9 ms·

I'm of two minds on the ozempic thing. On the one hand, i'm really happy for my friends and loved ones who have always struggled with weight find a solution th

I'm of two minds on the ozempic thing. On the one hand, i'm really happy for my friends and loved ones who have always struggled with weight find a solution that works for them. On the other hand, i went through a non-drug assisted weight loss journey and improved countless things about my lifestyle besides just the number on the scale. I worry this solution being available will just increase the number of sedentary people (which is also really bad for your health) and create a whole new set of people dependent on the pharma industry to be able to live their lives how they want

xnx 1y ago
I'd rather solve one of two major health problems (excess fat and insufficient activity) than neither of them. For the morbidly obese, fat loss makes more activity much more feasible.
- betterThanTexas 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - xrisk 1y ago
    As parent says, would you rather have “undisciplined” obese people or undisciplined non-obese people? Because those are the realistic choices here.
    - betterThanTexas 1y ago
      Someone else's lack of discipline has a far more negative effect on my life than their obesity does. So I reject this choice entirely—I'd rather we stop looking for easy fixes to hard problems. I don't judge people for taking ozempic, but I am absolutely confused why people see this as a massive win for society. We're just doubling down on our dysfunction.
      - chneu 1y ago
        This is just not addressing the issue. What's causing the hormone issues? Who cares. Throw a pill at it and we can forget about it.
        betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > Throw a pill at it and we can forget about it. I don't really see myself ever forgiving the west for prioritizing medication over holistic treatment. I've been through way too many mental health institutions to ever trust medicated treatment.
      - kelseyfrog 1y ago
        I agree with you in the same way that casts don't fix the underlying problem - a broken bone, or band-aids don't fix the issue - a cut. Until people start to treat the real issue and stop relying on crutches, we're just covering up the problem.
      - busyant 1y ago
        So, what's your solution to "lack of self discipline"? What is the physical basis for lack of self discipline?
        betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > So, what's your solution to "lack of self discipline"? IDK, wanting to be alive and happy? > What is the physical basis for lack of self discipline? That's just a category error. I just don't see obesity as worth caring about on an individual-level compared to the social dysfunction that produces it. If we can only address problems on an individual-level I don't really see why I should expect anything positive from society—that's just not rational.
        busyant 1y ago
        You just avoided answering the questions entirely. But you still want to pass judgement using your ill-defined concept of "self discipline."
  - SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
    Ozempic reduces addictive behaviors, it's effectively a drug to improve discipline more than directly a weight loss drug.
    - betterThanTexas 1y ago
      I don't think you can call should discipline if it implies a dependence on industry. What concerns me is how people will behave when industry leaves our lives.
      - JoshTriplett 1y ago
        > What concerns me is how people will behave when industry leaves our lives. If that happened, many many people would die of preventable medical conditions, or starvation, or many other causes. Let's avoid that.
        betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > Let's avoid that. Good luck.
      - matthewcford 1y ago
        I've tried it, as even a low dose gives the person much more willpower to make other life changes, which have nothing to do with the effects of feeling fuller. Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists can: Modulate dopamine release in brain regions associated with reward and motivation, such as the mesolimbic system and nucleus accumbens. Reduce the rewarding effects of food and possibly other addictive substances, which may explain the increased sense of control or willpower. Some studies in animals show that semaglutide can alter dopamine metabolism and suppress dopamine-driven behaviors.
