I think that doctors as a group are concerned about the need for rest, good nutrition and exercise. Doctors are like other people, however, and we live in the same world. It is one thing for me to know intellectually that I need to exercise 45-50 minutes a day, and quite another to take the time to do so when I have chores at home to do, a full time job and a 10 year old son who has his own activities and homework that demand my attention. It is a challenge to everybody. The "medical establishment" is another thing altogether. I think it is an extension of big business and the insurance industry which is more interested in short term profit rather than in long term benefit to society as a whole. That is why residents traditionally have been run ragged in training. A medical resident gets paid much less per hour than any nurse would. Medical students will actually pay tuition for the privilege of running scut, which is cheaper for the "medical establishment" than hiring an orderly at minimum wage to transport patients to tests, for example. Actually, that is probably how I kept from gaining weight at all in medical school--I would spend the days taking my patients to their tests, because there were no orderlies at the university hospital. But, of course, I would be too exhausted at the end of the day to do actual aerobic exercise at the end of the day. Medical students didn't have as ready access to food--we had to buy our own at the cafeteria, which was often closed by the time we were able to eat. Thus, the "medical establishment" would have no interest at all in maintaining the health and welfare of medical students and residents, whose tenure at any given hospital is 4-8 years, max.
Physicians themselves, on the other hand, are well aware of the problems involved in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Since I have been losing weight, I have had many interesting interactions with colleagues, which mainly have been positive from my point of view. One cardiologist, who is quite overweight himself, expressed admiration and said that he always intended to lose weight, but wasn't able to maintain the effort necessary to do so. My personal physician, who is my partner in my practice, makes comments frequently about it, some of which are quite comical. I felt sorry for the gastroenterologist who did my colonoscopy, because it wasn't clear to him at first that I had intentionally been losing weight, and thought I had lost 60 lbs unintentionally, which means some type of serious GI problem in many cases. He was much happier once he had done my exam and found that I was totally normal. I haven't had an interaction with any of my colleagues that wasn't encouraging and supportive of my efforts, and usually expressing admiration and wanting to know my secret (I have none, really). Any way, I hope you good luck and success in your efforts.
