Preventive medicine
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Obesity is considered a growing health threat in the United States. Although physicians have an important role in counseling their patients for obesity prevention and treatment, physicians themselves are often overweight. There are few data regarding how physician body weight might affect patient receptiveness to obesity counseling. ⋯ Patients seeking care from nonobese physicians indicated greater confidence in general health counseling and treatment of illness than patients seeing obese physicians. It is not known if this can be translated into increased success in obesity prevention and treatment.