>It's not that "eat less and exercise more" doesn't work, it's that nobody does it
There are plenty of examples of people who've managed to lose weight through diet and exercise, it's not "nobody". Sure it's a small % success rate, but that's because it's not easy. Just like squatting or deadlifting 300 lbs, it's not easy to get there, but the vast majority of humans could if they decided to put the time and effort into it.
I'm one of those examples. I've never been obese or really even overweight, but mid-2023, I noticed my clothes were no longer fitting, and I decided to take off some weight. I lost 20 pounds over the course a a few months and have managed to keep it off since. Body scans aren't accurate, but the 1 scan I took after losing the weight put me at 13% body fat.
It's one of the hardest things I've done. I'm no stranger to hard physical things - I've run marathons, raced cyclocross, done daily bike commuting through several Chicago winters, and I'd rate the weight loss as up harder than all of those. At the risk sounding too hubristic - if that's the effort it takes to lose weight, doing so is beyond the abilities of large swaths of the population. Not to mention that I have the time and financial resources to weigh my food, buy foods that were optimal for my diet (so much yogurt and chicken!), etc.
(As a side note, exercise isn't a very good way to lose weight in my experience. It's valuable to do for all sorts of other reasons, but I actually gained weight when training for my first marathon, while running 60-70 miles/week).
> As a side note, exercise isn't a very good way to lose weight in my experience.
Generally people who don't normally exercise are going to gain muscle faster than they lose fat. This was the origin of HAES before it got corrupted: Health At Every Size, not "Healthy". Encouragement to keep going because with exercise you'll get healthier even if you're not losing weight.
Also, by weight, muscle burns more calories than fat just by existing. Personally I think that's where most of the weight loss attributed to exercise comes from, rather than the exercise itself. You have to gain the muscle first to actually burn more calories.
Sure, I don't mean literally nobody, just 'nobody' in the statistical sense - from the comment I replied to, "the likelihood of going from severely obese to normal weight is 1 in 1667."
Would you apply the same analysis to people with depression who cured their depression by smiling more? It's not zero, it's just very hard. Ultimately both are chronic issues of the central nervous system. We know GLP-1s act on the GABAergic central nervous system.
I think that as convenient as it would be, depression and the inability to not eat too much are not the same.
The fact is that you have much more control over one than the other.
I don't disagree that maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge in today's environment, but it's not impossible or inevitable, like so many in this thread are pretending.
> I think that as convenient as it would be, depression and the inability to not eat too much are not the same.
> The fact is that you have much more control over one than the other.
Why do you say that? Studies do not agree. How would you assess the difference? Or are you simply coming at this from the perspective of either someone who has never had a weight problem or was able to get out of a weight problem without issue? If the latter you're in the ~1% and your experience is not that of others in the same way as your experience as someone without depression does not align with that of someone who is depressed.
How would you measure your thesis? Certainly it cannot be based on results because, well, I cited them.
As someone who isn't addicted to cigarettes, it's pretty easy to not smoke. My experience does not align with those addicted to cigarettes, and I can appreciate that. Why do you not appreciate that the experience of those with obesity might be different than your own? I am not obese for the record, and I have never taken GLP-1s, but I have been obese and this just makes sense to me.
Just because you have full control over your diet and I have control over smoking does not mean that there are people out there who cannot control their diets and cannot control their smoking.
Maybe depression and obesity are more similar than you are giving credit. Especially since serotonin inhibits appetite and has an integral role in maintaining energy homeostasis.
There are plenty of examples of people who've managed to lose weight through diet and exercise, it's not "nobody". Sure it's a small % success rate, but that's because it's not easy. Just like squatting or deadlifting 300 lbs, it's not easy to get there, but the vast majority of humans could if they decided to put the time and effort into it.