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How long til we're all on Ozempic?

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Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#271

Post by Uehreka »

farceSpherule wrote: post #237

A lot of people fail to realize that eating healthy and exercising is not enough for a lot of people who fight with their weight their entire lives. Ozempic and Wegovy are game changes and have real, tangible health benefits. One person told me, "No matter how much I eat or exercise, I have been 'hungry' my entire life. That ended when I started taking these drugs."

I gained about 50 pounds the past decade and the past year I’ve been trying to lose it.

I weighed myself at the beginning: 205 lbs

I started running 30 minutes per day (heartrate training targeting about 140-150), every day, for 10 months. I kept my diet the same as before (though with a protein bar after the run). Weighed myself every week or two, always within a couple pounds of 205.

In March I ramped up my runs to 45 minutes per day with better interval planning. Still 205. I injured my ankle in May: 205. I’ve been busy and haven’t gotten back into running yet, just weighed myself, and after months of no activity: 205

Weight loss is hard. It is possible to put in a pretty strenuous amount of effort and willpower and see exactly zero results.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#272

Post by diggan »

paulmist wrote: post #249
dfxm12 wrote: post #170

Instead of a system that makes these drug available for purchase, I'd rather live in a system that promotes healthy food and active behavior. Unfortunately, I have to drive everywhere, work too many hours to have free time for recreation and have no idea which government subsidy is going to help big ag likely at the expense of my health. All things being equal, I'd prefer to spend less money on prescriptions and have…

What is a realistic path to this? Being from Europe I visited US last year and was horrified at the quality of your food. You see a lot of documentaries/youtube videos/etc... discussing the problem, but how do you even go about this?

> but how do you even go about this?

Maybe I'm too European to understand why not, but seems to me that regulations around food and what companies are allowed to put into it is really helpful in avoiding companies from just stuffing whatever down people's throat.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#273

Post by klaussilveira »

paulmist wrote: post #249
dfxm12 wrote: post #170

Instead of a system that makes these drug available for purchase, I'd rather live in a system that promotes healthy food and active behavior. Unfortunately, I have to drive everywhere, work too many hours to have free time for recreation and have no idea which government subsidy is going to help big ag likely at the expense of my health. All things being equal, I'd prefer to spend less money on prescriptions and have…

What is a realistic path to this? Being from Europe I visited US last year and was horrified at the quality of your food. You see a lot of documentaries/youtube videos/etc... discussing the problem, but how do you even go about this?

The US is a huge country (9,833,520 square kilometers!), so I find it curious that such generalization can be made about the food available here, or even the eating habits of 334,914,895 humans. I could say that I visited Amsterdam 2 years ago and I was shocked with the quality of the food.

But I would never do that, since I mostly ate at the Red Light District, and I couldn't possibly generalize the country eating habits with stores in a major tourist area.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#275

Post by supportengineer »

logicchains wrote: post #205
djsavvy wrote: post #131

My pet crackpot theory is that within the next 100 years semaglutide is going to be in the drinking water (much like fluoride) because the benefit to society is going to be too hard to pass up on. However, it seems that it's delivered via injection so maybe putting it in the water supply wouldn't even be effective.

It's funny you say that because just now the US is starting to re-consider water fluoridation: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation... . It's also relative uncommon in other developed countries; according to Wikipedia, "Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water. Those people are in the U…

The benefits of fluoridation were amazing. I didn't have a single cavity until I was 25 and had moved away from that area to a non-fluoridated area.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#276

Post by acabal »

gcr wrote: post #229
dfxm12 wrote: post #170

Instead of a system that makes these drug available for purchase, I'd rather live in a system that promotes healthy food and active behavior. Unfortunately, I have to drive everywhere, work too many hours to have free time for recreation and have no idea which government subsidy is going to help big ag likely at the expense of my health. All things being equal, I'd prefer to spend less money on prescriptions and have…

If you have an open mind, I'd like to assign you some homework if you like. Take a look around r/zepbound and count the following: 1. Posts from folks who diet+exercise, or who have tried diet/exercise and nothing's worked so they then turned to Zepbound ("excited to hit the gym," "my diet is finally starting to work with Zepbound" and similar) 2. Posts from folks who haven't tried diet/exercise and turned to Zepboun…

The more important point the comment you're replying to makes is not "what if people could diet and exercise" - i.e. accept the modern American lifestyle as given, plus force yourself to go to the gym and eat chicken and broccoli - but rather that the modern American lifestyle in fundamentally structured to lead to people being overweight.

