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It's great because we had no other way to address this problem at a population level. Not any realistic ones, anyway. Like, I figured we were just never going

It's great because we had no other way to address this problem at a population level. Not any realistic ones, anyway. Like, I figured we were just never going to solve it, given the two possibilities were "radically re-engineer US culture such that moving to the US doesn't make previously-skinny people fatter" (with other countries heading the same direction as us needing to make similar moves, one supposes) or "find a miracle drug". Neither seemed likely. Turns out, decent odds we've managed the latter! Which was always the more likely of the two, but I still wouldn't have rated it as very likely.

throwawaylaptop 1y ago
I helped my dad lose 50 lbs by finally, after 10 years, getting him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes. It took buying him 2 months of a bluetooth glucose monitor. Once he saw what certain foods do, he believed me finally. At 65 years old, healthier than I remember since he was 40 and I was a teen. It doesn't require some weird injection.
- XorNot 1y ago
  No but its a lot easier for people who've had trouble and gets results, which is all that matters.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    Heroine would also help them lose weight also. Maybe cocaine too, but I'm not sure. So it's not "all that matters". What matters is, are the negative side effects and long term consequences better for you than the alternatives. One of them is "remaining fat". The other is "doing what other people have proven works.. cut all carbs".
    - KPGv2 1y ago
      You are showing your own ass with this ridiculous analogy. What are the negative effects of ozempic? Because the negative effects of heroin (not "heroine") and cocaine are well known and grossly outweigh "not being fat." Is ozempic worse than being fat?
      - Thlom 1y ago
        From people I know that have used Ozempic/Wegovy, the side effects are basically that they get a bit nauseated a few hours after an injection. That's it.
- radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
  There's anecdotes, and there's science. Individually, there's (previously) been nothing better to suggest than "try harder (and, maybe, smarter)". Statistically it was almost useless, but it's the best we had. It's not bad advice exactly, it's just extremely unlikely to work for long-term, sustained weight loss. It also very much appears to be the case that weight gain and loss are heavily influenced by environmental factors. Skinnier countries aren't skinnier because the people there have more willpower, it seems, but because they live in a skinnier country and are surrounded by the culture, laws, physical layouts of the created world, et c., that come with that. It'd be kinda weird if we expected "just try harder" to work very well when that's evidently not the mechanism by which skinny countries are skinny. Alternatively, if it is willpower doing it, we're just adding a step, because then it appears that environment strongly influences willpower, instead, since the same observations hold. Sure, sometimes it works for individuals. In fact, it often works temporarily, causing a yo-yo effect. It can work for long periods (many years without a slip) but that's rare. If your solution to the obesity crisis is "people need to try harder" your solution is demonstrably not helpful. Can it work for one person? Yes. Over a population, will it? No, it won't, it's amazingly ineffective, even very expensive high-touch interventions involving multiple experts aimed at weight loss and lifestyle change and such are wildly less effective than "inject GLP-1 agonists" or "move somewhere skinnier".
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
      Run a study of your approach and show good results over a cohort for 2+ years and you'll make an entire sub-field of medical scientists very happy. [EDIT] It's not that your approach can't work, it's that if (for example) people had as hard a time following the directions for condoms as they do following diet & workout plans, we'd never allow condoms to be sold as contraceptives, they'd not even be close to being OK to promote as useful for that purpose. It wouldn't matter if a few people could follow the directions and it worked 100% of the time for them.
- tuesdaynight 1y ago
  Just scale that solution to millions of people and the comparison will be relevant.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    If you told millions of people that bread, sugar, pasta and bread are basically killing them, and to flat out stop eating them.. you probably would help people lose weight (and save many lives too). My dad has finally understood that grains are for people that need help maintain weight or gaining weight. No fat person should ever be eating them.
    - parineum 1y ago
      If I told you billions of people eat bread, sugar and pasta and it wasn't "basically killing them" (whatever that means)... It's strange to make the culprit of a modern epidemic foods that have been with us for millenia.
      - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
        Billions of people were not overweight when they ate those things. They did not eat them 3+ times a day. I said in my other posts.. if someone needs help maintaining or gaining weight, eat those things. If you are overweight, you should be eating ZERO of them. "Basically killing them" means whatever the current obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic means.
        sarchertech 1y ago
        You don’t think people ate carbs 3 times a day in the past? The majority of humans for the majority of recorded history have eaten some kind of bread, rice, potatoes, porridge, or corn with the majority of their meals.
        ses1984 1y ago
        Also in the majority of recorded history being fat was a sign of wealth. I don't think the majority of humans had a surplus of carbs available to overeat them. It's not that carby foods are inherently bad, there's just something bad about the way they fit into modern society, for some people.
- stavros 1y ago
  I helped my dad lose 50 lbs by finally, after 10 years, getting him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes. It took buying him 2 months of Ozempic. Once he saw what stopping the cravings for certain foods can do, he believed me finally. At 65 years old, healthier than I remember since he was 40 and I was a teen. It doesn't require some weird bionic arm implant.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    Lol, a glucose monitor is a bionic arm implant (for $200 total), and an injection disrupting your entire hormone system is what then?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - stavros 1y ago
