| ▲ | 0xEF 5 days ago |
| Diet and exercise. It always comes back to that, yet people avoid it like the plague. The modern weight loss program you described is pushed because that's what people want; an extremely low-effort methodology that yields extremely high results. The idea that their is some silver bullet to weight loss has dominated the US health market for ages now because selling someone a pill that they don't have to do anything but swallow and be cured is really, really easy. Having gone through my own weight loss journey, I have seen first hand how attractive that is and fell for it myself twice. So have loved ones, one whom is no longer the same person because they got gastric bypass which resulted in a massive change to gut and brain chemistry, something that we seem to be just figuring out is connected. My own journey is not over, but there are no longer any medications or supplements involved, because I can say with authority that none of them work without good nutrition and physical exercise. As I realized this and just put more work into eating better and doing more activities (I did not join a gym, but started riding my bicycle more, walking neighbor's dogs, and doing body-weight exercises at home, etc, making it more integrated into my day rather than a separate event I could skip), I lost a healthy amount of weight and got stronger. It took a lot longer, of course, than what the pills promised, but that's the trick of the whole weight loss industry...and make no mistake, it is an industry. Short-term results in exchange for your money. It was never about helping people be healthier and always about myopic profits, therefore we should not be trusting any claims these companies make that their silver bullet is the correct one, finally. And yet. |
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| ▲ | jstummbillig 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The modern weight loss program you described is pushed because that's what people want; an extremely low-effort methodology that yields extremely high results. I think it's a mistake to think of it as what people want. It's what people can do. We have to acknowledge a fundamental struggle that we have with dieting and working out. Pretending it's just hard, when statistics show what is true at a societal level, will not bring us solutions. We need something else. Either that's massive societal change to i.e. approach something like the diet/workout culture you have in Japan. That's hard. Or, as with many other of our health problems that we can't just will away, it's drugs. Not believing in progress here, when drugs progress everywhere, is unnecessary. Current generations might have issues. Drugs will be better. We won't. |
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| ▲ | 0xEF 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I still disagree. Simplicity and convenience is what people not only want, but demand. And this extends beyond weight loss solutions to our modern world of ever-converging technologies creating ever-complex systems under the guise of efficiency. Multiple cultures have supported these values since the times of snake-oil salesmen, which did not exactly vanish with history, as we so often forget. Look at products like Optavia, Xenedrine, etc. It keeps happening because the market wills it to, but not without good reason. It is perfectly rational to want something to be easy, especially now as our modern lives are inundated with a tremendous amount of stressors and tasks we must constantly attend to. So yes, we wish for convenience, but it is not the solution we always need. | | |
| ▲ | jstummbillig 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > Simplicity and convenience is what people not only want, but demand. Hmm, that is not my experience generally. People will take insanely ineffective routes if that is what the system pushes them toward, without taking much offense. For example, on the topic of health/weight loss: Weight Watchers or yoga classes are huge industries while also being insanely elaborate and expensive ways of eating better and moving your body. I agree with you that, for example, drugs are currently not a solution to these problems. But what I propose is: they are going to be. And they had better be because there is no other effective solution poised to work at a societal scale. We just can’t help ourselves. “Just eat the salad and walk every day” simply did not do the trick. We tried. While it works on a mechanistic level, of course, it does not work in practice. Blaming people for their inability to fight their nature is just inhumane and not how we usually progress: we fix reality for ourselves. While it is not impossible to design a society that is healthier (see: Japan), it’s at such odds with our current culture, and societal change is slow. We should certainly get to work on this decades-long project, but we should also treat this like any other health issue that costs billions of life-years and find a more effective intervention. | | |
| ▲ | autoexec 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Blaming people for their inability to fight their nature is just inhumane It'd be nice if people didn't have to fight their nature. Our society demands we act in ways that are unhealthy and unnatural. We're forced to sit in chairs 8+ hours a day from very young ages. Children have teachers making sure they stay in their seats, and workers have supervisors enforcing inactivity either in person or using webcams and software. Companies like Amazon insist that their employees piss in bottles or wear diapers because leaving their workstation, even to use a bathroom, will get them fired. The demands of our daily lives and the design of our environments keep us from living the way we've evolved to live and it's normal and should be expected that many people will struggle with that reality more than others. Either our society and environment needs to change, or our biology and chemistry need to change. Turns out, it's easier to change ourselves than it is to change the massive systems designed by greed and exploitation that we're forced to live in. We'll adapt. Today it's with drugs. Tomorrow it may be genetic manipulation. | |
| ▲ | s1artibartfast 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think some people feel strongly about this issue because it seems like giving up on societal change, which IS necessary for many reasons besides just weight. Even if GLP-1 drugs are safe and long term effective for body fat, they are still a band-aid for a deeper problem. The deeper problem is that people feel and express less and less agency and control over their personal lives. This manifests in many forms, such as depression, anger, cynicism, addiction, loneliness, and personal stagnation. Weight loss will do little to improve these measures while the average American watches 4 hours of TV and is devoid of community. Im hopeful that these drugs can give people a toehold to tackle these deeper issues, and try to emphasize that they are not a panacea. People are a product of society, and society is a product of people. If we want to live better people will have to change too. |
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| ▲ | NovemberWhiskey 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don’t think anyone is disputing that changes to diet and exercise are required. Based on people who I know have been taking these drugs, they make it much easier to reduce calorie intake by promoting satiety. That’s the benefit. Doing the rest of your life while you feel hungry is not fun, and willpower is not infinite. |
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| ▲ | 1234letshaveatw 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't know it is always avoidance when it comes to diet and exercise. I think oftentimes it comes down to overscheduling. I like to exercise, I like to eat healthy. Those two are oftentimes the first things on my chopping block when I am hurried |
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| ▲ | in_a_hole 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How has the gastric bypass affected this person? It would not have occurred to me that the brain would be affected. |
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| ▲ | 0xEF 5 days ago | parent [-] | | We were surprised, too. Their personality changed to be a lot more aggressive and they started compulsively lying, then stealing things from stores, and some strange draw toward self-harm and getting "corrective" surgeries. Previously, this person was typically pleasant, if not a little outspoken at times. There is suspicion that they had a pre-existing mental health issue they were hiding, and the very fast changes that happened in their body triggered it to either manifest or get worse. We are left guessing because they refuse to see any doctors that won't just write prescriptions for meds or minor elective surgeries, now. These days, more and more evidence is piling up about the gut-brain connection, but no conclusions are being drawn quite yet. Though, from my own experience, it is not difficult to convince me that one certainly impacts the other. | | |
| ▲ | in_a_hole 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm sorry to hear that happened to someone close to you, thank you for sharing. |
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