People seem to think that once these drugs became popular, suddenly obese people around the world awoke from a deep slumber, like zombies, and decided to see a doctor for the first time in their lives about their weight.
Please. These people are walking into doctor’s office having given up hope because most of them have, to one extent or another, tried everything.
Our society does not make it pleasant to be obese, no matter how you feel about body positivity or anything else.
The implication that obese people have never considered or tried eating less, working out more, etc., is in and of itself the problem. It implies laziness and imbues negative morality, when the reality is that most people who are obese know it, hate it, and have tried most of their lives to overcome it, unsuccessfully.
So now that there’s a medication that can help kickstart their creation of new habits for the first time in their lives, I don’t see how that is a bad thing.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41813589
It is simply not true that if 90% of the population “tried to lose weight the right way” that they wouldn’t have a problem with it. That is an assumption you are making, and the underlying postulate is that that same 90% hasn’t tried.
> In other words I was giving kudos that the commentator put in a lot of effort to verify that it was an illness in their case.
The illness being addiction/food abuse?
Again we circle back to the question that OP posed. Because I have never seen someone say that they are an alchololic or smoke/tobacco addict and then get told: okay maybe, but first you should put in the work and find out if you really are that.
(Step one: admit that you are an addict. Step two, uh, confirm that you really are?)
In other words I was giving kudos that the commentator put in a lot of effort to verify that it was an illness in their case.