      A ridiculous claim.
  - siva7 1y ago
    I would love to do the same for my dad but i have no idea how to get these stuff.
- op00to 1y ago
  > some weird injection What’s weird about it? Is insulin some weird injection? What about epinephrine?
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    Yes, if you don't need it because there is a natural method that starts fixing your problem in the first week (like cutting all carbs does for being fat), then injecting insulin for your easily fixable problem would also be up there with injecting weird stuff into yourself.
    - KPGv2 1y ago
      > if you don't need it It seems like a lot of people need something other than "don't eat bread" though.
- 42772827 1y ago
  He could have lost all that weight and still had bread, sugar, and potatoes but instead he gave up what he clearly enjoyed. Now he gets to live out the rest of his life fighting cravings, telling himself he's not allowed to enjoy food. How utterly sad.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    Believe me, cutting out bread and sugar completely is 10x easier than some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled for it already for most of his life. And he is extremely happy with his new sugar and bread free life of increased mobility, less pain, and much lower blood pressure. At 64, he's learning how to ride a dirtbike and doing pretty well at it.
    - 42772827 1y ago
      The choice is no longer between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled." The choice is now between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "removing the struggle to moderate bread and sugar." You're clearly an advocate for your father making healthy choices. So why would you advocate against the use of a drug that makes that easier?
      - nradov 1y ago
        Why waste money and risk side effects for a drug that's not actually needed? Changing your habits is much easier.
        42772827 1y ago
        If changing habits were much easier, then people wouldn't be using the drug to make it easier change their habits. They would just do it.
        tirant 1y ago
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  I think its great you helped your dad lose weight but what is your issue with others choosing a different path? The health benefits of losing weight are massive . Why is it important to you that they do it how you want them to do it? Study after study has sung the praises of GLP-1s. It appears that your major issue is that you are simply angry people are taking a short cut. Which seems odd, why would it bother you how someone lost weight, why not just be happy for them? I got on GLP1s in January. I went from 6'1 240lb to 209lbs with defined abs benching 405lbs at 46 years old. I've worked out my entire life but never been lean like this. I like eating bread (steak, eggs, toast, ketchup and hot sauce is perhaps the single greatest breakfast in the history of the world. The toast is very important!) and potatoes are freaking incredible (mashed with Worcestershire sauce... bruv). The bulk of my calories are protein but I generally eat what I want if I desire it. I just desire less of it. I had a roast beef sub from Jersey Mike's today with my kid, it was delicious. Their honey mustard is the bee's knees. I had a medium sub though and not a large. The only change is now I essentially don't eat after 6pm. I just set that goal and the GLP-1 helped me keep it. The only side effects I have had is lower cholesterol and lower BP and that is while running 700mg of test. I'm going to hop on metformin next month after this cycle and target eliminating the fatty liver markers I have had for the last 20 years. They work friend, they are good for you and they make people live happier healthier lives. Embrace better living through chemistry.
- iwsk 1y ago
  It took you 10 years to get him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes? This approach would be hard to scale.
- minznerjosh 1y ago
  I find it odd you included potatoes in the list of foods to give up. Boiled potatoes in particular rank at the very top of the satiety index[1], meaning they keep you full longer with less calories than other food (likely due to a combo of high water and fiber content.) I recently lost a modest 10 lbs and mashed potatoes (even with some added butter and milk) were a staple of my diet—keeping me from feeling hungry even at a calorie deficit. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/
mensetmanusman 1y ago
It does solve itself due to natural selection based on fertility rate effect of being obesity prone. Life finds a way.
astrange 1y ago
> Like, I figured we were just never going to solve it, given the two possibilities were "radically re-engineer US culture such that moving to the US doesn't make previously-skinny people fatter" (with other countries heading the same direction as us needing to make similar moves, one supposes) Moving to higher elevations in the US causes people to become less fat, so you can do this by moving to Colorado. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093493 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
lm28469 1y ago
It's not like we tried very hard... our whole system is designed around instant gratification, comfort, consumerism and low cost feel good food.
skeezyboy 1y ago
> It's great because we had no other way to address this problem at a population level. Not any realistic ones, anyway. um, go out and exercise? compared to your ancestors from a century ago, you live a relative life of luxury. THIS IS WHY YOU ARE FAT. Too much food in, not enough burning calories. So simple. Im sure there are people who are clinically fat, broken metabolism, but there are tens of millions of obese in the USA alone, are they all metabollically disabled? I doubt it
- radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
  Yep, overeating (and, to some degree, not enough moving around) is the reason. True. But “just personally do better” doesn’t work very well when applied as a medical intervention (they have tried, and checked, over and over, a hundred different ways), even with lots of follow-up and monitoring, and it also doesn’t appear to be how other countries manage to be skinnier than the US. Between those two things, it really doesn’t look like a viable way to solve the obesity crisis—it doesn’t work when we try it, and it doesn’t seem to be what’s working anywhere else.
- desert_rue 1y ago
  It has more to do with the American food supply than anything else. The obesity rate skyrocketed as we started to consume food-like substances instead of food. Strip out all the signals that let the body know it has enough, and it is easier to overeat.

