breed and make more!”
It is within the evaluation of this comment that we find the exhibition of the most disturbing of trends – that being the creation of a new victim class that the ATLA is drooling over in the same manner as a beast would drool over a powdered donut pancake surprise. It would appear as those that do not accept the gluttonous appetites of the self-indulgent are now considered “bigists.” The leaders of the Civil Rights movement and the Womens’ Suffrage movement must be rolling over in their graves to see their goals and ideals debased to creating a new victim class – the class of beasts. This ladies and gentlemen, is how a new class of plaintiffs is born. One first excuses the behavior of the members of the class by empowering them while concomitantly excusing any and all modes of personal responsibility. Once the new victims have been created, one then looks for a set of deep pockets to go after – Food manufacturers, food distributors, restaurants and physicians. Mark my word, the day a physician is unable to accommodate one of these beasts when it comes to having construction equipment on hand or veterinary medicine equipment on hand is the day that the empowered beast will be calling a lawyer and suing.
“So please, do be the thinnest one in the cemetary! I’ll be the first to applaud you!!”
More then likely, it will be the embalmer cursing the day his father ever laid eyes on his mother when it comes to embalming your corpse if you are one of these beasts. One only hopes that you will not clog the local emergency department with your beastly plethora of ailments, assuming that you are a beast, forcing the ED Doc to work for free. At least have the common courtesy to have some insurance so that the treatment of your self-indulgent and self-generated maladies at least provides your provider(s) some remuneration for having to tolerate you. As far as the child abuser goes, perhaps it is your mouth that you should be using your handto insert a muzzle over to help constrain your caloric intake. Your post is indicative of what we would expect from a real 4Fer – a plaintiff attorney’s wet dream.
Anonymous
“Healthcare providers are the most patient and understanding of all people,”
That made me laugh out loud. Maybe he was only talking about nurses.
Fat Doctor
Just FYI, I posted about this whole mess on my blog. http://fatdoctor.blogspot.com/2006/08/zoo.html
Anonymous
I think what may be in order is an inspirational story for the beasts. Go to foxsports.com and read the story about Kris Jenkins. After incurring an ACL tear and what most likely appears to have been a cuff tear, he allowed his weight to balloon to 405. After changing his lifestyle, he is back to a svelte 365.
The key here is taking responsibility for your lifestyle choices and making the appropriate changes to keep your weight down (for your own sake and the sake of your family).
Anonymous
“Inspirational story for the beasts.”
Tell me why that remark is necessary?
Please explain why you think you are so good that you have a right to refer to human beings as beasts? You know nothing about these people except, their size that you have imagined in your mind.
You have offended people of every profession in the world. I guess that then means you are better than all these people because…you know..you’re so skinny your ribs are showing.
In reality I think you are probably way overweight and so full of self-hate that this somehow makes you feel better. Sad really.
Anonymous
Anon 12:20
Well? Which one is it? Am I an emaciated corpse or am I am giant tub of lard who is such a beast that I am unable to reach around to wipe in a hygenic manner? The term “beast” is applicable. My commentary was directed at the beasts (they know who they are). As far as being offensive – it is the choice of the beasts to be offended. Perhaps they will be so offended that instead of accepting and justifying their beastly behavior, they will engage in activities that result in a net reduction of the number of satellites that they have entrapped secondary to their gravitational pull.
Anonymous
Do you imply that doctor’s don’t have real lives, real jobs, real spouses, real kids, real bosses, real friends and actually don’t have to eat, cook, sleep, shower, shave.
No, of course not. And some doctors are fat.
It takes different people different amounts of exercise time and different amounts of calorie restriction in order to stay thin. We do not all have the same metabolism, we do not all have the same builds, we do not all have the same natural, ideal weights. People who live exactly the same lifestyles and eat exactly the same food are going to have different weights, just like kids who grow up with exactly the same lifestyles have different heights. For one person, walking a half hour a day and eating 2000 calories will fit them nicely into the “ideal weight” category. But for lots of other people, it won’t. That’s where the comments about “we don’t necessarily have time to spend an extra two hours a day losing weight” come from. For some people – yes, it takes that much time.
Diora
Anon at 2:27.