    - jorvi 1y ago
      It is a drug that suppresses addictive behavior. Developing discipline is developing the ability to delay gratification for greater reward. Taking away the (need for) gratification means not having to learn the ability to delay.
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    Is discipline why some other countries have a lot more skinny people than the US? Do they lose that discipline when they move to the US, and typically pack on weight? Like, is there a an anti-discipline barrier they have to walk through to get in? It really doesn't look like discipline's a major factor in how a population stays in a healthy weight range, so it'd be surprising if it merits being the main focus of any effort to make a fat country skinnier.
    - itsoktocry 1y ago
      >Is discipline why some other countries have a lot more skinny people than the US? Yeah, I think it is. It's easier to be in bad shape than good shape. I'm curious what you think it is?
      - pmarreck 1y ago
        It's 4 inputs, actually. 1) The culture (active, passive). Example: Germany, where people bike a lot more since gas costs so much; and ironically, their shitty Internet and cell service negatively impacts the phenomenon of everyone being glued to a screen. I think they're actually proud of it, at this point? Anyway, they're WAY fitter (despite, or perhaps partly because of, eating meats for breakfast instead of cereals!) 2) The food environment (preservatives, fructose, hidden carbs, bad artificial sweeteners, salts in everything, big serving portions, or more all-natural stuff) 3) Genes- There are literally over 500 discovered that affect your equilibrium weight. 251 genetic markers have been linked to sport-related traits (though only about half have been replicated in multiple studies). 13 genes have been identified so far that affect how the body responds to different types of exercise, including cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength. 4) And finally, there is willpower/discipline. Which is a finite resource, by the way, that gets resupplied by sleep and downtime, and which often needs to be drawn on for other things (like work and childrearing). Think of it as a dial. In the middle, you stay the same weight. Tilt it slightly to the right (which is all too easy to do), and you are on a weight-gain schedule. Tilt it slightly to the left, and you will lose over time. If you're working against (1), (2), and (3), then (4) becomes MUCH harder to do.
      - alabastervlog 1y ago
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
There's a clear parallel between that observation and AI. Instead of taking shortcuts to bypass activity that will improve our bodies, it will be the same thing but with our minds.
no_wizard 1y ago
I'd very much rather have the chance at being more active by losing weight via GLP-1 class drugs than really having to fight two uphill battles at once. I think we're overall going to be seeing more positives than negatives coming out of this.
ksindryolos 1y ago
I'm on Zepbound (more effective than Ozempic for pure weight loss), and I'm the most active that I've been in 15+ years. Losing the weight gave me so much more energy, and made is significantly easier to work out properly. I lift weights three times a week and go on walks that are twice as long as when I started. There are also a ton of positive mental side effects. It's hard to describe the kind of hope I have after trying and failing for so long to keep my weight in check. Everything is just easier, which is not something I anticipated when I started.
- snapcaster 1y ago
  Great to hear!
- pmarreck 1y ago
  See my potential warning here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919011
  - bb88 1y ago
    Here's a stark warning about diet and exercise: "90% of people who lose weight will likely regain it back." https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/weighing-facts-tough-truth-about-weight-loss https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/weighing-facts-t... Weight loss is easier than keeping it off. There is only so much will power people have against food noise.
- arp242 1y ago
