Posts Tagged ‘weight loss’

It is beginning to seem like an anachronism. January has long marked the beginning of “diet season.” Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Atkins, and many other businesses depend on this annual weight loss ritual to rack up their biggest sales of the year. Diet resolutions typically stick for only a few months, though. Some time […]

This was a year of great progress in obesity, and with that progress came frustrations and angst. So finding the best and worst of 2023 in obesity and health is actually quite an easy and interesting task. Let’s dig right in. #1 Best: Cardiovascular Outcomes Benefit Data for Semaglutide Above all else the landmark findings […]

It’s long been overdue. For as long as we can remember, one presumption has been dominant. The real cure for obesity is (supposed to be) a change in lifestyle. It is the “foundation of obesity treatment” says just about everyone, even today. But the sand underneath that foundation is shifting. So the time has come […]

It’s not easy. Getting access to good obesity care and maintaining it is a challenge that is especially frustrating as we see that the options for care are improving. But it seems that health systems right now are rigged to interrupt obesity treatment. An illustration of this comes from a recent study published in Obesity. […]

Words matter. The language we use to describe and discuss obesity conveys and sometimes betrays our understanding of this complex, chronic disease. It betrays that understanding because our implicit biases about obesity are sometimes at odds with our explicit, rational knowledge of it. With a new paper in Gastroenterology Clinics of North America, Ted Kyle, […]

People have “lots of interest” in the effects of GLP-1 treatment for obesity on body composition, reports endocrinologist Daniel Drucker from EASD in Hamburg. Judging from clickbait headlines about semaglutide, we suspect public interest in this question is strong as well. So that makes data presented at EASD from the SURPASS study on muscle composition […]

Words matter. They convey both facts and feelings and the wrong words create misunderstandings that are sometimes irreparable. Because of this, we notice the imbalance in public discourse about new medicines for obesity that more often casts them as weight loss drugs than as medicines for the care and treatment of obesity. Fortunately, others are […]

On Friday, NEJM published impressive results in an RCT of semaglutide for treating patients who have obesity and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). The treatment enabled these people to function better, feel better, and suffer half as many serious adverse events. These are important benefits for people with a very difficult condition. But […]

Simplistic thinking about obesity has an overwhelming appeal. Sadly, though, it has a dismal history of letting us down. “Yes, calories in/calories out really is the key to weight loss,” writes Tamar Haspel in the Washington Post. To insure we don’t miss the point, she closes by saying: “It’s the calories, people. It’s the calories.” […]

On Friday, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released remarkably detailed results from a survey of public awareness and beliefs about new obesity medicines. It offers much for us to think about. But at the very top line it puts some solid numbers on a basic fact about the public response to breakthrough medicines for obesity. […]