13 Questions To Ask Your Doctor About Weight Loss And Your Blood Work

A yearly physical runs about ten to fifteen minutes and most men spend all of it answering questions instead of asking them. In episode 49 of Driven For Health, Coach Brian hands you the thirteen questions to bring with you and the wording for each one. He is a coach and not a doctor, and the point of the list is a better informed conversation about your weight and your blood work.

Most men get about ten to fifteen minutes with their doctor once a year and spend it answering questions instead of asking them. That is how a man walks out with a new prescription and no plan he understands. This episode of Driven For Health covers the questions to bring with you so the appointment ends with a plan you can run.

Coach Brian Is A Coach And Not A Doctor

Coach Brian is a coach and not a doctor. Nothing here is medical advice.

Nothing on this page tells you to stop, skip, reduce or turn down anything your doctor has prescribed. That decision belongs to you and your doctor. What follows is a set of questions that help you get more out of the time you have in that room and leave with instructions you understand.

If your doctor prescribes something, take it as prescribed and ask the questions below about the plan around it.

Why The Yearly Physical Goes Sideways

The default visit runs on rails. The doctor glances at your numbers. Your weight comes up. A medication gets started or gets flagged for next time. Then it is see you next year. The whole thing lasts ten to fifteen minutes.

Nobody in that room did anything wrong. You were asked questions and you answered them. The problem is that you never asked any.

There is a second version of the same problem. A man gets his results relayed to him over the phone by whoever picks up at the front desk. The call takes under a minute. He now has numbers he cannot read and no idea what to do on Monday morning. That is not education and it is not a plan.

Men in their 40s and 50s are the ones this hits hardest. This is the window where things build up without announcing themselves.

What Extra Weight Around Your Middle Is Doing

Twenty extra pounds around the waist is not a cosmetic issue for a man in this age range. It tracks with higher blood pressure. It tracks with a rising A1C, and an A1C of 5.7 puts a man in the prediabetic range. It tracks with higher rates of heart disease.

One study found that men carrying obesity had almost 30 percent higher absolute risk of serious events before age 55 when compared with normal weight men. Those events include type 2 diabetes, heart attack, stroke and early death.

The other side of that is where the episode spends its time. Losing 5 to 10 percent of body weight is enough to bring meaningful change in blood pressure, blood sugar stability, triglycerides and cholesterol. For most men that is about 10 to 20 pounds.

The point of that is the next twenty years. It is being able to work and travel and be present with your family without your body setting the schedule for everyone.

What A Health Problem Costs Once It Arrives

There is a financial side to this that men tend to find out about after the fact. A single heart attack and a hospital stay in the US can easily run $20,000 or more with insurance, and thousands out of pocket once deductibles, co-insurance and the follow ups are added up.

Living with diabetes can be more than double the annual medical spending of someone without it. Insulin has historically cost several thousand dollars a year per patient, even with the recent caps that help some people. The episode tells the story of one woman paying $500 out of pocket for it, and $7,200 out of pocket across the year.

The other cost is time. Recovery from something like this can take weeks or months, it lands on your family, and it puts a dent in your ability to work and enjoy the next ten to twenty years.

How To Use These Questions

Treat the list like a script. Pause the episode, write the questions down and take the page with you. A written list changes the room. It tells your doctor you came to work on this and it gives the appointment somewhere to go.

The episode runs thirteen questions and gives you the wording for each one. All thirteen are below.

Each question has the same three parts. Why you are asking it. What you can say out loud. What a useful answer sounds like.

The Questions To Bring To Your Appointment

1. How do you usually build a weight management plan with patients like me?

You are finding out whether your doctor thinks in structures or in quick fixes. A useful answer accounts for your weight history, your current labs, anything you already take, your daily schedule and your stress load.

Say it like this: Given my age and my current weight and my labs, how do you usually build a weight management plan for men like me? What are the main pieces you focus on in the first three to six months?

What you want to hear is lab targets and not only the scale, meaning A1C and blood pressure and triglycerides. A good answer also treats food and movement and sleep and stress as one connected thing. The last piece is how progress gets measured before next year comes around.

2. How much weight should I lose and what is a realistic timeline?

This turns you need to lose weight into a number and a date. The pace the episode gives is 1 to 2 pounds a week as sustainable, 3 pounds as a strong week and 4 or more as overreaching.

Say it like this: Given my weight and my height and my waist size and my labs, how much weight do you recommend I lose to lower my risk? What is a realistic timeline for me?

Ask for a range and for checkpoints. Something like 15 to 25 pounds over the next 6 to 12 months, tied to what your doctor wants your A1C and blood pressure and cholesterol doing along the way. Then ask what should look different at three months, at six months and at the next annual lab.

