991–1000 of 1001 posts
My biggest fear is either there will be long term negative consequences to Ozempic et al, and a huge swath of the population will be dealing with issues 30 years form now - OR - there will be some long term positive consequence to using Ozempic et al, and I'm not getting any of the benefits because I'm not overweight.
I've been on tirzepatide (Mounjaro) for 4 months now. I'm down 13% of my body weight. I realized that frequent cannabis consumption interferes with the weight loss, so I've kicked the habit from daily to occasionally on weekends. I've started walking 2-3 miles a day, 2-3 days a week regularly, in addition to eating less and being more motivated to calorie count. All this to say, this drug has been life changing for m…
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 day Ozempic/similar drugs become approved for weight loss under ACA/Medicare is the day I stop paying taxes.
It’ll cost less than the effects of obesity Moral hazard has never been a good reason for any sort of regulation, the same principle can be used to justify not covering motorcycle riders, people who trad climb, people who do snow sports, people who jaywalk, people who work at a desk and drive everywhere, etc etc etc
And, motorcycles require special insurance, as does high-risk recreational sports like climbing. If you drive/commute to work, thats factored into your premiums. If you get hit by a car jaywalking, that is usually on you. Those examples have nothing to do with the prospect of tax-funded anti-fat pills.
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GP isn't talking about self-control, they're talking about the fact we've created a system that requires obscene amounts of self-control if you wish to maintain physical health. People in the 50s weren't slimmer because they had ironclad determination to stay such.
In my experience fitness is less about self control or will power and more about creating routines that lead to fitness. For example, I have a routine of going to a group fitness class at my gym in the morning. I don't need to summon willpower, I just have a morning routine that involves doing x thing at y time. No thought required. Given the abundance of options for fitness classes and meal plan services, you really…
That being said - I do feel like reducing the amount of willpower needed is the key. I love junk food, but if I never buy it at a grocery store it's much easier to cut it out. If I have no chips in the house I could still get some at the corner store, but I need to be much less disciplined than if the chips were in my pantry
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You need to change your attitude if you want to lead a healthy lifestyle. Don't blame your failures and CHOICE to eat junk and not exercise on weed. You know what the healthy choices are, you know when you're not making them. You lack self control.
I don’t usually say something like this on HN, but you are completely and utterly wrong. The obesity epidemic cannot be reduced to some simple moral failure. Multiple twin concordance studies have shown 70%+ inheritability. Those of us who are fortunate enough to not struggle with obesity do so not because of some skillset that we have, but because our bodies do not maintain the same homeostasis. For those of us old…
You're the only one to bring up morality so far in this comment chain.
> Those of us who are fortunate enough to not struggle with obesity do so not because of some skillset that we have, but because our bodies do not maintain the same homeostasis.
That's just utter bullshit. Homeostasis is heavily influenced by lifestyle choices.
> But this flat-earth-like notion of reducing obesity to an issue of basic willpower needs to be recognized for the drivel it is,
No, your incessant need to convince yourself and everyone else that something as straightforward as controlling your calorie intake is in fact a complex and naturally intractable problem that requires drugs and counseling is what's flat-earth-like drivel and utter bullshit.
> If you want to educate yourself, read Posner’s Burn [1], which is firmly grounded in empirical measurements of doubly labeled water to measure true metabolic consumption.
You're cherry picking terrible studies that happen to fit the preconceived notions you desperately want to believe, because they make you feel better about being undisciplined and weak-willed. Your understanding of nutrition, exercise and health are also clearly very minimal.
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From the article " Estimates suggest GLP-1s can reduce body weight by at least 15% when taken regularly ". That's a 5'10" man starting at 250lbs (obese, BMI > 35) and finishing at 220lbs (obese, BMI >30). Or a 5'10" man starting at 220lbs (obese) and finishing at 187lbs (overweight, BMI > 26). It ain't nothing, but that's not a magic pill which will fix the obesity epidemic. And these people have skipped changing the…
I lost 100 lbs over 18 months. And, I found it much easier to change my lifestyle on a GLP-1 drug. Naturally thin people / people who don't have some environmental sensitivity are super judgy about GLP-1 drugs, and closet judgy about fat people. It's just not so simple as "lazy/poor diet/no exercise." I went from nutritionist appointments that were like "are you lying about your food intake? because if not, you have…
(I want to ask this in a non-combative way, but 3 days later I still can't. How did you know the couple of foods(?) which were bothering you, which were the problem, and your nutritionist did not know about them, and you weren't lying to the nutritionist? I can't make sense of that without also accusing you of hiding them from the nutritionist, or the nutritionist being terrible at their job).
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I run three miles a day, never drive anywhere (bike or bus), eat reasonably healthy, and I'm still 20 pounds overweight. And what really scares me is that running is the only exercise I enjoy and if my weight fluctuates up just 5 pounds or so, I start getting hip/knee/foot etc pain. If I gain 10 pounds through some lapse in morality, I won't be able to run anymore and I'm cooked. If that happens, I'm banging down my…
>I run three miles a day Which will burn somewhere on the order of 400 excess calories - about as much as a typical North American muffin (or two of the big cookies from Subway). But worse, your body was probably going to use most of those calories on something else (fidgeting, running a higher body temperature, other immune responses including inflammation) anyway, assuming that you haven't been gaining weight with…
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I would say my concerns are far more in the range of downstream effects from the medication. Specifically, I am concerned with muscle retention. Concerns aside, it's a little hard of an argument to swallow having visited many other countries where these things are simply not an issue. How can it be argued that the cause is anything other than behavior when so many others are doing just fine? There is more to this sto…
I think some of the observed muscle loss might be just burning the fat tissue embedded inside muscles (marbling).
In a “traditional” weight loss strategy, you paired calorie deficit with an increase in physical activity (cardio, resistance training, etc). This increased physical activity helped protect you from muscle loss (your body tended to recognize that muscle was important so it burned fat at a higher rate)
With ozempic, people can lose weight without changing their sedentary lifestyle. Since your muscles are not needed, your body is free to grab energy from wherever it can. In some studies, almost half of weight loss can come from lean tissue.
Is it better to for an obese person to lose weight vs not lose weight? Absolutely. But it would be even better if they also changed their lifestyle to protect their muscle mass.
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>> I scanned, weighed, and measured every single thing I put into my body Not being snarky, but is this truly "better" than a single weekly injection - 10 seconds and done for the week? I do think our wider society sees medications for overeating as "cheating". Perhaps we might benefit from rethinking that.
>is this truly "better" than a single weekly injection - 10 seconds and done for the week? Yes, obviously. I'm stunned that it needs to be said, but since it apparently does: 1. You propose taking a medication regularly which is probably completely unnecessary, and paying for it regularly. (This was worse with "metabolism boosters" etc. since the patient would be paying for the medication to have the privilege of eat…
I think "perfect is the enemy of good" applies here. People en masse are not controlling their intake. They just aren't. They can't do it. We can rage about it and criticise - and many do for all the good that's doing - or we can explore options. Medications with few side effects have some appeal here. Evolutions will likely reduce those. Eventually that will not be a strong argument against the medication option is my prediction.