Part of me wonders if I should be on ozempic since I have a family history of several of the issues it's reported to help with.
Another part of me wonders if all the ozempic headlines I've seen over the past few months are just an incredibly effective and well orchestrated ad campaign.
It's possible, but I don't think it would be necessary. I know multiple people who have lost weight on it, and it sells itself.
After years of talking about the overweight epidemic, there's now medication that solves it. It's impossible not to talk about, whether your angle is "too good to be true" or "amazing step forward for humanity" It's ripe journalism bait and if a journalist decides to investigate they are going to write an article. Even if they don't find anything of value.
The symptoms you are describing are indicative of a subtle and well orchestrated ad campaign. You start seeing a lot of news articles about [commercial product]. You start hearing a lot of seemingly grassroots talk about [commercial product]. [Commercial product] is touted as miraculous and too good to be true. You start thinking maybe you need [commercial product]...
Ask your doctor, you may be suffering from acute advertisement-induced judgment impairment.
There's a growing industry of telehealth providers which exist only to write semaglutide (Ozempic) prescriptions after a brief video chat. I think some of them are linked to compounding pharmacies. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them are astroturfing online forums for marketing.
I'm not saying there's not a lot of hype here, but unlike crpyto, this is actually solving problems. I'm not going to get into a discussion about willpower and calories and all that, but GLP-1 drugs do effectively cause weight loss. That is bound to be big business.
I'm not surprised. Unless some really drastic long-term negative effects come up, I think these drugs are going to end up as popular as caffeine or acetaminophen.
To me the simple fact that millions of people kept telling us "being fat is OK and healthy" changed their mind over night now that they have a seemingly silver bullet is a big problem. That and the fact that 90% of fat/obese people could have fixed themselves with a bit of hard work and self control. What's the point of life if you're not able to control such basic things as what you ingest or how much you exercise, are you just at the complete mercy of McDonald's and Novo Nordisk. Having autonomy on your own body is such a basic thing, if you don't control that you control absolutely nothing
If it works for them and has 0 negative health effect, good for them, but philosophically it opens up a lot of questions
You assume that is all about hard work, self control and iron will. I can assure you that it is not, in many cases. Two days after the first shot I realized that if this is how people feel normally two things are crystal clear. One, obesity can be clearly an illness, or medical condition, that can not be cured by willpower alone. Two, if something is easy as drinking a glass of water for you, you can be a real dick about it without even realizing it if you have no idea how others can experience it
I realized after my first increase from the starting dosage that the feeling I used to call "full" was what most people call "not too hungry", and I'd been genuinely satiated 4 or 5 times in the past decade at best.
For some it's not as simple as calories in / calories out.
I stopped taking tirzepatide in September after losing 60lbs. Except for a blip at Christmas I am eating the same things and same amounts that I was during the weight loss with glp1 and I am steadily putting on weight, there is definitely something else going on and yet for the 20+ previous years where I've struggled to lose weight I've been told that I'm just not counting calories right.
As you said the first time I felt really full was on these drugs, and the lack of food noise - which is slowly returning but not as quickly as I thought - was wonderous.
On the one hand, you probably aren't counting calories right.
On the other hand, studies have shown that almost nobody can count calories right, so it's probably useless to try and rely on outside of basic order-of-magnitude kind of things.
> What's the point of life if you're not able to control such basic things as what you ingest or how much you exercise
Perhaps they're just depressed and obesity is part of a vicious cycle of seeking comfort in food and feeling bad about themselves afterwards?
Every one of the BMI 40+ people that I've met had unresolved issues. Sometimes it makes them say things which are difficult to understand from a healthy person's point of view.
The implication being most overweight people are lazy and impulsive. This is totally broken, there are factors that make some people more inclined to put in weight and what these drugs demonstrate is that our environment of unlimited and manufactured food breaks the normal mechanisms keeping people in a healthy weight. These drugs aren't a magic bullet, what you're able to do on them is exercise the control that many people who don't struggle with their weight can do every day.
The questions you posit have an easy answer: you’re wrong and you’re creating a false narrative.
No one is saying that being overweight is healthy. Most of those social campaigns were saying that we shouldn’t shame people for their body.
Also, plenty of studies have shown that weight control isn’t as simple as self control. Different people have different bodies that react differently, and plenty of people have other conditions that limit their ability to control weight.
