There is theory, and then there is practice. A 300lb person will have trouble just "eating less" and "working out", because both of those things put incredible stress on a person's mind and body. Immediately working those lifestyle changes into an obese person's life is not like flicking a light switch, even for the overweight person who looks at themselves in the mirror and cries about how they look, "just eat less" and "just move more" are ideas that are psychologically difficult to put into action.

With GLP-1 medications, it is considerably easier to do the first part of "eating less". An obese person can lose over 20% of their body fat in a year, which will reduce the probability of injury when they begin working out. There is hardly any downside to developing medication to help people manage their weight to below obesity, and incredible upside.

Maybe another example would be: why do you use VSCode to do your programming? Hell, why do you use a computer at all? You should probably do it the hard way, on a sheet of paper... there is no reason to use a keyboard when you could just use your hands, right?

GLP-1 agonists are just tools like anything else. They make difficult tasks easier.

Like much of life it's more complicated than simple rules. It works for some people, but does not for everyone. As someone that has struggled with diet for the last decade or so these drugs have been a life saver. I've been able to eat healthy and feel full instead of being stuck in a cycle of eating right for a while and then eventually breaking under load. I've been able to have a consistency in the last 6 months on the drugs that i never thought I was capable of. I've even been able to build up a weight lifting plan that actually works for me and I feel good after the day.

There are lots of problems with drug reliance still to be worked out, but I'm excited for the chance to rebuild my habits into something good and work my way off to something normal.

Related, exercise is awesome but has little impact on long term weight loss! Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSSkDos2hzo

There are many people in their 50-60s who can neither “eat no crap”, as you state it nor “work out”.

great, tell that to my grandma with high blood pressure and diabetes

Definitely but simple thoughts like that aren't easy to implement in reality for many, many people.

If it was there wouldn't be so many suffering from obesity...

[flagged]

Please don't be snarky or perpetuate flamewars here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please avoid generic flamewar tangents here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If that worked we’d all be skinny and fit. Different people have different capacities to control their ability to balance food/nutritional intake of different qualities than others and it’s traceable both back to nature and nurture.