> Will Ozempic users have developed the personal discipline to prevent themselves from relapse without the drug - or will they forever be on a the yo-yo of weight gain/loss?

Have alcoholics using Naltrexone? Or opioid addicts using Methadone, or smokers using nicotine gum/patches?

See I'm bringing this up to point out the obvious double standard, people suffering from food addiction (i.e. literally the high from food) or binge-eating disorder, who finally have an effective treatment, are treated like it isn't addiction or illness, but a "lifestyle," but if you said this stuff about any other addiction people would call you out and be horrified.

For people mildy overweight or accidentally obese, it is a wildly different illness for people with lifetime problems who have lost/regained weight tens of times and likely know more about nutrition than most healthy-weight people ever will.

>If you do not change your lifestyle, for real and not just superficially, then you will relapse with a vengeance.

Longterm glp-1 agonist research doesn't agree with this.

> but you have to continue that lifestyle after stopping the drug.

Why stop the drug?

>Will Ozempic users have developed the personal discipline to prevent themselves from relapse without the drug - or will they forever be on a the yo-yo of weight gain/loss?

A small % of people are able to achieve significant weight loss with diet and exercise. And an even smaller % of that group are able to maintain it for the long term. We've been trying to solve obesity this way for a 50 years and have bubkis to show for it. If someone has high cholesterol we give them a statin, if they have high blood sugar we give them diabetes. Now if they're overweight we give them ozempic.

I'm someone that has spent many years of my life eating well and exercising regularly, including weightlifting. I'm also someone who has spent the past decade doing neither of those things, with one attempt in the middle to correct my behavior interrupted by a knee injury.

I'm currently on tirzepatide and have also started to resume exercise, and I'm enjoying it like I did when I was younger - I expect I'll be able to go off of it when I get to my goal weight.

But at the same time, there's not any real reason that people would need to go off the drugs, outside of cost. So far we don't see any adverse reactions in the vast majority of people. Some people have reactions from rapid weight loss - gallstones, hair loss, etc. but these are also risks in crash diets, etc.

We accept that people will need lifelong medication (often with worse side effects) for other illnesses that have less risk to all cause mortality, etc., than obesity. Why would we be unwilling to do it for obesity?

The fact of the matter is that despite the risks and downsides of obesity being well known in America, 42% of American adults are obese. No amount of education or knowledge that has gotten us on the whole to eat better or exercise more. Plainly, being on these GLP1 medications is preferable to being obese based on all current knowledge.

> The problem with this (and all diet plans/drugs) is the lifestyle that led to problem in the first place.

I don't think we fully know what led to the problem in the first place.

I think it's a complex interaction between the types of foods we eat, and which are more affordable, our gut microbiome, and the amount and frequency of exercise which we are able to fit into our day.

We have some pretty good ideas that reducing intake of high glycemic foods, safely reducing overall calorie intake, and getting regular exercise will help.

However, it's the bad food which many families can most afford. Many people find it difficult to make time for exercise, since they are pretty exhausted from making a living. The foods which are bad for us tend to make us feel good in the short term.

When a person has become obese, it is harder to start exercising, and it's harder to find exercises which don't hurt their feet, joints, back, or other parts of their body.

Ideally, we would all have copious time to exercise, and healthy food would be abundant and affordable. But, that's generally not the case for most people.

And some people seem to be genetically predisposed to gain weight.

I don't think you expect to stop taking the drug. It's a for-life kind of thing.

If a prescription for "lifestyle changes" were a drug, it would be one of the least effective drugs ever made. I read something directed at medical professionals that are skeptical of the GLP-1 receptor agonists and it asks, if you prescribe a drug and your patient refuses to take it, why would you keep prescribing that drug? Of course not. That's what lifestyle changes are, and the landscape has changed so that there are alternatives.

(My employer is heavy on the "lifestyle changes" angle. They will not pay for GLP-1s, but they will send you a newsletter about losing weight if you want. Guess who's losing the weight.)

> you will relapse with a vengeance

You say this - but not from experience (correct me if I'm wrong and you have taken a GLP-1 agonist).

I say this because as someone who has taken it, I found one of the craziest parts is how they do seem to help you set better habits, and those habits do stick, and it's not like some fake thing.

For example MJ helped me do the following: entirely stopped late night snacking, stopped craving sweets, stop smoking weed. And it doesn't come back when I go off, even after months.

I wasn't especially overweight when I went on (maybe 20lbs), I did it for the incredible immune system benefit which seem to heal my immune disorder, but I was stunned at the results outside of it.

I get that people hate the idea of something that helps you be better without having to "put in work", but in the weirdest and best way possible, it seems to do that, at least in part.

