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Comment by jermaustin1

6 hours ago

As a person who has been told I'm "morbidly obese" for decades now, I will say that doctors at almost every level look at your chart not you. I've been told time and time again that until I get my weight under control, my health will suffer.

I'm 5'8" and weigh on average 210lbs. My BMI isn't even morbidly obese, it is 31, which is just "regular" obese, but on top of that, a DEXA scan shows that I am actually only 25% body fat, with only 1lb of visceral fat.

Doctor's don't care about that, they see on the Epic chart that my BMI is > 30 and have to tell me some spiel about a healthier lifestyle so they check check off a checkbox and continue to the next screen.

10 comments

jermaustin1

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sotix  1 hour ago

I'd consider 5'8 and 210lbs morbidly obese. An average male at 5'8 should generally weigh about 150lbs and no more than 164lbs.

  • Teever  1 hour ago

    Or that guy could be a burly bricklacker / concerete worker who can casually carry hundreds of pounds of weight all day every day in brutal conditions.

    It's really hard to tell with the data provided.

joshhart  2 hours ago

Huh. The standard in your case is to measure waist circumference if BMI is high. Did no doctor do that? As long as you are below 40” or 37” if Asian you are considered good to go.

prmoustache  5 hours ago

> Doctor's don't care about that

Literally all of them?

  • coldtea  4 hours ago

    When humans talk, they use generalizations (and don't need to annouce them). Here it means that most doctors don't care about that.

    Follow that rule next time you read such a statement in a context that's not formal math.

  • jermaustin1  5 hours ago

    I can't say literally all, but in my experience with having to get a new GP almost every year because of health insurance changes, location changes, hospital consolidation buying my GPs practice, and multiple doctors retiring or just quitting medicine (my last GP was tired of medicine after practicing for only 3 years). Over the last 20 years, I've had almost 15 GPs across 5 states (NY, NJ, CT, TX, LA). I also have multiple auto immune diseases, so I have had a handful of specialists of various flavors (endocrine, oncology - not for cancer, cardiology, and urology), but only need them occasionally.

    Almost every single start of every single appointment (including a follow up from just a couple days prior), they comment about my BMI. It is the rare time they don't that I remember. My last urology appointment the doctor was very congenial, didn't even go over the lab work, just said, everything is looking good, asked how I was feeling, everything good, alright, refilled my prescriptions and left.