The Future of Weight Loss | Hacker News Reader

The Future of Weight Loss

worksinprogress.co

41 pointsbeefman8 comments

> Aside from its slimming effect on the wallet, semaglutide often causes other unpleasant side effects like nausea, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation, fatigue, and headache, but they are usually mild and transient if the dose is started low and escalated gradually. “In my clinical experience,” states Macklin, “discontinuation of semaglutide because of side effects is generally nil.”

Perhaps discontinuation from the physician side is generally nil, but I’ve been on semaglutide, and the side effects hit me hard and I discontinued the medicine from my end. I’m not the only person I know that did that - I’d say one in four in my weight loss/diabetes support group has gone non-compliant for long periods of time due to side effects.

> Macklin, an 18-year veteran of obesity medicine and coauthor of the Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines, is referring to his two years of experience treating over a thousand people with obesity using the relatively new drug semaglutide.

Sadly, another intervention pushed by Big Pharma. Selling you a future of unhealthy dependency.

I don't think you're wrong but I'd also say anything to help those who are in need is a good thing. I'm healthy, I've taken the time to invest in learning and taking action to stay healthy in mind and body but a lot of people don't or can't.

If a doctor said "you can lose ~60lbs by taking a weekly shot OR you can lose ~60lbs by going to a therapist, talking with a dietician and visiting with a personal trainer weekly" which are most people going to choose? One sets you up for potential dependency and yo-yo'ing the other sets you up for the rest of your life. That's assuming their insurance would even cover all of those things on a regular basis.

There doesn't seem to be any money in the "ultimate weight loss therapy" and as of right now it seems like a long shot but eventually, maybe? Something has to be done about the current obesity epidemic so I'd say this is one step closer to some sort of solution.

One thing that is glossed over in this paper is the insulin-carb cycle, which affects obese people differently. When sugars are free in the blood stream, body fat gets preferential treatment in absorbing the extra blood sugar and converting it into more fat over everything except the brain, heart and lungs. Quick Edit: Muscles that currently have glycogen depletion seem to have precedence over fat cells

This makes sense as in a normal body it's more akin to recharging the batteries so that you have energy on standby once your muscles burn through their glycogen stores.

But, body fat in obese people is more like a parasite than an energy store, and since our body never destroys the fats cells it has created, even losing the weight means carrying around a hungry parasite that will feed itself any excess that you consume and will make you want to consume excess all of the time since insulin disrupts the Ghrelin hormone that indicates satiety.

Its why you can put weight back on so much more quickly if you were previously fat than if you were trying to gain weight.

Any form of diet and exercise alone will not resolve this issue. The only thing we have for now is to use liposuction or RF modulation to kill or remove the excess fat cells from the body, surgically excising the parasite from you.

Hey I've been on saxsenda and it is magical for how it changes my reward function. I'm usually very impulsive and it takes a long time for me to fill up. I'll get bored and snack. The drug helps the boredom snacking not even occur to me.

When I first heard about OMAD, I thought these guys were hardcore nut jobs.

Then I tried it—- now I’m convinced this is a smarter, healthier path. Down 70 pounds, kept off for 3 years now. Even during lockdown.

> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V4d_YoPRKa4

With regards to this and weight loss in general it's important to note that for many of us we can manage our weight and even lose weight successfully if we make slight diet decisions and have an ounce of willpower. Whilst it can be difficult to lose weight, this can be significantly more challenging depending on how much body fat you have carried during your lifetime, both in losing the weight but also keeping it off.

There is a lot of research being done (don't have the time to reference now) which is indicating that it is much more difficult for some obese people to keep off the weight they lose. Whilst I am not saying it is impossible and I have been a healthy weight my entire life, it is important to understand that an obese person's body is often geared in such a way that their body is primed to store food as fat more quickly than others and drive a cycle of hunger.

So whilst I'm not an advocate for an easy way out to lose weight if it doesn't address the underlying root causes of weight gain, I can get around it when it brings down some of the walls that very overweight people face that others might not.

The issue is we're dealing with a system that evolved in a food scarce environment.

The N hormones and signals for food intake can all be out of whack, and still somehow work since the food supply was constrained anyways.

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