Katrina Ubell, MD, listened with growing skepticism as the dietician outlined her weight-loss plan. “You’re going to have to eat a snack in the afternoon,” she instructed.
Dr. Ubell refrained from rolling her eyes. The afternoon was in the middle of clinic. “I’m not ever going to do that,” she tried to explain. “I can’t.”
“Of course, you can,” the dietician insisted. “You shouldn’t think that way. You get to decide.”
“She wasn’t wrong about that,” Dr. Ubell conceded years later. But the well-meaning dietician couldn’t understand the reality of life as a physician. As a pediatrician, Dr. Ubell could visualize how her afternoon would play out. “You’re already 40 minutes behind. This mom needs to get home to get her kid off the bus. This mom, her toddler is losing his mind because he needs a nap. You’re not going to say: ‘Sorry, I need to eat some carrots and hummus.’ ”
Neither was she looking for one of the many diet plans based on self-denial and will power. Having already lost and gained back 40 pounds several times, she knew these methods were not effective long term.
What were other overweight doctors doing? she wondered. Someone must know how to help doctors lose weight. But her Google searches revealed ... nothing. No one was offering a useful diet or exercise plan specifically for physicians.
Dr. Ubell’s search for answers led to the world of life coaching, and eventually she became a master-certified life and weight-loss coach, working exclusively with women-identifying physicians.
The field is small. Very few weight-loss programs are solely for physicians, whose stress levels, unpredictable schedules, and high-achieving mindset pose unique challenges. Among the constantly changing diet fads, few would likely work for the surgeon confined to an operating room for 9 hours at a time or the anesthesiologist who can’t even manage to drink water during the workday.
Dr. Ubell set out to create a weight-loss program rooted in the physical and mental demands of medical practice. In the process, she lost 45 pounds.
Step 1: Acknowledge that doctors are, unfortunately, human
Dr. Ubell’s approach to food combines concepts from cognitive-behavioral therapy with personalized eating plans, coaching, and support from a community of doctors.
All of this stems from her own experience with emotional eating, which she said many doctors use to process their stress and exhaustion. This is a direct result of needing to repress emotions while caring for patients but lacking guidance on how to manage those feelings outside of work.
“That kind of behavior, being what we call ‘professional,’ but really emotionally shut down, is prized and valued in medicine,” Dr. Ubell said. “I’m not saying we should be open all the time. But we’re not given any tools for what to do at the end of the day. In my case, it was eating. For other people, it’s drinking more than they would like, spending money, gambling, basically just numbing behavior.”
Dr. Ubell said only 20% of her work with clients revolves around what to eat. The other 80% is about managing the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that negatively affect their lives, teaching them how to cope “without food as the crutch.” Once the problems regarding eating are resolved, clients can begin to address all the problems they were using food to obscure.
“A lot of my clients really have to work on self-love, self-acceptance, self-compassion,” Dr. Ubell said. “They’re such high achievers, and often many of them think that they’ve achieved so much by being harsh with themselves and driving themselves hard. They think it’s causal, but it’s not. They have to learn, How can I be accomplished while being nice to myself?”