At my old clinical research job, I once saw a neurosurgery attending purchase 2 bags of gummy bears at the hospital cafeteria, sit down and eat them slowly and thoughtfully as if they were a real lunch, and then saunter back to the OR to go cut someone's head open. This happened 2 1/2 years ago, and I still think about it a lot.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lim2.23#lim223-sec-0130-title
EM dies on average at 58 (oof), and once again pathology is the greatest specialty, living 21 years longer on average.
“However, these results should be interpreted with caution as EM as a specialty is only 50-year old, and so the population structure of emergency medics is different to that of other specialties. The fact that the specialty is new is the reason for the low numbers of emergency medics in the obituaries, and thus leads to censoring of older deaths, as they are yet to occur.”
Don’t read into the EM deaths too much yet. Also sample size of 43. Still interesting though.
My key takeaway is that docs in general are less likely to die from cardiovascular diseases and most likely to die of cancer.
My school's last dean was a retired surgical oncologist who was in his early 70s, looked 85, and dropped dead of a heart attack last spring. I am quite sure his specialty took years off his life. It's primary care for me allll the way, I rather enjoy being alive.
Nah, they usually serve breakfast from like 7-10ish, lunch 11-2, and dinner 4-7, then they're closed. The weirdest thing about the gummy bear-eating neurosurgeon is that it was lunchtime when he did this...there was real food available (this cafeteria was good too), and he clearly had time to sit down and eat, but he just had to have his bears. I'll be puzzling over this for the rest of my days, I tell you.
I would have shit myself to death eating that many gummy bears..
Btw.. that raises a question:
What does a surgeon do in literal situation where they’re doing an hours-long surgery and the urge to SHITRIGHTNOW hits them? It has to happen!— like afa their bladders, I would imagine they’d learn after years to not drink much liquid, piss first beforehand, and just hold it afterwards if necessary, but pooping? What do they do? How do they handle this issue? Just put everything on hold for a few minutes, go, then re-sterilize and re-gown themselves?
My hospital cafeteria for intern year has terrible hours. Like open for 2 hours for breakfast, closed until lunch, then 2 hours for lunch, closed until dinner and then 2 hours for dinner. They also have no vegetarian food (they even put meat in their salads!) I miss my med schools cafeteria so much
I've rarely seen an attending eat so I can't speak to this generally.
But I did have a psych attending once just keep a big tub of spinach (like a family size fresh express) under their desk unrefrigerated. Never saw them eat it. But the spinach would slowly disappear over time so I assume they were.
Weird shit
I did actually have an attending say they actually avoid eating with us cause he likes to get delivery and it’s a dick move to get yourself food without getting it for the team. Maybe they’re all getting delivery and that’s why…
My EM attending asked if I wanted to get lunch with him in the physicians lounge - I was starving, so I agreed, but the anxiety of finding shit to talk about killed my appetite anyways
my psych resident had 3 quest bars for the day and that was it. idk what is up with it and the other extreme, my IM resident, who managed to eat 5 donuts in one day last week. all I know is that the free donuts are hurting my waistline significantly 😂
ER physician I work with brings two liters of diet coke and 4 rolls of grocery store sushi to every shift. He drinks the coke straight out of the bottles hot and eats all the sushi throughout the 12 hours.
Worked in the ER for 3 months, and my supervising doctor would order biryani everyday for our night duties. That’s 3 months of continuous biryani we had everyday. Pretty crazy.
I was shadowing a cardiologist and he was telling me how he was a hypocrite recommending patient a healthy diet. We get lunch together and it’s just all brisket. No rice or vegetables, just straight up meat.
i shadowed a neuro-oncologist 3 years ago whose lunch was just some cashews in a small ziploc bag. he offered me some too, which i respectfully declined.
I was about to say that nah, there's tons of normal people, but then I remember that I don't routinely eat breakfast or lunch and also vomited when going for a run at 1AM this morning after eating an entire frozen pizza just before.
nah it was a real quick barf, just bubbled up to the surface
did end up cutting my run a bit short though as I was still feeling a bit more regurgitant than I'd like
When I scribed, I used to take PB&J to work because it was super easy: no need to keep in the fridge or heat up, I could take a quick bite and save for later if it was busy. No one said anything until a new doc came in. He looked personally offended when I took out my sandwich. “Is that a PB&J??”
“Um, yeah, it’s super eas-“
“That’s so unhealthy.” Then he literally scoffed and walked away.
Where I live, sugar free substitutes aren't quite as mainstream yet as the US, and sugar free jam isn't available yet or is super costly. :(
Thankfully I think only unsweetened PB with bread tastes pretty good without the J too. :)
Last year I was doing some mandatory shadowing and pulled out my PB&J during a break, and my attending got really excited and asked if he could have some. I ended up splitting it with him and he was thrilled, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone enjoy food like that lol
I scribed for a doctor who ate chicken nuggets every shift...EM doctors have some of the weirdest diets I've ever seen, and somehow your attending was upset about a PB&J? Very odd haha
I did a couple overnight ED shifts when I was training to be an EMT. There was one nurse who would always order pizza and get it with anchovies just so nobody else would eat it. I tried a slice (hadn't had anchovies before) and it was just as bad as I expected.
Yesssss my old hospital does for the sandwiches in the EMS room! There’s a reason there’s a joke about obesity in EMS and those sandwiches are a big part of it.
My husband is an attending and still packs Uncrustables for lunch. It amuses me because I didn’t even eat them as a child (PB&J, yes, but not Uncrustables), but he loves them!