throwawaylaptop 1y ago

I helped my dad lose 50 lbs by finally, after 10 years, getting him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes. It took buying him 2 months of a bluetooth glucose monitor. Once he saw what certain foods do, he believed me finally. At 65 years old, healthier than I remember since he was 40 and I was a teen. It doesn't require some weird injection.

XorNot 1y ago
No but its a lot easier for people who've had trouble and gets results, which is all that matters.
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Heroine would also help them lose weight also. Maybe cocaine too, but I'm not sure. So it's not "all that matters". What matters is, are the negative side effects and long term consequences better for you than the alternatives. One of them is "remaining fat". The other is "doing what other people have proven works.. cut all carbs".
  - KPGv2 1y ago
    You are showing your own ass with this ridiculous analogy. What are the negative effects of ozempic? Because the negative effects of heroin (not "heroine") and cocaine are well known and grossly outweigh "not being fat." Is ozempic worse than being fat?
    - Thlom 1y ago
      From people I know that have used Ozempic/Wegovy, the side effects are basically that they get a bit nauseated a few hours after an injection. That's it.
radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
There's anecdotes, and there's science. Individually, there's (previously) been nothing better to suggest than "try harder (and, maybe, smarter)". Statistically it was almost useless, but it's the best we had. It's not bad advice exactly, it's just extremely unlikely to work for long-term, sustained weight loss. It also very much appears to be the case that weight gain and loss are heavily influenced by environmental factors. Skinnier countries aren't skinnier because the people there have more willpower, it seems, but because they live in a skinnier country and are surrounded by the culture, laws, physical layouts of the created world, et c., that come with that. It'd be kinda weird if we expected "just try harder" to work very well when that's evidently not the mechanism by which skinny countries are skinny. Alternatively, if it is willpower doing it, we're just adding a step, because then it appears that environment strongly influences willpower, instead, since the same observations hold. Sure, sometimes it works for individuals. In fact, it often works temporarily, causing a yo-yo effect. It can work for long periods (many years without a slip) but that's rare. If your solution to the obesity crisis is "people need to try harder" your solution is demonstrably not helpful. Can it work for one person? Yes. Over a population, will it? No, it won't, it's amazingly ineffective, even very expensive high-touch interventions involving multiple experts aimed at weight loss and lifestyle change and such are wildly less effective than "inject GLP-1 agonists" or "move somewhere skinnier".
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
    Run a study of your approach and show good results over a cohort for 2+ years and you'll make an entire sub-field of medical scientists very happy. [EDIT] It's not that your approach can't work, it's that if (for example) people had as hard a time following the directions for condoms as they do following diet & workout plans, we'd never allow condoms to be sold as contraceptives, they'd not even be close to being OK to promote as useful for that purpose. It wouldn't matter if a few people could follow the directions and it worked 100% of the time for them.
tuesdaynight 1y ago
Just scale that solution to millions of people and the comparison will be relevant.
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  If you told millions of people that bread, sugar, pasta and bread are basically killing them, and to flat out stop eating them.. you probably would help people lose weight (and save many lives too). My dad has finally understood that grains are for people that need help maintain weight or gaining weight. No fat person should ever be eating them.
  - parineum 1y ago
    If I told you billions of people eat bread, sugar and pasta and it wasn't "basically killing them" (whatever that means)... It's strange to make the culprit of a modern epidemic foods that have been with us for millenia.
    - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
      Billions of people were not overweight when they ate those things. They did not eat them 3+ times a day. I said in my other posts.. if someone needs help maintaining or gaining weight, eat those things. If you are overweight, you should be eating ZERO of them. "Basically killing them" means whatever the current obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic means.
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        You don’t think people ate carbs 3 times a day in the past? The majority of humans for the majority of recorded history have eaten some kind of bread, rice, potatoes, porridge, or corn with the majority of their meals.
        ses1984 1y ago
