trying to practice what i preach

as a future primary care doctor, i feel that i should try to follow the advice i dole out to patients, but these things are a lot easier to say than actually follow.

eat right. i have a particular interest in nutrition, so this one should be easy, right? WRONG!!! i love white rice, fried foods, red meat! i don't really understand the new food pyramid that's customizeable. i'm supposed to eat 2 cups of orange veggies and 3 cups of dried beans or peas a week? that doesn't sound very appealing to me. the only diet education that's worked at all for me is the new american plate concept--visualize the plate as 1/3 protein, 2/3 whole grains and veggies. my plate isn't there yet, but it's easy to visualize my goal.

exercise more. i went to the gym five times a week for my first two years of medical school, and i haven't been back since. how did that happen? i made the gym part of my schedule back then. after class, i would go to the gym with my study partner and then hit a coffee shop to study afterwards. if i wanted to be lazy, there was someone counting on me to be at the gym. since my schedule is much more erratic, the gym seems all but impossible for me. truthfully, i don't like the gym that much to begin with. so, i took a page out of the patient education materials i received during family medicine and started the 10,000 steps program. i bought a $10 pedometer and wore it around the hospital. it turned out that some days i was over 10,000 steps and some days i wasn't. what made the difference? strangely, it was all the things i've been trained to tell my patients--take the stairs, take more public transportation, or get off a bus stop early. if i did these things, i was consistently over 10,000 steps. i've been trying to add some pilates to that, but i was only able to do my 20-minute video three times a week for one week. that's right. i stuck with my new exercise program for one whole week, but i'll try again ... next week.

see my doctor annually. this one is definitely easier than it sounds. there was a two-year period during medical school when i didn't go to the doctor. why not? it felt like i didn't have enough time. plus, the wait for a regular appointment with my doctor is six weeks, and with the travel time to and from the office and the unpredictable amount of time in the waiting room, the doctor's appointment will take at least half my day. if i knew i had half a day free in six weeks, would i really want to spend it getting a pap smear? during my ob/gyn rotation, i did pap smears all day long on other women, and i finally worked up the courage to tell my attending i needed to take a morning off to get mine done. going to a doctor is a pain in the butt. why do i make time to go see my doctor? honestly, it's mostly because i don't want to be a hypocrite, but i'm never sorry that i took half a day to go.