weird caption on that photo. “pride of place” seems backwards?
and obv results note with that - less craving for everything! drugs don’t take the day off as a holiday
Yeah, no need for this here.
From a Linkedin discussion regarding mortality impacts of various behaviors. You could potentially have several of these going at the same time as well.
wonder if the “increase” is multiplicative or additive.
For the latter, I’m thinking that if someone had moderate obesity and very low fitness levels that their “net” increase would be 1.6.
When I quick alcohol, my BP normalized, weight reverted to the normal range, I slept much better, exercised more, and my stress level went down. That 1.5 factor feels like it is excluding a lot of the problems it causes.
i notice this phrasing is gaining traction. i first noticed it in ads for these products. people are no longer obese - they now “have obesity” like it just dropped out of the sky, a bad roll of the dice, luck of the draw.
not taking a jab at VA here, noticing changing language use
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Call it a combination of 1) a biological cause for stronger food cravings and 2) a lack of understanding on how certain foods can lead to craving cycles of #1.
- People are different. If given the same diet, they will consume different levels of calories until their weight achieves a steady state (the bigger they get, the more calories they will burn). Their biological functions and interactions with their brain chemistry will drive a lot of this.
- Capitalism leads to food designs that encourage sales. Obesity correlates with UPF consumption. Nearly every fad diet is a strategy that reduces or eliminates some combination of UPFs and replaces it with more natural foods. None of this is a coincidence. People have been told nutrition labels on calories and fat are what they should track. Those are also only generally available on processed foods.
People have been set up for failure with what they have been given. Enter weight loss companies, and now drug companies in the fight. Spend money on food at the same time you spend money fighting the food. It’s all pretty messed up if you think about it.
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FWIW, my thinking was more in the sense of “if someone had [the categories of] moderate obesity . . .” more so than trying to be “PC” about language usage.
But, I don’t see any problems around that particular change in language. It would align with how Spanish indicates hunger (literally translated, “tener hambre” is “I have hunger”) vs. English (“I am hungry”).
yup
the language change is another small nudge away from “what i did to myself” to “something that happened to me through little fault of my own and i can fix it with a drug”
not dismissing the fact that americans have been set up for failure by ag/pharma/food industry/etc
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IMO, a gross failure in American educational system. Over emphasis on "performing for [standardized] tests and very little in the way of learning how to live in the current environment.
I think there is an evolution of thought as research is starting to uncover reasons obesity isn’t strictly a matter of personal choices, but is worsened by some degree of physical differences in people. Tough to convey in a short commercial spot, but, yeah, I’d expect advertising to be intentionally non-judgmental.
Why should we blame the educational system for a problem that capitalism is creating? It is the same problem as we have had historically with tobacco companies. Alcohol has been a group 1 carcinogen for nearly 40 years yet no one thinks about this the same as smoking. Same with processed meats. Companies sell us things that kill us and we let them run ads for all of this stuff (except perhaps cigarettes at this point). Is an hour long lecture on this in high school going to offset the endless advertising that tells you the exact opposite message companies are spending billions on each year?
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that whole HAES push pretty much died off once these products hit the market
certainly a multi-factor problem and consumers are outgunned. it’s a tough landscape to traverse when industry and regulatory bodies work hand in glove to enrich themselves at our expense.
a one hour lecture in high school won’t do it. it will take, at least in part, parents and their children realizing that they’ve extended way more trust than is warranted to producers and regulators. and then make different decisions as to what foods, drinks, and medical products they’ll allow in their bodies
Posters on classroom walls might help. When kids are bored they read these things.
anyone who thinks obesity in the WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) world is strictly a matter of personal choices isn’t really thinking critically. modernity brings many blessings we enjoy, but it also brings many hazards and traps we tend to ignore or downplay
not necessarily saying you do this
I will admit to having a tendency to think of obesity as a willpower issue (even for myself as i deal with it), but it is a complex interaction of a lot of factors. It would be tempting to imagine a magic pill could fix it all, but on the public health scale there is a lot more to fix. And on an individual scale getting answers to treat it can be daunting as well.
It’s still a willpower issue, but its not one that you can view as one that requires equivalent willpower between two different people today making the same decision. Someone who has decades of consistently poor eating habits will struggle much more today stopping after that second slice of pizza than someone who has always done that. Their brains have become wired differently at that point. They have been wired to satisfy that craving and ignore the short term and long term consequences.
A diet, or taking a break, only to return to the old habit, fails at a high rate. If the same foods that satisfied those cravings for decades are brought back, the eating habit returns, and the person gains back the weight.
Change needs to be a lifelong commitment to a different way of thinking about food. Food is not a reward and an escape but rather nutrition for your mind and body. Over time, you can rewire what you prioritize, and once you have done that, willpower almost becomes irrelevant. Yes, that donut still looks delicious, but to eat it requires you to acknowledge the consequences - short and long term.
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The science behind obesity has materially advanced over the last 20Y due to technological improvements. The amount of scientific information we have now pales in comparison to 20Y ago.
Based on all the backing research and field studies so far, GLP-1s are a very potent weapon against obesity, but they will always have to be used in conjunction with behavioral modification for the bulk of the population that uses them.
There is a small slice of the population who can use GLP-1s, attentuate their hunger levels, and also make better long-term nutrition choices (while still being exposed to the usual unhealthy nutritional choices offered commercially).
This is not the norm from what I have seen so far in the UK and abroad.
@The_President covered this in his prior post
After 30Y+ of eating one way (unhealthily) your entire brain chemistry is wired for it, so changing this in the short-term is extremely difficult for the majority of the population.
I don’t think these compounds are a “quick-fix”, but they can help just about anybody taking them to start making improved nutritional choices by the way they shift your physiology towards that goal. So instead of a 95% failure rate (from normal dieting) you can strive for the bulk of people actually succeding (50%) and becoming healthier.