If there's one place where it's a good idea to come clean, it's the doctor's office. Patients with an ache, a symptom or a bad habit like smoking do no one any good if they keep it to themselves. Yet there's one time doctors are often less than forthcoming: when they have to tell patients they need to lose weight.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., recently released the results of a survey of more than 2,500 obese patients who went to their doctor for a regular checkup over the course of a year. The investigators found that the charts of only 1 in 5 of those people listed them as obese. What isn't on the charts is probably not communicated between doctor and patient either, and that means trouble. Those in the study who got the diagnosis were more than twice as likely to have developed a weight-management plan with their doctor than were the other obese patients.

"If you don't have a plan, you're not going to lose weight," says the study's author, preventive-medicine specialist Dr. Warren Thompson, whose research was published in August's Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Obesity, of course, means a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, hospitalization and early death, so how come doctors are so lax about putting the scarlet O on the chart? Sometimes, Thompson says, doctors perceive that a patient isn't motivated to change, so they just don't bother. Other times, the patient's likely embarrassment silences the physician, or time constraints get in the way as more immediately pressing health concerns get dealt with.

Discussing weight becomes even more complicated with children. According to a 2005 study in the journal Pediatrics, doctors diagnosed obesity less than 1% of the time among 2-to-18-year-olds—a figure far below the one-third of young Americans struggling with weight.

Dr. Mark Jacobson, an adolescent-medicine specialist with the American Academy of Pediatrics, explains that parents may feel guilty about having an overweight kid because they know it's partly hereditary and because they feel it's their responsibility to control their youngster's exercise levels and diet. Parents also worry about a child's developing eating disorders if weight becomes an issue, so they say nothing at all.

"I've had a patient whose mother whispered the letters w-e-i-g-h-t to me, with her hand over her mouth so the child couldn't see. I could tell it was something they had thought about and didn't want to bring up with the child," says Jacobson. Still, he insists that doctors must discuss the topic. One way to do so gently, he says, is to avoid the word obese and instead say the child has a weight problem. Doctors may also tell kids that their weight is a couple of years ahead of their age. Then, Jacobson says, he focuses the discussion more on the behaviors that could help improve the situation—like watching less TV and playing outside more—instead of concentrating principally on shape.

"You don't want to make people feel embarrassed and not want to come back to you. You want them to get treated," he says. Jacobson stresses that every pediatrician should determine a child's body-mass index (BMI)—a figure arrived at by factoring weight and height to produce a two-digit number that roughly diagnoses obesity. BMI is an imperfect metric, in part because it does a poor job of taking body type and muscle mass into consideration, meaning that a stocky person with low body fat can be labeled obese. But as a starting point, BMI helps.

None of this absolves patients or parents from stepping forward and bringing up weight on their own. But whoever raises the topic, it's important for patients and doctors alike to remember that modest amounts of weight loss can disproportionately benefit overall health, even if the loss doesn't feel or look like much. That fact may be the best reason for everyone to show a little courage and say what needs to be said — even if it hurts a bit.

如果有一個地方在那兒全盤托出是一個好的主意，它就是醫生的辦公室。一個有疼痛，一個像吸煙這樣的癥狀或者壞習慣的病人如果他把秘密留給自己是對誰都沒什么好處的。然而有一段時間當醫生們經常地而不是熱心的必須告訴病人們需要減肥。

在明尼蘇達州羅切斯特·馬尤診所的研究人員. 透漏了在一年多的時間里到他們的醫生那兒進行常規檢查的兩千五百多個肥胖病人的調查。研究者發現圖表中只有五分之一的人被列為肥胖之列。 沒列在表格上的很可能是既沒有和醫生交流也沒有和病人交流。那意味著麻煩。那些在調查中被確診的可能已經和醫生發展了體重管理計劃的人比其他的肥胖病人要多出兩倍還多。

這個研究的作者預防醫學專家，也是在八月份出版的《梅奧臨床進展》的作者Dr. Warren Thompson說：“如果你沒有計劃，你的體重就不會減少”。。

解決肥胖當然是意味著高風險的疾病，糖尿病，住院和早早的死亡。因此醫生們怎么會如此輕率地在表格上按上朱紅的O呢？Thompson說，有時醫生病人沒有改變的動機因此就不想打擾。有的的時候病人好像對醫生或者是需要立即著手解決的強制性的保健事宜的制約時間保持沉默。

在英國兒童科學院的青春期醫學專家馬克Jacobson醫生解釋道，父母們對超重的孩子有負罪感因為他們知道超重大部分有遺傳的因素，同時也因為他們感覺對控制年輕人的運動水平和飲食他們有義務。父母們也正在不斷發展的孩子的飲食紊亂而擔心體重是否變成一個重要問題，因此他們什么也不說。

Jacobson 說：“我有一個病人他的媽媽用手捂著嘴巴（從而使他的孩子看不見）小聲對我耳語.體重這個詞。我能夠分辨出他們已經思考了并且不想對孩子提及這個問題。”但是他仍然堅持醫生們必須討論這個問題。想溫柔的做這一點的方法就是避免說肥胖這個詞兒說孩子有體重問題。醫生也可以告訴孩子們他們的體重是十幾年前就存在了。然后，Jacobson說，他更多的集中討論能夠幫助提高改善環境的的活動像少看電視和到戶外玩耍而不主要集中在體型上。

“你不想讓人們感到窘迫也不想讓他們再來，你想讓他們得到治療。”Jacobson說。他還強調每一個兒科醫生應該確定孩子的人體重量指數(BMI)通過選配體重和身高產生一個大致能確診為肥胖的兩位數，BMI是一個非完美的公用制。部分是因為他不能考慮體型和肌肉的因素，一個有很少脂肪的敦實的人也可能被定義為肥胖。但是作為一個開始點，BMI是有用的。

沒有這樣的人赦免病人或者父母們使他們更進一步或者對自己提及體重這個問題，但是無論誰提起這個問題，記住謙虛的減肥可能對整體有很大的利益這一點對于病人和醫生都是重要的，即使這個減少感覺或者看起來很不像。彰顯勇氣并且說他需要有人說這樣問題，對于每一個人來說事實總是最好的理由——即使受了點傷害。