        Also in the majority of recorded history being fat was a sign of wealth. I don't think the majority of humans had a surplus of carbs available to overeat them. It's not that carby foods are inherently bad, there's just something bad about the way they fit into modern society, for some people.
stavros 1y ago
I helped my dad lose 50 lbs by finally, after 10 years, getting him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes. It took buying him 2 months of Ozempic. Once he saw what stopping the cravings for certain foods can do, he believed me finally. At 65 years old, healthier than I remember since he was 40 and I was a teen. It doesn't require some weird bionic arm implant.
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Lol, a glucose monitor is a bionic arm implant (for $200 total), and an injection disrupting your entire hormone system is what then?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - stavros 1y ago
    A ridiculous claim.
- siva7 1y ago
  I would love to do the same for my dad but i have no idea how to get these stuff.
op00to 1y ago
> some weird injection What’s weird about it? Is insulin some weird injection? What about epinephrine?
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Yes, if you don't need it because there is a natural method that starts fixing your problem in the first week (like cutting all carbs does for being fat), then injecting insulin for your easily fixable problem would also be up there with injecting weird stuff into yourself.
  - KPGv2 1y ago
    > if you don't need it It seems like a lot of people need something other than "don't eat bread" though.
42772827 1y ago
He could have lost all that weight and still had bread, sugar, and potatoes but instead he gave up what he clearly enjoyed. Now he gets to live out the rest of his life fighting cravings, telling himself he's not allowed to enjoy food. How utterly sad.
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Believe me, cutting out bread and sugar completely is 10x easier than some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled for it already for most of his life. And he is extremely happy with his new sugar and bread free life of increased mobility, less pain, and much lower blood pressure. At 64, he's learning how to ride a dirtbike and doing pretty well at it.
  - 42772827 1y ago
    The choice is no longer between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled." The choice is now between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "removing the struggle to moderate bread and sugar." You're clearly an advocate for your father making healthy choices. So why would you advocate against the use of a drug that makes that easier?
    - nradov 1y ago
      Why waste money and risk side effects for a drug that's not actually needed? Changing your habits is much easier.
      - 42772827 1y ago
        If changing habits were much easier, then people wouldn't be using the drug to make it easier change their habits. They would just do it.
        tirant 1y ago
wonderwonder 1y ago
I think its great you helped your dad lose weight but what is your issue with others choosing a different path? The health benefits of losing weight are massive . Why is it important to you that they do it how you want them to do it? Study after study has sung the praises of GLP-1s. It appears that your major issue is that you are simply angry people are taking a short cut. Which seems odd, why would it bother you how someone lost weight, why not just be happy for them? I got on GLP1s in January. I went from 6'1 240lb to 209lbs with defined abs benching 405lbs at 46 years old. I've worked out my entire life but never been lean like this. I like eating bread (steak, eggs, toast, ketchup and hot sauce is perhaps the single greatest breakfast in the history of the world. The toast is very important!) and potatoes are freaking incredible (mashed with Worcestershire sauce... bruv). The bulk of my calories are protein but I generally eat what I want if I desire it. I just desire less of it. I had a roast beef sub from Jersey Mike's today with my kid, it was delicious. Their honey mustard is the bee's knees. I had a medium sub though and not a large. The only change is now I essentially don't eat after 6pm. I just set that goal and the GLP-1 helped me keep it. The only side effects I have had is lower cholesterol and lower BP and that is while running 700mg of test. I'm going to hop on metformin next month after this cycle and target eliminating the fatty liver markers I have had for the last 20 years. They work friend, they are good for you and they make people live happier healthier lives. Embrace better living through chemistry.
iwsk 1y ago
It took you 10 years to get him to give up bread, sugar, potatoes? This approach would be hard to scale.
minznerjosh 1y ago
I find it odd you included potatoes in the list of foods to give up. Boiled potatoes in particular rank at the very top of the satiety index[1], meaning they keep you full longer with less calories than other food (likely due to a combo of high water and fiber content.) I recently lost a modest 10 lbs and mashed potatoes (even with some added butter and milk) were a staple of my diet—keeping me from feeling hungry even at a calorie deficit. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/