Gaining weight is easy, and losing it is hard. The body evolved to treat a caloric deficit as literally painful. And losing significant weight requires months or years of deficit, which is months or years of pain. That’s tough to overcome with “a little bit of hard work and self control”.
Anecdotally, I’m a perfect example of this. I used to be a runner, and thin. Then I got sick, and my BMI doubled in months. It’s taken at least a year to undo months of illness. I can’t imagine what someone with chronic illness, or even more weight must go through. I live in a city and walk instead of drive, but not everyone has that lifestyle and it’s not a easy thing to change (“why don’t you just move a long way away to an expensive place and sell your car”). Of course, you should not require someone to do everything just right on paper for their views to be valid. Plenty of people struggle with the motivation, time, or finances to make healthy decisions, and those people are real and should be supported too.
It’s been studied and proven ad nauseam that food can be addictive and that addictions aren’t a matter of “self control” the way people want it to be.
That link goes great lengths to not shame people for their weight and not shame them for a number while also being crystal clear that you have worse outcomes from obesity. Some key quotes:
> Yes, you can be overweight and metabolically healthy. At the same time, we know that obesity is a disease that affects the body in many different ways. Thirteen types of cancer and 200 other health conditions are related to obesity.
> Those numbers [weight on the scale] directly correlate to life expectancy.
Also note, metabolic health doesn't mean "will live a happy and long life with good statistical outcomes for other areas". It mostly means things like "you're not anemic, not diabetic, you have acceptable cholesterol, etc." it doesn't mean "your knees will be fine as you age" nor does it mean "you are at a similar likelihood to develop cancer as someone who is not overweight". It's a pretty narrow definition that's focused on the hyper-immediate.
I hope these people will come to the realisation that being skinny doesn't necessary mean being healthy, and that they basically traded a life long addiction to food for a life long dependance to a drug.
Sure but if you didn't care about putting the work while being fat why would you care about putting the work now that you're skinny, especially now that you're skinny while providing 0 effort. The mindset is the same, maybe even worse because it perpetuate the idea that modern medicine will fix you up no matter how much you fuck up
Because a bunch of activities which help you remain healthy are easier when you're skinny. Jogging, hiking, and bouldering are all things I enjoy, but are very hard on my joints because I'm overweight: I'm looking forward to doing them more after I lose weight with GLP-1s, which might help prevent a rebound.
Swimming and biking, especially indoor, are super easy on the body and unless you're fat enough to qualify for the 1930s world biggest man on earth it should be doable.
Sure, but I don't like those: I like running, hiking, and bouldering. I don't subscribe to an ethical system where it's better to do things you hate just for the sake of avoiding a GLP-1 agonist; I'd rather take the GLP-1 agonist and do the things I like.
Because it's a lot less work! I still have to schedule my workouts and find time to make healthy meals, but I no longer have to schedule my meals and social calendar around when I get too hungry to function.
Correlation is not automatically causation, but it does imply a link. That is why you have to have to look into the many, many studies which have given evidence for a causative link.
But how do we deal with the fact that, up until recently, to only consistent way to lose weight and defeat obesity was to actually acquire healthier habits (in terms of e.g. food and physical activity)? Can we assume that taking a shortcut and becoming thinner by taking medicine will also lead to these benefits?
Whats so wrong with taking a medication to fix that addiction? A lot of people need fat people around in order to feel better about themselves, so they shit on Ozempic. Your downvotes are peoples protest of this attitude.
A skinny person is far more likely to be healthier than an obese person.
I have a secret that I use to keep myself healthy because I watched as most everyone else in my family struggled with obesity and its related health issues.
But your comment reminds me of the times I overhear the ladies in the office trash-talking another coworker who decided to lose weight and become healthier. I've honest to god heard morbidly obese coworkers try to justify their size and claim that they are in fact healthier than our skinny coworkers.
I promise I’m not trying to sound like a jackass. But I’ve been told that my secret is offensive to some people.
But it’s the same secret I’ve used to quit all of the bad habits in my life and also pivot from a ~20 year career in manual labor to a successful software engineering career.
I'm trying to take you at your word that you aren't trying to be a jackass, but I'm honestly having a really hard time reading this another way so I'll ask:
Are you saying that overweight people lack self-respect?
It is a somewhat laconic presentation, but what I take Hollywood to mean is that hen values hens future self more than hens current impulses, and applies constant vigilance to succeed at it.
It gets somewhat preachy to promote that one should practice delayed gratification instead of YOLO.
