Cheap, effective interventions like this are incredible for our future populace.
I want to point out, I disagree with the HAES people, you are not healthy at every size.. you're going to have some people who are more healthy than others regardless of some amount of weight... But not obesity, not that size.
Companies selling $500-$1,000/mo drugs to counteract the garbage food and "food products" other companies are producing and marketing to us.
But now, through farming technologies, food has never been more abundant. Yes we've saved people from dying of famine, but then the corn producers grew so much more corn that were beyond America's daily dietary need, they then could use much of it for HFCS, say. Or you know, Taco Bell's fourthmeal.
It's absolutely a willpower problem. These medications won't fix that for you. You stop taking them and you will gain weight again.
I've heard this called "food noise" by those who are obese. GLP-1 agonists reduce the so called food noise -- that's all it does.
In that light your argument is like trying to tell schizophrenics, "Hey, stop hearing those voices in your head!" I think we tried that for over a century.
The evolutionary human condition was primarily hunger. Animals fought over food. Humans fought, went to war over it. Nature has been that way for millions of years.
So now only in the past 100 years food has become abundant. Do you expect our evolution to change with it to be that quick too? That's really only 4 or 5 generations.
One data point here. In the 1700's, 1800's the rich were the ones that were fat, because they were the ones that had the abundance.
I hit my 30's, and became a dad, I lost my ability to run as much as I did. Now a decade later that's changed. But in that time I gained a lot of weight. I started running again. I'm a distance type of runner so I'm talking 6-15km a day, 6-7 days a week.
With that out of the way. After doing that for 6 months I was wondering WHY am I not losing weight? Like basically nothing. I counted every calorie, kept myself in a caloric deficit, used a TDEE spreadsheet to keep readjusting my daily caloric needs. Nothing was working.
Went to the doctor, he did blood work, it was all pretty much normal for someone obese. He asked me how hungry I am. I said I'm constantly hungry and it's just willpower alone that keeps me from eating, unless I had a drink, so I usually refused to drink.
I was put on Ozempic/Wegovy.
Pretty much two weeks later, I stopped thinking about food. Gone. Just gone. Before I would wake, and I'd be planning every meal.. when, what. How much, etc. If anything got in the way of a meal, I would be super irate. I was counting down seconds... Every single thought in my head was food.
Now gone.
I sometimes forget to eat.
So yeah. Food noise is real, and it suuuucks.
Side note: the weight loss helped my running a lot! And the weight loss seems to have stalled... But I don't care. I'm just happy to have this extra energy from not thinking about food every second of every day. :)
Eating right, exercising, taking this medication - if you stop any of these, yes, you will gain back weight.
I would happily continue to be on this med for the rest of my life, side effects and all.
Different levels of anxiety, depression, focus, pain, sexuality. All that we can manipulate with medication, to bring within a range we find suitable.
So why can't ones inner experience of hunger be vastly different from someone else?
What we need is a radical change in the food we eat and how we live our lives. It's easier than ever to not move all day. Sugar in one form or another is our primary diet. These problems won't go away.
That for sure would obviate the need for such pharmaceutical countermeasures, but achieving such radical change would be very difficult and time consuming. I'm glad we have some options to improve the quality and quantity of peoples lives while we work on that.
The issue with that thinking is it's super black and white, that willpower alone is the cure to weight loss.
So let's do a little thought experiment , what about all those naturally thin people, like really thin.. they can eat what they want and remain thin, find it hard to put on muscle. If it's really really hard for them to gain weight... Then isn't the inverse also true? Aren't there also people who are trying to do everything they can but for similar get inverted reasons just cannot lose weight?
The problem with relying on willpower alone is there's a finite amount of it.
Yes, for some people they have terrible willpower, they have terrible diets, and they do not work out. But they aren't the only ones. There's definitely others who are trying but failing... And you can only fail for so long before you give up.
So going back to my first point. I hope these drugs enable a new option, to get them past a certain point where they can lose weight without the failure... Begin to make better choices... Gain more confidence and willpower.
My own mother struggled with her weight and opted for surgery at one point while I was in college. It did help her lose weight and keep it off. However, I honestly believe that surgery was a large factor in her death many years later. She was never the same after it. She lost the weight, but I would say she never obtained a healthy body and mind.
I don't say those things lightly. Surgery and other interventions are fine, but they shouldn't become our goto solution for these problems. There are absolutely other problems at play here. Willpower may be one of them, but the way food is mass produced and our usage of sugar additives seems to be a huge factor (we now have obese children...).
This lecture changed my mind on many arguments in this space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM