Doctors Need to Practice What They Preach

If I could put a title on this comment, I'd call it "Fit Doctor, Fat Doctor" (like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad").

Dr. Fit has been my family's doctor since before I was born. His BMI is around 19, he exercises for an hour every day, and he eats lots of fruits and vegetables of many varieties. He says that he has always enjoyed exercise and loved vegetables ever since he was born. He has absolutely no understanding why people might get fat. He's doesn't understand why people might crave bad food like chocolate cake and why we won't eat our vegetables even though he's been telling us repeatedly to do so since we were born. He doesn't understand why we don't "simply" make the time to exercise every day. Worse, Dr. Fit is very blunt about his advice. When he lectures his patients, they leave the office feeling very discouraged and bad about themselves. They seem to feel defeated just by hearing his advice, and the way he talks makes people feel that it's way too hard to ever be fit. "Just do it" and "try harder" just isn't enough. Everybody already knows that it's good to eat more vegetables and get more exercise, but it's just not that simple for most of us. The fact that following his own advice is very easy for Dr. Fit doesn't help me at all. Dr. Fit even prescribed me weight loss drugs, but I ended up having rather bad side effects.

Dr. Fat is Dr. Fit's new, young partner, fresh out of residency. Dr. Fat's BMI hovers around 31, and it looks like it's mostly fat with no visible muscle. I think Dr. Fat and Dr. Fit have about the same amount of book knowledge. However, Dr. Fat also pays attention to all the latest gimmicks about food and exercise because he's fat himself. Dr. Fat can explain all the science behind what parts of the latest diet craze works and what parts are bad for people, whereas Dr. Fit doesn't even know what the latest diet craze is (because they are often not part of the scientific journals). Dr. Fat loves food, so he can make good recommendations about which vegetables might not taste so bad, whereas Dr. Fit has no recommendation other than "just eat more vegetables". (Dr. Fit's wife shops and cooks for him, so he even know the names of the vegetables he eats. Dr. Fat is single and does all his own shopping and cooking.) Dr. Fat is also very sweet. He listens, he understands that people makes mistakes, he knows some great tricks about food and fitness, and he tries to adapt his advice in ways that might not be so hard for people.

I think Dr. Fat actually gave better advice about losing weight even though he can't seem to lose weight himself. After asking about what I was eating, Dr. Fat recommended that I stop forcing myself to eat iceberg lettuce because the salad dressing just doesn't justify the meager nutrition. This advice worked miracles for me. Once I stopped counting iceberg lettuce as a legitimate vegetable, I discovered that there are a lot of great-tasting vegetables out there with a far higher nutritional density. Dr. Fit lectured for DECADES that I need to eat more vegetables, but his lectures never helped me.

Dr. Fat knows how hard it is to try to get exercise into a busy day, and he admits that he only manages to exercise on weekends. Although Dr. Fit pretty much said that all video games are evil, Dr. Fat assures me that my video games (DDR and Wii Fit) are OK if that's what it takes to motivate me to become physically active. He says he uses an iPod to help him get motivated to go jogging, and he recommends some great scenic places to go jogging locally.

Dr. Fat is still obese and still struggling with his weight and blood sugar. He admits that he doesn't get as much exercise as he wants to and that he doesn't eat as many vegetables as he knows he should. But thanks to what he said, my BMI hovers at just under 23 (down from a very fatty 32 under Dr. Fit).

Ultimately, we are each responsible for our health. We each already know we need to exercise more and eat more vegetables. We know this to be good advice even if we can't do it ourselves. Although children supposedly follow a monkey-see monkey-do approach to learning (and are thus supposed to benefit from having good role models), people who are selecting a doctor should be responsible adults. Dr. Fat understood and worked with me on my limitations and help me become fit even though he can't help himself (because he has a different set of limitations). Dr. Fit, on the other hand, had been an excellent fitness role model all my life (following his own recommendations and then some), but he still couldn't help me with my obesity.

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