I’ve encountered various forms of patient behaviour in their attempts to deal with changes in body shape.

One patient presented after a long absence. To be more accurate, her abdomen first made its entrance into the surgery before the rest of her. It was that prominent.

“I really hate my genes,” she said.

She had accepted that she was following in the footsteps of other females in her family who had become quite rotund in their middle years. Yet my patient didn’t feel that she was eating all that much.