I took a GLP-1 (Mounjaro) for a couple months then stopped. It wasn't all GLP-1 that did the work. I had to track my foods in my Vida app that my workplace pays for and I started walking 10k steps a day. In three months, my triglyceride count dropped from 340 to 92. My cholesterol is totally normal. My A1C went from 5.4 to 5.0. I stopped taking it in October but because I kept up with a diet that is less than 1900 calories a day that is high in fiber and protein, I continue to lose weight.
I am not diabetic and not insulin resistant so that totally helped.
My sleep apnea and IBS has been virtually eliminated altogether.
I do know other people who are on the medicine but haven't taken the proactive approaches like I did to properly track their food and incorporate exercise. So they'll never fully realize the weight loss benefits until that changes or they'll continue to take the GLP-1.
You are being downvoted for thinking that this isnt something people have already thought about or take lightly. You made several absolutes in a comment with a length of one sentence without providing any evidence and just assume these are settled facts that we all know and agree on. Also, a "life long dependency" doesn't really seem to apply to everyone.
Even if it were, many people would happily trade addiction for a dependency.
"Hey buddy, looks like you can use some help. I have a medicine here that can help you live longer with a better quality of life, and a boost to self-esteem but its gonna require a subscription."
Is it silly to think many people would not enter this non-binding agreement that can be stopped at any time?
"Dependence" simply doesn't mean "routinely taking this drug improves my quality of life". It means that your body comes to rely on the drug for normal functioning and if you try to quit you'll be worse off than if you'd never taken it at all. I'm not aware of any evidence that this happens for GLP-1 agonists; from what I've heard, people who stop taking them just return to their normal appetites.
> One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss
> Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health.
You need a complete change of mindset, of routine, of relationship with food, of relationship with your body. If you keep everything the same as soon as you stop the treatment it's game over. And if you manage to change all of these things you don't need the treatment to begin with. We treated my father in law, by explaining him about calories, exercise, &c. He lost 40kg in a few years and will never gain them back, because he isn't relying on any magic pills.
Check reddit, it's full of people stopping ozempic and telling how they gained it all back and couldn't stop
> My Endo halved my dose recently and I gained 10lbs in about 3 weeks on a half dose despite no changes in my food intake.
> About 10 days after my last dose, I suddenly became voracious. It was like my hunger came back with an insane vengeance and I physically couldn’t stop myself from overeating.
> I've been off Ozempic 2 weeks and yes the appetite came back
> You need a complete change of mindset, of routine, of relationship with food, of relationship with your body. If you keep everything the same as soon as you stop the treatment it's game over. And if you manage to change all of these things you don't need the treatment to begin with. We treated my father in law, by explaining him about calories, exercise, &c. He lost 40kg in a few years and will never gain them back, because he isn't relying on any magic pills.
What the treatment does is enable me to change all of these things. I don't let food control me because I no longer get extremely cranky when I haven't eaten in 8 hours. I eat a balanced healthy diet because feeding my hunger no longer requires 1000 calories of carbs. I listen to my body because the voices saying "drink some water" and "get up and stretch" are no longer drowned out by a troll demanding that I go eat 3 cookies right this second.
Let’s just ignore the controversial things like cholesterol.
Your knees are significantly more likely to work well into old age if you’re active, but not constantly supporting excess weight. Talk to any orthopedic doctor and they will tell you weight loss makes your lower body joints much healthier in old age. Not to mention the natural increase in activity people experience when they are lighter and walking is less of a chore.
Having healthy lower body joints makes you much less of a fall risk.
Being less of a fall risk extends your lifespan quite a bit once you’re around 60-70.
Being overweight is one of the most objectively bad for you things out there, but it’s a shame we all share (75% of Americans are overweight and way even higher you look at people old enough to be doctors).
The entire point of this article is now that it is something treatable through medical science, people who understand the major health downsides of being overweight are treating themselves.
> The entire point of this article is now that it is something treatable through medical science,
Yeah I don't buy it. The dude in the pic went from slightly chubby to thin as fuck, nothing prevented him from updating his diet, especially as a doctor
Of course the result overall is better, all I'm saying is that it's far from a magic pill if you keep everything else the same
You are being downvoted because the therapeutic use of these drugs doesn’t involve life long use. It’s expected and common to transition off of them once an immediate result is achieved.
> One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss
> Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health
It's certainly too early to see if this class of drugs extends lifespan, but it does improve numerous biomarkers that are associated with longer lifespan. And a longer functional lifespan as well.