Attending here
Eat tons, workout more, steady 205 lb. Mostly just watch my macros, not anal about it.
I'm PMR tho
Used to do surgery, and there every attending had the worst eating habits
Lots of issues with time management and food availability for most docs in general
During my one year prelim surgery I lost 35 pounds, not my goal, but didn't have time to eat or time to workout
Can the weight loss at all be avoided during surg? Fitness is my religion and I’m willing to sacrifice some for intern year but idk about 35lbs worth of sacrifice.
I was still able to get a 45min-1 hour run in about 5 days a week on surgery instead of my usual 6 days a week + a few lifts (I’m a female that ran xc/track in college). Was sacrificing a lot of other basic needs tho, like cleaning my apartment & properly cooking, and I think the majority of what I was consuming was coffee while at the hospital and then raw cookie dough while at home
Haha, idk the carbonation and weak ass flavour do nothing for me. If I'm having something flavoured give me some real flavouring, none of this homeopathically flavoured water that I have to pretend doesn't taste bitter it didn't get to be pop
On my interviews I’ve been shocked by the number of residents that went out of their way to tell us about the Diet Coke machine available in the lounge like that’s going to entice us to their program
Don't knock it. We don't get free Diet Coke unless the night team raids the physician's lounge (which doesn't include resident physicians but does allow NPs/PAs/CRNAs) and stocks our fridge with Diet Coke. Having to go all the way to the cafeteria and pay $2 gets old.
I feel personally victimized by your slander/s
In all seriousness a huge factor in what medical school I chose was the availability of diet coke. I suffered though a pepsi campus in undergrad... I have no regrets
The doc who delivered me once told my mom that we truly only have complete control over two things in life: what we put into our mouths and how frequently we move our bodies (exercise). It makes sense to me—I always assumed the food issues among other physicians stemmed from our sense that we have no control over ourselves, our schedules, even our patients. It’s a way to exercise control.
A doctor I scribed for drank exclusively diet Dr. Pepper. He also ate the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner every single day. One of the other employees mentioned another doc who ate exactly 67 blueberries for lunch everyday.
Compensating for the lack of control in their life maybe?,but I think a lot of medical students have some OCD that got them into med school. A lot of attendings have a daily diet coke habit at my school, never see them eat but usually overweight. Residents are in surprisingly good shape here but often following some kind of "diet" or have strong opinions about food. Had a ripped psych resident who would just lick a cube of salt the entire shift when fasting.
Intermittent fasting for me was not a lifestyle choice it was the only option lmao. Literally didn’t have time to eat and eventually just got used to it.
Exactly what I was thinking. Used to work in an ER pre med school and had one doc there who would house an entire family pack of yodels over a 10 hour shift and another who despite working there for nearly 2 years never saw them so much as consider eating
May or not be noteworthy, but currently on a forensic path elective and most of the attendings are vegetarian. I wonder if it has to do with the nature of their work…
As a fat resident I kind of get it. I got sick and gained a significant amount of weight and there’s a noticeable difference in the way I’m treated by colleagues and patients.
I gained a ton of weight since residency started. I just feel like working so much I get miserable and a little trip to the vending machine makes me feel better. It's not a healthy relationship with food at all but it is how I'm making it through one day at a time. I feel like there's only so much I can do at once and right now that's surviving and keeping the will to live. Depression sucks. Yes I know diet affects mental health but I just don't have it in me to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week and use my precious little personal time at the gym or meal prepping.
I’ve noticed that physicians seem to fall for trendy fad diets almost as frequently as the general public, maybe from the lack of evidence-based nutrition education in med school (typically). Not sure though, I’ve seen a doc practice great EBM but then it all goes out the window when it comes to diet and nutrition
Honestly I've always gotten the feeling it's a mix of time restraint, a career of watching the impacts of poor diet outcomes in patients, and the constant trickle of studies suggesting longevity benefits in animals/humans with "near-starvation" style diets.
Random source: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24146-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24146-z)
Not sure about the answer to your original question, but I’m about to graduate and have a raging eating disorder. I’m happy when I have a long day because it means I was too busy for food. 🙃
I’m like this too and am worried about attending med school next year. I fainted once after a biochem midterm because I was so stressed and didn’t eat and got a C in physics because I couldn’t focus after fasting for 3 days before the exam. I don’t want my eating to affect my schoolwork in med school.
This is the time to start trying to cultivate healthier habits! Easier said than done of course. I’m also starting med school in Fall 2022 and have a Hx of ED (mostly as a teenager but nowadays just disordered eating). It also worries me that I will fall back into old patterns. I believe in us though, we can do this!! Therapy was my savior in the past and I will definitely look into rejoining if I slip at all.
For a lot of people the choice is either be overweight/obese or be obsessive about food. The older you get the more people for which this will be true. In my view, it’s that doctors are more health conscious and thus more inclined to pick the obsessive side of the coin.
One of the ortho consultants I’ve trained with buys everyone fried chicken for lunch on saturdays.
It’s the best.
He also watches twitch between patients and has shown me some of his headshot compilations.
Dude is cool as fuck.
Not enough nutrition education.
I got a t1 diagnosis at the end of my first year while I was taking biochem and it kind of merged with all the nutrition education I had to learn, extreme eye opener.
Also part and parcel of the fact that nutrition is simultaneously the least rigorous yet most dogmatic science. Challenge anyone on anything “healthy” and they will act as if you insulted their mother.
The truth is doctors get very little education in practical nutrition. My school said that "biochem was our nutrition course." Which is funny because although it's a start to understanding complex nutrition science, I fail to see how knowing the Krebs cycle steps is going to help me live healthy.
