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‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

nature.com

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Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#511

Post by mshake2 »

2devnull wrote: post #491

“when lifestyle changes aren’t enough.” People don’t want to hear it, but we do nobody any favors by pretending this is more complicated than it is. It’s actually pretty simple. The solution is to adjust calories in vs calories out. Fast a few days a week. Cut out bread, sugar and other simple carbs. We don’t help alcoholics or opioid addicts by enabling them with statements like “when not getting drunk isn’t enough……

While I agree, you're right, nobody wants to hear it. There's no point telling people to have discipline, because discipline is not spread through strangers telling each other to have it. Someone either has the capacity to have discipline (instilled through upbringing or formative events), or they don't. These magic pills are for everyone who doesn't have discipline.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#512

Post by kasey_junk »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #498
tyleo wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing weight was extremely challenging and socially isolating. How was it socially isolating? I’m curious because I exercise and diet and this is not my experience. I understand it being challenging though.

Because if you want to lose quickly, and once you get the discipline to lose you do want it to be quick, you have to restrict your calories A LOT. I'm not OP but when I was losing, as a 6"2 male, I was eating between 1200 and 1400 calories a day. This does not allow you to eat anything outside of small meals and drink anything outside of water or diet sodas. I was still going sometimes to the restaurant with friends…

I would love to know what sort of healthy cut has a 6"2 male eating that low a calorie count. That is approaching weight class athlete cutting numbers which is near uniformly considered very bad for you.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#513

Post by tyleo »

omniglottal wrote: post #501
tyleo wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing weight was extremely challenging and socially isolating. How was it socially isolating? I’m curious because I exercise and diet and this is not my experience. I understand it being challenging though.

OP commented on a weight-loss scheme of eating every other day. Given the social attitudes around eating (which I suspect to be the #1 most common social activity), this alone has the obvious potential to eliminate ~%50 of the most likely socializing opportunities.

I agree that eating every other day would be socially isolating but OP stated he ate every other day 7 years after his original bout of weight loss which he said he did, “the old fashioned way.”

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#514

Post by anigbrowl »

kiba wrote: post #499
anigbrowl wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction. I minimize oxidative stress on my body by being selective about what I eat: having a bit less of some delicious things and eating a bit more of some boring foods that I know are good for me. Also, fuck 'longevity.' The population of the world has doubled during my lifetime and this is a Bad Thing which is wiping out vast numbers of other species. Call me misanthropic if you like but humans ar…

Also, fuck 'longevity.' The population of the world has doubled during my lifetime and this is a Bad Thing which is wiping out vast numbers of other species. More about our socioeconomic and political structure than raw population numbers. Every piece of meat, for example, require the conversion of plant matter into meat. There's going to be energy loss. If we eat more plants and less meat, we would pollute less, and…

I'm not sure that I am healthier than my parents. Some of my life/lifestyle choices have likely contributed to superior health, others have done the opposite.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#515

Post by wpietri »

Scalene2 wrote: post #382
rootusrootus wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, the first result for him on Google is a link to a YouTube video. That makes my BS meter instantly peg.

What kind of crap do you watch on YouTube that manages to taint the entire platform?

Note that they're also talking about Google search ranking. People who are actual experts in things tend to have meatier hits at the top than J Random Vlogger.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#516

Post by mclouts91 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #504
nerdawson wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a little bit of research and for people in the UK it appears to be substantially less. I found a few health companies offering it for <$250/mo. I’ll probably wait until it’s readily available on the NHS but it is tempting.

I thought the UK had government healthcare?

It does but it doesn’t mean you get any treatment available. They carefully make decisions on what treatments they can/should provide. This may be offered eventually but at the moment it’s a case of be very fat and get offered gastric sleeve or just be overweight and no treatments are offered other than advice about losing weight

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#517

Post by ajkjk »

bioemerl wrote: post #411
MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "natural weight" as used here is misleading. It does not mean that people are supposed to be a particular weight. It refers to the idea that something—whether it's diet, genetics, environmental factors, or something else—influences the body's weight regulation mechanisms to "prefer" a certain body weight, and changing that is very, very hard. Think of it like body temperature: normally, your body maintains a…

If this were true I would not expect that changes in our lifestyle would cause broad scale weight increases like they have. I'm very skeptical humans are built with an average set weight way up in the unhealthy range. Or maybe this is the case, but it is thrown off hard by our modern diets. Our natural set point is in the healthy range, but our meal is x calories per Y food now so it ends up artificially high. The ex…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_point_theory may help

> but it is thrown off hard by our modern diets.

Yes. I think the dominant theory is that it has something to do with gut microbiomes, and in particular sugar and/or artificial sweeteners screw it up pretty badly.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#519

Post by dcolkitt »

bscphil wrote: post #352
dcolkitt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern nutrition science has found that each person, at any given time, has a "metabolic setpoint". This is basically a target weight that their endocrine system is trying to keep them at. There's a feedback loop, where below this weight hunger hormones will nudge them to eat more and metabolic hormones will lower caloric expenditure (lowering body temperature, sleeping longer, fidgeting more). And vice versa above t…

> Modern nutrition science has found that each person, at any given time, has a "metabolic setpoint". This is basically a target weight that their endocrine system is trying to keep them at. Citation? This goes against everything I've heard from credentialed experts and against my own experience as well. For one thing, it's unclear how you'd explain the weight gain of the median person in the western world over the l…

Metabolic set points can and will drift over time. So if somebody starts out with a setpoint at 22 BMI, they might naturally be anywhere from 21-24 BMI at any given time. As food in the environment becomes more hyper-palatable and calorically dense, people are more likely to "settle" at the upper end of this range. Over time spending more time at the upper end of one's range will "nudge" up the setpoint gradually and continuously.

But the point is this is a slow and continuous process that occurs over years or even decades. Discontinuously making a big shift in weight, up or down, is basically impossible. Which is why despite very high rates of obesity, it's basically unheard of for someone to gain 50 lbs in a short period of time. Almost all weight gain takes the form of 5 lbs one year, 5 lbs another year, and so on.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#520

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #333
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #291

[flagged]

This is a ridiculous comment. Statistically, there is no weight loss strategy that has been found to work long term at the population level except for bariatric surgery (and now, apparently, these drugs, but we'll see how things look in a few years). Sure, one individual person can pull it off with enough willpower and support and luck. But at a population level, we know definitively that "grind it out with exercise,…

Never said I'm better. My point is that these solutions are driven by people looking for easy answers to a hard problem. I refuse to believe people need them but only want them and that may be enough for some.
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