If people tell us that, ‘look I’ve been following all the guidelines and I’m still gaining weight’, what we do is we assume that they are lying. Isn’t that just…? Doh! You know, as the doctor, we assume that they are lying. We blame the patient.
You know, didn’t we ever sit down and think, maybe we’ve just been telling them the wrong thing?
The patients do do what we tell them. They are trying hard. So many times people will tell you about the yo-yo dieting. They’ll tell you about all the different diets they’ve tried. People are trying hard.
It’s just that the advice is wrong.
So now that we have the correct advice, now that we understand the mechanism of weight gain and obesity, now that we know that it’s to do with insulin resistance, and we know that it’s due to eating too many carbs, it’s no difficulty whatsoever in bringing the topic up with people.
So, I just say to people, ‘would you like to talk about your weight?’ And inevitably, people are saying, ‘yes, I would’.
Dr Glen Davies (GP) is one of the instructors in PK204: The Science and Practice of Weight Loss