I agree, which is why most people aren't just taking the drug. They're using the drug to help improve overall health, from better eating, reduced obesity related issues (joints/sleep/metabolism) and are able to start getting healthier. It's not a magic bullet, but it's a significant leg up.
You would expect more from The New York Times. The article lacks depth in exploring potential downsides, broader accessibility, and possible conflicts of interest. It feels somewhat like an infomercial for the drugs rather than an objective piece of investigative reporting.
The potential long term effects of tinkering with the endocrine system just leave me too uneasy to give it a try as an otherwise healthy young person with a few pounds to lose. Good for diabetics and the morbidly obese, but the whole craze is just too much. Feels like Ephedra all over again.
This is a fine take, there's absolutely reason to not want to screw with one's body without cause. If youre 65 and obese though, probably its worth the risk rather than die within 10 years pf a heart attack
I hope this drug is safe for all the people consuming it.
That said, as someone who prefers to stay fit the hard way (exercise, sleep and balanced diet) I would never take a drug to stay in shape or for that matter anything else that could be mitigated by lifestyle changes. About 11 years ago I was prescribed hypertension medication, I never went to the pharmacy to pick them up, instead I reduced my weight, started meditation and improved my cardio exercises and my hypertension is under control now. I know eventually I might need the drug (hereditary) but I will delay it as much as humanly possible.
To each their own, but you ought to meditate on how much of this "purity test" is just your own psychology looking for a way to feel better than others. If people start getting healthier/fitter from meds than "the hard way" would you be mad? What about people who lift every day and take steroids, they're in the same category as Ozempic patients right?
Your comment is typical of those I see on these new weight loss drugs.
Not everyone can control their health issues through lifestyle changes alone. I successfully controlled hypertension with an hour a day of running but that's just not sustainable and I barely controlled it anyway. As I reached 50, my genetics and age caught up with me. My father and all my siblings take drugs for hypertension and now I do too.
Similarly, my wife, who I've known since we were teenagers, fought her weight as long as we've been together. No amount of weight watchers, calorie counting, eating well and exercise allowed her to maintain a healthy weight. It's also exhausting being hungry all the time and fighting against your increasing weight. About two years ago she started Wagovy for legitimate health reasons. It's changed her life. She still exercises, eats well, and counts calories. What the Wagovy has enabled is for it not to be a constant battle with herself. She's not hungry all the time now maintaining a healthy weight.
Unless you've really fought these battles, you don't know what other people are going through.
This is tangential, but the fact there are a significant number of physicians with lifestyle diseases is testament to the idea that our food culture/industry is broken. As doctors they're probably not impoverished, ignorant, or even lazy. So the fact they also struggle to keep a healthy weight suggests maybe the food that's readily available is a big part of the problem.
This is my (mostly uninformed) belief. Living in Asia, I learned that what I thought of as full in the US is stuffed. There, I would eat a tasty meal at a reasonable pace, and get up feeling neutral to full. Here, I eat in kind of a ravenous rush in which I overeat before I realize it.
My guess is that it's the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in Western food.
It might not even be Western but US specific. I’ve heard a similar story of somebody having the same diet in the US and in EU but got weight in the US while staying the same in EU.
I might be the naive in the room by saying no it's not all western food like that. At least not here, or at least not in any restaurants I've been. But I'm not in the US and also don't go to fast food restaurants, so yeah might be wrong.
Gee the whole article reads like the latest South Park episode on weight loss drugs and then “…navigate the medical system…” got me out of nowhere.
Was watching some comedy specials lately and looking into the crowd it’s quick to realise what a blessing these working weight loss drugs are for the US.
I read 15% weight loss in 18 months, 0.83% per month. Starting at 120 kg that is about 1 kg per month. Works out to about 1 dollar per gram at 1000 $/month.
running 8 km (or 5 miles) a day, you can lose 1 kg in 2 weeks. 110km/kg or 0.11 km/g or 110 m/$ or 0.9 cent per meter.
Many overweight people simply cannot run that far even if they wanted to.
In fact it is one of the insidious things that gaining weight forms a vicious feedback loop.
Also, often enough when people start exercising to lose weight they overcompensate by eating more and getting even more weight.
Finally, the "diet and exercise" advice is clearly misleading as paid for by the sugar council. For almost everybody, our weight is dominated by what we consume. Some people can get out of this by exercising a lot, multiple hours a day, without getting injured or overcompensating, but that is not enough people to matter compared to the diet pushed on people.
