3 ms·

> The results at year eight are heartening. Eight years later and 50.3 percent of the intensive lifestyle intervention group and 35.7 percent of the usual care

> The results at year eight are heartening. Eight years later and 50.3 percent of the intensive lifestyle intervention group and 35.7 percent of the usual care group were maintaining losses of ≥5 percent, while 26.9 percent of the intensive group and 17.2 percent of the usual care group were maintaining losses of ≥10 percent. I am not sure this is heartening. Sure, they lost some weight permanently. Did they lose enough weight for it to matter health wise? Did they shift from obese to not obese? You certainly wouldn’t get any social benefits from such small weight loss. Few would notice that small a change. Sure, you can lose a bit of weight long term, but only a bit. This seems to make the case for Ozempic ever stronger.

paulpauper 3y ago
Reading stories of people who lost a lot of weight with Ozempic and related drugs gives me hope...I don't consider it cheating or a short-cut. I look at it like treating a disease.
clipsy 3y ago
I would go so far as to call it explicitly disheartening. To put those figures in perspective, someone at the lower BMI threshold (30) for obesity needs to lose 1/6th (~16.7%) of their body weight to get down to the upper BMI threshold (25) for healthy weight; he's bragging that 50% of patients in the "intensive group" can maintain 5% weight loss, and 27% can maintain 10% weight loss. I'm sure that's enough to effect some improvement in health outcomes and quality of life, but I can't imagine it would be helpful to hear this data if I was obese. And that's just comparing to the lowest possible weight at which someone can be obese -- for people who weigh 300+ or even 400+ pounds it would be laughable to hear a doctor say that committing to permanent "intensive" lifestyle changes would likely result in no more than 5% permanent weight loss. Why even bother?

paulpauper 3y ago

Reading stories of people who lost a lot of weight with Ozempic and related drugs gives me hope...I don't consider it cheating or a short-cut. I look at it like treating a disease.

clipsy 3y ago

I would go so far as to call it explicitly disheartening. To put those figures in perspective, someone at the lower BMI threshold (30) for obesity needs to lose 1/6th (~16.7%) of their body weight to get down to the upper BMI threshold (25) for healthy weight; he's bragging that 50% of patients in the "intensive group" can maintain 5% weight loss, and 27% can maintain 10% weight loss. I'm sure that's enough to effect some improvement in health outcomes and quality of life, but I can't imagine it would be helpful to hear this data if I was obese. And that's just comparing to the lowest possible weight at which someone can be obese -- for people who weigh 300+ or even 400+ pounds it would be laughable to hear a doctor say that committing to permanent "intensive" lifestyle changes would likely result in no more than 5% permanent weight loss. Why even bother?