Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
I have to say, I find it frustrating to read blogs, or talk to people, who a year ago, or 10 years ago, were talking about their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and have a healthier lifestyle, and how they were going to change this or that, and then things would be different.
However, instead of making any real changes, they kept doing what they were doing, and kept getting what they were getting, except with aging and usually putting on more weight, they got more of what they didn’t want and less of what they did. They were less healthy, less mobile, less disease-free and less happy.
These are not bad people. In fact, most of them are wonderful people. Just wonderful people heading in a very poor direction, all the while, usually this time of year, talking about how they need to be different.
The “secret” to motivation
I’m always looking for that elusive secret to motivating people to achieve success when they claim to want to become healthier and fitter in the coming year. I believe that’s one of the most common resolutions on that ever-popular list, and usually the first one to fall by the wayside on that circuitous road of good intentions.
Recently I noticed the headline of a story while looking through a well-known fitness magazine. It read, “Doctors Said I’d Never Run Again, But I Did!” Of course it’s more common to hear it expressed as “the doctor said I’d never walk again,” but this was a fitness magazine.
It seems one way to really motivate someone is to tell them that they can’t do something and that they will fail if they even try. Then, it seems, people will work really hard to prove the naysayer wrong.
I’m never quite sure what to make of this in regard to doctors, but people seem to love saying that their doctor was wrong. Perhaps this merely reflects a veiled respect of the profession couched in an oblique way. It’s not like doctors have some kind of Secret Lottery Club, where along with your MD comes a membership allowing you to bet the odds on a patient’s morbidity and mortality with the winner getting free malpractice coverage for the year. Really, we don’t like to all get together after work and compare our winnings over your losings!
I then realized that perhaps I had an opportunity in the making. Since people seem to relish doctors being wrong, and I’m a doctor, why not give them this opportunistic pleasure? Why be positive or supportive this New Years? I’m going to try another approach.
Dr. J says you can’t do it
So here goes:
You guys on a diet to lose weight, you guys trying to become healthier, eat healthier, exercise more, lower your cholesterol or blood pressure, increase your intake of fruits and vegetables. You guys listening?
You are going to fail! You are not going to lose weight. You are going to gain weight. Yup, just like a snowball heading downhill, your waist line will be a growing. As for eating better or becoming healthier, in your dreams, no way, no how!
You know how you always spell the word as “loose” instead of “lose?” Well, you may learn to spell, but none of your clothes will be getting looser!
Diets don’t work, all the research shows that. And that friend of a friend’s sister’s cousin, who you know lost all that weight, well, she gained it all back and more! If you diet, so will you!
Perhaps I can turn this into a full-time job! I could just go around and tell people that whatever it is that they have on their New Year’s resolution list, no matter how trivial or obtainable, “Forgetaboutit, you can‘t do it!” It doesn’t matter who the patient is or what the goal is, the diagnosis will always be the same, a modified version of “You’ll never walk again!”
“You can’t do it” in action
I had a 19-year-old patient who had a severe anaphylactic reaction to an IV drug I had given her. It was incredibly rapid, I had never seen anything like it before. Immediately after I had injected the medication, she looked at me and said, ”I can’t breathe,” and she was gone!
After my initiating emergency treatment and with the Code Team’s help, she was in the ICU, alive but comatose. The consulting neurologist said at the bedside that she would never recover. Perhaps she heard him? I’m happy to report she recovered completely, without any deficit, a few days later.
I suggest your first New Year’s resolution this year be to prove this doctor wrong.
I dare you! It will feel so good!
From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)
Dr. J on proving the doctor wrong