  I've never had any problems with my weight until the last year or so; guess I'm getting old? Currently ~106kg at about 2m, which puts my BMI just in the "overweight" category (imperfect measure, but still). Basically, I have what you'd call a "beer belly", which is very new for me. I don't like it. Reading between the lines, I have the impression that you were fairly strongly overweight ("obese") and struggled with more serous weight issues throughout your life? I share the concern of the previous poster not so much for people like you, where "lose weight to a manageable level ASAP" is generally a good thing, but for people like me who are "a bit fatter than they'd like" but not necessarily "obese". If you'd meet me, you wouldn't necessarily call me "fat". Previously I would just eat whatever (not super unhealthy, but also not really healthy) and not really exercise beyond my stubborn insistence on walking or cycling everywhere. I don't see weight loss rugs as a net positive for me. I made some positive changes to fix this, and if I were to take Ozempic I'd just revert back to my lazy git self, and not get all the benefits that a better diet and exercise give me.
ebiester 1y ago
How much did you lose? What is your current food noise? I really like Mark Lewis's take on YouTube - he's someone who is very fit in general but an injury threw him off and before he knew it, he had gained double digit kilos. This is someone who is motivated but also deals with high food noise. I deal with low food noise. I am relatively active. I got up to <overweight> pounds slowly and over 8 months was able to lose 40. Even so, I had just one bad month at work and gained 7 pounds without significantly dropping my activity. Just a few meals out and not tracking my calories and I fell off of maintenance quickly. If I resistance train my ability to keep control of my calories falls off quickly because I just get too hungry. I'd love just a maintenance level just because distraction-level hunger sucks.
- zahlman 1y ago
  What do you mean by "food noise"?
  - anon291 1y ago
    Bags of rubbish calories lying all around us is what I assume. I have stopped eating outside of defined times to cut down on this.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ebiester 1y ago
    How much of your active attention is tracking on your hunger signals. If I can't focus on my current task because I'm too hungry, that's food noise. If I can't get to sleep and am tossing and turning because I am too hungry, that's food noise. If all I can think about is a doughnut, or even if I'm chomping on raw broccoli and hating myself because it's just making me hungrier, that's food noise.
    - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
      Huh...if that's what food noise is, then I must be at a 24/7 rock concert.
pjc50 1y ago
People really want these things - exercise, weight - to be important moral objectives for others, when they're not that important in the grand scheme of things. Now you'll just have to find another easy visual marker for ranking people by moral superiority.
- snapcaster 1y ago
  I see your point but not really true. people in good shape vs. people who lost weight is pretty visible
  - ben_w 1y ago
    If you're as muscular as Schwarzenegger, some people will fancy you, others will say you're ugly and unnatural because you're taking steroids. On weight, France (amongst others) had to ban extremely low BMI models*, which implies that people are very happy to look at — and desire to have — dangerous body forms. * https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32174364 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32174364
    - arp242 1y ago
      The "stick figure" fashion models have been widely ridiculed for as long as I can remember, since the 90s. It mostly seems confined to the fashion industry: models outside of that tend to be thin, but not as extremely so. I'm not really clued up on that world to know why this is the case.
      - macintux 1y ago
        I remember the phrase "heroin chic" from that era.
        throwaway2037 1y ago
        Gisele Bündchen is one of the most famous runway models in the world. Surely, her BMI is below 18. (If you look at unstaged photos of her, she is so unbelievably thin. No one would think a relative who looked like that was healthy.) I am pretty sure that is the "legal" limit in France. How do they work around it? Does she never walk the runways in Paris?
Starlevel004 1y ago
It's a lot easier to be less sedentary when your knees aren't carrying 1.5x their rated weight and you don't become 50% sweat by mass after an hour.
- twodave 1y ago
