How to Talk to Your GP About Weight

Book the right appointment

Ask for a long consultation and say it is to talk about weight and general health. Reception staff book to the length you ask for, and this is the single change that makes the biggest difference. A standard consult is designed around one issue. What you want to cover is closer to four: your history, your bloods, what your options are, and where to go next.

Two practical notes. Bulk billing varies enormously by practice and by patient, so if cost matters, ask what you will pay when you book rather than at the counter afterwards. And if you have a GP you have seen for years, they are usually the better appointment than a bulk billing clinic you have never met, because continuity is doing real work here.

What to bring

Bring a trend, not a number. One weight on one morning tells a GP very little, because weight moves a kilo or two on water alone. Three months of weights, even weekly ones, tells them the direction and the speed, and that is the actual clinical information.

• Your weight over time. Ideally a few months. A chart on your phone beats a number you half remember.
• Your waist measurement, if you have it. Where weight sits matters clinically, and it moves even in months when the scale does not.
• Every medicine and supplement you take. Include the ones you would not think to mention. Several common medicines cause weight gain, and that is a fixable conversation.
• What you have actually tried, and for how long."Six months of 5:2, lost 6 kg, put back 8" is worth a hundred times more than "I have tried everything".
• Family history. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, in whom, and at roughly what age.
• Sleep, mood and pain. Snoring and daytime sleepiness point at sleep apnoea. Low mood and disturbed sleep change what is likely to work.
• Any history of pancreatitis, gallstones, thyroid cancer or an eating disorder. These genuinely change the options, so they are worth saying without being asked.

If you have been tracking in Healthcount, all of that lives in one place already and you can show it on your phone. That is largely the point of tracking. Not to be judged by a number, but to have something better than memory when it counts.

BMI will come up, and it has limits

BMI is weight divided by height squared. It is a population screening tool, it is quick, and it is what most clinical criteria in Australia are written around, so expect it to be part of the conversation.

It is also blunt. It does not distinguish muscle from fat, it does not know where the fat sits, and its standard cut-offs came from populations that were mostly European. For people of South Asian, Chinese, Japanese and some other ancestries, cardiometabolic risk tends to appear at a lower BMI, which is why some Australian guidance uses lower thresholds for those groups. If that applies to you, it is a reasonable thing to raise.

A waist measurement adds information that BMI misses, which is why it is worth having. Neither number is a verdict on you. They are inputs.

Questions worth asking

• What do my bloods say? HbA1c, lipids, liver, thyroid and kidney function are the usual set, and they often reframe the conversation from appearance to risk.
• Is anything I am taking making this harder?
• Given my history, what would you suggest first, and why that rather than something else?
• If we tried a medicine, what would we be watching, and how would we know at three months whether it was worth continuing?
• What would you want to see before you would consider prescribing?
• Am I eligible for a chronic condition management plan, and would a dietitian referral help?
• Is a sleep study worth doing?
• What should bring me back sooner than planned?

Ask the last one every time. Knowing which symptom means "come back now" is the most useful sentence you can leave an appointment with.

What Medicare covers around this

The medicine may not be subsidised, but the care around it often is, and a lot of Australians never find out.

• GP chronic condition management plan. Since 1 July 2025 this framework replaced the old GP Management Plans and Team Care Arrangements. If you have an eligible chronic condition, it opens up a set number of Medicare-supported allied health services in a calendar year, more for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients. A dietitian is a common use for them. There is often a gap to pay on top, so ask what it will be.
• Mental health support. Under the Better Access initiative, a mental health treatment plan from your GP gives Medicare rebates for sessions with a psychologist. If food and your body are tangled up with mood, this is frequently the more useful referral.
• Pathology. The relevant blood tests are usually bulk billed when your GP orders them.
• Sleep studies. Often available with a Medicare rebate when clinically indicated. Worth raising if you snore, wake unrefreshed or fall asleep in the afternoon.

None of this is automatic. All of it starts with your GP thinking it is appropriate, which is another argument for the longer appointment.

The cost conversation

Be direct about money, because it changes what is realistic. If a private script is not sustainable for you month after month, say so at the start rather than after the second repeat. There are other routes worth discussing, and a plan you can afford to stay on beats a better plan you have to abandon in April.

Two things your GP can tell you that no website can: whether you meet the PBS criteria for a subsidised script in your specific circumstances, and whether there is a reason to think you would tolerate one option better than another. Our page on what the PBS covers gives you the background so you are not spending appointment time on it.

If the conversation does not go well

It happens. Weight is a subject where people get brushed off, and being told to eat less and move more when you have been doing exactly that for a decade is demoralising rather than useful.

If that is how it goes, you have options. Ask directly what they would need to see before they would consider something different, which turns a refusal into a plan. Ask for a referral to someone with a specific interest in this. Or see another GP. A second opinion is a normal part of Australian primary care and you do not need to justify it to anyone. Take your records with you, because starting from scratch is what makes second opinions slow.

And if the appointment leaves you feeling worse about yourself rather than clearer about what to do, that is worth naming too, to them or to someone else. This is meant to be about your health, not a performance review.

When not to wait for an appointment

Preparation is for planned care. Some things do not wait for the next available slot: severe or persistent stomach pain, vomiting that stops you keeping fluids down, chest pain, breathlessness, fainting, or a sudden change in vision.

If food, your body or your mood is the harder part of this, the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline is on 1800 33 4673 and Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Both are free, and neither requires you to have a diagnosis before you ring.

FAQs