Genetic gifts don't trump thermodynamics (unfortunately).

>Please reserve your moral judgments.

This thread seems needlessly heated. How is it a moral judgement to say that some folks don't put in the effort to control calorie input? Losing weight sucks. It's worse the bigger you are. But they're not gaining weight by magic. They're consuming more calories than they burn. It is as simple as that (yes, yes, yes -- gut flora, metabolism disruption, vernal equinox, micro-plastics, etc. etc. There are plenty of variables that change the efficiency of the mechanism, but none that override the core mechanism.)

fwiw, Ozympic sounds great to me if people want to take it. Also great if they don't.

> How is it a moral judgement to say that some folks don't put in the effort to control calorie input?

The implication that anyone reading it walks away with is "... and it is because they don't care enough to try and/or are lazy." If that wasn't your intent, cool, but that is most often the implication.

My only point is that most folks who "don't put in the effort" have put in the effort, and have failed. Multiple times, over and over again.

Sure, some lazy folks exist. It is a tiny minority of those who are obese, though, most of whom have given up because they had tried and failed countless times, or have simply accepted that there is no hope for them (cue tears and depression).

I have been obese for more than a decade, during which I have made many failed attempts of losing weight.

Because of the many failures, I was pretty convinced that what you say is true and no matter what I do I cannot lose weight.

Nevertheless, eventually I have made one more attempt, which was successful, so after about ten months I have reached a weight of only 2/3 of the weight that I had previously.

Then, after learning thus how to control my weight, I have kept it constant for more than a decade, until today. Losing weight was a rather unpleasant experience, especially in the beginning, but then the improvements in my quality of life have been so noticeable that the effort has certainly been worthwhile.

Looking back at time when I was obese, I regret a lot that I did not lose weight earlier and I consider that my failed attempts of losing weight had been quite stupid, because I should have realized that I am not doing all that is necessary for success.

The final attempt that was successful started with a way to measure accurately my changes in weight from a day to another, to determine the effect of the changes in diet, and it required a complete change both in what I was eating and in how I was eating.

Now it is very obvious for me why all my early attempts were not successful, because they were doomed from the start, since I was not doing them in the right way. However at that time, I was not aware of this and I did not think enough about the manner in which I should handle this problem.

After my own experience, I find it very hard to believe in the theories that for many or most obese people there are objective reasons for them to be obese instead of the fact that they have just never been taught what to eat and how to eat in order to preserve their health (in a detailed, practical way, not with generalities like "do not eat too much").

Both my grandfather and my father had been obese and they both had diabetes in old age, so I certainly did not have any help from genetic inheritance. It is enough for me to eat during a single day like I was eating when I was obese, to gain enough weight that I would need at least a week to lose it again.

The only thing with which I agree is that for poor people who are obese it is extremely difficult to lose weight, because all their time is occupied with ensuring their subsistence, so it is hard for them to reserve time for things like cooking at home, learning about how to compose a healthy diet, doing some physical exercises and so on.

That is fantastic that that was true for you. I, too, have tried many times to lose weight, and I hadn’t given up. The closest I got was losing 55 lbs, which worked great, until I dislocated my shoulder and had to have surgery, which meant I couldn’t work out for a long time.

For many people, it is simply a lot easier to lose and maintain weight, even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time. If we were to perform the same actions, in the same way, my body may simply have a predilection to maintaining a higher weight. (This is a real phenomenon, bodies have “set weights,” this is how stalls happen, etc.)

Is it impossible? No, of course not. But is it much much harder for some than others? Absolutely.

Yes, if anyone eats fewer calories than they expend they will lose weight. That is how thermodynamics works.

But the level of difficulty with which that can happen varies greatly.

One of the main changes in my habits that was absolutely necessary in order to lose weight, then maintain it at the desired level, was that previously I was eating whenever I felt the need and until I felt completely satiated, while since then I make every day a plan with when to eat, what to eat and how much to eat and then I stick to the plan, I never eat anything more than previously planned and outside the planned meals I do not eat or drink anything else, e.g. snacks or juices, except for drinking water.

Obviously during all the time when I was losing weight and even some time after that I was feeling hungry all the time, so I had to make some efforts to not eat beyond what I had planned. Nevertheless, if you work or do anything else that occupies your attention, the feeling of hunger disappears for some time, even if it reappears after some hours.

So having to cope with hunger is unavoidable for this goal. However, eventually my body became accustomed with a much lower food intake and the hunger disappeared. Now, when I eat food that I cook myself, I may not eat again for an entire day without becoming hungry. I have experimented and I have eaten again some industrially-produced food, like I was eating in the past, and with that I have become hungry just a couple of hours after eating it, exactly like before losing weight, so I believe that switching to self cooking is also a necessary condition for avoiding hunger when eating little.

I don’t disagree with that. When I did keto for about 10 months, I was very similar. The challenge with this was, of course, maintaining it - I’m an extrovert, and being social often meant being around people at dinner, drinking, etc. Even if I abstained (which I did), you still felt a bit “out of place.”

As for hunger - you’re right. I was able to curb hunger simply by eating better. But I was never able to curb the “food noise” that was constantly in my head in a sustainable way.

Moreover, my body does really attempt to retain weight. Unless I’m absolutely perfect, I will gain weight fast and take it off extremely slowly. That is now how everybody’s body works. Many people struggle to put on weight. That is not the case for me.

I do not disagree that lifestyle changes matter, and that Ozempic is not sustainable without them.

> you were genetically more gifted than they

No scientific basis in this whatsoever.

> It is the rare person who has been obese for most or all of their lives and prefers it that way or has never thought about or done anything to try and fix it. That is not how people show up at doctor's offices to ask about Ozempic. They show up in tears, at the end of their rope, or having completely given up.

If this was the case, there would have been no drug shortage. Instead, everyone is showing up asking for it because it's the easiest way out. No diet, no effort, nothing. Just take the pill or do the shot, boom. I wonder if you are being serious or just so much deluded. There is no drugging out of thermodynamics.

There is no scientific basis that genetics affects your predilection to obesity? Uh, I have about a dozen papers to show you, at least.

There was a drug shortage because the media ran away with the story and the pharmaceuticals were unprepared.

That very drug shortage hurt both people with obesity and people with Type 2 Diabetes.

My source is first hand experience. What’s yours? Bias and assumption, or moral judgment?