Whil I don’t agree with anon’s poster name-calling, his point about your making excuses is valid. Who says you have to eat 2000 calories a day to survive? You should adjust your caloric requirement based on how much you need for your level of physical activity. If you gain weight on 2000 calories a day, you don’t need 2000 calories a day to satisfy your caloric requirements. If you are a competitive athlete, you may need more than 2000 calories a day. How many calories you need depends on your level of activity, your age, your desired weight, your metabolism. But how much you need to survive also depends on the exactly same factors (if I am wrong I am sure doctors will correct me, since I am not one). If you don’t spend 2000 calories, you do not need 2000 calories.
For example, I am short (5’2″), in my 40s and I have a sedentary job. I can exercise about 3-4 times a week for an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on my work schedules. For me, to maintain my current weight (123 pounds), I can only eat about 1400 calories a day (or something like it). If I exercise a lot – like walk from morning till evening on vacation, I may eat a little more. If I am really busy at work and don’t have time to exercise much (although I still try something, like dancing in front of the TV, using stairs, walking during lunch, and parking in the farthest corner). If I were to eat 2000 calories a day, I’d gain weight very fast. So I eat around 1400 calories – and no, I am not hungry. If I notice I am gaining weight, I eat less. I like black chocolate with nuts, but it has lots of calories. So I eat a tiny bit of it as part of my 1400 calories, not in addition to it. I might allow myself something on a special occasion – but a) it should be a rare special occasion and b) I make sure to spend whatever extra calories I happened to eat by either exercising more or cutting something else in the days that follow. Because not gaining weight again or loosing 1 or 2 pounds you happened to gain on a “special occasion” is easier than waiting until pounds add up to more.
I think many people who try to loose weight often go on those crash diet or skip meals trying to loose weight fast. They loose weight, but they get so hungry and sick of their diet, that they break it and have “this slice of cheesecake just this once, and after all, it is my friends wedding” or something else. Then they gain weight – oops, diets don’t work. Well, they don’t work if you are looking for something quick and cannot stick with it. If you make a lifetime commitment and choose something you can live with (even if you loose only 1 pound a week), they do.
Here is another inspirational story for you. Irina Slutskaya suffers from a serious desease (vasculitis) for which she takes drugs that cause weight gain. So she has a valid reason to gain weight, right? But not only she manages to maintain her weight, she also got a bronze medal on last olympics. OK, you are not a competitive athlete, but you are not taking medicines that cause weight gain either. And surely loosing weight cannot be more difficult than going to the olympics while suffering from debilitating illness.
Anonymous
What I want to know, is if you are commenting or blogging during work hrs, meaning this is not your free time, but you are on the clock of such and such med clinic, are you not then a representative of them and therfore you are not really just some anon abusive person giving a personal opinion? If your being paid while leaving comments on a blog you really should watch what you say.
How in the world anyone can say “Its ok, this is just my opinion” when they happen to be on someone elses time is absurd.
Anonymous
Anon 5:53:
If you aren’t using your company electronic letterhead or identity, then no. You might be using company time, and that might not be allowed (separate issue) but that doesn’t make whatever is said company policy or your opinion company opinion.
Not that the chubby tattletales won’t try to make the argument that you are.
Anonymous
Can anyone figure out why you rarely see fatties exercising. Three possible explanations:
1) fatties are lazy
2) fatties have created such disability for themselves that exercise has become impossible
2) exercise turns fatties into healthy people, thus the fatty in transition is a short lived entity hard to find because they either choose to succeed and become normal, or they choose to fail and eat their way back to their old sick self
Anonymous
“What I don’t get, what I truly don’t get is why any person (medical professional or otherwise) would use such hateful terms to descirbe another human being. Why is it okay to slam a fat person? What makes it okay? Would someone please tell me why so many seek with their words to dehumanize fat people.”
Because “professional” is no longer a part of being a physician. Their sole goal is more money in their pockets for less work. They no longer feel a duty to the public. They no longer feel a responsibility to society. It’s get as much as I can as quickly as I can, and screw everyone else.
Which is why one day soon they’ll all be just another branch of the civil service. Only slightly different from any other govt. employee.
