Well then maybe we shouldn't use it unless the consequences are severe enough to warrant them. In particular we shouldn't use them without trying behavior modification first.
Behavior modification has been failing for decades. It had its shot.
Skinny foreigners move here and gain weight. That’s a pretty strong indication that individual willpower doesn’t have much to do with why skinny countries are skinny. Why would we expect that to work here?
Our options that have any hope of actually working are a huge overhaul of probably a lot of things, including our food culture, zoning and city layouts, farm policy, and social safety net, to name a few—or, a miracle drug.
Realistically, if we want results this century, that leaves only the latter option.
Google either of those first two things. The answers are in the first page, no need to provide a citation and open up “well I don’t like that citation” cans of worms, pick your source, there will be a mountain of them. Dig a little on any of them and you’ll be on actual meta-studies and such. Neither is a controversial claim, or even close to it.
“Why only extreme solutions?” 1) because zero non-extreme ones have worked, 2) because the root cause appears to be deeply embedded in a complex web of systems, which means addressing the root cause within a human lifespan is necessarily extreme, 3) the drugs arguably aren’t really extreme, and 4) supporting #3, the alternatives we’re currently reaching for are drugs to treat the outcome of the pattern of failures in behavior modification / willpower approaches, so this is really what we’re already doing just applied before things get extremely bad.
Paywalled but the summary provides some good info. Between this and others (also appearing on the first page of my ddg searches for this) one puts together a consistent picture
1) thanks to a ton of research and spending we’re getting better behavior modification programs! Hooray!
2) the ones that kinda work are a lot higher-touch than you probably expect. I.e. expensive and not accessible to lots of folks, for a variety of reasons.
3) despite all that the expensive state-of-the-art isn’t good enough to tackle the obesity crisis. It helps, but not enough, even if we could provide that help to everyone who needs it.
4) comically (again) this particular summary ends on a “… but now that we have really good weight loss drugs, maybe it’ll work!” note.
(“Just do a diet” without ongoing professional support is basically not effective at all for long term weight loss, on a population level)
> In particular we shouldn't use them without trying behavior modification first.
As someone who is diabetic and who has lost a lot of weight on semaglutide I can assure you that several genuine and difficult attempts to modify behavior were attempted before getting on the drug.
I guarantee you that I'm not the only one - I'd expect the vast majority (75%+) of people using semaglutide to have attempted behavior modification before starting the drug.
You sound like the people who say that trans people should try psychological interventions (conversion therapy) before medically transitioning (which is also a lifelong medical commitment in many cases). Psychological interventions don't work, while medical transition does. It's the same here. Ozempic works while telling people to eat less does not.