  It’s not about what’s easy. This is what the OP is talking about. Anyone who is in shape over a certain age pretty much has to wake up and choose the hard thing most days. Whether it’s bunions, old (or recent) injuries, GI problems, arthritis, inflammation—movement is good for all of these things. I know this from personal experience. If I stop moving for a few weeks it is very painful to get back into the groove. I’m currently dealing with some kind of lower GI problem that is affecting my energy and causing a lot of discomfort. I have foot problems, a messed up rotator cuff, etc. But if you just keep showing up and putting in the effort (and most of all, not comparing yourself to anyone else, even your past self), the results will come.
  - kazinator 1y ago
    Losing fat through exercise requires a high volume; excess weight will really put extra stresses on those injuries and other problems. If people have some shortcut toward reducing their weight so they can exercise more easily (rather than looking at it as the complete quick fix), it may not be a bad idea.
    - twodave 1y ago
      I don’t disagree there. And I was probably a bit aggressive with my take really. Not all healthy choices are hard ones, and exercise alone isn’t enough. Actually the hardest thing for me (and I have and continue to deal with addiction first-hand) is getting out of the mental ruts I’ve put myself in. I can choose not to eat poorly and to go exercise today, but if it’s just will-power and not a mindset change then it’s not going to be sustainable.
- thefz 1y ago
  You can get very thin without moving a muscle and by diet alone.
ZekeSulastin 1y ago
Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs. I also hope there’s no long term worse side effects, but I agree with pjc50 in that most of the negative reaction is actually about feeling morally superior.
- RankingMember 1y ago
  I agree, it's moralizing. The dependence on pharma is a real concern, particularly in a country (US obv) where they've got us all by the balls, but it's no less/more a problem here than for any other ailment requiring maintenance meds. We're still learning how the American diet and other environmental factors can literally change peoples' metabolism and it makes complete sense to me to treat the symptoms if we have the means to do so.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    It’s a peptide like insulin. It’s made through recombinant DNA which can be done with desktop bioreactors, it doesn’t take a whole industry to make this stuff.
- thefz 1y ago
  > Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs. Most disesases are not self inflicted. Obesity is
  - triceratops 1y ago
    If obesity is 100% self inflicted, the fast food, snack food, and ancillary advertising industries should pack up and go home. They obviously do nothing. Instead we have a system where these companies are allowed, even encouraged to make food that's terrible for you taste amazing, and market the shit out of it to increase shareholder value. But when they succeed at their jobs it's because you, the individual, fucked up. Well which one is it? Both can't be true.
turnsout 1y ago
Yes, this is exactly why the pharma industry unironically refers to GLP-1 as a "miracle drug." The miracle is that it's expensive, it works, and people don't need to change their behavior. And as soon as you stop taking it, it stops working. It's perfect (for capitalism).
r00fus 1y ago
Most programs that rely on GLP-1 meds also stress that lifestyle changes are needed to not only really lose weight, but also to keep that weight change once you stop taking the medication (or go to a maintenance dosage). I'm taking the meds right now - what the medication allows me to understand is that without changing your sleep, exercise and diet, I simply won't be very successful even while on the meds.
CyberDildonics 1y ago
You don't have to be "of two minds" about it, you can just let people do whatever they want. If you want to feel superior for losing weight without drugs, you can do too.
ridgeguy 1y ago
I started on Zepbound March 1. The food noise is gone. I'm no longer distracted by intrusive thoughts around food/hunger, which after a lifetime of enduring such, is wonderful. The strongest behavioral effect is that I no longer snack at all, a lifetime habit pre-March. That's resulted in ongoing weight reduction, ~9kg so far. That, in turn, has encouraged me to increase my activity levels a lot. Offered as an anecdatum in which this drug is driving me away from the sedentary tarpit, rather than towards it. YMMV, of course.