Anonymous
Why do people come to read a blog page where the comments threads are known for being particularly frank, and even controversial and abrasive, and then complain that things don’t seem “professional”? Have a clue. This is where people let their hair down about the things in their professional jobs that bug them. This isn’t your doctor’s office. This isn’t a professional encounter. You aren’t paying for anything, and the doctors posting here aren’t acting as your doctor when they write here. Those who post here can be “professional”–which I think means reserved and restrained in the expectations of those who complain–but they aren’t required to be. Are you really that naive to think that doctors don’t find some of their patients incredibly irritating and maddening to deal with? Do you really think they are blind to behavior in patients that any other normal person would find utterly off-putting and sickening. Sure, most set those feelings aside in patient encounters the interests of professionalism, but that doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t there or that they aren’t bothersome.
What is amazing here isn’t what the doctors say or think (and I am not convinced that every abrasive poster is necessarily a medical doctor), what is amazing is the naivete of non-physician readers whose interest extends to surfing medical blogs. You would think someone with the resources to do so would have enough experience and sophistication to know and expect doctors to have negative opinions about quite a few things they see everyday. Sometimes I think some folks believe we wear white coats to bed.
Chris, RN
The O-beast-lee do not need to set aside extra time to stay fit. I do my own yard work, open my own garage door, do my own housework while wearing weights. Most of my neighbors outsource chores to others, so it’s rare to find a homeowner here who mows their own lawn. I stand at my home desk (you can purchase an electric desk at IKEA). I refuse to go out of my way to exercise, so I have made exercise fit into my daily life. You make choices in life, make good ones. Life is short and shorter still if your genes are working against you.
Surgeon in my dreams
I feel a twinge sometimes when I read the “fat” remarks, being a fat person myself, but even as thin skinned as I am I take these comments for what they are – someones opinion.
Here is a prime example of what can happen when people forget that the internet, and blogging, is a place of free expression…
http://www.mumsnet.com/lw/state.html
I will not quit reading these blogs or complain to a soul (well…I did tell my husband about some of the comments cause he’s a fatty too).It would have never occured to be to complain to anyone.
Blogging is supposed to be fun. When it quits being fun, stop reading and writing.
And that, my friends, is the strongest comment you will ever read from me on anyones site other than my own.
Anonymous
“Those who post here can be “professional”–which I think means reserved and restrained in the expectations of those who complain–but they aren’t required to be. “
If that is what you think being professional means then it’s no wonder you don’t understand what we’re talking about.
Anonymous
Can anyone figure out why you rarely see fatties exercising. Three possible explanations:
A fourth explanation: fat people don’t like to exercise in situations where they will be laughed at, taunted, etc. I exercise for an hour each morning; I do it in the privacy of my own home where I don’t have to deal with other people ridiculing me.
Anonymous
>>”If that is what you think being professional means then it’s no wonder you don’t understand what we’re talking about.”
No, that is what I think some readers posting here who object to what is written appear to expect in the way of “professionalism”, at least their version of it on the internet. That has nothing to do with my understanding of professionalism at all. What you don’t seem to get is that neither you nor anyone else reading have a right to expect the same considerations that would apply to a professional medical encounter.
This is an internet blog thread, not yours or anyone’s doctor’s office. Is that so hard to grasp?
Anonymous
What this is, is a medical blog that belongs to a real physician, using his own name. Those things somehow seem to imply that persons might be able to read here and get educated on medical issues.
Noone would think that visiting a medical blog would be reasons for abuse. This is the most hateful filled medical blog on the entire internet. It caters to the lowest persons in that profession. Of course they get mad when people complain or ask for their to be some semblance of moderation. The trolls have found a home here. They have no place else where they can go and be allowed to abuse in such a way as they can here. I remember when almost everyone used their own names and somehow folks had a good back and forth without resorting to abuse. That is all gone now. Kevin has made it perfectly clear that he is more upset by the people who would like these trolls gone than by the actual trolls themself.
Seems very odd that he wants them (trolls)to have all this freedon to abuse folks and then he gets upset at the people who wish them gone.
Chris, RN
Buyer beware. A blog, a book, a television show is no substitute for a real, live, face-to-face doctor encounter.
There is a well-recognized subgroup of people who have an inordinate need to control every relationship in their life, including the one between doctor and patient. They work overtime reading the PDR, websites, or talk to relatives who work in healthcare, about medical topics. Some may want to one-up their doctor. Some pour over the small print of every package insert and turn up with the most obscure side effect of a medicine which allows them to not take medicine. The irony is they run to the doctor constantly, obsessively, tirelessly with every minor complaint imaginable. Every bowel movement is headline news in their thinking.
If you find yourself identifying with what I’ve written, take a chill pill. This blog doesn’t factor into what would be termed “doctor-patient” relationship. It’s like a break room at work, and you’re little more than a voyeur on some level, fascinated yet repulsed at the same time!
Sit back and enjoy the view few of you would otherwise have access to spoilpsort.
Anonymous
“What you don’t seem to get is that neither you nor anyone else reading have a right to expect the same considerations that would apply to a professional medical encounter.”
Perhaps you haven’t read very closely, but many of your colleagues have stated that is exactly how they would and do treat their existing patients and are looking forward to doing so in the future.
Anonymous
Chris RN, there are also many RNs trying to “one up” the doctors.
Anonymous
What ever happened to “First, do no harm”?
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/medical.htm
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20020101/81.html
http://www.aafp.org/fpm/20020100/25towa.html
http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2002/Sep27_2002/forum.html
Anonymous
>>”Perhaps you haven’t read very closely, but many of your colleagues have stated that is exactly how they would and do treat their existing patients and are looking forward to doing so in the future.”
I can read just fine. Say vs. do, huge difference there. I just don’t believe everything I read here literally, especially when the topics involve venting or are provocative. Do you suppose if someone says in the back office out of earshot that they want to choke the s**t out of someone else, even a patient, that they really mean they intend to do so?
It is hard to imagine how so many people get their pants in a bunch over stuff like this. What a bunch of hand-wringing ninnies. Are you that isolated from reality that you can’t see someone blowing off steam? Please get yourself something that resembles a life.
Anonymous
I dont agree with someone being reported to their employer for comments made on a blog.
But some of you do really need to get some new training or empathy.
Some of you need to get a clue about how people really have to live.
You think everyone’s body works like your own. You think your hunger levels match everyone else’s. If I ate only 1200 calories a day, Ive tried trust me, I would be having severe hunger PAINS [not emotional but physical] all day long.
What is 1200 calories? A bowl of soup and sandwich and a glass of orange juice and then youre done eating for the rest of the day?
Am I a moral and complete failure for desiring mroe to eat? A fat blob who simply cant control herself because she had a soup, sandwich and glass of orange juice at lunch and now its 7pm and she’s hungry again.
Diets are a joke too, give me 400 bucks a week for groceries and maybe I can follow all the complicated recipes in most of the books. For now Im having to buy way too much damn pasta and cheap meat while going to the veggie stands for cheap produce, which really around here only lasts for three months out of the year.
And Oatmeal and berries? You got to be kidding me!. Even the prediabetic insulin sensitive will be passing out within the hour. Theyll then be hungry only two hours later. I havent eaten cereal in YEARS. Cereal is the WORSE thing you can tell fat people to eat. People need protein in the morning, please go get some nutritional training.
Doctor can you help that pain in my stomach and my brain that wants food for the other 12 hours of the day?
Oh and the exercise thing, I ended up in the ER once when I joined the Y and had a severe asthma attack. I was actually thrown out of the class and told I was too unhealthy. Am I supposed to throw up everyday phlemg and lung plugs while going outside to feel the burn?
Why cant I get a cheap gym membership on a low income? I cant even afford the Y anymore.
Why arent there any physical therapists or exercise programs out there to help me move in a safe manner?
From what I know most doctors come from upper middle socioeconomic classes. [with exceptions from overseas] They have had highly nuitritious food, leisure activities, and sports that have been a part of their lifestyle.
Most do not understand how the average person lives. If my husband was to get a middle class or upper middle class job within the year, I know I would lose 100 lbs within the year without even thinking about it. I could go to Whole Foods and buy extremely nutritionally dense food, low calories with high nutritient, I could hire a trainer physical threapist to help me work around my severe respiratory issues.
I know what I need but dont have the means to get it. I guess the empathy deficient here, wouldnt never even consider those possiblities.
