[amazingamazing]

Honestly don’t understand it. Feels like a lack of discipline. I was 250. Plugged in a bunch of numbers into an app and it gave me a calorie count per day. I brought a scale with me everywhere, used ChatGPT to guesstimate calories, I added 50% for good measure. A year later I’m 175. You can’t do this even with drugs you’re gonna get fat anyway.

I’m most curious about someone like me vs someone who lost the same amount on glp1 with respect to these stats

[AussieWog93]

I'll bite!

A decade or so ago, when I was still in uni, I managed to get similar results naturally too - ~100kg down to ~65kg in around 18-24 months just by eating healthy and exercising more.

I put back all of that weight and then some during the COVID pandemic (I'm in Melbourne, Australia - we had the worst lockdowns on planet Earth) and this time struggled for years to lose it until trying GLP-1 drugs a few months back.

For me, what made it harder the second time around wasn't so much of a difference in discipline skills (if anything, they've improved) but the fact that there was so much more going on in my life - young family constantly getting sick, small business that started struggling, relationship/social issues, health issues (sleep apnoea) etc. etc.

I'd get on the weight loss train, lose a couple of kilos, then the whole family would get sick with the flu and I'd put it all back on again while recovering. Or maybe I'd be forced to shift my focus to the business so that we could keep the lights on. Or any number of things.

I guess my point is that it's not difficult to lose weight naturally (or any self-improvement, really) in and on itself, but it's completely different ballgame when you're fighting a war on 6 different fronts. Having one of those problems simply just disappear through GLP-1 drugs genuinely feels like a miracle.

[renewiltord]

Everything is discipline. If you just always do the thing you’re supposed to you will win at life. People can’t always do the thing they’re supposed to so they supplement with drugs that help them do it: caffeine, amphetamine, SSRIs, GLP-1RAs and related drugs.

In fact, everything is discipline. If you were disciplined enough to always put the basketball in the net from anywhere on the court you’d be Steph Curry. The thing is most people don’t have that kind of discipline. Someone runs up to them and puts their hand up in the air? They shoot wide or balk. Curry shoots true. Discipline.

Just always do the right thing and never do the wrong thing and you’ll be fine at literally everything.

[amazingamazing]

Some things require talent like your examples, weight loss does not imho. The disparities in obesity and culture within country says it all.

[array_key_first]

Weight loss of course is helped by talent, because genetics are talent.

Metabolisms fluctuate, although granted not by much. But what really varies is your response to food. And it's not just genetics. It's food scarcity, early childhood, your environment.

The (maybe) sad reality is that there will be people skinnier than you will ever be who have put in zero effort. Nada. That's life. Just like there's people who can sing better than me off the rip and I took vocal lessons for 10 years. Life's not fair.

But the bright side is, I can drink and not be an alcoholic. Maybe they're just lazy or something. Or, maybe this mentality is one people feed themselves (ha) to feel better about the circumstances of their life.

Wouldn't we all like to believe we're the way we are because we're strong, brave, and hard-working?

[cthalupa]

The ability to be disciplined about eating is also a talent.

Or do you think that somehow genetics don't play one of the largest roles in your ability to be disciplined when it comes to food?

[amazingamazing]

If you can be disciplined about taking a drug you can about food. How do you explain correlations in obesity across cultures? Genetic superiority? Again, imho just making excuses for laziness. The same logic you’re applying here also applies to even taking the drug and picking up refills from the mail…

Also look at obesity rates across time within the same country. It’s clearly not an issue of discipline, it’s an issue of what’s being eaten.

[cthalupa]

Why in the world do you think that taking a once a week injection requires even remotely similar levels of discipline to dealing with daily hunger and food noise? There's like, a dozen orders of magnitude in between. This is a silly argument.

> How do you explain correlations in obesity across cultures? Genetic superiority?

Every developed nation in the world except Japan has been seeing obesity and overweight rates rising at significant rates, including countries that have fairly similar cultures, such as Korea. You also see people move to America and stay in relatively isolated pockets of their culture and still gain weight.

So no. It's a matter of access to hyper palatable calorie dense food. The more of it around, the more likely people are to get fat. The fatter you get, the more of a feedback loop you end up in for a wide variety of known and relatively well understood mechanisms. GLP-1s help short circuit that feedback loop.

[amazingamazing]

> It's a matter of access to hyper palatable calorie dense food. The more of it around, the more likely people are to get fat.

Now there’s something we agree on. If only we could agree that no one is stuffing cheeseburgers down people’s throat other than themselves. So close.

Once the shame around disgusting fattening food has reached a critical mass the problem will solve it self.

Ironically the excuses you make for them only worsen the issue. If fat people and the food they ate were appropriate shamed they both would cease.

FYI in Japan fat people are ruthlessly bullied. Fat people are rare. Food for thought, pun intended.

Stop tolerated junk.

[renewiltord]

You just have to be disciplined to always shoot accurately at the basket. Most people send it one way or the other but if you are disciplined enough in your aim at the basket no matter the constraints you will be the best basketballer of all time.

[rootusrootus]

We know that GLP1s have benefits that are disproportionate with just weight loss, so someone who is otherwise like you in terms of weight loss would probably have better cardiovascular markers.

Probably the biggest difference, though, is that an average "you" will be back at original weight, plus a little, in about a year, while the average GLP1 user will (assuming they keep taking it) be the same weight, or even a bit lighter.