Long before taking up hotel doctoring, I answered
an ad from a physician who offered “weight control.”
Every era has a weight loss miracle. During the
1970s it was human chorionic gonadotropin, HCG, a respectable hormone involved
in reproduction. There were the usual flurry of bestsellers and HCG clinics,
and then it went into a decline although it remains in the armamentarium at
plenty of shady clinics.
My doctor was a regular GP who merely made it
known that he offered HCG. I doubt diet patients made up ten percent of the
practice, but they provided an impressive cash flow. The women (only a rare
male) came in weekly for a shot, a diet sheet, and a pep talk from the nurse.
The doctor saw them monthly, but they paid the regular fee for every visit. He
never claimed (to me) that HCG worked, only that patients believed in it, so it
inspired them to stick to the diet.
But it didn’t inspire them. Any motivated patient
who starts a diet, legitimate or silly, will lose ten or twenty pounds before
the gnawing of hunger becomes tiresome. Losing more is much harder. This was no
news to the HCG patients, but they were not paying good money to hear it. Their
stubbornness amazed me. They signed up with the usual enthusiasm, came in for
their shots, followed the diet, and lost their ten or twenty pounds. Then they
stopped losing, but most continued to come in, month after month, taking the
weekly shot and paying the fee.
Despite the universal opinion among the thin that
dieters fail because they cheat, most of these women were trying hard. Alas,
they were butting up against the ten-twenty pound limit. Losing more requires a
tighter diet, self-denial, and regular exercise, a difficult feat.
Dropping that initial weight turns out to be a good
thing. Ninety percent of dieting’s health benefits (reduced risk of diabetes,
lower cholesterol, less heart disease) are achieved by a ten percent weight
loss. Alas, few patients thrilled to that knowledge because better health was
not their goal. Many asked if the shot worked. At first, loyal to my employer,
I admitted that opinion was divided. Eventually my answers grew blunt. This
never offended the patients who were already suspicious. Many did not even drop
out, but the news got back to my boss.
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