Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by accidentallfact 161 days ago
Most people quit, because it doesn't work:

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/aug/14/ozempic-wei...

I hoped it will finally shut up those stuck on the dogma, but it seems the denial is far too strong, and nothing will change.

And yes, it is a dogma, because no kind of evidence no matter how strong makes people like you reconsider.

1 comments

From your link:

> “The meds are highly effective for a majority of patients but there is still a percentage who don’t lose a clinically significant percentage of body weight. Everyone’s physiology is a little different,” – Veronica Johnson MD, an obesity medicine specialist in Chicago

> He explained that for someone who is overweight, shedding even a small amount of weight can improve heart and kidney function

And, the Guardian is exactly the kind of outlet that would publish "woe is me, it doesn't work for me" stories, as it's their target audience.

It's a tool - it can be a force multiplier if you also make other changes. If you just take the jab and do no exercise and continue eating bad, weight loss will be minimal.

Yes it's been oversold – just like almost any other product/service that ha an advertising budget. That doesn't mean it "doesn't work" for everyone.

Does your car 'not work' because you can't attract those extremely attractive ladies in the street which are often featured in the adverts?

It also cites a study which says that the average loss is 5%. That isn't what most people imagine as "highly effective".

Weight also doesn't tell the whole story. The people don't get any better, they get (more) starved in addition to staying obese.

It's a disease with another cause, hunger is only a symptom.

Too much money has been wasted on proving and "educating" people that it's just overeating, while there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.

The one that convinced me is horses. Horses get fat, and they need to wear a muzzle that makes eating difficult for them. Otherwise, they eat so much so fast that it literally kills them.

There seem to be AREAS that are affected and areas that are less affected. Either there are fat people in the area, or there are no fat peoplle in the area. People who move seem to quickly change weight to fit the local norm. There doesn't seem to be any clear correlation with dietary habits, or anything else that is commonly observed. The entire Japan appears to be spared.

It gets commonly missed that it isn't possible to get obese on purpose either. It's hard to eat more, and the body just seems to burn off the excess.

This is a load of bullshit man. Even the article you linked describes lying to his friends' parents to get a second dinner, being unable to have just one cookie etc.

The only way to get fat is to eat too much and anyone who really eats too much will get fat. There's a huge amount of people who simply lie or are ignorant about their food intake. Fat people falsely claiming they hardly eat anything but can't lose weight etc. Of course you lose weight if you don't eat. Your body can't create energy from nothing. Without energy you die.

That's not actually what the evidence says, overwhelmingly.
Share to share any of it?
Always a fair request. I don't know it well enough or have time at the moment, but afaik it's the medical consensus:

Obesity is a disease, (mostly) not a result of behavior. Eating less and/or more activity doesn't cure people; iirc bodies adjust to retain the same amount of fat, etc. under the new conditions.

Let's say there is a new discovery tomorrow - there is a virus that lives in your mitochondria, and makes them unable to produce energy. We can make a vaccine against it, and nobody will ever get fat.

Would you be against the vaccine?

Why would I be against that? I'm not against ozempic either.

I'm just against people who throw their hands in the air, say "my fatness is a disease" and continue eating 4000 calories a day while hardly moving at all. And just to be clear I'm not against the fatness - if you want to be fat that's fine, I don't care. It's your life. And if you want to say it's a mental disorder that's fine too, addiction is real and I know first hand that it's hard to resist good food and get off the couch.

Just don't claim there's nothing to be done about it. There is. I and many people I know have successfully lost weight by eating less and moving more. I've also gained weight by eating too much and moving too little. Because that's literally how it works, for everyone in the entire world. Sure it's possible to have some disease or disorder that prevents you from gaining weight by preventing you from utilizing the calories in your food. Or parasites can steal your calories. But if you aren't eating, your body still needs energy. It can't just choose to not use energy, energy is required to live. Without energy the heart doesn't beat, the lungs don't breathe, the brain doesn't brain, the muscles don't work. It's not like the body's just wasting energy, it uses as much as it has to. It's a fine tuned machine. So it can't just use less - the only way to use less energy is to spend less by moving less. Maybe the body can reduce it slightly by adjusting organ activity and such, but not much.

This is why we breathe oxygen and exhale CO2. Oxygen is literally used to burn calories, CO2 is the product of that combustion. Just like in a fire. When you exert yourself the body is spending more energy so it needs more oxygen and produces more CO2, that's why we need to breathe faster and our heart beats faster to get the oxygen to where it's needed and get rid of all the CO2. When you relax, your pulse and breathing lowers because you're burning very little.

Now, with this understanding of basic body functions it's obvious that moving more and eating less is how you lose weight. There is no question about it, it's just clear as day and absolutely indisputable.

All right. I guess you're right then, and the entire world is lying and everybody wants nothing else than to eat more.