That jumped out at me, because, unfortunately, it seems it's become unpopular, or even offensive, to claim there's a link between obesity and poor health/lower life expectancy. I've heard of doctors refusing to recommend weight loss to their patients for fear of being accused of "body shaming".
My guess is that doctors typically understand that the patient already knows they’re obese, and therefore tries to get them to do something, anything, that’ll help.
The reality is that patients do not listen and do not have the tools to make changes. A lot of these people are barely living life, they're just on autopilot.
That being said, I'm gonna file "doctors are afraid to tell patients they're obese because they'll be accused of body shaming" next to "they're putting litter boxes in the classrooms so the furries can poop in front of everyone" and "strangers are putting LSD in halloween candy to get kids hooked". It's 100% made up rage bait and the people who believe it believe it because they hear it all the time from their propaganda echo chambers.
Wild story, either way. I expect professionals to be better.
I'm a healthy weight and every single time I speak to my GP they talk about diet and exercise and the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. I can think of no health advice I have received more than "control your weight." Not even "don't smoke."
I've literally never heard of this, in fact I've heard hundreds of stories about doctors refusing to put any effort into giving people a real diagnosis if they're even the slightest bit overweight.
Riddle me this: were you trying to lose weight as a course of treatment for some other thing that was happening or were you trying to lose weight for its own sake? I'm wondering if the doctor actually thinks that being overweight is fine or if they were just saying you don't have any particular condition that being overweight would treat or relieve. I don't mean to call you out in particular, it's just that your experience is directly opposite to anything I've experienced or been told about as someone who was overweight and went to doctors about it and as someone whose entirely family has always been in healthcare in some way or another (a couple doctors, several nurses, I'm in med tech alongside a couple cousins and my dad runs a power plant but even he runs a power plant owned by a hospital system).
But no, I had no active medical conditions and this was the first time I saw this doctor. So, he didn't really know my medical history anyways.
The weight loss was really the entire reason I went in. But over my medical history I've had a lot of experiences like this where doctors really aren't very helpful. Or at least, they don't have enough time to actually think beyond the 10 most common things that happen to people.
This was in 2018, before GLP-1's, and I wasn't looking for medication.
It’s true that in Japan people walk a lot more, but I think good nutrition and eating habits from a young age are a key factor in why people don’t get fat here. Also, if you want “fast food”, ramen or teishoku is faster than McDonalds.