3. Which weight management options do you recommend for me and why those specifically?

You want the full menu and the reasoning behind the pick. Excess weight behaves like a chronic condition and it tends to respond best to a combination of food, movement, sleep and stress work. Medication can be one part of a plan. So can a referral out to someone else. What you are after is why this option and not another one.

Say it like this: Based on my history and my family risk and these labs, what do you recommend for me right now, and why that instead of the other options?

What you want to hear is whether changes to food and movement and sleep are expected to be enough at your current numbers, and how each option is expected to move a specific marker rather than only the scale. This is the question that gets you the why behind the plan.

4. What other options should be on the table and when would you consider them?

This keeps you out of a single lane. Every approach has a strength and a weakness, and you want to know what the picture looks like a year and five years down the road.

Say it like this: If this plan is not enough, what else would you consider for me later on? What would need to change in my weight or my labs before you would recommend it?

Listen for numbers. Not enough should mean something you can measure, such as your A1C failing to drop by a set amount in a set window. Or your blood pressure holding above a set range for a set stretch. That gives you a plan B before you need one.

5. How often should we check in to make sure this is working?

Long gaps are where weight climbs back and labs get worse with nobody watching. Scheduled check ins give a plan its pace and give you a place to adjust.

Say it like this: Given the plan we discussed, how often do you want to see me and have your team review my weight and blood pressure and labs?

Clarify two things while you are in the room. Whether those visits are with the doctor or with a nurse or over telehealth, because a wrong assumption there is where the frustration starts. And whether they want you tracking anything at home, such as blood pressure readings or morning weights, and how they want it sent in.

A useful answer sounds like labs in three months, an in person visit twice a year and a call from the care team in between.

6. What will this likely cost, and what is usually covered versus out of pocket?

A plan you cannot afford is not a plan you will run. Costs come at you from several directions at once here, and a man who has not asked about them is the one who gets surprised later. If something gets coded wrong, it lands on the insurance bill rather than the one from the doctor.

Say it like this: Can we walk through the likely costs of this plan, including visits, labs, medications and referrals, and what is usually covered by insurance versus what I am expected to pay?

What you want to hear is how often labs get run and roughly what they cost, an out of pocket range for anything they are considering prescribing, and a heads up on whatever tends not to be covered. Walking out of a ten minute visit and later getting a bill for $843.52 is the version of this men do not see coming. So is filling a prescription at the pharmacy for $500 when a comparable option runs 10 to 15 dollars.

Then there is the cost of doing nothing. Heart disease treatment runs the US around $100 billion a year, and a single heart attack hospitalization can put a patient's bill into the thousands even after insurance.

7. If this plan does not work as expected, what is the next move?

You want a doctor who plans to adjust. In good chronic care a plan that is not moving is a signal to change the plan, not a reason to label you and move on.

Coach Brian's position on the episode is that type 2 diabetes can be reversed, and that you do not have to be identified as a type 2 diabetic. That is a reason to keep working the plan rather than to accept the label as the end of the conversation. What your own diagnosis means and what to do about it is a question for your doctor.

Say it like this: If my weight and labs are not improving the way you expect after a set period, what will we change first? How will we decide whether to change food, movement, medication or a referral?

Listen for a window of three to six months and for markers you can measure. That turns the next stretch into a proper experiment. You test something, you watch what the numbers do and you test again.

8. Are you willing to partner with me on my weight and metabolic health long term?

Men stay with a plan longer when the doctor is in it with them. This question tells you which kind you have.

Say it like this: I am ready to take this seriously and do the work on my nutrition and my training. Are you willing to work with me on this over the next year?

Listen to the tone as much as the words. Willingness to book regular follow ups and to review progress openly is what you want to hear. If the answer lands flat, you are allowed to look for another in network doctor.

9. What can I start doing today before I leave the office?

Ask for the first moves while you are still in the room. Food, sleep and movement are where most men have room to work on day one.

Say it like this: Before I walk out, what are three specific changes you want me to make this week with my food, my movement or my sleep, based on my labs and my schedule?

Specific is the word that matters. Swapping sugary drinks for water or a zero calorie option, walking after meals and holding a consistent bedtime are all instructions you can run tonight.

10. Are there genetic or ethnicity related factors that change how you look at my risks?

Family history is a real input. So is the environment you live in and the food you eat every day. Some groups see diabetes and cardiovascular complications at a lower body mass index, which means a man does not have to be far overweight to be at risk.

Say it like this: Given my family history and my background, are there genetic or ethnicity related risks I should know about? How should that change my weight and blood sugar and cholesterol targets?

Two things are worth hearing here. Whether any screening should start earlier than the standard age for you, and whether your waist and weight targets should be tighter than they would be for an average patient walking in off the street.

11. How long will it realistically take for me to reach the goals we discussed?

This is the expectation question. Plenty of men quit a plan while it is still working, because nobody told them what the middle of it looks like.