The first step to making America healthy again would be to criminalize adding sugar to food-like substances
> In fact it is one of the insidious things that gaining weight forms a vicious feedback loop.
You get enormous muscles form all that weight and burn a lot more.
> Also, often enough when people start exercising to lose weight they overcompensate by eating more and getting even more weight.
Don't worry about it. The goal is health. You should eat more or you get sluggish, weak, fail to recover, get injuries and quit.
> Finally, the "diet and exercise" advice is clearly misleading as paid for by the sugar council. For almost everybody, our weight is dominated by what we consume.
Agreed, it's a pretty dumb abstraction.
The funny thing tho is that at some point in the training the lack of consumption becomes a problem. Some marathon runners and some bodybuilders require 4500 kcal per day. Long before that people are trying to eat uncomfortable amounts of food. Good food of course, not random trash.
Fat people already have enormous muscles and a trained digestive system. Switching to jacked isn't far away. If you grab a random 90 kg fit guy from the gym and put a 50 kg backpack on him his "running" wont be anywhere near that of a 140 kg couch potato.
> Some people can get out of this by exercising a lot, multiple hours a day, without getting injured or overcompensating, but that is not enough people to matter compared to the diet pushed on people.
I actually think that if you go all out on the exercise bike for 8-15 seconds and do a single 1r max deadlift per day people will be very surprised what happens. It is dramatically more than not doing anything. No cheating, it has to be all out on the bike and if you can lift it twice put more weight on it. Put the bar and the bike in the middle of the living room as an internal conversation piece.
I think one will find that the internal protest starts around 10 seconds per day not hours.
Come on, 8 km would kill the people you are talking about. They would be breathless after 500 m and walk back and that would be all.
Getting to these 8 km is a rough journey for someone who is overweight and their food intake is the first reason for their problems. Lack of sport is rather the effect.
It is like saying that simply building the CERN accelerator will give you a PhD.
8km really isn’t too bad. Millions of people do the 8 week couch2 5k program, once you’re at 5km/half hour, scaling to 8km is easy, like a couple more weeks tops.
Also, running (rather, jogging) isn’t terrible aerobically taxing, if you can’t keep up a convo, you’re running too hard.
Once you’re used to running, it’s an insanely efficient way to create a calorie deficit. Not the most glamorous exercise, but cheap, easy, requires no significant equipment and most all, incredibly time efficient.
I'm not suggesting anything, just comparing the cost. You don't start with 8 km on the first day nor do you need to stop there. It is just a convenient way to do a crude calculation.
1 kg worth of body fat is about 7700 kcal or 7.7 kcal per gram. One m&m is about 3 kcal, if you run 35 meters for each m&m you can eat the whole bag :) You don't have to eat the whole bag.
If you gradually build up to 8 km/day it isn't very likely to kill you. 1000 dollar/month however... If 110 km in two weeks takes more than 2 hours/day you aren't really jogging. 28 hours in two weeks is $35.72 per hour.
That is a Gift Jar in Snowflake Gift Tube per hour!
I cannot figure out where I come down on Ozempic (not that my opinion matters to anyone else and not like anyone asked me).
On one hand I couple probably benefit from it. I'm about 80-100lbs over where I'd like to be but I recently lost 50lb (so I was 130-150lbs away before) without any drugs (and I have lost weight in the past successfully and kept it off until I got lazy). I think it comes from a combo of "If I don't need to rely on something I'd rather not" and "It feels like cheating". Digging into both those ideas comes up rather... empty. Neither are great reasons and so I keep mulling over "should I try it?".
The only thing I'm fairly certain on is this: These are not meant to be "forever drugs" but many people will/do treat them as such. My understanding (which could be flawed) is this is a "3-12mo"-type thing. I really don't know how many people are using Ozempic and friends as "This is going to help me get on track" and "Look at this magical drug that makes me lose weight", I fear it's largely the second group.
Ozempic != Wegovy. While both are semaglutide, Wegovy is the therapeutic dosage for weight loss while Ozempic is the dosage to control type 2 diabetes. One is covered by Medicare, and the other is not because somehow being morbidly obese is a "choice".
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[ 18.9 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadAnother part of me wonders if all the ozempic headlines I've seen over the past few months are just an incredibly effective and well orchestrated ad campaign.