The genetics of hunger are fascinating, people literally feel very different levels of hunger. My family are mostly all quite fit and healthy, but this is because exercise and dieting are a cultural obsession in my family to an un-mentally healthy extent, because as I understand through conversation with others We feel an unusually high level of hunger, I can be full to bursting and hunger does not stop. I tried semaglutide, it was the first time I can recall ever feeling the absence of hunger. To think that my family and I are likely nowhere near the top of the hunger spectrum astonishes and horrified me

Yes, what's true and often understated about weight-loss is that people usually do lose weight when they decide to, but gain it back. Aside from lifestyle, metabolic adaptation is one factor. Since metabolism is lower, increasing calorie intake too quickly leads to weight-gain, and metabolism remains worse than it was before.

Sounds like it directly affects their lifestyle though? Being less drawn to addictions, and thus less engaged in related activities, is a pretty big lifestyle change.

Yeah, no. Speaking of "personal discipline" makes it obvious you have never seriously dealt with addicts. Solving it long term is basically impossible for some of us; pretty sure because of how our brains are wired at the physical level. I know all the (popular) science, I discussed it with a good doctor whom I personally know, I know you're supposed to change your habits long-term (and how you're supposed to do it), and I recently lost 15 kgs of weight for the fourth time in my life. The longest time I managed to maintain healthy weight was maybe 3-4 years. If Ozempic (or whatever) actually solves this, I'm ready to go on it for the rest of my life.

I also live in a "vodka belt" and know several alcoholics who tried very hard to maintain their "personal discipline". It's impossible for most of them -- almost all relapse in a few years' time.

So I was, also, a firm believer of the "gotta fix your lifestyle" school of thought regarding weight management until I was introduced to the Maintenance Phase podcast (hosted by Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes).

This podcast, and Aubrey's book "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat," opened my eyes to the fact that many people are just _born_ hungrier than others.

The body will weigh what the body wants to weigh, no matter how many fad diets or drugs you throw at it.

Unfortunately, those whose bodies that don't conform to our modern, eugenicized definition of "healthy" and don't particularly care for working out at all times are dealt a lifelong sentence of social ostracizing, "have you tried this diet" and "calories in, calories out," mostly against their will.

To wit: I can easily scarf down 3000+ calories per day. EASILY. I also know people who struggle to eat 2000 calories per day. I've seen this dynamic with kids in the same family as well.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to make healthier choices. Everyone can benefit from a balanced diet and more exercise. I'm saying that some people will naturally be heavier than others, and that should be okay.

I figure for some people it will work as a crutch and for some it will work as a prosthetic. I guess that depends on whether you need to take some weight off and allow yourself to heal, or if you are actually missing that appendage. Metaphorically.

It seems to be more like an orthosis than a crutch as it helps the body to get back into a healthy state instead of replacing it‘s functionality.

Well that's the whole point of the novelty of this drug.

This drug somehow effects our emotional resilience and/or the strength of our response to emotional decisions and/or the way our brain weighs different options regarding to long-term planing.

Basically instead of your suggestion of not treating drugs as a crutch, and trying hard to restructure your life; this drug basically does exactly that. It gives you the decision making of a person that already did fight the addiction and restructured his life. The only thing then is for the person to actually restructure his life by living his newly well-decisioned life for a while.

That's why it is sometimes bad advice to tell people not to use medicine as a 'crutch'. Just like actual crutches, they actually are meant to be able to temporarily support a person. If somebody needs a 'crutch' they should fully use it, especially if it can help them ultimately solve the need for the crutch.

I get what you're trying to say with the crutch thing, but personally this kind of attitude prevented me from considering medication much earlier. Even though we all feel deep in our hearts that standing by yourself is better than relying on some crutch, nobody cares, and nobody is going to give you any bonuspoints if you make it to your death without any help. If any type of medication or treatment can help you, for the love of all that is good, use it.

Did you even read the top level comment here where the person addresses this? Anyway, this sort of moralizing is incredibly inhelpful. Very few people are obese because they lack “discipline”. Certainly they are no less disciplined than most non-obese folks in the world. All sorts of factors play into obesity that have nothing to do with “discipline”: genetics, gut microbiome, local environment, food availability, mental health, physical disease.

There’s some small percentage of people for whom “discipline” is enough, but when people talk like you are with the implicit assumption that all fat people are lazy and immoral due to lack of “discipline”, you only reinforce the misinformation about the causes of obesity and make it harder to address novel causes with novel treatments.

As someone very close to an Ozempic user, I can tell that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Would we consider insulin a crutch? Think of this as something in the same league. At least that is the case for a good chunk of the target audience.