Researchers have discovered if a doctor is overweight, he won’t be counseling patients to diet and exercise as a way to curb health problems. So should you seek out a thinner doctor? Not necessarily, says Lawrence Kaplan, professor of medicine at Temple’s School of Medicine. Patients with a higher BMI might have a hard time relating to a physician who looks lean and actually runs marathons. “They’ll think, ‘It’s easy for you to tell me to exercise, you probably never struggled with your weight at all.’”