Instead of being forced to drive everywhere for the most basic possible human needs - like getting groceries, going to the doctor, or dropping kids off at school - as is the case in 90% of America - what if you could walk to those places instead? You would get exercise as part of your every day life, with no extra effort!

What if instead of corn syrup being so heavily subsidized, we could use more filling sweeteners in a lower amount instead? What if people lived closer to agriculture, instead of in faraway suburban tract housing only accessible by car, so they had easier access to fresh meat and vegetables, instead of ultraprocessed package food?

These dreams are not "diet and exercise", they are a fundamental reshaping of American lifestyle that would directly lead to weight loss. We know this, because America used to look like this before, say, 1940. In old photos you see people in huge crowds in streets as they walked to their everyday errands, and menus and recipes of the era are mostly minimally processed food that is mostly local. Americans of the past were not overweight, because the way society arranged its physical existence didn't permit it!

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#277

Post by sph »

steveBK123 wrote: post #160

One lurking concern I've had around this space is that junk food makers simply find a way to make their food even more addicting. Arguably though, ozempic'd customers and shrinkflation'd products would be a recipe for amazing margin improvement. And they can dress it up as doing good because its better for people, (like the 100 calorie snack packaging).

You can see that in the lab-grown burger space already: it is a massive opportunity for companies to create an ultra-processed version of meat, and label it as healthy as the public opinion has gone blindly against meat and on the vegan bandwagon. They'll claim it's more eco-friendly, they can sell it 5x the price of beef and rake billions.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#278

Post by whall6 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #170

Instead of a system that makes these drug available for purchase, I'd rather live in a system that promotes healthy food and active behavior. Unfortunately, I have to drive everywhere, work too many hours to have free time for recreation and have no idea which government subsidy is going to help big ag likely at the expense of my health. All things being equal, I'd prefer to spend less money on prescriptions and have…

[flagged]

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#279

Post by connicpu »

indiebat wrote: post #17

I don’t want this to come out insensitive or from under the rock, but why is taking a drug a novel & cool idea (all of a sudden/recently) as opposed to good old fashioned working out and not eating more than what you need? okay, this drug is all kinds of great and it’s the next best thing since green grapes, still not eating more and workout is better than taking drugs that effect your brain right? Are doctors requir…

Completely missing the point of GLP-1 agonists. The point is that it breaks the cycle by giving you the willpower to eat less. It doesn't magically make the calories you eat not contribute to your weight, it just makes it easier to eat less and still feel full. It also counteracts insulin resistance, which is another problem inherent to obesity.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#280

Post by llamaimperative »

dfxm12 wrote: post #269
gcr wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an open mind, I'd like to assign you some homework if you like. Take a look around r/zepbound and count the following: 1. Posts from folks who diet+exercise, or who have tried diet/exercise and nothing's worked so they then turned to Zepbound ("excited to hit the gym," "my diet is finally starting to work with Zepbound" and similar) 2. Posts from folks who haven't tried diet/exercise and turned to Zepboun…

I'm not sure how this applies to my comment. I'm not saying anything about self control. I'm not against individuals taking GLP-1s. But, if we're at a point where we're all on drugs to treat lifestyle diseases, we should at least recognize that these lifestyles are largely chosen for us , and we should consider that doing something about that will reap us the benefits we're after.

Those benefits and a billion more! Better state of nature, richer social fabric, probably less political polarization if people were bumping into their neighbors more frequently instead of going from drywall box to steel box back to drywall box day in and day out.
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