alt Hacker News> Why do we find it acceptable to help people who struggle with alcohol abuse, or nicotine addiction, or opioid addiction, but not to help people who struggle with food abuse?
"Getting fit and staying fit" is a form of social capital, because it's extremely hard and only within reach of a small portion of the population. "Being fit" is strongly aligned with "being attractive" which confers all sorts of cross-cutting social benefits.
Some people feel cheated when medication allows others to "effortlessly" join this social club, and then become vile and hateful in response.
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> Some people feel cheated when medication allows others to "effortlessly" join this social club, and then become vile and hateful in response.
I don't think this is just about a social club. Battling weight loss and habits is foundational to the human experience from the most recent centuries. Be it drugs, or anything else really that changes the nature of these challenges, people are going to feel discomfort because it's an attack on their understanding of the world, and in some ways, their beliefs.
It’s only within reach of a small portion because of industrialized food. Look at a graph of obesity rates in the US over several decades. Find literally any picture of people at any beach in the US in the 60s or 70s versus now.
In what ways is fitness not within reach for a large portion of the population?
>Some people feel cheated when medication allows others to "effortlessly" join this social club, and then become vile and hateful in response.
Nice one. I think it's a bad idea to be dependent on drugs for something you can achieve on your own, especially if the drugs don't have a long term safety profile. Pretty sure I read somewhere that they don't. If you're going to use them for a short period of time, that's fine. Don't say nobody warned you if that doesn't pan out though (or worse, you have a bad drug response).
This is funny how black & white some folks here want the world to be painted if it suits them.
You know by far the biggest benefit of doing hard workouts or doing extreme sports? Its not muscle mass nor how much they lift. Its about how it changes your personality, resilience to mental or physical suffering and ease of overcoming it. You know, hardest part of doing anything is winning the mental resistance game and just start it. Keep doing this every day in various forms for decades... A very strong resilient personality under various circumstances is almost an unavoidable result if you are putting in enough effort.
If somebody can't even stop themselves buying and paying for junk food at grocery store or has to overeat constantly otherwise getting anxious, that part of personality is missing and another, less desirable is present.
Who would you prefer to have as a close colleague you depend on, life long partner, a close dependable friend? Who do you think women would prefer subconsciously? Societies have always some form of castes, even hardcore communists have/had them, in US one of very popular is based on career/income/wealth. And this is just another dimension or caste, so let's not act like we are not humans with flaws and subjective preferences, we don't give our respect out for free.
These medication help with none of above, in fact they strongly reinforce such behavior and personality traits. But to each their own. One benefit I can see that they could start / help with movement from former to the latter, but that's rarer than people like to admit.
I would say my concerns are far more in the range of downstream effects from the medication. Specifically, I am concerned with muscle retention. Concerns aside, it's a little hard of an argument to swallow having visited many other countries where these things are simply not an issue. How can it be argued that the cause is anything other than behavior when so many others are doing just fine? There is more to this story than painting people as evil.