In the U.S., 72% of adults are overweight and 42% are obese, and without intervention, they’re at significantly increased risk of death, heart disease, and more.
GLP-1 agonists, like Ozempic and Wegovy, have been billed everywhere as “miracle drugs,” enabling people to achieve upwards of 20% weight loss without imposing major detrimental side effects.
The argument against pharmaceutical intervention is generally that people could and should achieve long term healthy outcomes with high quality nutrition and effective exercise programming. However, the added efficacy of weight GLP-1 medication is undeniable: Even when we offer this kind of intervention the medication-assisted group has significantly better outcomes than the lifestyle-only cohort (16% vs 5.7% weight loss).
The cause is well known and simple: overconsumption of calories relative to expenditure. Unfortunately, the solution has seemed more elusive, despite the known risks and how motivated people with obesity are to lose excess weight.
The other common argument is that ‘we don’t know the side effects.’ Side effects are a serious concern, but nausea and diarrhea would be much less harmful than atherosclerosis or diabetes.
With lifestyle approaches falling short, we must rethink how we address obesity. Given the danger of unmanaged obesity, low success rate of lifestyle methods and high success of GLP-1 agonists, I feel strongly that stigmatizing an incredibly promising lifeline to a dire crisis is a terrible mistake.
Instead of stigmatizing these drugs, I propose we take a sober and realistic view of the obesity issue and recognize that most people need help to address this problem. Most will not be able to attain and maintain a healthy body weight regardless of education and motivation they receive. They aren’t ignorant or lazy; they are, like all of us, animals built for scarcity and endurance forced to exist in a digital world of caloric abundance. Of course they need help.