Anonymous
Here is another inspirational story for you. Irina Slutskaya suffers from a serious desease (vasculitis) for which she takes drugs that cause weight gain. So she has a valid reason to gain weight, right? But not only she manages to maintain her weight, she also got a bronze medal on last olympics. OK, you are not a competitive athlete, but you are not taking medicines that cause weight gain either. And surely loosing weight cannot be more difficult than going to the olympics while suffering from debilitating illness.”
well gee if an OLYMPIC ALL STAR can do it [who has DAILY access to an endless cadre of trainers and gyms] why cant the rest of us lazy slobs?
Give me a break!
Anonymous
“
I’m terrified of what life will be like for me after thyroidectomy…should by hypothyroidism be undermanaged. Terrified. Will I be looked down on, blamed, judged, hated because I put on weight?”
Yes.
I went from a more normal weight to severely obese in a short period of time due to illness including THYROID.
I actually have wished I had hyperthyroidism instead of hypothyroidism from all the hell Ive been put through.
Most of the doctors will lie to you too about you gaining weight from hypothyroidism, so even if your hair is falling out and your skin is breaking out, they will tell you to quit eating and to quit whining.
I stopped gaining weight the month I started on thyroid pills but supposely was a lazy fat ass, for thinking I was gaining weight from my thyroid.
All the comments here, if you gain any weight be prepared.
Diora
What is 1200 calories? A bowl of soup and sandwich and a glass of orange juice and then youre done eating for the rest of the day?
So replace sandwitches with something else. American sandwitches are huge. Where I grew up a sandwitch was about 1/4 of what is called a sandwitch in the US. A sandwitch here may be the worst you can do – it often includes high calorie stuff, like lots of mayonnaise and/or cheese as well as two huge slices of white bread. The latter add calories as well as raise you blood sugar so you are hungry soon. Some soups contain lots of cheese. So maybe you can replace it with something that has less calories but is still satisfying.
Let’s see how can you fit 3 reasonable meals in 1200 calories:
A beaf stew as in
this recipe – 325 calories. And something like this could easily be a dinner entry.
You might find this recipe too complicated, but you can make something simpler with the same amount of lean beef and something to go with it, e.g. steamed vegetables. Eat this for dinner and you’ll still have 875 calories left for two other meals.
Or you can make a bigger dinner and eat less for other meals. For example, 126g of broiled beef tenderloin is 291 calories. Add to it some steamed vegetables, and you may have a pretty decent dinner of only 400 calories. 800 calories left for two smaller meals and some fruit. Don’t like steamed vegetables – a cup of cooked brown rice is 218 calories. This gives you a dinner entry of 500 calories with 700 left for 2 smaller meals. Replace brown rice with buckwheat and you end up with less calories; replace beef with fish, and it’ll be even less.
Don’t like oatmeal? Prefer scrambled eggs? 100g of those is
only 160 calories Add to it a glass of orange juice – 112 calories, and you’ll get 272 calories breakfast. If it is too boring, one slice of turkey bacon is only 40 calories. Still a breakfast of just a little over 300 calories.
Even creamed cottage cheese with fruit is only
219 calories. Is it such a bad breakfast? Use reduced fat cottage cheese instead and it’ll be less.
So, you can easily have a dinner of 500 calories and breakfast of 300 calories with 400 calories left for lunch. Maybe not enough for a huge sandwitch, but might be enough for a smaller open one.
A friend of mine who was pretty fat recently lost about 45 pounds and so far managed to keep it off. You may say 45 pounds is not a lot, but it was a big percentage of her weight because she is short – under 5′. She decided to loose weight because her blood pressure was high and she didn’t want to go on drugs – she told her doctor that she’d rather loose weight. Unlike so many others who say the same thing, she actually followed through. Now her blood pressure is fine.
She didn’t go on any crash diet, and she has very little time to exercise beyond walking to the bus station to go to work and back, and she is over 50. She has never eaten really huge portions or too much fat, her problem was that she loved white bread and ate it with every meal. Lots of it. So, she simply stopped eating white bread and started eating more fruit instead. Beyond that, she ate her normal meals. I realize that this may not be your situation, but there may be something else you can cut e.g. sugary drinks or muffins.
