Easier said than done

MR.

JAY: So I need to lose weight in order to have a kidney transplant, but I don’t know how to do this. It’s so difficult. I want to lose weight, but I can’t see it happening. I’ve always been heavy. MS.

ROBERTS: I think I’m doing quite well following the instructions my doctor gave me. He said I need to stop eating salt, so that’s what I have been doing. No salt anymore on my potatoes, pasta, or vegetables. We have basically banned the salt grinder from our dinner table. But it is so difficult to do that. Everything tastes bland now, and my family always forgets and puts a lot of salt into the food. So I can only follow his advice when I cook. Then everything tastes very boring. But thankfully, when I eat at the cafeteria at work, the food there tastes really good, even when I don’t add salt MR.

JAY: My doctor told me I need to do physical activity in order to lose weight. She said I can also just use my bike to ride to work, but my work is 10K away. I can barely walk around the block. How am I supposed to bike that far? The goals she set are unrealistic, and it’s frustrating that I don’t know what I need to do differently. MS.

PHILIPS: When I take my medication, I always take all the tablets together. I knock them all back. I’ve been doing that for years. They say you can’t do that in the hospital. They said that, as well. And I say, well, that’s what I’m doing. It’s always OK, because I find it annoying if I have to take one pill at 8 o’clock and another at 11 o’clock, and another at 1 o’clock. Then you’re busy taking medication all day. I think, rubbish. I take the whole handful of tablets and they find their own way. I don’t see the point of taking them at different times.

And nobody has ever taken the time to explain to me why I should, so I just do what I think is right.