There's metabolism, food density, food availability, psychology, culture, economics, etc in play, but it's important not to lie to ourselves that the proximal cause of obesity isn't from over consumption.
I dislike the rejection of evidence. These drugs solve a problem. Preaching personal responsibility does not. In that way it almost reminds me of drug prohibition and abstinence-only rhetoric.
Yes. Specifically, how basal metabolism is not a consciously-controlled rate that modifies itself against diet and exercise to the point that in some people with serious metabolic syndrome it may be impossible for them to lose weight through diet and exercise without suffering nutritional shortfalls.
Also, the clinical evidence around what works for people losing weight and getting healthier and what doesn’t. Like, I get we have a powerful fast-food and sugary-drinks lobby in America, but wow is it wild seeing people get uppity about third parties’ private healthcare decisions like this.
The average person does not understand how weight loss works; many people do not know the concept of maintenance calories, and don't know how calorie surplus or deficit works.
Simply putting them on drugs for life isn't a solution. The average person does not have metabolic syndrome, yet the average person is increasingly becoming obese or perhaps already is obese in many countries.
Plenty of people are on drugs for life for a variety of things that have less health impact than being overweight.
It literally is "a" solution.
The questions should be: is it the best solution that currently exists? And is it the best that can exist?
It may be that widespread availability of weight loss drugs that actually work ends the economic incentives to promote foods which themselves promote over-eating.
Or it may be that it triggers an arms race with food manufacturers seeking out things that override the weight loss drugs.
Or there may be negative side-effects we have yet to learn about, like there have been for so many other things that previously seemed amazing or miraculous.
That said, 2026 US GLP-1 healthcare sales projections run between 60 and 100 billion [1]. it will be interesting to see if these miricle drugs can really provide that much benefit/offset that much cost.
For comparison, Medicare part D is ~150 billion in its entirety. https://evolvancemarketresearch.com/reports/glp-1-weight-los...
The payment part is almost entirely pushing against GLP-1 agonists. Nobody has a long-term financial stake in patient costs to care that lifetime costs will likely be lower; insurers are just looking at the next couple years against expected churn. Another cost of tying health insurance to employment.
Why I ate too much is uninteresting to me. I also don’t have some moral hang up over it. Give me that easy button all day long so I can focus on shit in my life that actually matters.
If it makes someone feel better about themselves to believe in woo-woo science that violates the laws of physics and ascribe magical properties to GLPs, why do you care?
Why we should not care about putting people on drug who do can benefit from making lifestyle changes, being less sedentary and leaning about maintenance calories and how calorie surplus and deficit works?
if there is no resistance, simply prescribing GLPs to average person may become a new normal.
Because it's useless advice that doesn't work in practice. As witnessed by decades of failure, with the only thing turning the tide on the obesity epidemic on a population scale being GLP-1 drugs.
> if there is no resistance, simply prescribing GLPs to average person may become a new normal.
Probably not ideal, but until Western society decides to change from the ground up it's better than the alternative which showed literally nothing but failure. One is something that works, the other is something that will take multiple generations to correct.
I think you are looking at research on obese people but applying it to average people who are simply overweight.
Why is it a problem if there's wider access to these drugs? So far, afaik, there's been no long term major adverse effects, and especially I've seen no reports of adverse effects that extend beyond use of the drug (as has been the case with previously popular weight loss drugs that could injure people's hearts).
We're 5 years since fda approval specifically for weight loss and 9 years since fda approval for type 2 diabetes. That's a pretty good amount of time to find serious problems, although certainly many withdrawn drugs were on the market for longer, ex wikipedia says Ranitidine was the biggest selling prescription drug in 1987, but was found to be problematic in 2019 (apparently a new formulation is available as of late 2025!)
Sure, there are other ways to work on weight, just like there are other ways to work on allergies and exercises some people say are effective for vision problems. But we don't force people to give up pets or move somewhere that has fewer triggering allergens, we let them take allergy pills; we let people use eyeglasses or contact lenses or have their eyeballs adjusted so they can see; etc. There's a tool that's effective for many people, why not use it?
I spent every ounce of effort I could muster last year to lose weight and dropped 36 kg, however there was never a point where that got easy to maintain, where my body wasn't screaming at me to eat. Crying oneself to sleep from hunger after walking 20000 steps per day is not how I could live the rest of my life. I understand that that is not the case for you, but you must understand that hunger and food cravings are not the same for all people.
There are people literally starving to death because they can't force themselves to eat and of course many more people eating until it kills them. How can you not realize that you happen to be naturally in between these two extremes?
Basically, you walking 20,000 boosts your maintenance calories up, since
deficit = tdee (maintenance) - intake
Once you've lost the weight, there is no need to maintain "deficit" to stay at that weight when you do not understand something as simple as this. I’ve no doubt what you did was perhaps over-restrictive, which made you suffer.
which means no you do not need to walk 20K steps for life, nor you need to perma lower your calorie intake, you just need to eat at maintenance calories after getting to your target weight.
>There are people literally starving to death because they can't force themselves to eat and of course many more people eating until it kills them.
They are rare, so rare i don't run into them at all.
so what?