AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED in this week’s British Medical Journal on the way doctors treat overweight people has been generating quite a bit of discussion online.
Contributor Emma Lewis wrote of her experiences of receiving healthcare as a fat person - she says she has been overweight her whole life, but eats healthily, exercises regularly, and is for all intents and purposes totally healthy:
Almost every consultation I’ve ever had – about glandular fever, contraception, a sprained ankle – has included a conversation about my weight; and that’s inevitably the conversation that destroys any rapport or trust that might have existed between me and my doctor.
Lewis said that on a recent trip to her GP for a sprained ankle, the doctor advised that she should be exercising more ‘in general’, without asking how much exercise she already did.
He doesn’t know that just last night I danced enthusiastically for four hours, then walked several miles home. I assume that he tells all his fat patients the same thing, without bothering to find out about their individual situations.
“When healthcare professionals ask me whether I know if my BMI is too high, I’m always a little surprised when they act like they might be the first to have ever brought it up,” she writes.
The article is being shared widely on social media, leading to discussion of instances when doctors chose to advise fat people on their weight instead of treat the problem at hand:
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