I think it is because if 90% of the population did half of what you do (and kudos for you for doing it), they wouldn't have a problem with weight, you just happen to be one of the unlucky few where it doesn't work and these drugs are useful.
Commenter 2: Kodus to you. Let me just discount your anecdote as being unlucky and keep my current belief. But again, kudos.
HN threads on weightloss are an utter waste of time.
As a direct reply to the challenge that the original poster made:
> > Why do we find it acceptable to help people who struggle with alcohol abuse, or nicotine addiction, or opioid addiction, but not to help people who struggle with food abuse?
They said nah, you were unlucky. In other words just dismiss his point outright.
Is that still uncharitable? Then so be it.
> GGP said themselves that their issue is volume, that they're doing well in many other ways.
Yes they said that they have a food addiction.
- The alcoholic said that his problem is the volume of alcohol intake
- The smoker said that…
Then asked why we won’t help food addicts. Just waffle on about self-discipline or hint at it.
This question is still yet to be answered.
> GP is saying if everyone could do what they've done, many fewer would have the problem, and so maybe it would have less stigma.
Maybe if those people had more self-discipline. Then maybe there would be less of a stigma.
You’re using the rationalized stigma to explain the stigma. This is at best circular.
Maybe we would respect ex-smokers more if they had the discpline to not ingest nicotine gum.
In other words I was giving kudos that the commentator put in a lot of effort to verify that it was an illness in their case.
People seem to think that once these drugs became popular, suddenly obese people around the world awoke from a deep slumber, like zombies, and decided to see a doctor for the first time in their lives about their weight.
Please. These people are walking into doctor’s office having given up hope because most of them have, to one extent or another, tried everything.
Our society does not make it pleasant to be obese, no matter how you feel about body positivity or anything else.
The implication that obese people have never considered or tried eating less, working out more, etc., is in and of itself the problem. It implies laziness and imbues negative morality, when the reality is that most people who are obese know it, hate it, and have tried most of their lives to overcome it, unsuccessfully.
So now that there’s a medication that can help kickstart their creation of new habits for the first time in their lives, I don’t see how that is a bad thing.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41813589
It is simply not true that if 90% of the population “tried to lose weight the right way” that they wouldn’t have a problem with it. That is an assumption you are making, and the underlying postulate is that that same 90% hasn’t tried.
> In other words I was giving kudos that the commentator put in a lot of effort to verify that it was an illness in their case.
The illness being addiction/food abuse?
Again we circle back to the question that OP posed. Because I have never seen someone say that they are an alchololic or smoke/tobacco addict and then get told: okay maybe, but first you should put in the work and find out if you really are that.
(Step one: admit that you are an addict. Step two, uh, confirm that you really are?)
There are clearly minority of people who can only achieve weight loss using drugs but for most people they can achieve the same effect by a lifestyle change, has this been proven incorrect?
I think the best empirical result for this is to compare US with any other western country (say Japan or France) or even US states with each other, clearly lifestyle plays a huge role in obesity.
Are you suggesting there are people who can burn more energy than they ingest for a prolonged period of time and not lose weight?
That… would fundamentally rewrite everything we know about how mammals consume energy.
Of course not. Nobody needs drugs to lose weight, they need to consume less energy than they use.