[42772827]

He could have lost all that weight and still had bread, sugar, and potatoes but instead he gave up what he clearly enjoyed. Now he gets to live out the rest of his life fighting cravings, telling himself he's not allowed to enjoy food. How utterly sad.

[throwawaylaptop]

Believe me, cutting out bread and sugar completely is 10x easier than some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled for it already for most of his life.

And he is extremely happy with his new sugar and bread free life of increased mobility, less pain, and much lower blood pressure. At 64, he's learning how to ride a dirtbike and doing pretty well at it.

[42772827]

The choice is no longer between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "some kind of lifelong moderation for a person that has struggled." The choice is now between "cutting out bread and sugar completely" and "removing the struggle to moderate bread and sugar."

You're clearly an advocate for your father making healthy choices. So why would you advocate against the use of a drug that makes that easier?

[nradov]

Why waste money and risk side effects for a drug that's not actually needed? Changing your habits is much easier.

[42772827]

If changing habits were much easier, then people wouldn't be using the drug to make it easier change their habits. They would just do it.

[worldsayshi]

> They would just do it.

Telling your mind to do a thing is only ever easy in retrospect and when you find a "trick" that works for you. For some people that trick is getting clear feedback about glucose levels in your bloodstream. But any trick that works for one person might not work for the next. So it is good that there are many approaches.

[tirant]

Changing habits is easy. Still people decide against it because they enjoy those habits more than the result of changing them.

Unless we talk about eating disorders.

[homefree]

Obviously it’s not much easier or the drug wouldn’t be so valuable.

People make such a moral crusade of this - the drug works, people will take it. Behavior modification works in theory and fails for most in practice. Even for those that can make it work usually don’t hold out indefinitely.

[nradov]

I made no moral statement. Behavior modification has worked great for several formerly obese people that I know. They made permanent lifestyle changes without relying on drugs. I really don't care whether people take weight loss drugs or not but the reality is that there are cheaper and safer alternatives.

[homefree]

You’ve been here since 2007, you’re not dumb. Stating it’s “much easier” when it’s obviously not betrays something.

We likely agree that doing it without drugs is probably better, but it’s definitely harder and it’s not clear yet how much better it will even be.

I’ve successfully lost 70lbs (250->180) three times and gotten fit, but it’s a constant effort and psychic drain to maintain the lower weight. If the drug (which I haven’t taken yet) made it easy that’d be a relief. It’s much easier to just manage exercise.

I suspect people that don’t have as much difficulty just get a different amount of joy from eating. For me I felt I could relate to the way an alcoholic described trying to quit drinking, except it’s harder in a way because you have to eat.

[cthalupa]

This is such an absurd statement.

If changing your habits was much easier then we wouldn't need these medications and the world wouldn't keep getting fatter. People have known how to not be fat for a long time, yet the obesity rate has been rising worldwide, even in countries that have traditionally been skinny.

It's not like fat people on the whole are ignorant of how to become not-fat and never attempt to do so.

[tirant]

Because people are choosing deliberately to get pleasure to eat unhealthy stuff instead of being healthy. And that’s a reasonable thing to do. Immediate pleasure trumps future hypothetical gains.

And it’s exactly the same situation with financial education, debt, university degrees, or in general any long term endeavors that requires the sacrifice of the immediate pleasure.

Of course, we still have a non trivial percentage of people that suffer from eating disorders, and use food as a way to emotionally regulate themselves because that’s what they learned as children (child is unhappy, give him a candy…).

[cthalupa]

None of which addresses the point. Combating all of those urges and changing your habits via willpower is still far more difficult than a weekly injection that provides huge help in combating said urges.

[ranger_danger]

If it's so easy why does the drug even exist? Why is it so popular? Why isn't everyone just changing their habits so easily like you say?

[sumeno]

As someone who in the past lost ~50lbs and has mostly kept it off for more than a decade this is just horse shit. It's incredibly hard even as someone who was only a bit overweight and not obese and it is still a struggle 15 years later, even more so than it was when I was younger

[Almondsetat]

Who are you to know what's going on inside his head? What an arrogant comment

[perching_aix]

> Now he gets to live out the rest of his life fighting cravings, telling himself he's not allowed to enjoy food. How utterly sad.