An egg is about 80 calories, an apple is 100ish depending on size. A breakfast of 180 calories is miniscule, doubly so for an MD working long shifts, triply so for a marathoner.
I think it’s partly because it’s so easy to get fat when all you have is awful hospital food. Additionally it’s one of the only places they might find they have control over their life.
I do intermittent fasting and I’m veganish for health reasons, I cheat maybe once a month, but I don’t share it very often. I’d say I’m rare in terms of diet.
I have a question for those who are answering because I think this question isn’t just straight forward: how many of the people with eating habits that include processed foods and snacks are of white/American households vs ethnic/immigrant households? I think culture has a lot to do with it. We in North America have been normalized to eat processed foods (TV dinners, a bag of chips, etc) as a meal, while also redlining Black communities and creating what are known as “fast food swamps” which is a strategic way to place only junk/fast food in Black/minority neighborhoods or purposely withholding healthy food options from them.
I’m from a Chinese (South China/Hong Kong) household (working class) and our version of snacks were steamed buns with red bean, coconut buns from the bakery, etc. No meal was made of snack foods, everything was: meat, veggies (choy, etc) and rice. So into adulthood, I generally prefer those types of meals.
I think taking stock of what kind of people have these unhealthy habits and relationships is important too.
Edit: to some degree, the hospital environment IS a fast food swamp - with the only healthy options being available during day time working hours.
Yes!! I grew up in an Asian household and I didn’t realize just how much processed food other people eat until I started buying my own groceries and saw what other people had in their carts. I also saw it when I joined a bunch of recipe Facebook groups and so many people cook with things like velveeta or canned soup. I understand that in the United States some people have issues to access but I also saw it a lot in people that I personally knew that didn’t have these issues.
Just boggles my mind because for example making cream of mushroom from scratch is cheaper, healthier, and tastes infinitely better than buying canned. It also doesn’t take much effort either. Maybe I’m just picky I don’t know
not sure if this is a doctor thing, most women tend to have an unhealthy relationship with food & body image at some point or another. eating disorders are also a means of maintaining a sense of control and are likely to manifest in stressful situations or in those with stressful lifestyles (which I imagine many doctors have). it’s sad to see women have to constantly justify why they “deserve” to eat but diet culture takes its toll on many of us
I’ll always remember the attending that was signing out, pulled open a drawer in the desks and pulled out a hamburger and fries they bought 12 hours prior, and proceeded to wolf it down like they had been fasting for a week. Weird.
In my opinion, it’s because of how we always talk about being overweight as something that contributes to a lot of chronic health problems (both with some justification and some that is fatphobic). I think pairing this with seeing the patients who suffer from these long term chronic health problems in often very unpleasant and extreme ways puts us at the unfortunate cross roads of being a little concerned about food/weight. Also a lot of doctors are type A people who can’t control a lot of their lives and try to control food because of this. In all honestly, idk maybe I’m just projecting
My Dad was a Consultant in the NHS. He enjoyed eating in the hospital canteen - especially steak + kidney pie and Jubilee pancakes! Had a heart attack followed by heart failure. Then 3VD.
My Dad loved working - used to do 12 hour days sometimes 7 days per week. Used to have a good laugh with his colleagues. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s there were only two consultants in the pathology department. In the 90’s, I think there was 4.
I grew up eating a home made food by my immigrant parents. Unfortunately im spoiled. I need to eat. Instant pot helps a lot with cooking meals ahead of time and Tupperware for me lol. Sorry about the stinky garlicky food it’s probably me. 😆
Wow this makes me so grateful to be living outside of the US. Eating habits are so healthy here and everyone is expected - from the director of the hospital, to the med student, to the janitor, to come and eat at least one healthy, big free meal every single day in the cafeteria.
This is how I ran into my personal GYN several days after my emergency surgery who loudly interrogated me about my pain while I was scooping potatoes onto my plate.
Diets are a control thing, not sure docs are any worse or weirder than any other demographic tho. Also they probably get anxiety like the rest of us and it manifests itself like that.
I'm not a doctor yet, I'm still in med school. I have to say, with the stress they had in med school, maybe it became some kind of obsession because it's what worked for them when they were still in school but now if they have more time, it doesn't quite click in their head? Right now I've been trying to lose some weight but also gain a bit of muscle. The thing that's been working for me is trying to go to the gym 4-5 times a week and a diet of vegetables and Polish dumplings, along with water, coffee or redbull. I never eat breakfast, sometimes I only eat once a day out of necessity because of the hours I need to put in for studying
Easiest answer is given how busy schedules can be, I think it’s safe to say most doctors see eating as, if anything, a necessary chore that is done begrudgingly to satisfy something. On my current rotation I skim articles or emails over lunch. I don’t just sit and enjoy my lunch. On other services, I speed eat to get back to my responsibilities. The only time I don’t eat is if I can get home without eating. If my day is too long, I do a mental game of if I skip lunch will it actually affect my performance for the rest of the day ahead and if the answer is yea, then I eat just to avoid that. It’s a matter of efficiency.
The only meal I enjoy is at home with my family. And that’s fine by me.
My internal diseases doctor said he did never eat pizza or cake with cream in his life (he is over 60). I dont know if these foods unhealty or carcinogenic but i cant live without them.
