Sing it with me people! Gotta love James Brown!

No kidding, I actually feel really great today and it’s hard to think of a day in recent times when I have felt this good within myself. I feel like I have more energy, I want to do stuff that I usually loathe doing and I feel like I’m getting the old me back again. Those of you who have read “The Bloggest Loser” page will know that I’ve started on a prescription medication to assist with weight loss. I had never really discussed how I felt about my weight with my GP, even with all the Xenical ads floating around about “lose weight, gain life”. I just felt like there was too much of a stigma attached to it and if I resorted to taking medication, people would just assume I was this lazy person who just ate take-away every night and was looking for a quick fix.

I really wish I had talked to her sooner because so far it is really helping me. And you know, it really makes me wonder about this obesity epidemic we have in Australia. Although I’m a big girl, apart from my weight I am in good health and that is the reason why I wanted to try to lose weight now. While you are still healthy, that is the time to do it. When you get to the stage where you are triple the person you are supposed to be and getting the line from the doctor “you have to lose weight or you will die prematurely”….well it gets that much harder to do anything about it.

I’ve met a lot of people through the course of my work who are at that stage and some of them just can’t be bothered. They have just resigned themselves to the fact that they will die early and there is nothing they can do about it. I just wonder, if they’d talked to their doctor about their weight while they still had a BMI under 40 and able to do at least some exercise….would it have changed their life starting this kind of medication? Could it save a life? Maybe, maybe not. I just think that considering obesity is costing $21 billion a year to treat, then it might be worth GPs being a little more pro-active and discussing weight loss with their patients and offering support in the process. I know it can be a sensitive issue for a lot of obese people but had my doctor not broached the topic first, I’m not sure I would have brought it up myself.

So thank you to my GP, I feel good because of you.

July 26th, 2008 | Category: Health and Fitness |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL