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I haven't gotten into the ozempic discussion so I don't know if other people have been talking about this, but isn't this going to make people consume 2000 calories of the same corn-syrup-on-soy-flakes diet they were already on?
I worry we're going to have a lot of malnourished people who maintain a BMI of 20 on nothing but Snickers bars and potato chips because their entire appetite regulation system is being overridden.
The idea that obese people eat nothing but junkfood is a strawman. Every single fat person I know tries to eat healthy. Every single one. And they are 95% successful at it too.
I've worked as a grocery store cashier (God help me) and see what foods people buy. I stand by it.
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I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but I have a friend of mine who's already on ozempic specifically to loose weight.
Ironically enough, he's not obese - he just knows he eats alot and wants to stay at a healthy weight.
He literally cannot over-eat. As in, physically impossible. It makes him uncomfortable bordering on painful. Solid foods, atleast - does it affect liquids? I don't know.
So there's something there, atleast.
Sorry, I know this is being annoying, but you committed my least favorite spelling mistake. It should be lose, not loose. Loose is pronounced like moose.
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Then we throw some vitamins in the snickers bars and call it a day.
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That's not strictly worse than their current diet. Let's say they eat 8 Snickers bars for exactly 2000 calories:
They won't pack on any muscle with paltry 32g of protein, nor will this amount of fiber get them a better score on the Boston stool scale. But they will still lose weight and become much nimbler.
And if you switch them to (still delicious) Snickers Hi-Protein (8 bars for 1960 calories), the macros start to look solid:
This is not exactly the diet of champions, but if you feed someone these bars you can do some body recomposition work on them with resistance training.
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This is what I was trying to put my finger on. Thank you.
Ozempic etc don't reduce complexity in the system. We're already dealing with complex interactions between the human endocrine, neurological, and gastrointestinal systems and I think we're prematurely celebrating by myopically focusing on the success of appetite suppression. But how does that reverberate through the entire system? People eating fewer calories but also eating lower quality calories? Inconsistent eating timing? Maybe the secondary effects are benign (I'd like that!).
I would imagine the trade off is still worth it. Billions of East Asian peasants lived off almost nothing but rice for thousands of years. They weren’t at optimal health, but they managed.
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