Thread: Tv show This morning debate - new idea about doctors calling 'fat' instead of obese.

Funny really, I know I am overweight, fat or obese or even all 3 so having someone else, doctor or not point this out wouldnt offend me at all. Sometimes the truth does hurt.....

But I do agree with doctors should consider the feelings of their patients, not everyone is as thick skinned as I can be and knowing they are going to bring up their weight may stop some people getting the help the need

I can agree with that...you would like to think though with all their education and training that they would use sound judgement when dealing with people needing the truth..lets be honest though, i dont think there are a lot of people that lose weight because they are TOLD to! in my experience i have always had to be in the perfect frame of mind and no matter who told me or how..i was going to do it when i was ready. xx

I don't like the term obese but it is that which has spurred me on, simply being called fat to me means nothing. "Fat cow" was the standard nasty name thing at school and I was size 10 then so now size 22 its water off a ducks back. Obese on the other hand makes me worry... BUT if the doc called me names or had a go at me he wouldn't see me for dust...

I don't like either! But if I had to choose, I suppose I prefer obese. It shocked and frightened me to learn I was obese. Now I'm just overweight

If we want to shock ourselves all we need is step in front of a mirror...

Fatty or obese is the same thing, you can use all euphemism that you want but the mirror does not lie.

And I will only stop dieting when I can look at it and smile. ;-)

tbh i dont care what the doctors call me, i went to the doctors last year as i was having panic attacks, they straight a way attributed it to me being obese, AND made a big thing of it putting me down for it, THEN did not want to prescribe me the pills to calm me down because it could make me put more weight on.. all through my life my problems have straight a way been put down to weight and being told if i were skinnier it would not happen!

i was 17 at the time!

I'm currently training to be a doctor and I hope I will be an understanding and caring doctor (and not just assume everything is caused by excess weight) and will definitely treat all my patients with utmost respect.

My current thoughts are that, at the end of the day, the words 'overweight' and 'obese' are technical terms, the same way that female, male, pregnant are. Many many many illnesses have obesity as a risk factor - which means it's a possible underlying causes of the illness and shows up in studies as making a difference. There is also a 'cure' for obesity in the way that there isn't a cure for Parkinson's Disease or Altzeimers. Of course, this cure isn't easy and while on paper it may be as simple as 'eat less, exercise more' it's a massively massively complex disease with so many different factors involved including social, psychological and physical ones that doesn't get fixed overnight even if you completely and utterly follow the programme and never have a slip-up - which is also impossible.

It can be awful to hear the words 'obese' or 'overweight' from someone you want to trust such as a doctor and I'm sure some of them handle it really really badly but ultimately, they are diagnosing you with something (that fair enough, you already know!) to possibly explain some of your symptoms and then hopefully provide you with support to fix the problem.

To think of it another way, if you went to your GP with all the symptoms of an illness they recognise, have seen before and know a cure for, would you want them to not tell you a diagnosis because it might upset you and the cure may take a long time to come to fruition?

Still doesn't excuse the rubbish doctors out there (sorry to hear you were treated so poorly, wannabeaslimjim) but it seems crazy to not say something when it may be relevant as well.

Just my thoughts! :|

Cheers
Vicky

I don't really have a preference myself - I think it's all about delivery. The fact is for most of us (excluding medical conditions) being fat is somewhat of a choice, however much we would like to think it isn't. Doctors tread a fine line between trying to be 'caring' and trying to get us to help ourselves. I've had doctors yell at me about it, and whilst I think maybe they could have delivered the information better (there's very few of us unaware of the fact that we are overweight/fat/obese and unaware of how we got here) they weren't saying anything untrue.

I think it's a little patronising to assume this is going to make a huge difference or even a small one to be honest (again, few of us are unaware of our status!) but I won't be weeping in the waiting room about it

I prefer the clinical terms. A doctor calling their over weight patient "fat", is akin to calling someone with an eating disorder "a skeleton". Neither is a nice term.
When I was pregnant with my last baby, I went in for my ante natal appointment, and got weighed. I'd was 6 pound lighter at my 20 week check up than I was when I first got pregnant.
Instead of telling me "well done on not putting on any more weight", the doctor said to me...

"You didn't put on weight."
I replied with a smile, "no, I actuall lost some."
To which she replied. "Good. You don't need to put on any more weight. You're big enough as it is. I'll be happy if you don't gain an ouce through your entire pregnancy."

I found that very rude. It was not necessary to say any of that to me. And to make it worse, she said it while my partner was standing beside me, totally effin embarrassing me altogether. I actually started crying when I left the hospital that day.

I have a real hate-on for that particular doctor, now.

I call myself fat, cause that is how I feel. However I would be VERY offended if someone else describe me (to my face) as fat. Obese and overweight are definately the route to go down.

Someone earlier mentioned that being obese/overweight/fat is not a crime, which it isn't. However being obese/overweight/fat does cause health problems and these problems cost money on the NHS - which is on the increase. This cost is the same for anyone that suffers at the hand of being self inflicted, drugs, ciggies etc. However I think there should be more support for those that are overweight/obese... food can be an addiction much like drugs, cigarettes or alcohol and I think that help for those that are overweight is viewed more negatively and gets alot less sympathy.

I'm as you can see over 90lbs overweight - however so far I've been lucky and not had a trip to the doctor once, I did notice as my weight soared from stone to stone that things like breathing, stomach upsets etc did come around more frequently. I put on weight through years of stopping smoking.

I once took part in another forum and another member there said to me about a similar issue to weight loss "is that our weight when we are overweight/obese should shock us. It's not okay to put yourself at risk or your family if your children have adopted your habits". Safe to say while it's quite dramatic I think it's right, I don't care about media pressure to be riduculously underweight but I do think that (for me) I should be moving in the right direction for a healthy BMI so that I can increase my chance of being here for aslong as I can for my daughter (reason I gave up smoking)

This is quite a contraversial subject and while I am not condeming anyone in particular that happen to be fat/obese/overweight I just think that viewing my weight the way I do really has made me wake up and this time I know there is no going back - it's either lose the weight or lose my life, even if the result isn't death my would would still affect me enough that my life wouldn't really be much of a life as I couldn't live it to the full potential.

I think doctors should really stick to health terms, especially since there have been a lot of studies coming out saying that health isn't as tied to weight as we previously thought. I know I've had problems in the past with doctors ignoring symptoms because they thought it was fat, and it was actually an illness.

Obese sounds harsher than fat. People always say fat, "I feel fat", "do I look fat in this?" etc.. If it was "I feel obese", "do I look obese on this?" it sounds depressing.