xnx 1y ago

I'd rather solve one of two major health problems (excess fat and insufficient activity) than neither of them. For the morbidly obese, fat loss makes more activity much more feasible.

betterThanTexas 1y ago
[flagged]
- xrisk 1y ago
  As parent says, would you rather have “undisciplined” obese people or undisciplined non-obese people? Because those are the realistic choices here.
  - betterThanTexas 1y ago
    Someone else's lack of discipline has a far more negative effect on my life than their obesity does. So I reject this choice entirely—I'd rather we stop looking for easy fixes to hard problems. I don't judge people for taking ozempic, but I am absolutely confused why people see this as a massive win for society. We're just doubling down on our dysfunction.
    - chneu 1y ago
      This is just not addressing the issue. What's causing the hormone issues? Who cares. Throw a pill at it and we can forget about it.
      - betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > Throw a pill at it and we can forget about it. I don't really see myself ever forgiving the west for prioritizing medication over holistic treatment. I've been through way too many mental health institutions to ever trust medicated treatment.
    - kelseyfrog 1y ago
      I agree with you in the same way that casts don't fix the underlying problem - a broken bone, or band-aids don't fix the issue - a cut. Until people start to treat the real issue and stop relying on crutches, we're just covering up the problem.
    - busyant 1y ago
      So, what's your solution to "lack of self discipline"? What is the physical basis for lack of self discipline?
      - betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > So, what's your solution to "lack of self discipline"? IDK, wanting to be alive and happy? > What is the physical basis for lack of self discipline? That's just a category error. I just don't see obesity as worth caring about on an individual-level compared to the social dysfunction that produces it. If we can only address problems on an individual-level I don't really see why I should expect anything positive from society—that's just not rational.
        busyant 1y ago
        You just avoided answering the questions entirely. But you still want to pass judgement using your ill-defined concept of "self discipline."
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
  Ozempic reduces addictive behaviors, it's effectively a drug to improve discipline more than directly a weight loss drug.
  - betterThanTexas 1y ago
    I don't think you can call should discipline if it implies a dependence on industry. What concerns me is how people will behave when industry leaves our lives.
    - JoshTriplett 1y ago
      > What concerns me is how people will behave when industry leaves our lives. If that happened, many many people would die of preventable medical conditions, or starvation, or many other causes. Let's avoid that.
      - betterThanTexas 1y ago
        > Let's avoid that. Good luck.
    - matthewcford 1y ago
      I've tried it, as even a low dose gives the person much more willpower to make other life changes, which have nothing to do with the effects of feeling fuller. Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists can: Modulate dopamine release in brain regions associated with reward and motivation, such as the mesolimbic system and nucleus accumbens. Reduce the rewarding effects of food and possibly other addictive substances, which may explain the increased sense of control or willpower. Some studies in animals show that semaglutide can alter dopamine metabolism and suppress dopamine-driven behaviors.
  - jorvi 1y ago
    It is a drug that suppresses addictive behavior. Developing discipline is developing the ability to delay gratification for greater reward. Taking away the (need for) gratification means not having to learn the ability to delay.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  Is discipline why some other countries have a lot more skinny people than the US? Do they lose that discipline when they move to the US, and typically pack on weight? Like, is there a an anti-discipline barrier they have to walk through to get in? It really doesn't look like discipline's a major factor in how a population stays in a healthy weight range, so it'd be surprising if it merits being the main focus of any effort to make a fat country skinnier.
  - itsoktocry 1y ago
    >Is discipline why some other countries have a lot more skinny people than the US? Yeah, I think it is. It's easier to be in bad shape than good shape. I'm curious what you think it is?
    - pmarreck 1y ago
      It's 4 inputs, actually. 1) The culture (active, passive). Example: Germany, where people bike a lot more since gas costs so much; and ironically, their shitty Internet and cell service negatively impacts the phenomenon of everyone being glued to a screen. I think they're actually proud of it, at this point? Anyway, they're WAY fitter (despite, or perhaps partly because of, eating meats for breakfast instead of cereals!) 2) The food environment (preservatives, fructose, hidden carbs, bad artificial sweeteners, salts in everything, big serving portions, or more all-natural stuff) 3) Genes- There are literally over 500 discovered that affect your equilibrium weight. 251 genetic markers have been linked to sport-related traits (though only about half have been replicated in multiple studies). 13 genes have been identified so far that affect how the body responds to different types of exercise, including cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength. 4) And finally, there is willpower/discipline. Which is a finite resource, by the way, that gets resupplied by sleep and downtime, and which often needs to be drawn on for other things (like work and childrearing). Think of it as a dial. In the middle, you stay the same weight. Tilt it slightly to the right (which is all too easy to do), and you are on a weight-gain schedule. Tilt it slightly to the left, and you will lose over time. If you're working against (1), (2), and (3), then (4) becomes MUCH harder to do.
    - alabastervlog 1y ago

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

There's a clear parallel between that observation and AI. Instead of taking shortcuts to bypass activity that will improve our bodies, it will be the same thing but with our minds.

no_wizard 1y ago

I'd very much rather have the chance at being more active by losing weight via GLP-1 class drugs than really having to fight two uphill battles at once. I think we're overall going to be seeing more positives than negatives coming out of this.

ksindryolos 1y ago

I'm on Zepbound (more effective than Ozempic for pure weight loss), and I'm the most active that I've been in 15+ years. Losing the weight gave me so much more energy, and made is significantly easier to work out properly. I lift weights three times a week and go on walks that are twice as long as when I started. There are also a ton of positive mental side effects. It's hard to describe the kind of hope I have after trying and failing for so long to keep my weight in check. Everything is just easier, which is not something I anticipated when I started.