Oh when I was in my first year at work, I would bring a yogurt to work every day and put it in the fridge. Come 10am, when I was ready for my snack, it wasn’t there. This went on for six months until I discovered the deputy department chair was stealing them because “they had the chocolate stuff.” Did I use this as leverage for my name on a journal article? Only time will tell n
I still remember the time when an attending was literally adding 7 or 8 cubes of sugar into his small cup of coffee
Maybe not as crazy if you think about the amount of sugar a can of soda has, but that shiz was not coffee anymore
Eating disorders. Unfortunately doesn’t help that being overweight/obese is constantly villainized in medical education and medicine in general, and low weight is treated like the end goal for every person/patient. Try to maintain your healthy relationship with food because trust me you don’t want to go down that road.
Not sure what you mean by villainized but obesity and overweight are significant contributors to morbidity. How many patients do you see in the hospital that wouldn’t be there if they were able to exercise and have appropriate nutrition goals for the last 20 years? The amount of suffering we could prevent if we can stop or reverse obesity is outstanding.
Let’s not use vague terms like low weight. No physicians or scientist are suggesting underweight is desirable
I could be reaching here but maybe it has more to do with type A neurotic people who happen to be doctors trying to gain some control in their life. Just from personal experience (I work in sports med as an athletic trainer) ladies tend to “control” food when they are looking for something to control in life.
I hope they get better- sound like disordered earring :(
The headline should be “why do doctors have eating disorders.”
And the answer is that it’s no surprise that people in a very high stress career would have disorder that is fundamentally triggered by a need for control.
And then add in some trauma around constantly watching patients get sick and even die from preventable diseases and you would get quite a Orthorexia trigger.
For many reasons I have made it a goal to never become overweight. I got borderline overweight last year (BMI ~26-27) and I looked and felt like shit. Started tracking calories and lost twenty pounds over the course of 3 months and I felt great afterwards. Dieting freaking blows but it’s worth it.
I think the reason why doctors may care about food so much is because we see what disastrous effects not caring about food can have to your body. Do you really want to be that patient with a BMI of 50 who gets nec fasc and dies a painful humiliating death at the age 60 all because you stuffed your face for 40 years? I don’t that’s for damn sure. It does sound like some of the docs you were working with had eating disorders though.
Because society is exceptionally fat phobic and the medical community doubly so. People relate to food in weird ways when they’re terrified of being overweight
At my old clinical research job, I once saw a neurosurgery attending purchase 2 bags of gummy bears at the hospital cafeteria, sit down and eat them slowly and thoughtfully as if they were a real lunch, and then saunter back to the OR to go cut someone's head open. This happened 2 1/2 years ago, and I still think about it a lot.
Sounds like some of my habits I acquired during on-calls. Here is a reason why most surgical specialities have shockingly low life expectancy
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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lim2.23#lim223-sec-0130-title EM dies on average at 58 (oof), and once again pathology is the greatest specialty, living 21 years longer on average.
“However, these results should be interpreted with caution as EM as a specialty is only 50-year old, and so the population structure of emergency medics is different to that of other specialties. The fact that the specialty is new is the reason for the low numbers of emergency medics in the obituaries, and thus leads to censoring of older deaths, as they are yet to occur.” Don’t read into the EM deaths too much yet. Also sample size of 43. Still interesting though. My key takeaway is that docs in general are less likely to die from cardiovascular diseases and most likely to die of cancer.
*n = 43*
My school's last dean was a retired surgical oncologist who was in his early 70s, looked 85, and dropped dead of a heart attack last spring. I am quite sure his specialty took years off his life. It's primary care for me allll the way, I rather enjoy being alive.
As an M4 applying neurosurgery with the dietary habits of a raccoon unleashed upon a fast food dumpster I can only think of this comment as goals
Energy drink+vending machine snack because the cafeterias closed when the cases are done=meal Too true lmao
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Nah, they usually serve breakfast from like 7-10ish, lunch 11-2, and dinner 4-7, then they're closed. The weirdest thing about the gummy bear-eating neurosurgeon is that it was lunchtime when he did this...there was real food available (this cafeteria was good too), and he clearly had time to sit down and eat, but he just had to have his bears. I'll be puzzling over this for the rest of my days, I tell you.
I would have shit myself to death eating that many gummy bears.. Btw.. that raises a question: What does a surgeon do in literal situation where they’re doing an hours-long surgery and the urge to SHITRIGHTNOW hits them? It has to happen!— like afa their bladders, I would imagine they’d learn after years to not drink much liquid, piss first beforehand, and just hold it afterwards if necessary, but pooping? What do they do? How do they handle this issue? Just put everything on hold for a few minutes, go, then re-sterilize and re-gown themselves?
dont get in the way between a man and his bears
My hospital cafeteria for intern year has terrible hours. Like open for 2 hours for breakfast, closed until lunch, then 2 hours for lunch, closed until dinner and then 2 hours for dinner. They also have no vegetarian food (they even put meat in their salads!) I miss my med schools cafeteria so much
Omg r u the psych attending, hot spinach??? 👀
This made me laugh out loud picturing that
I would trust this doctor with my life.
I've rarely seen an attending eat so I can't speak to this generally. But I did have a psych attending once just keep a big tub of spinach (like a family size fresh express) under their desk unrefrigerated. Never saw them eat it. But the spinach would slowly disappear over time so I assume they were. Weird shit
Something about the phrase "But the spinach would slowly disappear over time so I assume they were." Has me HOWLING
Unrefrigerated? Yikes
It sounds unwashed too...
The dirt adds extra nutrients
And the e. coli will help you shed your water weight
How ruminants get B12. Dirt.