After years of talking about the overweight epidemic, there's now medication that solves it. It's impossible not to talk about, whether your angle is "too good to be true" or "amazing step forward for humanity" It's ripe journalism bait and if a journalist decides to investigate they are going to write an article. Even if they don't find anything of value.
Ask your doctor, you may be suffering from acute advertisement-induced judgment impairment.
If it works for them and has 0 negative health effect, good for them, but philosophically it opens up a lot of questions
I stopped taking tirzepatide in September after losing 60lbs. Except for a blip at Christmas I am eating the same things and same amounts that I was during the weight loss with glp1 and I am steadily putting on weight, there is definitely something else going on and yet for the 20+ previous years where I've struggled to lose weight I've been told that I'm just not counting calories right.
As you said the first time I felt really full was on these drugs, and the lack of food noise - which is slowly returning but not as quickly as I thought - was wonderous.
On the other hand, studies have shown that almost nobody can count calories right, so it's probably useless to try and rely on outside of basic order-of-magnitude kind of things.
Perhaps they're just depressed and obesity is part of a vicious cycle of seeking comfort in food and feeling bad about themselves afterwards?
Every one of the BMI 40+ people that I've met had unresolved issues. Sometimes it makes them say things which are difficult to understand from a healthy person's point of view.
No one is saying that being overweight is healthy. Most of those social campaigns were saying that we shouldn’t shame people for their body.
Also, plenty of studies have shown that weight control isn’t as simple as self control. Different people have different bodies that react differently, and plenty of people have other conditions that limit their ability to control weight.
Gaining weight is easy, and losing it is hard. The body evolved to treat a caloric deficit as literally painful. And losing significant weight requires months or years of deficit, which is months or years of pain. That’s tough to overcome with “a little bit of hard work and self control”.
Anecdotally, I’m a perfect example of this. I used to be a runner, and thin. Then I got sick, and my BMI doubled in months. It’s taken at least a year to undo months of illness. I can’t imagine what someone with chronic illness, or even more weight must go through. I live in a city and walk instead of drive, but not everyone has that lifestyle and it’s not a easy thing to change (“why don’t you just move a long way away to an expensive place and sell your car”). Of course, you should not require someone to do everything just right on paper for their views to be valid. Plenty of people struggle with the motivation, time, or finances to make healthy decisions, and those people are real and should be supported too.
It’s been studied and proven ad nauseam that food can be addictive and that addictions aren’t a matter of “self control” the way people want it to be.
Uh...
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/health-and-wellne...
> Yes, you can be overweight and metabolically healthy. At the same time, we know that obesity is a disease that affects the body in many different ways. Thirteen types of cancer and 200 other health conditions are related to obesity.
> Those numbers [weight on the scale] directly correlate to life expectancy.
Also note, metabolic health doesn't mean "will live a happy and long life with good statistical outcomes for other areas". It mostly means things like "you're not anemic, not diabetic, you have acceptable cholesterol, etc." it doesn't mean "your knees will be fine as you age" nor does it mean "you are at a similar likelihood to develop cancer as someone who is not overweight". It's a pretty narrow definition that's focused on the hyper-immediate.
It is amusing in some way that that doesn't get as much press as all the weight loss and prettification.
(1) https://www.drugs.com/sfx/ozempic-side-effects.html scroll down to serious side effects and note it leaves a very serious side effect https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/ozempic-cause-muscle-l...
https://www.drugs.com/sfx/aspirin-side-effects.html
ps: feel free to explain your downvotes
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-manageme...
Note that the list of diseases in that article includes every single one of the leading non-injury causes of death:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm
(partially excluding cancer, and excluding flu, which does have a higher mortality among obese patients)
I have a secret that I use to keep myself healthy because I watched as most everyone else in my family struggled with obesity and its related health issues.
But your comment reminds me of the times I overhear the ladies in the office trash-talking another coworker who decided to lose weight and become healthier. I've honest to god heard morbidly obese coworkers try to justify their size and claim that they are in fact healthier than our skinny coworkers.
Whats your secret?
My secret is “self respect.”
That’s all I used.
Are you saying that overweight people lack self-respect?
It gets somewhat preachy to promote that one should practice delayed gratification instead of YOLO.
I am not diabetic and not insulin resistant so that totally helped.
My sleep apnea and IBS has been virtually eliminated altogether.
I do know other people who are on the medicine but haven't taken the proactive approaches like I did to properly track their food and incorporate exercise. So they'll never fully realize the weight loss benefits until that changes or they'll continue to take the GLP-1.
