This is akin to saying a severely anxious person should be able to take an SSRI for a few months, learn how to change their thinking, and stay off antidepressants for the rest of their life. So simple. Must be their fault if they can't pull it off.
Perhaps that works for some people. I'm glad it seems to have worked for you. But the facts of the world we live in show that it doesn't work for most. "Learn the lesson and be disciplined!" is not effective advice.
That is the ideal model for treatment of those types of mental health disorders. Often patients have blockers that prevent them from resolving underlying issues. But through a drug they can get into a headspace that allows them to work through them with talk therapy, and then learn new habits and eventually go off the drug.
In practice, this doesn't happen that often, no, but it's a theoretical goal. Probably because we're in the pre-GLP-1 era with regard to mental health meds. Maybe that will change.
I think there is a big difference when one still ultimately requires a physical act in the end and one is all mental.
You can much more easily use the physicality of your surroundings to physically deny yourself the food than you can deny yourself anxious thoughts.
With eating there are 2 components to it, mental and physical, so you have more opportunities and more options and avenues to potentially control it.
The additional options to control it should IMO make it at least some amount easier to control in the end since some people may be able to take advantage of physical controls to limit themselves where that's not an option for anxiety.
I would say that in at least some cases over eating and anxiety are both symptoms of underlying problems. Stress, emotional issues, and trauma can all lead someone to either of the two.
As someone that uses food as a coping mechanism for stress, I agree with the GP - if the underlying problem isn't resolved, the weight will come back.
As someone who took SSRIs for a while my plan w my doctor was always to use meds for support as I developed a toolkit to deal with my emotions without medication and then to re-evaluate periodically to see if the meds were still necessary. It took a few years, but eventually we weaned me off. I'm glad we did, now that my life is in a better place and I'm a bit more agile with my thinking I'm quite glad to be rid of all the gross side effects of the drug, but when I was having a rough time those side effects were well worth the stabilization the drug brought me.
The analogy to your example is that someone who has to take Mounjaro for diabetes will always have to take it even after losing say 100 pounds. Or Metaformin even.
GLP-1 in those cases helps manage the problem better.
But for those who are not in those cases where Type 2 Diabetes has sunk in, then they need to use the opportunity to get better while on it and kick themselves into high gear or they will have learned nothing from the experience
I feel like your example shows the inverse of what you want. SSRI are actually great at helping the person develop healthy mechanisms (compared to GLP-1s), because they reduce the mood swings & negative thoughts, allowing the person to be more productive & be more involved in their therapy, in reading, journaling, doing sports, etc. It's just that it might take two or three years and not months, which is fine because SSRI also have much more limited side effects compared to GLP-1s.
GLP-1s don't do that directly.. but at least they might help people move more, and give them confidence to do more for their health instead of seeing it as a lost cause.
How are people so consistently wrong about GLP-1s? The side effects are minuscule in comparison to SSRI’s and the effects on improving habits are massive.
GLP-1 - Mild nausea, always temporary and in the beginning, easy to avoid by tapering dose. Extremely effective.
SSRI - about 10% chance of major sexual disfunction, often permanent, significant likelihood of sleep disturbance, majority get blunted emotions. Debatably effective.
As someone who's currently experiencing significant and crippling gastroparesis due to GLP-1's, being reductive about the side effects is not particularly helpful.
Lower your dose a little? Gastroparesis is a choice on these and only at high doses for long periods, you get signs weeks in advance and you choose to stay on a high dose. Myself never experienced it even when I had extremely strong effects (near 500 cals a day for a few weeks), but I did have some slowness, I lowered my dose and was fine.
It’s trivial to look this up which is funny - I double checked everything i said, so I know it’s true, and never claimed you’re making things up. But you are claiming I’m making things up while obviously not even doing basic research.
Very wrong analogy. Anxiety is not something that you gain by buying junkfood due to low budget or laziness or simply being raised with very wrong values re food and health. On the other hand, every single ice cream, pizza, burger with fries, cupcake or beer contributing to resulting weight is a voluntary choice (with some mental drama around).
There is simply no way around the simple fact that there is only 1 way to eating well long term - that is lesser, more healthy portions. GLP1 may show a person what things could and should look like, what is achievable but the path needs to be walked by themselves. The alternative is either lifelong consumption of this chemical with various bad side effects or premature death (or both, to be seen since nobody has a clue).
You need to remember that people experience reality differently. For you eating the healthy number of calories may be easy. For others it very much is not. I have heard it described as leaving your thermostat at 45 in the winter to save money on your gas bill. Sure, you could do it, but it would cause a lot of suffering. GLP-1s are able to change the way people experience hunger so that it only feels like the thermostat is at 65 instead of 45.
Perhaps that works for some people. I'm glad it seems to have worked for you. But the facts of the world we live in show that it doesn't work for most. "Learn the lesson and be disciplined!" is not effective advice.