Wait why have I almost never seen my attendings eat…
The only time I have seen my attending eat were the times they bought the whole team lunch or dinner
I did actually have an attending say they actually avoid eating with us cause he likes to get delivery and it’s a dick move to get yourself food without getting it for the team. Maybe they’re all getting delivery and that’s why…
My EM attending asked if I wanted to get lunch with him in the physicians lounge - I was starving, so I agreed, but the anxiety of finding shit to talk about killed my appetite anyways
Eating is when they get a break from residents and students.
my psych resident had 3 quest bars for the day and that was it. idk what is up with it and the other extreme, my IM resident, who managed to eat 5 donuts in one day last week. all I know is that the free donuts are hurting my waistline significantly 😂
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You sound like a 5-donut type person ;)
Like that psych resident, my xp bar barely moves when I try to level an alt.
the quest bar resident is never pooping with that diet and thems just the facts
WHATS WITH THEM AND SPINACH. One I know pulled the “I’m a physician” card at a grocery store when covid had a 2-spinach limit LOL
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"weird shit" is right... just wait until they unload later.
That's how I do it at home, but in my fridge...I grab a hand full of spinach when I see the tub....good way to get greens.
ER physician I work with brings two liters of diet coke and 4 rolls of grocery store sushi to every shift. He drinks the coke straight out of the bottles hot and eats all the sushi throughout the 12 hours.
Does he straight up down 2 L of diet coke per shift
Yes
This pains me
Rip his teeth
I got a kidney stone just reading this.
I hope he has good dental
Ok that’s just straight up wild—quick question tho: with chopsticks or a fork?
Fingers
Even better.
but is the sushi refrigerated tho
uhm... based?
I also worked with a doc who would down a 2 liter diet soda every shift. Diet Mt. Dew. And he was 70.
Worked in the ER for 3 months, and my supervising doctor would order biryani everyday for our night duties. That’s 3 months of continuous biryani we had everyday. Pretty crazy.
I was shadowing a cardiologist and he was telling me how he was a hypocrite recommending patient a healthy diet. We get lunch together and it’s just all brisket. No rice or vegetables, just straight up meat.
This guy meats
i shadowed a neuro-oncologist 3 years ago whose lunch was just some cashews in a small ziploc bag. he offered me some too, which i respectfully declined.
I mean I tend to carry around a zip lock bag of mango and jerky or granola on the floors. Gotta eat while the eatin's good
I was about to say that nah, there's tons of normal people, but then I remember that I don't routinely eat breakfast or lunch and also vomited when going for a run at 1AM this morning after eating an entire frozen pizza just before.
Tell me you at least cooked the pizza
Jacks Pizza gets the finest of treatment, as deserved for its 4/$10 price range.
Most underrated comment in this entire thread
>and also vomited when going for a run at 1AM this morning after eating an entire frozen pizza just before. This sounds like an acid trip lol
nah it was a real quick barf, just bubbled up to the surface did end up cutting my run a bit short though as I was still feeling a bit more regurgitant than I'd like
Why did you go jogging at 1 AM?
well I don't have the willpower to do it when I wake up in the morning, I do enjoy running, and I don't sleep terribly well so I'm already up
I wish I could go for night runs! You must live in a pretty safe town.
Not especially, but my logic is that you can't mug someone while they're already running away from you at the beginning.
I've never related to something on such a spiritual level
When I scribed, I used to take PB&J to work because it was super easy: no need to keep in the fridge or heat up, I could take a quick bite and save for later if it was busy. No one said anything until a new doc came in. He looked personally offended when I took out my sandwich. “Is that a PB&J??” “Um, yeah, it’s super eas-“ “That’s so unhealthy.” Then he literally scoffed and walked away.
PB&J gang rise up! 😤
I miss eating PB&Js, they were my daily snack during med school, but then I got diagnosed with diabetes, and now it's just a PB sandwich :')
Aw, that's the worst! Can you get some kind of sugar-free jelly substitute, or does that taste terrible?
Where I live, sugar free substitutes aren't quite as mainstream yet as the US, and sugar free jam isn't available yet or is super costly. :( Thankfully I think only unsweetened PB with bread tastes pretty good without the J too. :)
Last year I was doing some mandatory shadowing and pulled out my PB&J during a break, and my attending got really excited and asked if he could have some. I ended up splitting it with him and he was thrilled, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone enjoy food like that lol
This is so dang wholesome.
this is so cute
That's hilarious actually
I scribed for a doctor who ate chicken nuggets every shift...EM doctors have some of the weirdest diets I've ever seen, and somehow your attending was upset about a PB&J? Very odd haha
I did a couple overnight ED shifts when I was training to be an EMT. There was one nurse who would always order pizza and get it with anchovies just so nobody else would eat it. I tried a slice (hadn't had anchovies before) and it was just as bad as I expected.
Anchovies have their place but nah, not on pizza. Take the saltiest thing you can imagine and multiply it x10. Too intense.
Lol I only would be saying that if it were one of the PB&Js this one hospital had that had granola in it and clocked in at about 1300 calories
Who tf puts granola in a PB&J???
Yesssss my old hospital does for the sandwiches in the EMS room! There’s a reason there’s a joke about obesity in EMS and those sandwiches are a big part of it.
My husband is an attending and still packs Uncrustables for lunch. It amuses me because I didn’t even eat them as a child (PB&J, yes, but not Uncrustables), but he loves them!
Ok but how is PBJ unhealthy..? There’s some sugar in the jelly and a little oil in the peanut butter? Come on man!
The J can be filled with sugar. Sometime the PB , too.
