Honestly don’t understand it. Feels like a lack of discipline. I was 250. Plugged in a bunch of numbers into an app and it gave me a calorie count per day. I brought a scale with me everywhere, used ChatGPT to guesstimate calories, I added 50% for good measure. A year later I’m 175. You can’t do this even with drugs you’re gonna get fat anyway.

I’m most curious about someone like me vs someone who lost the same amount on glp1 with respect to these stats

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AussieWog93 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'll bite!

A decade or so ago, when I was still in uni, I managed to get similar results naturally too - ~100kg down to ~65kg in around 18-24 months just by eating healthy and exercising more.

I put back all of that weight and then some during the COVID pandemic (I'm in Melbourne, Australia - we had the worst lockdowns on planet Earth) and this time struggled for years to lose it until trying GLP-1 drugs a few months back.

For me, what made it harder the second time around wasn't so much of a difference in discipline skills (if anything, they've improved) but the fact that there was so much more going on in my life - young family constantly getting sick, small business that started struggling, relationship/social issues, health issues (sleep apnoea) etc. etc.

I'd get on the weight loss train, lose a couple of kilos, then the whole family would get sick with the flu and I'd put it all back on again while recovering. Or maybe I'd be forced to shift my focus to the business so that we could keep the lights on. Or any number of things.

I guess my point is that it's not difficult to lose weight naturally (or any self-improvement, really) in and on itself, but it's completely different ballgame when you're fighting a war on 6 different fronts. Having one of those problems simply just disappear through GLP-1 drugs genuinely feels like a miracle.

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rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We know that GLP1s have benefits that are disproportionate with just weight loss, so someone who is otherwise like you in terms of weight loss would probably have better cardiovascular markers.

Probably the biggest difference, though, is that an average "you" will be back at original weight, plus a little, in about a year, while the average GLP1 user will (assuming they keep taking it) be the same weight, or even a bit lighter.

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renewiltord 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Everything is discipline. If you just always do the thing you’re supposed to you will win at life. People can’t always do the thing they’re supposed to so they supplement with drugs that help them do it: caffeine, amphetamine, SSRIs, GLP-1RAs and related drugs.

In fact, everything is discipline. If you were disciplined enough to always put the basketball in the net from anywhere on the court you’d be Steph Curry. The thing is most people don’t have that kind of discipline. Someone runs up to them and puts their hand up in the air? They shoot wide or balk. Curry shoots true. Discipline.

Just always do the right thing and never do the wrong thing and you’ll be fine at literally everything.

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amazingamazing 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Some things require talent like your examples, weight loss does not imho. The disparities in obesity and culture within country says it all.

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cthalupa 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The ability to be disciplined about eating is also a talent.

Or do you think that somehow genetics don't play one of the largest roles in your ability to be disciplined when it comes to food?

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amazingamazing 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you can be disciplined about taking a drug you can about food. How do you explain correlations in obesity across cultures? Genetic superiority? Again, imho just making excuses for laziness. The same logic you’re applying here also applies to even taking the drug and picking up refills from the mail…

Also look at obesity rates across time within the same country. It’s clearly not an issue of discipline, it’s an issue of what’s being eaten.

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cthalupa 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why in the world do you think that taking a once a week injection requires even remotely similar levels of discipline to dealing with daily hunger and food noise? There's like, a dozen orders of magnitude in between. This is a silly argument.

> How do you explain correlations in obesity across cultures? Genetic superiority?

Every developed nation in the world except Japan has been seeing obesity and overweight rates rising at significant rates, including countries that have fairly similar cultures, such as Korea. You also see people move to America and stay in relatively isolated pockets of their culture and still gain weight.

So no. It's a matter of access to hyper palatable calorie dense food. The more of it around, the more likely people are to get fat. The fatter you get, the more of a feedback loop you end up in for a wide variety of known and relatively well understood mechanisms. GLP-1s help short circuit that feedback loop.

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amazingamazing 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's a matter of access to hyper palatable calorie dense food. The more of it around, the more likely people are to get fat.

Now there’s something we agree on. If only we could agree that no one is stuffing cheeseburgers down people’s throat other than themselves. So close.

Once the shame around disgusting fattening food has reached a critical mass the problem will solve it self.

Ironically the excuses you make for them only worsen the issue. If fat people and the food they ate were appropriate shamed they both would cease.

FYI in Japan fat people are ruthlessly bullied. Fat people are rare. Food for thought, pun intended.

Stop tolerated junk.

	▲	cthalupa an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Now there’s something we agree on. If only we could agree that no one is stuffing cheeseburgers down people’s throat other than themselves. So close. No one is saying that it is forced. What I am saying is that your sense of moral superiority for the fact you aren't is misplaced. Let's give you an anecdote: Up until 18 or so, I was a stick. I went from being a stick to getting into powerlifting. I spent the first chunk of my 20s with a pretty great physique. Then as I had more and more responsibilities in life, I had less and less bandwidth to apply to things like cooking, exercise, etc. I slowly lost muscle mass. I slowly gained fat. I had never had food noise when I was skinny - I had never compulsively felt the need to eat, regardless of hunger. I had never had food just constantly occupy my brain. After my slow descent into obesity, something fundamental about my relationship with food had changed. When my stress was lower and I was skinny or later fit, staying that way was easy. It didn't require great mental fortitude, massive discipline, any of that. And when I got fat, it wasn't because I was craving food - it was because I had shit to do and couldn't take the time to cook. Or because I was going outwith friends or my SO and eating out was a huge part of my social life. When I looked at myself and decided I had to change, I though I just needed to stop doing those things. Stop going out, force myself to take the time to cook and let other things fall on the backburner, etc. Except now I thought about and craved food in a way I never had before. I went from thinking exactly the same as you to realizing 'Oh shit. This wasn't as simple as I thought it was.' I lost weight plenty of times. Significant weight - not just a few lb, but 30+. Multiple times. And then I'd get busy at work, I'd have family members going through problems and need help, I'd have a rough patch with an SO - as soon as my mental bandwidth got divided, the weight loss stopped and regain started. Even if an individual is just always able to resist, it's almost entirely based on their genetics. If you want to feel superior because of something you had no control over, I guess that's your perogative. > Once the shame around disgusting fattening food has reached a critical mass the problem will solve it self. I think shame is a useful human emotion. We evolved it for a reason. But we also know that it has limits and that once those are reached more shame on top, it becomes counter productive. > Ironically the excuses you make for them only worsen the issue. If fat people and the food they ate were appropriate shamed they both would cease. No. Fat people experience plenty of shame, and for a huge amount of them, it only worsens the problem. Once you shame a person too much - once you make it about them and not about the action - they start to feel that they are unable to make a change because they have less worth than those people that can, and often end up losing even more control in their relationship with food or whatever else they are being shamed about. > FYI in Japan fat people are ruthlessly bullied. Fat people are rare. Food for thought, pun intended. This is not universally true - it is highly regional, though the most populated portion of Japan is definitely an area where this is largely the case. But even in areas where this is not the case, they still have significantly lower obesity rates. Osaka and Hokkaido are significantly more laid back about it than the Tokyo area, for example, but they still have relatively flat obesity rates. Basically every fat person in the developed world receives more than the maximum effective dose of shame over their body and it hasn't made them stop being fat.

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renewiltord 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You just have to be disciplined to always shoot accurately at the basket. Most people send it one way or the other but if you are disciplined enough in your aim at the basket no matter the constraints you will be the best basketballer of all time.