I don't understand what drives people to write such intentionally asinine comments. Do you get off on hurting others or something?

There were quite a few foods I let go of when I decided to drop weight. Can't say I miss them much, certainly not to the extent to say something like "wow, i can't enjoy food anymore" or "now i'm fighting cravings all the time!!". And I legitimately have no interest in reintegrating them into my diet.

Turns out, some kinds of food are just dumb to consume, and my enjoyment of them is legitimately secondary. To the extent that discovering how harmful they were, they became inherently less enjoyable, and it was well possible for the habits and the cravings to subside over time. You don't try to go hit a balance with crack addiction, why would you try to hit a balance consuming 5 bazillion calorie rubbish?

Cutting out certain classes of foods from one's diet is absolutely possible and there's nothing necessarily wrong with it.

[ProfessorLayton]

Additionally, some of us give up foods for reasons other than weight loss. I have no weight issues today, nor have I personally struggled with it in the past, yet I also gave up stuff like drinking soda because diabetes runs in my family.

While I do miss it sometimes, I'm perfectly fine with sparkling water. Sure I'll have soda once in a while, but it's now officially a "treat", and not all that sad about it.

If I ever struggle with weight gain in the future, I see no reason to skip a tool that makes that much easier.

[42772827]

>There were quite a few foods I let go of when I decided to drop weight. Can't say I miss them much, certainly not to the extent to say something like "wow, i can't enjoy food anymore" or "now i'm fighting cravings all the time!!". And I legitimately have no interest in reintegrating them into my diet.

Your story has been told over and over and over. We get it. Congratulations. You win. You don't need GLP1s to sustain your weight loss. You don't experience food noise. You made all the right choices. Your brain and genetics are superior to the 30% of American adults who have been told to eat less and move more and still haven't managed to improve their health through weight loss.

Now that you've been properly congratulated for your superiority, are you interested at all in understanding the complex systems that prevent 100 million Americans from achieving the success you have? Like, any intellectual curiosity at all about a problem that causes untold suffering for almost one third of Americans? That costs literally billions in healthcare costs? About stress, anxiety, access to healthy foods, or the novel mechanisms by which a drug which was discovered through studying the venom of a Gila monster operates on the human gut and brain? Or are you only interested in re-telling the world how you don't have the problem that we're trying to solve?

[perching_aix]

I'm pretty okay with semaglutide and I understand its prospective benefits, both on a personal and societal level. My point was that the father of this person clearly has that oh-so-superior and elusive brain chemistry you suppose I have based on the account shared, so it was both immensely asinine to write what you did, as well as straight up false. That you could have went through all these other points without being an asshole about it, from the get-go. That there's a person on the other side of the screen too, and maybe, just maybe, they weren't meaning unwell, and didn't deserve a fucking brainwash about how they're actually torturing their loved one - you know, just like how people don't deserve one about how they can totally lose weight unassisted and are just being "weak willed" or whatever. That you escalated, and that thinking you're justified in doing so doesn't actually make it any fucking better.

[42772827]

You made the story about you, when nobody asked. Check the comment I responded to. You did exactly what people always seem to jump out of their seats to do when this drug is mentioned: crowd the conversation with anecdata about how you did it better.

[perching_aix]

It's blatantly obvious that what I said was an anecdote and what benefits semaglutide harbors. I'm well aware and am in full agreement with it. Always has been. Now if only you condeded to having been unnecessarily and disproportionately hurtful.

[nradov]

I don't understand. What's sad about giving up junk carbs?

[42772827]

Bread, sugar and potatoes exist on a spectrum from highly processed/refined (truly problematic) to minimally processed whole food versions (nutritionally valuable). There's no reason to give up minimally processed whole food versions of these.

[imtringued]

There is no spectrum for me. I can't eat bread or sugar.

[nradov]

What a bizarre, illogical comment. Did you even read what @throwawaylaptop wrote above? While most of us can handle she carbs just fine, some people have to pretty much eliminate them (regardless of processing level) in order to lose fat.