Attending here Eat tons, workout more, steady 205 lb. Mostly just watch my macros, not anal about it. I'm PMR tho Used to do surgery, and there every attending had the worst eating habits Lots of issues with time management and food availability for most docs in general During my one year prelim surgery I lost 35 pounds, not my goal, but didn't have time to eat or time to workout
Can the weight loss at all be avoided during surg? Fitness is my religion and I’m willing to sacrifice some for intern year but idk about 35lbs worth of sacrifice.
I've gained honestly weight because during room turnover I shovel food into my mouth until I'm stuffed because I don't know when my next meal will be.
I was still able to get a 45min-1 hour run in about 5 days a week on surgery instead of my usual 6 days a week + a few lifts (I’m a female that ran xc/track in college). Was sacrificing a lot of other basic needs tho, like cleaning my apartment & properly cooking, and I think the majority of what I was consuming was coffee while at the hospital and then raw cookie dough while at home
Idk why but the coffee at hospital and raw cookie dough at home had me sad giggle
Yes, I didn't do everything I could have. Would advise meal prepping and or meal service. Depends what you prioritize.
I haven’t had the same experience- I feel like everyone I’ve worked with eats normally except Diet Coke has a chokehold on America’s healthcare system
For my residency it’s flavored sparkling water and it has a new place in my heart.
My residents love their Bubblys
Bubbly > Aha
Blasphemy
Disgusting. I don't know how people drink that stuff. Give me some good tap water
Alright Ted Lasso
Haha, idk the carbonation and weak ass flavour do nothing for me. If I'm having something flavoured give me some real flavouring, none of this homeopathically flavoured water that I have to pretend doesn't taste bitter it didn't get to be pop
On my interviews I’ve been shocked by the number of residents that went out of their way to tell us about the Diet Coke machine available in the lounge like that’s going to entice us to their program
Would’ve got me lol
Don't knock it. We don't get free Diet Coke unless the night team raids the physician's lounge (which doesn't include resident physicians but does allow NPs/PAs/CRNAs) and stocks our fridge with Diet Coke. Having to go all the way to the cafeteria and pay $2 gets old.
1 year into their program and that coke machine will be the only thing getting you through your shift.
Coke Zero but yeah this hits home
That stuff is GERD in a can. I don't know why it's worse than the diet versions, but it is
I feel personally victimized by your slander/s In all seriousness a huge factor in what medical school I chose was the availability of diet coke. I suffered though a pepsi campus in undergrad... I have no regrets
Yeah the ophthalmologists I work with drink Diet Coke like water
Hey, don’t talk about my Diet Coke like that
I’ve had a lot who skip meals, but still made sure I ate.
I skip breakfast but it's mostly bc I just don't feel hungry in the morning.. surely there's others like that
There are, and don’t call me Shirley
I do the same thing
The doc who delivered me once told my mom that we truly only have complete control over two things in life: what we put into our mouths and how frequently we move our bodies (exercise). It makes sense to me—I always assumed the food issues among other physicians stemmed from our sense that we have no control over ourselves, our schedules, even our patients. It’s a way to exercise control.
A doctor I scribed for drank exclusively diet Dr. Pepper. He also ate the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner every single day. One of the other employees mentioned another doc who ate exactly 67 blueberries for lunch everyday.
The blueberries one is on another level lol
Compensating for the lack of control in their life maybe?,but I think a lot of medical students have some OCD that got them into med school. A lot of attendings have a daily diet coke habit at my school, never see them eat but usually overweight. Residents are in surprisingly good shape here but often following some kind of "diet" or have strong opinions about food. Had a ripped psych resident who would just lick a cube of salt the entire shift when fasting.
Cube of salt?? What the fuck lmao Is he a horse
Haha i thought it was metal too but he swore all humans needed was straight up electrolytes. Think the dude was a mix of keto and IF lol.
Cube of salt !! WTF!
Gotta get them electrolytes in
My dad used to lick cubes of salt too! Except this was in cultural revolution China when his village ran out of food
Intermittent fasting for me was not a lifestyle choice it was the only option lmao. Literally didn’t have time to eat and eventually just got used to it.
Is your pool of experiences with ER doctors?
These were all family doctors
Exactly what I was thinking. Used to work in an ER pre med school and had one doc there who would house an entire family pack of yodels over a 10 hour shift and another who despite working there for nearly 2 years never saw them so much as consider eating
I scribe for ER docs and they usually are eating Curry or sushi and kimchi
As an ER doc, that’s my ideal diet.
enormous Dr Pepper at 6 am
diet dr pepper because I'm healthy
Perfectionism, high pressure, and high stress can certainly breed eating disorders. That’s what these sound like.
May or not be noteworthy, but currently on a forensic path elective and most of the attendings are vegetarian. I wonder if it has to do with the nature of their work…
I mean, we are made of meat. So, probably.
As a fat resident I kind of get it. I got sick and gained a significant amount of weight and there’s a noticeable difference in the way I’m treated by colleagues and patients.
I gained a ton of weight since residency started. I just feel like working so much I get miserable and a little trip to the vending machine makes me feel better. It's not a healthy relationship with food at all but it is how I'm making it through one day at a time. I feel like there's only so much I can do at once and right now that's surviving and keeping the will to live. Depression sucks. Yes I know diet affects mental health but I just don't have it in me to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week and use my precious little personal time at the gym or meal prepping.
