Oh. You're not saying lifestyle choices are ineffective, you're saying telling people to make those changes is ineffective.
Yes, that I would completely agree on.
Yes, that I would completely agree on.
I think now that we actually have a solution, we can stop saying this “lifestyle choices” junk. The reality is people rarely have a true choice.
But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not doable. For the vast majority of people it is doable without any form of medication. It will be slow and uncomfortable, but doable.
I think that a prescription should be a last-resort option for people who genuinely have a condition that makes a traditional method not possible. There's a variety of reasons for that, from monetary ones to health concerns about being on something like these medications long-term.
Traditional methods are already out there and this health crisis is just getting worse each year. The average person is clearly not having success with them, and saying "if they just try harder" or putting some different spin on them hasn't done a thing to fix the trajectory of this problem in the past 30 years, so I can pretty confidently say that there is zero chance they will somehow solve this societal problem in the future.
Being significantly overweight has immense health consequences and imposes huge costs on both the individual and society. I think it's incredibly, incredibly unlikely that the costs or health risks of this medication are higher than the well-documented costs of people continuing to be significantly overweight.
And FWIW: I say this as a thin person with no trouble with my own weight.
Sure it's hard but if I ate till I couldn't regularly I'd end up several thousand calories over what my body needs for maintenance.
Struggling successfully is struggling.