Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Civilization is built on long term sustainable practice, shortcuts in response to the lack of such practices is how civilizations burn down.

Obviously T1 diabetics need to take medication because there's not much else they can do whatever side effects that has, but the topic is obviously relevant and posted here because these drugs are currently being used/abused for weight loss. Given that sustainable, side effect free ways to lose weight exist (with many additional benefits) that is what a healthy human civilization would do, instead of opting for drugs with utterly unknown side effects, potentially really bad ones, like in this case.

View on HN

> Given that sustainable, side effect free ways to lose weight exist (with many additional benefits)

Just because it exists doesn't mean it's statistically applicable to a population of people. I've yet to see real evidence that on a population scale, sustainable and side effect free ways to lose weight exists at a statistically significant level. If you're 100+ lbs overweight and you lose it all without any medical intervention for over 5 yrs you're basically a statistical freak.

Not to mention that the human body is completely opposed to losing weight, and will do anything it can to convince you that what you really need to do is to gain it back.

This was something that astounded me about my weight. It is static. Has been static since I gained it all (when my thyroid quit working at 18 - over 4 months I gained 100 pounds). Since that date more than half my life ago, I have been the exact same 220lb +/- 5lb depending on time of day. Through caloric deficits, through hiking and jogging (run many 5ks, and just recently hiked 125mi through the mountains). I'm fit, I eat well, but I'm BMI of 34, and my weight never fluctuates.

My wife has wanted me to get on ozempic, but I'm actually scare of side effects, and the cost is atrocious in the US.

See France

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/global-obesity-rates/

It’s a policy intervention from the mid 2000s onwards and I kinda doubt the policy is “mandatory Ozempic injections”.

This is not a study. Furthermore, this isn't even a report on losing weight!

> I've yet to see real evidence that on a population scale,

I mean visit Japan if you want to see a large nation manage its populations weight, but the entire reasoning is completely backwards. Statistics doesn't have a will of its own or causal powers, it's a description of aggregate behavior. Change the behavior and you get some new statistics. 100 years ago you didn't have a single statistic showing that obesity was an issue. What evidence do you need that making people move more and eat less will make them lose weight, there's no law of nature operating against you.

The obvious reason to even think like this is indicative of the problem, that in a lot of places we're so unused to simply enforcing sane cultural norms and incentivizing healthy behaviors and discourage crappy ones that people think it breaks some kind of ironclad law.

> What evidence do you need that making people move more and eat less will make them lose weight, there's no law of nature operating against you.

IDK, any evidence? We've been telling people to move more and eat less for literally decades and it doesn't work to make them lose weight on a broad population level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com