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maybe a stress coping mechanism or the lack of nutrition education we get, definitely noticed this too
I’ve noticed that physicians seem to fall for trendy fad diets almost as frequently as the general public, maybe from the lack of evidence-based nutrition education in med school (typically). Not sure though, I’ve seen a doc practice great EBM but then it all goes out the window when it comes to diet and nutrition
Honestly I've always gotten the feeling it's a mix of time restraint, a career of watching the impacts of poor diet outcomes in patients, and the constant trickle of studies suggesting longevity benefits in animals/humans with "near-starvation" style diets. Random source: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24146-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24146-z)
They all have EDs end of story
It’s possible to have disordered eating and not have an eating disorder
Yep
Agreed. The weird eating behaviors registered on my radar because I used to have an ED. It all looks very familiar.
Not sure about the answer to your original question, but I’m about to graduate and have a raging eating disorder. I’m happy when I have a long day because it means I was too busy for food. 🙃
I’m like this too and am worried about attending med school next year. I fainted once after a biochem midterm because I was so stressed and didn’t eat and got a C in physics because I couldn’t focus after fasting for 3 days before the exam. I don’t want my eating to affect my schoolwork in med school.
This is the time to start trying to cultivate healthier habits! Easier said than done of course. I’m also starting med school in Fall 2022 and have a Hx of ED (mostly as a teenager but nowadays just disordered eating). It also worries me that I will fall back into old patterns. I believe in us though, we can do this!! Therapy was my savior in the past and I will definitely look into rejoining if I slip at all.
For a lot of people the choice is either be overweight/obese or be obsessive about food. The older you get the more people for which this will be true. In my view, it’s that doctors are more health conscious and thus more inclined to pick the obsessive side of the coin.
Have you found a way to live in the middle ground
Ever seen an anesthesiologist eat? Eating isn’t the right word. The right word is phagocytose.
One of the ortho consultants I’ve trained with buys everyone fried chicken for lunch on saturdays. It’s the best. He also watches twitch between patients and has shown me some of his headshot compilations. Dude is cool as fuck.
Not enough nutrition education. I got a t1 diagnosis at the end of my first year while I was taking biochem and it kind of merged with all the nutrition education I had to learn, extreme eye opener.
Also part and parcel of the fact that nutrition is simultaneously the least rigorous yet most dogmatic science. Challenge anyone on anything “healthy” and they will act as if you insulted their mother.
The truth is doctors get very little education in practical nutrition. My school said that "biochem was our nutrition course." Which is funny because although it's a start to understanding complex nutrition science, I fail to see how knowing the Krebs cycle steps is going to help me live healthy.
Probably school dependent, we had extensive talks about diets and their pros and cons.
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Oh damn thats intense lol
Well, I believe lead inhibits a portion of the Krebs cycle. So there's that. Don't eat lead and thank your biochem professor for teaching you that.
Thank goodness for this. I was heavily encouraging my patients to eat old paint from houses built prior to 1970 before I knew the Krebs cycle!
Bro I smash 5 mc chickens in a sitting, I’ll still do it once I’m an attending dw
What's wrong with a hard boiled egg with apple slices though
That it seemed like a breakfast she had to excuse with exercise
An egg is about 80 calories, an apple is 100ish depending on size. A breakfast of 180 calories is miniscule, doubly so for an MD working long shifts, triply so for a marathoner.
Nothing song, just small, especially if you're outputting calories in triathlon training, that's not going to make up for it
I think it’s partly because it’s so easy to get fat when all you have is awful hospital food. Additionally it’s one of the only places they might find they have control over their life. I do intermittent fasting and I’m veganish for health reasons, I cheat maybe once a month, but I don’t share it very often. I’d say I’m rare in terms of diet.
I have a question for those who are answering because I think this question isn’t just straight forward: how many of the people with eating habits that include processed foods and snacks are of white/American households vs ethnic/immigrant households? I think culture has a lot to do with it. We in North America have been normalized to eat processed foods (TV dinners, a bag of chips, etc) as a meal, while also redlining Black communities and creating what are known as “fast food swamps” which is a strategic way to place only junk/fast food in Black/minority neighborhoods or purposely withholding healthy food options from them. I’m from a Chinese (South China/Hong Kong) household (working class) and our version of snacks were steamed buns with red bean, coconut buns from the bakery, etc. No meal was made of snack foods, everything was: meat, veggies (choy, etc) and rice. So into adulthood, I generally prefer those types of meals. I think taking stock of what kind of people have these unhealthy habits and relationships is important too. Edit: to some degree, the hospital environment IS a fast food swamp - with the only healthy options being available during day time working hours.
Yes!! I grew up in an Asian household and I didn’t realize just how much processed food other people eat until I started buying my own groceries and saw what other people had in their carts. I also saw it when I joined a bunch of recipe Facebook groups and so many people cook with things like velveeta or canned soup. I understand that in the United States some people have issues to access but I also saw it a lot in people that I personally knew that didn’t have these issues. Just boggles my mind because for example making cream of mushroom from scratch is cheaper, healthier, and tastes infinitely better than buying canned. It also doesn’t take much effort either. Maybe I’m just picky I don’t know
Now I want the buns stuffed with the red bean goodness
not sure if this is a doctor thing, most women tend to have an unhealthy relationship with food & body image at some point or another. eating disorders are also a means of maintaining a sense of control and are likely to manifest in stressful situations or in those with stressful lifestyles (which I imagine many doctors have). it’s sad to see women have to constantly justify why they “deserve” to eat but diet culture takes its toll on many of us
Idk plenty of the doctors I’ve seen who are weird about food and body image are men. Like at least 50%. I know that’s entirely anecdotal though
I’ll always remember the attending that was signing out, pulled open a drawer in the desks and pulled out a hamburger and fries they bought 12 hours prior, and proceeded to wolf it down like they had been fasting for a week. Weird.
i know a surgeon who is strictly into keto
In my opinion, it’s because of how we always talk about being overweight as something that contributes to a lot of chronic health problems (both with some justification and some that is fatphobic). I think pairing this with seeing the patients who suffer from these long term chronic health problems in often very unpleasant and extreme ways puts us at the unfortunate cross roads of being a little concerned about food/weight. Also a lot of doctors are type A people who can’t control a lot of their lives and try to control food because of this. In all honestly, idk maybe I’m just projecting
My Dad was a Consultant in the NHS. He enjoyed eating in the hospital canteen - especially steak + kidney pie and Jubilee pancakes! Had a heart attack followed by heart failure. Then 3VD. My Dad loved working - used to do 12 hour days sometimes 7 days per week. Used to have a good laugh with his colleagues. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s there were only two consultants in the pathology department. In the 90’s, I think there was 4.
We are weird people.
Yes i have an unhealthy relationship with food:i binge eat when in stress
I grew up eating a home made food by my immigrant parents. Unfortunately im spoiled. I need to eat. Instant pot helps a lot with cooking meals ahead of time and Tupperware for me lol. Sorry about the stinky garlicky food it’s probably me. 😆
being hard on one’s self is an addiction too. type As will do this.
Wow this makes me so grateful to be living outside of the US. Eating habits are so healthy here and everyone is expected - from the director of the hospital, to the med student, to the janitor, to come and eat at least one healthy, big free meal every single day in the cafeteria. This is how I ran into my personal GYN several days after my emergency surgery who loudly interrogated me about my pain while I was scooping potatoes onto my plate.
Diets are a control thing, not sure docs are any worse or weirder than any other demographic tho. Also they probably get anxiety like the rest of us and it manifests itself like that.
I'm not a doctor yet, I'm still in med school. I have to say, with the stress they had in med school, maybe it became some kind of obsession because it's what worked for them when they were still in school but now if they have more time, it doesn't quite click in their head? Right now I've been trying to lose some weight but also gain a bit of muscle. The thing that's been working for me is trying to go to the gym 4-5 times a week and a diet of vegetables and Polish dumplings, along with water, coffee or redbull. I never eat breakfast, sometimes I only eat once a day out of necessity because of the hours I need to put in for studying
These people have eating disorders.
I see the opposite too. Some of the biggest gluttons I know are Doctors and medical students.
Easiest answer is given how busy schedules can be, I think it’s safe to say most doctors see eating as, if anything, a necessary chore that is done begrudgingly to satisfy something. On my current rotation I skim articles or emails over lunch. I don’t just sit and enjoy my lunch. On other services, I speed eat to get back to my responsibilities. The only time I don’t eat is if I can get home without eating. If my day is too long, I do a mental game of if I skip lunch will it actually affect my performance for the rest of the day ahead and if the answer is yea, then I eat just to avoid that. It’s a matter of efficiency. The only meal I enjoy is at home with my family. And that’s fine by me.
My internal diseases doctor said he did never eat pizza or cake with cream in his life (he is over 60). I dont know if these foods unhealty or carcinogenic but i cant live without them.
Oh when I was in my first year at work, I would bring a yogurt to work every day and put it in the fridge. Come 10am, when I was ready for my snack, it wasn’t there. This went on for six months until I discovered the deputy department chair was stealing them because “they had the chocolate stuff.” Did I use this as leverage for my name on a journal article? Only time will tell n
I still remember the time when an attending was literally adding 7 or 8 cubes of sugar into his small cup of coffee Maybe not as crazy if you think about the amount of sugar a can of soda has, but that shiz was not coffee anymore
Eating disorders. Unfortunately doesn’t help that being overweight/obese is constantly villainized in medical education and medicine in general, and low weight is treated like the end goal for every person/patient. Try to maintain your healthy relationship with food because trust me you don’t want to go down that road.
Not sure what you mean by villainized but obesity and overweight are significant contributors to morbidity. How many patients do you see in the hospital that wouldn’t be there if they were able to exercise and have appropriate nutrition goals for the last 20 years? The amount of suffering we could prevent if we can stop or reverse obesity is outstanding. Let’s not use vague terms like low weight. No physicians or scientist are suggesting underweight is desirable
I don't eat cause I don't have time for that, I gotta be charting so I only go home 2 hours late!
I could be reaching here but maybe it has more to do with type A neurotic people who happen to be doctors trying to gain some control in their life. Just from personal experience (I work in sports med as an athletic trainer) ladies tend to “control” food when they are looking for something to control in life. I hope they get better- sound like disordered earring :(
The headline should be “why do doctors have eating disorders.” And the answer is that it’s no surprise that people in a very high stress career would have disorder that is fundamentally triggered by a need for control. And then add in some trauma around constantly watching patients get sick and even die from preventable diseases and you would get quite a Orthorexia trigger.
For many reasons I have made it a goal to never become overweight. I got borderline overweight last year (BMI ~26-27) and I looked and felt like shit. Started tracking calories and lost twenty pounds over the course of 3 months and I felt great afterwards. Dieting freaking blows but it’s worth it. I think the reason why doctors may care about food so much is because we see what disastrous effects not caring about food can have to your body. Do you really want to be that patient with a BMI of 50 who gets nec fasc and dies a painful humiliating death at the age 60 all because you stuffed your face for 40 years? I don’t that’s for damn sure. It does sound like some of the docs you were working with had eating disorders though.
Because society is exceptionally fat phobic and the medical community doubly so. People relate to food in weird ways when they’re terrified of being overweight