snapcaster 1y ago
Great to hear!
pmarreck 1y ago
See my potential warning here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919011
- bb88 1y ago
  Here's a stark warning about diet and exercise: "90% of people who lose weight will likely regain it back." https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/weighing-facts-tough-truth-about-weight-loss https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/weighing-facts-t... Weight loss is easier than keeping it off. There is only so much will power people have against food noise.
arp242 1y ago
I've never had any problems with my weight until the last year or so; guess I'm getting old? Currently ~106kg at about 2m, which puts my BMI just in the "overweight" category (imperfect measure, but still). Basically, I have what you'd call a "beer belly", which is very new for me. I don't like it. Reading between the lines, I have the impression that you were fairly strongly overweight ("obese") and struggled with more serous weight issues throughout your life? I share the concern of the previous poster not so much for people like you, where "lose weight to a manageable level ASAP" is generally a good thing, but for people like me who are "a bit fatter than they'd like" but not necessarily "obese". If you'd meet me, you wouldn't necessarily call me "fat". Previously I would just eat whatever (not super unhealthy, but also not really healthy) and not really exercise beyond my stubborn insistence on walking or cycling everywhere. I don't see weight loss rugs as a net positive for me. I made some positive changes to fix this, and if I were to take Ozempic I'd just revert back to my lazy git self, and not get all the benefits that a better diet and exercise give me.

ebiester 1y ago

How much did you lose? What is your current food noise? I really like Mark Lewis's take on YouTube - he's someone who is very fit in general but an injury threw him off and before he knew it, he had gained double digit kilos. This is someone who is motivated but also deals with high food noise. I deal with low food noise. I am relatively active. I got up to <overweight> pounds slowly and over 8 months was able to lose 40. Even so, I had just one bad month at work and gained 7 pounds without significantly dropping my activity. Just a few meals out and not tracking my calories and I fell off of maintenance quickly. If I resistance train my ability to keep control of my calories falls off quickly because I just get too hungry. I'd love just a maintenance level just because distraction-level hunger sucks.

zahlman 1y ago
What do you mean by "food noise"?
- anon291 1y ago
  Bags of rubbish calories lying all around us is what I assume. I have stopped eating outside of defined times to cut down on this.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ebiester 1y ago
  How much of your active attention is tracking on your hunger signals. If I can't focus on my current task because I'm too hungry, that's food noise. If I can't get to sleep and am tossing and turning because I am too hungry, that's food noise. If all I can think about is a doughnut, or even if I'm chomping on raw broccoli and hating myself because it's just making me hungrier, that's food noise.
  - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    Huh...if that's what food noise is, then I must be at a 24/7 rock concert.

pjc50 1y ago

People really want these things - exercise, weight - to be important moral objectives for others, when they're not that important in the grand scheme of things. Now you'll just have to find another easy visual marker for ranking people by moral superiority.

snapcaster 1y ago
I see your point but not really true. people in good shape vs. people who lost weight is pretty visible
- ben_w 1y ago
  If you're as muscular as Schwarzenegger, some people will fancy you, others will say you're ugly and unnatural because you're taking steroids. On weight, France (amongst others) had to ban extremely low BMI models*, which implies that people are very happy to look at — and desire to have — dangerous body forms. * https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32174364 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32174364
  - arp242 1y ago
    The "stick figure" fashion models have been widely ridiculed for as long as I can remember, since the 90s. It mostly seems confined to the fashion industry: models outside of that tend to be thin, but not as extremely so. I'm not really clued up on that world to know why this is the case.
    - macintux 1y ago
      I remember the phrase "heroin chic" from that era.
      - throwaway2037 1y ago
        Gisele Bündchen is one of the most famous runway models in the world. Surely, her BMI is below 18. (If you look at unstaged photos of her, she is so unbelievably thin. No one would think a relative who looked like that was healthy.) I am pretty sure that is the "legal" limit in France. How do they work around it? Does she never walk the runways in Paris?