Diora
well gee if an OLYMPIC ALL STAR can do it [who has DAILY access to an endless cadre of trainers and gyms] why cant the rest of us lazy slobs?
Yes she does. You have a point here. But she also has a debilitating and painful illness and has to take drugs that cause weight gain. I am sure some percentage of overweight people do have some health issues. But not the majority. Otherwise we wouldn’t have so many more obese people now than 30 years ago.
Anonymous
10:56,
As long as you think you are fat because your husband doesn’t make enough money or because others have things that you don’t you will remain fat.
Wow, the philosophies of the liberal educators really brainwashed you into a mental midget. Absolutely astounding and sad.
Anonymous
Diora, I Pray that in my next life I can be as perfect as what you assume you are. However, I think I’ll leave the judegemental behind. You must spend so much time online because God knows you probably don’t have many friends that want to hang out with you. Most people tend to stay away from one so judgemental.
Why is it any of your concern whatsoever how much anyone weighs? Your not a medical Physician. I think you are just mean spirited. You get some thrill of making others feel bad.
Sad!
Anonymous
Do you guys ever try to question your patients a little to get more facts? I know people who have hunger pains and feel like they must eat. On further questioning it came to light that what they really had were symptoms of ulcers and eating made the pains that they confused with hunger pains feel better. Once their ulcers were treated and those pains went away then they stopped overeating. That is just one example.
What a sorry bunch of professional physicians you guys are. How nice it must be to be so lousy at your jobs that you blame your pateints for your shortcomings. Did you sleep all the way through med school?
Diora
Why is it any of your concern whatsoever how much anyone weighs?
It is not except for when someone wants to create “fat tax” which means that I would have to pay more for some food items. Then it affects me personally. It was my problem when I had to fly with someone who took up half of my seat and I was very uncomfortable; on a longer flilght I’d be in a real physical pain. We are not talking about being mildly overweight here – most people have a tendency to gain weight as they get older unless they actively try to prevent it and work hard at it. This is about really obese people, like those who wouldn’t fit in a plane seat; also obese children. Tell me, how getting an 8 year old to be obese is not child abuse?
Beyond this, I have no problem with other people’s weight.
Incidentally, I’ve never said I was perfect, I’ve never called anybody names. I simply gave suggestions based on my and my friend’s experience in loosing weight and keeping it off. I’ve been fighting with weight ever since my ovaries failed when I was in my early thirties. I was gaining slowly – a couple of pounds here, a couple of pounds there, year after year. At one point I crossed into the “overweight” category and which point I said, enough is enough. Then I lost extra weight and so far managed to keep it off. But it is a fight. Which is why I pay attention to calories. I was trying to share my experience, and that of my friend who really was obese and lost weight. But you are clearly happy the way you are. Which is fine as long as you don’t expect me to give you half of my seat or pay “fat taxes”.
Anonymous
My God, I have never heard people make up so many excuses for themselves. You can’t lose weight because you are not upper or middle class- give me a break! You think all those skinny starving kids in Africa are rich? Using your logic one would think that Americans were at their fattest during the Depression (I mean, after all they couldn’t afford to join a gym or go to Whole Foods either, right?). Guess again. Obesity rates exploded during the prosperous nineties.
Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and making tired, ridiculous excuses. So you can’t join a gym- going for a walk around the neighborhood and doing some crunches or push-ups on your bedroom floor is free. And please, it does not take two hours a day. Work exercise into your daily activities. Do some sit-ups in the morning while you watch the news. Take a quick jog around the block. Use the stairs, not the elevator. Look for the farthest parking spot at the store, not the closest. Play with your kids outside or take the dog for a long walk.
Can’t shop at Whole Foods? Neither can I- there isn’t one close to me. I shop Sav-a-Lot, where I purchase skim milk, whole grain bread, chicken breasts (instead of beef), giant boxes of brown rice, frozen veggies and “diet” or “light” versions of anything I can. Stop drinking calories (except for milk). You’d be amazed how many calories the average person cuts by dropping soda, juice, etc. Go to McDonalds if you must, but get a Happy Meal instead of a super-sized meal, or the grilled chicken sandwhich, or a salad.
