Answer: Use a more empathic and collaborative approach than confrontational approach.

The scientific evidence

Doctors can help patients change their eating and exercise habits — if they use the right words!

Doctors were observed to spend around 15% of the patient consultation time advising their overweight patients to lose weight. However, this advice  made no difference to their patients’ weight three months later. As a group, patients who received counselling lost no more weight than patients who did not.

Digging a bit deeper,  however, the researchers found that how the doctors gave their advice did make a difference. Patients whose  doctors used a more empathic, collaborative style of counselling  had lost an average of three and a half pounds more than patients whose doctors  used a more confrontational style when assessed three months later. It seems patients prefer their doctors saying empathic statements such as “it sounds like you’re finding it hard to find time to exercise” than more confrontational statements such as “So, you can’t fit exercise into your day?”

Click here to read the full scientific journal abstract.