‘If you focus on gaining Health,
you might lose some Weight as a bonus. If you only focus on losing Weight, you might lose your Health as a consequence.’
In my medical practice, I sometimes do get patients referred by other doctors to my lifestyle medicine clinic for weight loss to better manage their chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol problems.
And at the first consultation, I would always ask them what they think is the primary purpose of their visit and invariably almost every one of them would say, 'My doctor asked me to come see you to help me lose some weight.'. This would also invariably draw a 'philosophical' answer from me reminding them, 'Actually I think your doctor referred you to me primarily to help you gain Health through lifestyle modification, weight loss is just one of the necessary steps towards that, Because If you focus on gaining Health, you would probably lose some Weight as a bonus. But if you only focus on losing Weight, you might risk losing your Health as a consequence.’ And if I have bit more time that day, I might even share with them my personal journey of how when I focused on practising a healthy lifestyle, I accidentally gained health and lost some weight in the process (>>> you can read the story about my accidental weight loss journey on my personal blog post on this) |