RE: Dr.

[Guest guest]

> I was listening to Dr. yesterday and was appalled by

> what she told a caller about her overweight husband. The

> husband was having joint pain from his weight and was

> considering going on disability. Dr. told the woman

> she knew who she was marrying when she got married and she

> would have to live with it. She attributed the husband's

> weight gain to a character flaw. I have a great deal of

> respect for Dr. 's philosophy normally, but this

> was too much.

I went to Dr. 's website, and found and listened to the call from

yesterday's show. I have transcribed the call below. It looks to me like

Dr. may be somewhat ignorant about obesity in general, but it's

hard to know the scope of it just based on the offhand comment she made.

Overall with this call, it seems to me like she went on a tangent and

didn't really address the caller's concern.

10/11/01 Dr. excerpt:

--------------------------

JANELLE: " I've been married for sixteen years. I have two children, a

boy thirteen and a little girl nine. And a mother-in-law. My husband has

been employed at the same place for twelve years, eleven or twelve

years, and has just recently taken a pay cut in his job, backed by his

mother, because of a leg condition that he has which is a result of his

weight. And now she's saying, " Oh, maybe the best thing for you is to

just receive disability " , and give up everything that he has. And I'm

not being able to offer any advice, I'm not being able to, you know, let

him hear how much he has to work, not only for himself but for us. And

then the other part of this is that...

DR. LAURA: Hey, Janelle.

JANELLE: Yes?

DR. LAURA: <heavy sigh> That's a sigh, meaning I feel bad. I feel bad

for you, I feel bad for the kids, and I feel obligated to say the

following, which is just purely annoying. It's going to annoy you, I

know, but I feel obligated to say it because it's the truth. He didn't

suddenly become his mama's little boy. He didn't suddenly become a guy

who, um, I don't want to talk in the negative, because then two

negatives and everybody doesn't understand what I'm saying. Uh, this guy

was not an ambitious, responsible go-getter in the first place. And, so,

there's nothing new here. That makes it harder to do anything about. I'm

not just telling you this because I'm trying to put a pall on your day.

It's just that it's harder because this is about HIM. It's not about his

mother.

JANELLE: I think it's about both.

DR. LAURA: No, no, no, no -- because if he acted like a man from the

time you were dating him, his mother wouldn't have this power. But part

of his being fat is his personality/mentality. Part of his giving in to

a foot which is hurt because he's too heavy is part of his mentality.

There's nothing new here. And that's the first thing you need to

recognize. It's not that I intend to be annoying. But you have to

understand the magnitude of your problem. A lot of times we're attracted

to a certain constellation of personality traits, because it fits things

we are more or less comfortable with. What generally happens, though,

when these personality traits are not really high-quality ones, it comes

back to bite us. So the best advice I can give you is the hope that you

can get him into therapy with you so that he can become the man you did

NOT pick. Does that make sense? That's the problem. A lot of times women

want a complacent, easily manipulated, low energy kind of guy, because

they're not threatened by that for whatever the reasons are. Because how

we pick somebody is not just based on sexual attraction. You know? Thank

goodness for THAT. But it's often not based on things much healthier

THAN that. And that's why I think it is really important that people go

into pre-marital counseling. That should be a more important word than

pre-marital sex. Everybody keeps saying, " Well, we have to get it on to

see if we're compatible, but they won't go into counseling to see if

they're compatible! They just see if they can orchestrate orgasms to

find out if they're compatible. It's not enough information. With

children and problems and marriage and the like. So, first thing you

have to recognize is that you didn't pick for the best reason, so we

have inherent limitations. And our hope is that you can get him into

counseling so he can grow and confront that, but that's the problem

there. That's the little monkey wrench I have to throw in - you'll have

to be in therapy too, because he is now the man you picked. If he

changes and becomes the man you didn't pick, then there's more tension.

So you have to change. And it becomes difficult and complex. The

alternative to that is basically he stays home with the kids and you

support the family. Because you realize you're going to keep the family

together, and this is too much of an uphill battle. So that's another

conclusion you can come to, with or without the therapy. But I would

still recommend that that's a good first attempt, is to try to make it

healthier on both sides. That's why I've got to tell you the bad news,

because without knowing the bad news, without knowing the depth and

breadth of this, I mean if you don't know what illness you have, you

can't know what antibiotic to take. You can't just take any antibiotic.

They're specific for the problem. Well, when things just erupt that's a

different form of treatment. When things have always been, that's a more

profound and difficult form of treatment, because you're asking people

to change what is fundamentally themselves.

-end-

M.

---

in Valrico, FL, age 39

Lap DGB/DS by Dr. Rabkin 10/19/99

Starting weight 299, now 155

Starting BMI 49.7, now 25.8

Starting size 26/28, now 10/12

http://www.duodenalswitch.com/Patients/_M_/melanie_m_.html

Direct replies: mailto:melanie@...

_________________________________________________________