I Asked My Doctor For A Check Up. She Immediately Brought Up Ozempic.
I’m the first person to criticise myself in any room. Too loud, too stupid, too much, too… big.
I hate that the last one is lodged in my mind as a criticism, but let’s blame that on growing up in the thick smog of tabloids, The Biggest Loser and invasive paparazzi pictures snapping every nook and cranny of celebrity bodies. The analysis of female bodies I saw in the media around me seeped into my own head, to the degree where it became second nature to catch myself in a mirror and think ‘yuck’. Sometimes it was vague, open-ended, all over yuckiness, and sometimes it was specific – isolating a square centimetre of my body and ripping it to shreds.
I’ve worked hard on shushing the heckling of my own body. It certainly wasn’t an overnight fix, undoing years of talking to myself in a horrid tone took effort, confrontation and a lot of time. It’s not completely gone – because body neutrality is more of a complicated long-term relationship than a destination – but I’d say it’s the healthiest mindset I’ve had for a long while.
That healthy mindset just happened to arrive at a time when I am physically at my biggest.
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I wouldn’t say I felt particularly unhealthy as I was eating a well-ish balanced diet, taking myself for daily hour-long trots and ticking off a couple of pilates classes every week. I was sleeping well, my skin was clear, my eyes were bright, and I was happy.
But after a few conversations with friends about food and nutrition, I realised I had no idea if I was giving my body the fuel it actually needed. I had mates recommending metamucil to keep them regular, pals who’d dropped broccoli from their meal preps because it made them gassy and gals who switched from coffee to tea and were live, laugh, loving life and sleeping solidly. I wanted to know what foods my body really craved so I could incorporate them into my meals and feel even better.
So, I went to ask an expert: my doctor.
During my standard session with her where I was updating my pre-existing scripts, I mentioned that I was curious about learning more about nutrition and how I could squeeze more of the foods that were specifically good for me into my life. She responded positively and said that she’d love to have a full consult where the nurse did a thorough analysis and captured my health metrics so she could advise where I could make positive tweaks.
Perfect, I thought. How measured, I bragged to myself.
When I arrived for my session, I was taken into the nurse’s room. Expecting a full chat about my lifestyle, blood pressure tests, and perhaps even a blood test, I was very confused when all she did was measure me and weigh me. She was getting my BMI. That was it.
I was then shuffled to the doctor’s room for the consultation where she opened with a line that still makes me angry.
“So the good news is you’re not quite in the obese category. Bad news is, that means I can’t put you on Ozempic straight away.”
I’m very rarely stunned into silence, but I was so taken aback by this that I just sat there like a lemon, staring back at her. I hadn’t once asked about Ozempic or any kind of weight loss medication. But she’d flung it straight into the arena as a solution to the ‘problem’ she deemed me to have: I was too big.
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Because I hadn’t actually said anything out loud by this point, she launched into what my two options were moving forward. First, she presented a heavily restricted diet, cutting my calories to 600 per day (working out to a grilled fish, broccoli head, one yoghurt, some cucumber and about five almonds). She also recommended switching my daily walk to a run. This sounded totally unsustainable. I’ve had days where I’ve not eaten enough and exercised and I’ve been exhausted to the point of not being able to write or speak – two rather crucial parts of my job.
So, what was the second option? Oh, that I go away, gain three kilos to push me into the obese category and I could be on Ozempic by the end of the week.
I had asked for insight into nutrition. How to add higher quality foods into my meals. But I was recommended disordered eating or weight loss injections. I couldn’t believe it.
Perhaps if she had looked into my lifestyle… Perhaps if she’d taken proper health metrics …. Perhaps if she’d asked about my family medical history or my own journey with disordered eating…. Perhaps if I’d actually enquired about Ozempic… Perhaps then, and only then, would it have made sense for her to present these options.
But instead, it was a slapdash solution to a problem she’d diagnosed me with after a quick glance my way. It felt so rushed. So rude. So awful.
Still in a daze, I left the consult and blindly booked my follow-up appointment in two weeks’ time. I guess that was my window to figure out if I was cutting 1000 calories out of my daily diet or if I was going to binge my way up the BMI ladder. Writing these words now, it’s clear that these were seriously stupid options. But because they’d been recommended by an actual doctor, I took them very seriously. I left the medical centre feeling disgusted with myself. How could I let things get to a point where my only ways out were this drastic?
Luckily I had trivia that night with a group of friends, one of whom is a GP herself. She was appalled at the ‘advice’ that had been thrown at me and set the record straight. If I did want to lose weight, there were lifestyle tweaks I could make to improve my already healthy routines, but I didn’t need to do anything so extreme. She saw me breathe out for what felt like the first time that day when she told me I wasn’t, by any stretch, a walking health concern.
While I respect medical professionals for their expertise, I’m happy to say that sometimes they really don’t read the room, attempting to ‘fix’ something that they see as a problem. But I’m not a problem. I’m a girl trying to learn more about my body and lead a healthy life that makes me feel good. And I don’t need fixing.
Image credit: Supplied + Punkee