mensetmanusman 1y ago

It does solve itself due to natural selection based on fertility rate effect of being obesity prone. Life finds a way.

astrange 1y ago

> Like, I figured we were just never going to solve it, given the two possibilities were "radically re-engineer US culture such that moving to the US doesn't make previously-skinny people fatter" (with other countries heading the same direction as us needing to make similar moves, one supposes) Moving to higher elevations in the US causes people to become less fat, so you can do this by moving to Colorado. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093493 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

lm28469 1y ago

It's not like we tried very hard... our whole system is designed around instant gratification, comfort, consumerism and low cost feel good food.

skeezyboy 1y ago

> It's great because we had no other way to address this problem at a population level. Not any realistic ones, anyway. um, go out and exercise? compared to your ancestors from a century ago, you live a relative life of luxury. THIS IS WHY YOU ARE FAT. Too much food in, not enough burning calories. So simple. Im sure there are people who are clinically fat, broken metabolism, but there are tens of millions of obese in the USA alone, are they all metabollically disabled? I doubt it

radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
Yep, overeating (and, to some degree, not enough moving around) is the reason. True. But “just personally do better” doesn’t work very well when applied as a medical intervention (they have tried, and checked, over and over, a hundred different ways), even with lots of follow-up and monitoring, and it also doesn’t appear to be how other countries manage to be skinnier than the US. Between those two things, it really doesn’t look like a viable way to solve the obesity crisis—it doesn’t work when we try it, and it doesn’t seem to be what’s working anywhere else.
desert_rue 1y ago
It has more to do with the American food supply than anything else. The obesity rate skyrocketed as we started to consume food-like substances instead of food. Strip out all the signals that let the body know it has enough, and it is easier to overeat.