Or you eat less and/or healthier food to achieve the same result without the side effects. Spend part of that $1000 (but not too much) on better food which you (or someone in your family) prepares at home, keep the rest for other purposes.

For some reason this suggestion, i.e. the suggestion to solve a problem by eliminating the root causes, does not seem to be popular on this forum. I'd very much like to know why this is given that this place is supposedly frequented by rational people. If eating too much unhealthy food is making you fat you don't solve that by putting a chemical stopper in your veins, you solve it by eating less of the bad stuff.

I don’t think anyone here disagrees with the premise that fat people can lose weight by eating fewer calories than they expend. What you are missing is that — for many people — your solution is akin to telling an alcoholic to just drink less. Yes, it would solve their problem, but for a variety of reasons it’s probably not gonna happen.

Most fat people who want to lose weight have already tried eating less food. Just like many alcoholics have tried to cut down or stop drinking. Some of those people succeed, but many others don’t. The reasons why are far more complex than commitment and willpower.

Deliberately disingenuous? Pretending it's a diet problem, and not a psychological one.

Try this experiment: put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. You may find it hard. Your hand may shake; you will start sweating; rising panic will cloud your thinking.

But it's so easy! Just a couple pounds of pressure on the trigger. Anybody can do it.

That's me substituting a physiological problem for a psychological one.

This reminds me of Sheldon Cooper's suggestion to Penny on The Big Bang Theory when she was having financial problems: "You know, it occurs to me that you could solve all your problems by obtaining more money".

Weight depends on a complex interaction between many systems of the body. Losing significant weight and keeping it off in healthy way without side effects can be difficult.

There was a good look at much of this in the Nova episode "The Truth About Fat" in 2020. Old Nova episodes are usually behind a paywall if you aren't a member of your local PBS station but occasionally old episodes become free for a while. It might be worth checking occasionally to try to catch it during one of those free periods.

This might not be a popular opinion: but I think that for roughly 99% of people losing weight and keeping it off long term is impossible once they’ve become overweight. They are just destined to be fat at that point no matter what they do. Weight may come off for a bit, but it returns… their body is irreparably compromised.