This is an absurd claim. Skinny and fat isn't an indication of whether a person experiences hunger.

If GLP-1 blockers work for people then great, but it does so by making them uninterested in eating, meaning all those years of people being demonized for saying obesity is, in some meaningful part, a lack of will power and self control were indeed right. If it was either of those, and instead obesity is a purely genetic condition, appetite suppression wouldn't help.

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Viliam1234 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It is not necessarily either-or.

What if staying skinny requires willpower... but the genetics determine whether little willpower is enough, or you need astronomical amounts of willpower?

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_heimdall 2 days ago | parent [-]

We may be talking about different issues. If a pharmaceutical intervention drastically reducing hunger allows a person to low weight, it confirms that the issue was eating too much.

That isn't a moral judgement or a knock against the person, we all have issues we struggle with.

That makes no statement over a measurement of willpower required though, and I don't know of any research linking dietary willpower to genetics. That link could exist, but if it does I don't think we have found it yet and that argument hinges on pharmaceuticals being able to overpower genetics, which is a bold claim.

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Viliam1234 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Of course if you eat less and less, at some moment you stop gaining weight. The question is what else also happens to you.

Before physiological harm, such as losing your muscles and ultimately your heart muscles, there will be psychological harm, when your hunger prevents you from thinking clearly, so you may become e.g. unable to hold your job.

I am saying this because sometimes "just eat less" is a technically correct answer to losing weight, and yet...

(And the pill breaks the link between the amount of food and how the person feels about it.)

	▲	_heimdall 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh I 100% agree. I think people may be making a mistake taking an appetite suppressant and watching pounds drop thinking it means they're healthy. The question rarely asked in modern medicine is why a symptom is present. Doctors and patients almost entirely focus on how to get rid of the symptom, in this case dropping lbs without first understanding why the weight is there. I equate GLP-1s to simply eating less because my understanding of the mechanism is that is all it does, make a person uninterested, and even in some cases unable, to eat more.

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idiotsecant 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Whew, lots of moralizing to unpack here.

	▲	_heimdall 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Where do morals come into this thread? Obestity isn't a moral question, neither is self-control. I specifically didn't say people with self control issues specific to diet are bad people for it, or lazy, or whatever you may be reading into it. Everyone has shit they deal with, that's expected not a reason to ostracize a person. My point remains, if GLP-1 blockers help a person lose weight they haven't been able to lose then great, I hope it leaves them healthier and happier. And also, the fact that a diet suppressant did the trick makes it pretty clear a lack of self control was at play since the fix was finding a way to eat less.