Starlevel004 1y ago

It's a lot easier to be less sedentary when your knees aren't carrying 1.5x their rated weight and you don't become 50% sweat by mass after an hour.

twodave 1y ago
It’s not about what’s easy. This is what the OP is talking about. Anyone who is in shape over a certain age pretty much has to wake up and choose the hard thing most days. Whether it’s bunions, old (or recent) injuries, GI problems, arthritis, inflammation—movement is good for all of these things. I know this from personal experience. If I stop moving for a few weeks it is very painful to get back into the groove. I’m currently dealing with some kind of lower GI problem that is affecting my energy and causing a lot of discomfort. I have foot problems, a messed up rotator cuff, etc. But if you just keep showing up and putting in the effort (and most of all, not comparing yourself to anyone else, even your past self), the results will come.
- kazinator 1y ago
  Losing fat through exercise requires a high volume; excess weight will really put extra stresses on those injuries and other problems. If people have some shortcut toward reducing their weight so they can exercise more easily (rather than looking at it as the complete quick fix), it may not be a bad idea.
  - twodave 1y ago
    I don’t disagree there. And I was probably a bit aggressive with my take really. Not all healthy choices are hard ones, and exercise alone isn’t enough. Actually the hardest thing for me (and I have and continue to deal with addiction first-hand) is getting out of the mental ruts I’ve put myself in. I can choose not to eat poorly and to go exercise today, but if it’s just will-power and not a mindset change then it’s not going to be sustainable.
thefz 1y ago
You can get very thin without moving a muscle and by diet alone.

ZekeSulastin 1y ago

Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs. I also hope there’s no long term worse side effects, but I agree with pjc50 in that most of the negative reaction is actually about feeling morally superior.

RankingMember 1y ago
I agree, it's moralizing. The dependence on pharma is a real concern, particularly in a country (US obv) where they've got us all by the balls, but it's no less/more a problem here than for any other ailment requiring maintenance meds. We're still learning how the American diet and other environmental factors can literally change peoples' metabolism and it makes complete sense to me to treat the symptoms if we have the means to do so.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  It’s a peptide like insulin. It’s made through recombinant DNA which can be done with desktop bioreactors, it doesn’t take a whole industry to make this stuff.
thefz 1y ago
> Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs. Most disesases are not self inflicted. Obesity is
- triceratops 1y ago
  If obesity is 100% self inflicted, the fast food, snack food, and ancillary advertising industries should pack up and go home. They obviously do nothing. Instead we have a system where these companies are allowed, even encouraged to make food that's terrible for you taste amazing, and market the shit out of it to increase shareholder value. But when they succeed at their jobs it's because you, the individual, fucked up. Well which one is it? Both can't be true.

turnsout 1y ago

Yes, this is exactly why the pharma industry unironically refers to GLP-1 as a "miracle drug." The miracle is that it's expensive, it works, and people don't need to change their behavior. And as soon as you stop taking it, it stops working. It's perfect (for capitalism).

r00fus 1y ago

Most programs that rely on GLP-1 meds also stress that lifestyle changes are needed to not only really lose weight, but also to keep that weight change once you stop taking the medication (or go to a maintenance dosage). I'm taking the meds right now - what the medication allows me to understand is that without changing your sleep, exercise and diet, I simply won't be very successful even while on the meds.

CyberDildonics 1y ago

You don't have to be "of two minds" about it, you can just let people do whatever they want. If you want to feel superior for losing weight without drugs, you can do too.

ridgeguy 1y ago

I started on Zepbound March 1. The food noise is gone. I'm no longer distracted by intrusive thoughts around food/hunger, which after a lifetime of enduring such, is wonderful. The strongest behavioral effect is that I no longer snack at all, a lifetime habit pre-March. That's resulted in ongoing weight reduction, ~9kg so far. That, in turn, has encouraged me to increase my activity levels a lot. Offered as an anecdatum in which this drug is driving me away from the sedentary tarpit, rather than towards it. YMMV, of course.