Sure 1200 calories goes fast if you’re eating typical sandwhiches, creamed soups and juices. Try a frozen Lean Cuisine, bottled water and fruit. That’s well under 500. You can grill a chicken breast with brown rice (just as cheap as white), a salad and veggies for 400. For a breakfast with protein you can have three scrambled egg whites, a low-fat string cheese and a slice of canadian bacon for 400 too. Throw in an apple for some fiber. There, you still have 100-200 calories left over for a healthy snack or two, or even a modest dessert. And none of those foods are fancy or expensive.
Anonymous
I should add to that last post the very few obese people need to cut all the way down to 1200 calories a day to lose weight. Most women could lose with 2000, or maybe 1600.
Elizabeth
What is this business about being too poor to lose weight? You think you’d be thinner if only your husband had a better job? Sorry- I call bullshit on that. Oprah Winfrey’s the richest woman in the world, and she still has to struggle with her weight. And God bless her for trying.
Morbid obesity is about emotional issues, self-control and self-esteem. Money won’t fix that. It’ll just buy you filet mignon instead of cube steak. If you are 100 or more pounds overweight, you need to admit that there is a problem, pure and simple. Then you need to try to fix it. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by inventing excuse after excuse for your lifestyle.
As for whether it should be anyone else’s business as to what someone weighs- I agree with Diora. If the U.S. was seeing double-digit increases in any other kind of deadly disease over the past few decades, it would be a public health emergency and we’d all be alarmed. On a personal level, I don’t care what you do to your own body. But at some point, the obese population starts to cost us all in the form of public health dollars. When hospitals and fire companies need to spend part of their stretched budgets purchasing bigger equipment to accomodate large bodies, when Medicare and Medicaid are going bankrupt in part paying for the healthcare problems of the obese (their diabetes, high blood pressure, joint problems, etc.), when eight times as many children today are obese compared to fifty years ago (nothing short of child abuse IMO) and three times as many have type TWO diabetes, and yes, when I have to give up half my seat on the airplane, bus, subway car etc. to an obese person’s ass… then yeah, I do care. Every American should.
Anonymous
ELIZABETH…
Medicaid going broke because of the obese? Does that somehow imply that a majority of obese are on medicaid? LOL…You people with all your prejudices are a riot! And a damn sick riot at that. What about cancer? Maybe you just discriminate against those people. Alot of medical and ins. money being sucked up in cancer treatment.Maybe they are to blame for their own cancer? If they had gotten that colonoscopy or PAP test like they should have they wouldn’t have gotten cancer so maybe we should just crucify them for being sick. If those damn heart disease sufferers would have changed their lifestyles long ago we wouldn’t be paying for them to have coronary surgeries. Do you see how simple minded that all sounds?
Why stop there with medicaid? How about all the unwed teens having babies? Notice that was plural and not single, as in 3 or 4 or even 8 or 9?
Do you like supporting all those babies that you didn’t create? What about their deadbeat dads, you like paying for his kids medical bills. When you figure out all this then you come talk to me about obese people. until then you should take a lesson on “how to be Civil to fellow human beings.”
Anonymous
so we should all be replicas of the “Skinny starving kids in africa”? You people are completely crazy! Just who in hell do you think you are that you belive you have some god given right to give all your pseudo advise to people. Just so you know, I’m not over weight and have never been. But, I also don’t talk the way you guys do to other human beings. And you think they have problems?
Elizabeth
You did not read my message clearly, or you would have seen that I said public health programs are going bankrupt “IN PART” because of problems with obesity. There are other problems too (although you should know that the teenage birthrate in this country has actually declined over the past two decades) but they are not the focus of this thread so I didn’t bring them up. Obesity has been noted by the CDC as the number two PREVENTABLE (there is your difference between this and cancer) cause of death in this country. It increases your risk of developing over thirty other life-threatening diseases. How can you argue that this does not affect heath care budgets as more and more people in this country become seriously overweight? I’ll accept that there will always be a small percentage of people in any population who are obese due to genetics or disease, but come on- the number of morbidly obese people in this country has DOUBLED in just one generation, and nearly TRIPLED since the time of the Depression. That isn’t genetics or thyroidism, sorry. It is preventable lifestyle choices.