Former weight = 255 lb
Current weight = 212 lb
Goal weight = 185 lb
Even if it were, many people would happily trade addiction for a dependency.
"Hey buddy, looks like you can use some help. I have a medicine here that can help you live longer with a better quality of life, and a boost to self-esteem but its gonna require a subscription."
Is it silly to think many people would not enter this non-binding agreement that can be stopped at any time?
Yeah, the same one that made them obese... if their normal appetite was fine they wouldn't have a problem to begin with
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35441470/
> One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss
> Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health.
You need a complete change of mindset, of routine, of relationship with food, of relationship with your body. If you keep everything the same as soon as you stop the treatment it's game over. And if you manage to change all of these things you don't need the treatment to begin with. We treated my father in law, by explaining him about calories, exercise, &c. He lost 40kg in a few years and will never gain them back, because he isn't relying on any magic pills.
Check reddit, it's full of people stopping ozempic and telling how they gained it all back and couldn't stop
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ozempic/comments/15lgnnc/i_now_unde...
> My Endo halved my dose recently and I gained 10lbs in about 3 weeks on a half dose despite no changes in my food intake.
> About 10 days after my last dose, I suddenly became voracious. It was like my hunger came back with an insane vengeance and I physically couldn’t stop myself from overeating.
> I've been off Ozempic 2 weeks and yes the appetite came back
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ozempic/comments/1h49urx/weight_gai...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ozempic/comments/1g1xa8l/rebound_we...
What the treatment does is enable me to change all of these things. I don't let food control me because I no longer get extremely cranky when I haven't eaten in 8 hours. I eat a balanced healthy diet because feeding my hunger no longer requires 1000 calories of carbs. I listen to my body because the voices saying "drink some water" and "get up and stretch" are no longer drowned out by a troll demanding that I go eat 3 cookies right this second.
Your knees are significantly more likely to work well into old age if you’re active, but not constantly supporting excess weight. Talk to any orthopedic doctor and they will tell you weight loss makes your lower body joints much healthier in old age. Not to mention the natural increase in activity people experience when they are lighter and walking is less of a chore.
Having healthy lower body joints makes you much less of a fall risk.
Being less of a fall risk extends your lifespan quite a bit once you’re around 60-70.
Being overweight is one of the most objectively bad for you things out there, but it’s a shame we all share (75% of Americans are overweight and way even higher you look at people old enough to be doctors).
The entire point of this article is now that it is something treatable through medical science, people who understand the major health downsides of being overweight are treating themselves.
Yeah I don't buy it. The dude in the pic went from slightly chubby to thin as fuck, nothing prevented him from updating his diet, especially as a doctor
Of course the result overall is better, all I'm saying is that it's far from a magic pill if you keep everything else the same
> One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss
> Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health
I think diabetes doesn’t have a max treatment recommendation because most of the other interventions choices are also long term.
Yes, people will probably have to bounce on and off them, but that's not the same as a lifelong addiction.
Not sure what your beef is, they work, they're helping millions get healthier and live longer.
The doctors are accomplished and astute.
That said, as someone who prefers to stay fit the hard way (exercise, sleep and balanced diet) I would never take a drug to stay in shape or for that matter anything else that could be mitigated by lifestyle changes. About 11 years ago I was prescribed hypertension medication, I never went to the pharmacy to pick them up, instead I reduced my weight, started meditation and improved my cardio exercises and my hypertension is under control now. I know eventually I might need the drug (hereditary) but I will delay it as much as humanly possible.
To each their own I guess.
Not everyone can control their health issues through lifestyle changes alone. I successfully controlled hypertension with an hour a day of running but that's just not sustainable and I barely controlled it anyway. As I reached 50, my genetics and age caught up with me. My father and all my siblings take drugs for hypertension and now I do too.
Similarly, my wife, who I've known since we were teenagers, fought her weight as long as we've been together. No amount of weight watchers, calorie counting, eating well and exercise allowed her to maintain a healthy weight. It's also exhausting being hungry all the time and fighting against your increasing weight. About two years ago she started Wagovy for legitimate health reasons. It's changed her life. She still exercises, eats well, and counts calories. What the Wagovy has enabled is for it not to be a constant battle with herself. She's not hungry all the time now maintaining a healthy weight.
Unless you've really fought these battles, you don't know what other people are going through.
My guess is that it's the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in Western food.
