Dr. Gordon’s Rules of Primary Care:

Over the last few years of practice, I started to notice how my patients shut down when I started encouraging them to lose weight. 

So over time, I basically just stopped doing it.

I define my work as an anti-diet doctor as basically not yelling at my patients to lose weight. (Which, unfortunately, is still pretty radical in the U.S. health care system.)

But what does that mean in the Ozempic era? Lots of my patients DO want to talk about weight loss. I never want people to feel uncomfortable bringing up a topic that's important to them. 

If weight loss is something my patient is interested in, I'll usually start the conversation by trying to narrow down their goals. Are they interested in getting more active? Preventing cardiometabolic disease? Dealing with fatigue or joint pain? We zone in on those symptoms. 

GLP1s can absolutely be part of a treatment plan to help my patients achieve their goals. I've prescribed them for years. I'm very grateful to the researchers who developed them. 

But as a doctor, backing off on the weight loss talk has been so positive for my practice. I can see that patients trust me more. It’s a ways of respecting their bodily autonomy.