Medical science has not proven that there are lifestyle choices one can make to either 100% prevent or reverse the onset of deadly cancers and other diseases. There are steps which can be taken to reduce the risk in some cases (i.e., sunscreen for skin cancer, safe sex for cervical cancer/HPV and not smoking for lung cancer) but they are nowhere near foolproof. People who have never smoked a day in their lives can still develop lung cancer. And once someone has cancer, they can hardly choose to get rid of it by eating healthier food and exercising.
People who are morbidly obese got that way as a direct result of their lifestyle choices. They eat more calories than their body needs, and/or do not burn enough off with activity. The reasons for this aren’t as simple as pure gluttony, of course, but in the end they are responsible for what they have done to their bodies. They have an addiction to food, not much different than drugs or alcohol.
Should we be sympathetic and “accepting” of drug abuse or any other addiction in this country? Should we use “addict-friendly language” so as not to hurt their feelings too? After all, quitting drugs is extremely difficult and those withdrawal cravings are stronger than any hunger pain a dieter feels. And addictions do have a strong genetic/family connection so, you know, it really isn’t their fault in the first place…
Anonymous
Anon 1:01- no one is going around giving unsolicited “psuedo” advice. I can speak for myself to say that I was responding directly to a poster who claimed it was impossible to eat filling meals on 1200 calories per day. I offered examples to the contrary, because they are wrong. Others have claimed that they cannot exercise effectively without a two-hour block of time each to or the money to join a fancy gym. Again, I offered examples to the contrary because this is also wrong. There was nothing insidious or mean-spirited in the way the message was delivered. Sorry if the truth hurts.
It is very dangerous to go around promoting this idea that the only way to lose weight is to eat one meal a day, buy expensive stuff from Whole Foods, hire a personal trainer or join an expensive gym. It is flat-out wrong, and anyone who uses these ideas as reasons why they cannot lose weight are in denial.
If you’re fat and happy- fine, say so. Just say, I like eating too many calories and I’m not willing to make the effort to exercise, and I know I’m overweight because if it and that’s okay with me. I can’t argue with that. But don’t come on here complaining that you could lose weight if only x,y, and z were different and making excuses for yourself. And even if you are fat and happy, don’t make accomodating your size in public everyone else’s problem.
Anonymous
What I think people are saying is it’s none of your damn business what anyone weighs. If they happen to be on the same public transportation as you and God forbid take up some of the space that you AREN’T using then for God sake complain to someone.
Anonymous
If they happen to be on the same public transportation as you and God forbid take up some of the space that you AREN’T using then for God sake complain to someone.
We might not be using it this second, but there is a difference between sitting squashed unable to move and sitting comfortably. On a 10-hour flight it makes a lot of difference not just in comfort, but in long-term health.
As This woman tried to complain. A lot of good it did her.
Anonymous
In all honesty, when the airlines are trying to shove 5 people (seats A thru E) into such a small area on one side of a plane I’m not sure who’s fault it is when someone hangs over the edge or aren’t comfortable. I weight in the 130s range and I’ve never had a comfortable plane ride since they started squeezing so many into that size area. last time I flew there was a man beside who didn’t look one bit overweight. But, he was about 6ft 5in and probably 250 lbs. I can promise he was alot more uncomfortable than what I was. I kept trying to move over so he could have more of my seat.
Thinness should not be an excuse for lack of common courtesy.
Anonymous
I weight in the 130s range and I’ve never had a comfortable plane ride since they started squeezing so many into that size area.
This is the thing – it is already uncomfortable. When someone is occupying half of your seat, it gets intolerable.
I kept trying to move over so he could have more of my seat.
Was it a short flight or an 8-hour flight?
Thinness should not be an excuse for lack of common courtesy.
You could let him have part of your seat without long-term health consequences for you, great. This woman had torn muscles in your leg. Would you cosider it a requirement of common courtesy to sacrifice muscles in your leg?
Anonymous
“Thinness should not be an excuse for lack of common courtesy.”
For that matter, neither should obesity. Nor should it be an excuse for neglecting safety or being a public hazard.
Anonymous
Get a life asshole! You’re pathetic. How in hell is someones weigh a public hazard to you? Mind your own business! I think some fat woman probaly stole your husband and now you are all up in arms and mad at all obese people.