Was watching some comedy specials lately and looking into the crowd it’s quick to realise what a blessing these working weight loss drugs are for the US.
running 8 km (or 5 miles) a day, you can lose 1 kg in 2 weeks. 110km/kg or 0.11 km/g or 110 m/$ or 0.9 cent per meter.
In fact it is one of the insidious things that gaining weight forms a vicious feedback loop.
Also, often enough when people start exercising to lose weight they overcompensate by eating more and getting even more weight.
Finally, the "diet and exercise" advice is clearly misleading as paid for by the sugar council. For almost everybody, our weight is dominated by what we consume. Some people can get out of this by exercising a lot, multiple hours a day, without getting injured or overcompensating, but that is not enough people to matter compared to the diet pushed on people.
The first step to making America healthy again would be to criminalize adding sugar to food-like substances
> Many overweight people simply cannot run that far even if they wanted to.
If that is what their doctor says.
https://thewiredrunner.com/running-when-you-are-overweight-h...
> In fact it is one of the insidious things that gaining weight forms a vicious feedback loop.
You get enormous muscles form all that weight and burn a lot more.
> Also, often enough when people start exercising to lose weight they overcompensate by eating more and getting even more weight.
Don't worry about it. The goal is health. You should eat more or you get sluggish, weak, fail to recover, get injuries and quit.
> Finally, the "diet and exercise" advice is clearly misleading as paid for by the sugar council. For almost everybody, our weight is dominated by what we consume.
Agreed, it's a pretty dumb abstraction.
The funny thing tho is that at some point in the training the lack of consumption becomes a problem. Some marathon runners and some bodybuilders require 4500 kcal per day. Long before that people are trying to eat uncomfortable amounts of food. Good food of course, not random trash.
Fat people already have enormous muscles and a trained digestive system. Switching to jacked isn't far away. If you grab a random 90 kg fit guy from the gym and put a 50 kg backpack on him his "running" wont be anywhere near that of a 140 kg couch potato.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/94xlCEJaVeg
Ill message him and ask him to run... haha....
> Some people can get out of this by exercising a lot, multiple hours a day, without getting injured or overcompensating, but that is not enough people to matter compared to the diet pushed on people.
I actually think that if you go all out on the exercise bike for 8-15 seconds and do a single 1r max deadlift per day people will be very surprised what happens. It is dramatically more than not doing anything. No cheating, it has to be all out on the bike and if you can lift it twice put more weight on it. Put the bar and the bike in the middle of the living room as an internal conversation piece.
I think one will find that the internal protest starts around 10 seconds per day not hours.
Getting to these 8 km is a rough journey for someone who is overweight and their food intake is the first reason for their problems. Lack of sport is rather the effect.
It is like saying that simply building the CERN accelerator will give you a PhD.
Also, running (rather, jogging) isn’t terrible aerobically taxing, if you can’t keep up a convo, you’re running too hard.
Once you’re used to running, it’s an insanely efficient way to create a calorie deficit. Not the most glamorous exercise, but cheap, easy, requires no significant equipment and most all, incredibly time efficient.
1 kg worth of body fat is about 7700 kcal or 7.7 kcal per gram. One m&m is about 3 kcal, if you run 35 meters for each m&m you can eat the whole bag :) You don't have to eat the whole bag.
If you gradually build up to 8 km/day it isn't very likely to kill you. 1000 dollar/month however... If 110 km in two weeks takes more than 2 hours/day you aren't really jogging. 28 hours in two weeks is $35.72 per hour.
That is a Gift Jar in Snowflake Gift Tube per hour!
https://www.mms.com/en-us/gifts/gift-jar-in-snowflake-gift-t...
On one hand I couple probably benefit from it. I'm about 80-100lbs over where I'd like to be but I recently lost 50lb (so I was 130-150lbs away before) without any drugs (and I have lost weight in the past successfully and kept it off until I got lazy). I think it comes from a combo of "If I don't need to rely on something I'd rather not" and "It feels like cheating". Digging into both those ideas comes up rather... empty. Neither are great reasons and so I keep mulling over "should I try it?".
The only thing I'm fairly certain on is this: These are not meant to be "forever drugs" but many people will/do treat them as such. My understanding (which could be flawed) is this is a "3-12mo"-type thing. I really don't know how many people are using Ozempic and friends as "This is going to help me get on track" and "Look at this magical drug that makes me lose weight", I fear it's largely the second group.