I updated my blog all for Tony!! Seriously though I will have some words of wisdom sometime soon.
BUT, I will respond to that article that you posted on facebook that I haven't actually read but can get the gist of from the title (and I initially was just gonna post this on FB but it kinda got long).
I really think that physicians should play an important part in battling the obesity epidemic in this country and should be actively helping their patient's to lose weight but at the same time this should just be one tool that people use to help them lose weight. Blogs, nutritionists, work out plans/personal trainers and hopefully soon some better weight loss medications and surgeries should all be used as well though and should . I can only speak from the physician standpoint in this case and the fact is we are really really undertrained in this area but I know a lot who would like to be better trained. I was thinking back to the first two years of medical school and I am pretty sure we only had 3-4 hours total of lecture regarding nutrition and exercise plans. Since then though we have had a couple hours learning about bariatric surgery (has some interesting developments for the morbidly obese) and another about how effective weight loss medications have been (actually fairly successful) but as I already said, it would be nice to know more about nutrition and physical activity. There is one caveat here though, it really depends on the specialty of the physician. For example, someone like a radiologist does not need to worry too much about nutrition and exercises because they are not involved with the long term care of a patient. I will admit though that overall physicians need to do better in helping their patients more with their weight and need better training in it and to be more proactive (especially with some of the newer things).
