Can Overweight Docs Really Give Credible Weight Loss Advice?

July 7, 2021 — Kevin Gendreau, MD, a weight loss doctor at Southcoast Health in Fall River, MA, lets patients know that he was once obese. He says this knowledge inspires and motivates them to lose weight.

After dropping 125 pounds over 18 months, “I can relate to their binges, hardships, and plateaus on a very personal level,” he says.

Peminda Cabandugama, MD, an endocrinologist and obesity medicine specialist at Truman Medical Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has weighed between 180 and 240 pounds in the past decade. He now weighs 225 pounds and has a healthy lifestyle.

“I have had patients come to me saying, ‘I used to see a different weight loss doctor who was not heavy. But how can he understand what I’m going through?’” he says.

Cabandugama shares his weight loss struggles with patients “to dispel this myth that weight management is as simple as just eating too much and not exercising. It involves a smorgasbord of emotions and hormones, some within and outside of our control. I hope that sharing this allows me to connect more with my patients so that they know that even their health care professional goes through the same challenges that they do.”

“Patients are more likely to make behavior changes when doctors are supportive and have had similar experiences and talk about their stories,” says Wendy Bennett, MD, an obesity researcher and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Do Patients Respect Overweight Doctors?

While Gendreau and Cabandugama have lost weight, some doctors who would like to shed unwanted pounds have been unable to do so. What impact does this have on patients?

Doctors sometimes have biased attitudes toward overweight patients, but few studies have looked at whether patients have biases towards overweight doctors. The results vary and may depend on whether or not the patients are overweight.

A random online survey of 358 participants suggested that regardless of their own weight, people had biases about doctor weight gain. They viewed the overweight or obese doctors as less trustworthy and credible, which could lead the participants to reject their medical advice and change doctors.

“Patients expect doctors who are providing health care to be doing everything they can to take care of their own health and well-being,” says Pamela Peeke, MD, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore.

“I am a physician who believes you have to walk the talk — that the best teachers are those who live it,” she says.

Still, “I don’t think based on this one experimental study that we can conclude that overweight physicians are harming patients’ efforts to change their behavior,” notes Bennett, who was not involved in the study.

“I think that patients do often want to connect with their physicians on more personal levels, but without the story behind where the advice is coming from, patients may struggle to trust a provider who seems to be contradicting the messages,” she says.

A study that Bennett helped lead suggests that patients are not biased against overweight doctors if they themselves need to lose weight. A national survey of 600 overweight patients showed that 87% trusted diet advice from overweight primary care doctors, compared to 77% who trusted diet advice from doctors who had a healthy weight.

“This shows that patients were more trusting of physicians who are more like them, which can lead to better relationships. We know from the studies on race that patients are often more trusting of physicians from the same race as them,” says Bennett.

Gendreau says that when he was severely obese, some patients questioned whether to trust his weight loss advice.

“It was very awkward when they turned to me and said, ‘What about you?’ I would respond that it’s my job to inform them about the risks to their health,” he says.

Nearly half (48%) of doctors said they are trying to lose weight, according to the 2021 Medscape Physician Lifestyle and Happiness Report. As a result, many doctors may end up in the position of seemingly advising to “do what I say, not what I do.”

Nearly 3 in 5 Americans are trying to lose weight, according to Gelesis poll results released in December 2020.

Should Doctors Pay More Attention to Wellness?

Doctors have an ethical duty to maintain their own health and wellness so they can provide safe and effective medical care. If they don’t have a healthy lifestyle, they need to make adjustments, the American Medical Association Code of Ethics advises.

Peeke agrees with the AMA. “We signed on to do this — we have to go out of our way to carve out time, even if it’s just 15 minutes where we hide away and eat that healthy lunch that we brought with us,” she says.

Gendreau suggests busy doctors do what he did.

“I started by bringing healthy snacks — small Ziploc bags filled with mixed nuts and berries — and expanded from there. This way, if I got hungry or stressed between patients, I would have easy access to something nutritious,” he says.

He and Peeke also suggest making protein shakes or berry smoothies that are low in sugar.

“These can keep you full for hours as you sip them between patients,” says Gendreau.

Convincing busy doctors to make lifestyle changes may be challenging. Sixty-five percent of those who responded to the Physician Lifestyle and Happiness Report say that they sometimes, rarely, or never focus on their health and wellness. Only 45% said they are eating healthy, and 65% said they exercise.

“Self-care isn’t a priority for most physicians because we are taught to take care of others and to put them first,” says Gendreau. “Like many doctors, I had so many other priorities — family, friends, career. Also, my last year of medical school was so difficult that my priority was finishing. I pushed my health to the side and told myself that I could fix this later.”

Only about 1 in 5 medical schools require students to take a nutrition course, according to David Eisenberg, MD, an adjunct associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“I didn’t get one ounce of nutrition training, which is the reason I became a Pew Foundation scholar in nutrition and metabolism. I had to go outside of my traditional training,” says Peeke.

“Physicians are not adequately trained to do the behavioral counseling and motivational interviewing that is needed,” says Bennett. “We do a good job of diagnosing obesity based on body mass index and understanding the relationship with future health conditions. But most doctors struggle with both a lack of time and the skill set to make significant behavior changes.”

“Medical school curriculum is focused so heavily on the pathology and pathophysiology of obesity, rather than how to prevent it with the appropriate diet and exercise regimen,” Gendreau says. “My physician patients often tell me that their own education in the field of nutrition is lacking, which can affect their weight loss journey and what they teach their patients.”

Gendreau, crediting his own weight loss journey as well as his obesity medicine fellowship, says his confidence in discussing weight loss with patients has soared.

Reframing Obesity as a Chronic Disease

Rather than criticizing overweight people, including doctors, for their personal health choices, a better approach is to think of weight or obesity as a chronic illness, says Bennett.

“If we understand that obesity is a chronic health condition that people are struggling with, we can empathize with them,” she says, recommending that more providers share their weight loss journeys with patients they give lifestyle advice to, which may help address and repair potential biases.