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  • Factually correct and wrong in every way that matters.

    Have you struggled with oveeating? Food is as addictive as nicotine but you have to have it every day, just not too much.

    That's not realistic. Not for the majority. It's just not.

    • Sorry, but still no sources.

      Perhaps more importantly, still attacking a straw-man argument that I never personally made.

      I will repeat the following that keeps conveniently being ignored:

      Again, I just want to again reiterate: Literally everything Ozempic does positively, from dementia to cravings to weight-loss, can be achieved by eating a healthy diet. Period. Full stop. This isn't like antibiotics where you can't just take vitamin C and eliminate C-diff. Unless you have problems creating GLP-1, all the benefits of Ozempic — KEY POINT: AND MORE because you're actually avoiding anti-nutrients and taking in a diverse array of nutrients — can be achieved by simply eating what scientists have already concluded as being the healthiest diet: A Mediterranean plant-based diet. (and that doesn't even mean excluding all meats).

      And no, I'm not saying it should be taken off the market; only that I'm practicing skepticism and not calling it a miracle drug because it masks a poor habit; it doesn't fix it. If Ozempic caused someone to stop eating all poor food and start eating their leafy greens and stop chugging starbucks coffees and adopt the scientist-recommended Mediterranean diet, then sure, I might be more likely to call it that. It does not.

      It’s also important to remember weight is only one part of the health equation. If you suppress your appetite but maintain a diet high in ultra-processed foods low in micronutrients, you could lose weight but not increase your actual nourishment. So support to improve dietary choices is needed, regardless of medication use or weight loss, for true health improvements.

      https://hmri.org.au/news-and-stories/ozempic-helps-weight-loss-making-you-feel-full-certain-foods-can-do-same-thing/

      Edit: Correcting a negative.

      • "Again, I just want to again reiterate: Literally everything Ozempic does positively, from dementia to cravings to weight-loss, can be achieved by eating a healthy diet. Period. Full stop."

        I'm not ignoring you. It's just not relevant. People could eat better, but nobody does. I see the people around me all my life everyone is dieting and resolving to change their behavior and buying healthier food and going to weight watchers and having bariatric surgery and they are NOT losing weight and they are getting diabetes and suffering chronic pain and many of them are becoming disabled.

        If anyone could do it, it wouldn't be a society wide issue. 60-70% of the people in my city are overweight and the percentage goes up over time. Sure, technically, anyone could change their diet, but they won't.

        Maybe we need to change our transportation infrastructure so biking is easier and walking more reasonable. Maybe we need to change our food regulation so our groceries and restaurant food is less processed. Maybe we need to change our taxation structure to encourage the production and consumption of healthy foods. Maybe we need to do all that, but people know what healthy diets consist of and they DO NOT eat that way. Sugar and fat and cheese and meat and deep fried deep fry are delicious and people will eat delicious food far in excess of their needs and telling people to eat their vegetables is tone deaf, counter - productive, and ultimately, cruel.

        Nobody around me is suffering from malnutrition. Meat is very nutritious. That is why our bodies crave it. Bread is fortified with micronutrients. Yes, eating more leafy greens would benefit basically everyone where I live. But Lectures are worse than useless, when obesity is killing and maiming people every day.

        • Your points are valid and believe it or not I largely agree. We are largely products of our environment. If there are potato chips in the house, I am more likely to eat potato chips. At scale, if there is a McDonald's on the corner or chips in the grocery store, people are more likely to eat said junk food out of both convenience and dopamine fixation and median societal stress levels leading to elevated cortisol and so on.

          I don't think they changes the points I'm trying to raise, which are:

          • Concerns for symptom masking leading to a false sense of believing you are healthy and not nutritionally deficient.
          • Deflecting attention away from the root issues causing obesity: deregulation of processed foods and socioeconomic inequality and societal stressors (all which COULD and should be addressed).

          Put another way: My primary concern is people being lulled into a false sense of security. If pain is a signal to change something, then looking in the mirror and seeing your weight can be a similar motivator for change all the same for people. If people taking this drug get positive feedback, they may then lack that normal feedback for motivation to change their underlying dietary habits. If this means that while obesity drops, the number of people who adopt better dietary habits overall decreases in kind, then we're setting ourselves up for various disease epidemics down the road. Systemically, there's no doubt you're right that most people struggle to get through this; but that's not to say there aren't people who do manage to make lifestyle changes for the better. It is possible; and are so-called (as the other user called them) "miracle drugs" further impeding that? Are we losing the thread?

          If all we do going through life is chasing a revolving number of symptoms and side-effects, we will never get to the heart of the root problems.

          But as I wrote elsewhere, I am open to the notion that because these problems begin in a unnatural manner in the way they short-circuit our evolutionary biological circuitry, then perhaps the solutions are unnatural as well. For me to change my opinion, would need studies showing that people are more likely to adopt healthy lifestyle choices, particularly diet, following taking Ozempic for a period of time.

          Nobody around me is suffering from malnutrition. Meat is very nutritious. That is why our bodies crave it.

          This is going beyond the scope of our conversation probably, but this is flatly not true. My body doesn't crave it any more than it can be programmed to crave a popsicle, soda, ultra-salty fast-food burger. One can crave heroin or meth, too; it doesn't mean it's good for you. Let us please not enable carnivore pseudoscience bullshit. Not to say some meat, notably cold-water fish, isn't good for you however; in limited quantities in accordance to the Mediterranean diet, yes, it can be healthy.

          Extreme malnutrition tends to have to do with deficiencies in macronutrients; raw calories. Back in the day, we didn't live long enough for micronutrients to have such a profound impact. Macronutrients, in terms of calories, true are easy to get. But people are profoundly deficient on a variety of micro and phytonutrients, ranging from fiber to antioxidant intake to B12 (yes, even 1/3 of meat eaters are deficient), to Omega-3s, to Potassium. These are facts, and if you need sources they're easily found.

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