> they don’t have the discipline and motivation to maintain the weight loss
That argument has been tried for years and yet it fails nearly 100% of the time. Should we be trying something different than claiming it's a moral issue? Or is that too scientific?
If you owe the bank $10,000,000,000 that's the banks problem.
Obesity is a 'bank problem' issue. When everyone around the globe is massively gaining weight, in every country on this planet that's not in a war or famine, this isn't a human willpower issue. Something has changed, and to ignore that is unscientific.
All that has changed is the environment and lifestyle humans live in, and it's quite obvious discipline and willpower cannot overpower that environment on average.
The change was far too rapid for anything else to be remotely the primary cause.
If you put a past heroin addict locked in a room with unlimited heroin readily available, chances are likely 9 times out of 10 that person is going to partake eventually. Same goes for our food environment and way of life.
We could stop companies spending billions shoving the heroin down people’s throats with advertising. But I guess selling them more drugs is a better solution.
You see, companies have a way of stopping that and it only costs millions. They pay off the politicians and the politicians say that companies have more freedoms than individuals.
That doesn’t suggest it isn’t a human willpower issue. If anything it suggests there is a fundamental flaw in human willpower in general. That when we get fat, happy, sedentary, peaceful, that most humans are susceptible to taking it easy, becoming lethargic, chasing easy quick neurotransmitters.
I think the reason I am not obese myself is that I am aware of all this. The hedonic treadmills. Calories in calories out. What processed food actually means. Understanding what the ingredients actually do. Maintaining an active lifestyle.
For me, the way forward was simply education. Once aware of all this, it becomes impossible to live another way. Maybe that is what we should market to people: knowledge that empowers lasting changes to behavior instead of quick fix shots/pills/diets.
It's entirely discipline and motivation. Just because only a select few people carry it through and maintain it doesn't change that. Just very few people in this world are truly disciplined and self-motivated.
You can see it all around you in one form or another:- overweight/obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking/vaping, people spending 5+ hours staring at glowing rectangles.
Why do we need to try anything? This comes down to individualism versus collectivism.
Besides, the logical consequence of the portion of my comment you highlighted is that the majority of GLP-1 patients will need to be on these drugs forever to maintain these benefits long-term. We have precisely one trial of 5+ years of patients taking liraglutide, and ~2 years for semaglutide. Some side effects and long-term consequences could be entirely unknown.
All the side effects I've seen of GLP-1s are positive, and we've had diabetes patients taking them for much longer than that.
Anyway, it's fairly obvious that discipline is not a solution to weight loss, because weight gains a) happened in lab and pet animals on the same timescales they happened to humans and b) are reversed by moving to higher altitudes.
So to be productive, you should be telling people to move to Colorado.
It's possible that there could be long term side effects that we don't know about, but given the number of people taking these drugs we would likely already have seen some indication of them. I guess we will find out!
That argument has been tried for years and yet it fails nearly 100% of the time. Should we be trying something different than claiming it's a moral issue? Or is that too scientific?