Say it like this: Looking at my current numbers and the plan we discussed, what is a healthy rate of progress for my weight and A1C and blood pressure and cholesterol over the next 3, 6 and 12 months?

Get it in pounds per month and in lab movement. Then you know what a win looks like before it arrives, and you know which stretches are normal instead of a sign to stop.

12. Who else should be on my team to help me manage my weight and health?

Nobody handles this well alone. A solid team can include someone for nutrition, someone for training, a mental health professional and a coach who builds the structure around your actual life.

Say it like this: Are there professionals you trust that you can refer me to?

When your doctor and your coach and your own plan point the same direction, the work gets easier and the results come faster. When they pull against each other, you feel that too.

13. If I lose this weight and keep it off, what specific health benefits should I expect to see?

This is the one that connects the effort to the payoff. You want to hear your doctor say it out loud.

Say it like this: If I lose the amount of weight you are recommending and keep it off, what should I expect to happen with my blood panels?

A doctor who has been at this a long time can give you a general picture of what changes and roughly when. Hearing it from them is what makes the work concrete. It stops being a number on a scale and starts being energy for work, for travel and for the people at home.

What To Do Before Your Next Appointment

Write the thirteen questions down. Put them on paper or in your phone and take them with you.

Then get your last set of labs out and read them before you go. Walking in already knowing which markers are out of range changes what you can ask for.

Then pick one habit to have running before the appointment. Protein at breakfast, a walk after dinner or a consistent bedtime. One is enough. It means the conversation starts from work you have already done.

More From Driven For Health

If your last panel came back moving the wrong way, Bad Blood Work After 40? What Men Should Do to Improve It covers the markers that matter most and the daily habits that move them.

If a type 2 diabetes diagnosis is already on the table, I Just Got Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes, Now What walks through what comes next.

And for what is happening with your blood sugar overnight, listen to If You Have Type 2 Diabetes, Your Liver Is Sabotaging Your Blood Sugar.

Read Your Own Labs Before You Go

If your last blood panel had more red on it than green, the free Improve Your Blood Panels Scorecard is the fastest way to make sense of it. It explains A1C and cholesterol and blood pressure in plain language, and it names the habits that move each one.

It also comes with a three day metabolic reset, which is a short structured plan for nutrition and movement to get some momentum back before your next appointment.

Get it at brianparana.short.gy/improveyourbloodpanels.

The Call To Rise

The questions above make one appointment better. What changes the numbers is what you do in the months between appointments. That is the part most men are trying to handle alone.

The Call To Rise is a 100-day Fat Loss Challenge designed for driven men ready to get back to a healthy body, boost their energy, and lead as a powerful man.

If you are struggling with some form of chronic illness such as high blood pressure, cholesterol or even Type 2 Diabetes - this program is designed for you too.

Through a proven system of strength training, personalized nutrition, and real accountability, most men lose 20 plus pounds and rebuild the confidence that comes with it and even improve chronic illness issues. It's more than a fitness program, it's a body transformation experience with a Brotherhood of like-minded men committed to showing up, leveling up, and leading in a body they are excited about.

This is your wake-up call to rise.

www.thecalltorise.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this episode telling me to stop taking my medication?

No. Coach Brian is a coach and not a doctor and nothing here is medical advice. The questions are there so you can have a better informed conversation with your doctor about the plan around your weight and your labs.

What questions should I ask my doctor about weight loss?

The episode gives thirteen and this post carries all of them. They cover how your doctor builds a plan, how much weight to lose and by when, which options are on the table, how often you check in, what the plan will likely cost and what insurance covers, what happens if the plan stalls and what health benefits to expect once the weight is off.

How much weight do I need to lose to change my blood work?

The episode points to 5 to 10 percent of body weight, which is about 10 to 20 pounds for most men. That range is tied to meaningful change in blood pressure, blood sugar stability, triglycerides and cholesterol. Your own target is a question for your doctor.

What is a realistic rate of weight loss for a man over 40?

The pace given in the episode is 1 to 2 pounds a week as sustainable and 3 pounds as a strong week. Losing 4 or more pounds a week is overreaching.

What A1C number puts a man in the prediabetic range?

The episode names 5.7 as the point where a man moves into the prediabetic range. Bring your own number to your doctor and ask what it means for you specifically.

How often should I be checking in with my doctor about my weight and labs?

Ask for that to be scheduled instead of left open ended. A useful answer sounds like labs in three months, an in person visit twice a year and a call from the care team in between.

What if my doctor does not seem interested in working on this with me?

The episode says to listen to the tone as much as the words, and that you are allowed to look for another in network doctor who will book regular follow ups and review your progress with you.

What is the Call To Rise program?

The Call To Rise is a 100 day fat loss challenge for driven men who want their body back at the level their work is already at. Most men lose 20 plus pounds.

Listen to the full episode of Driven For Health.

Read the companion article on brianparana.com.