WeightWatchers files bankruptcy

They do sometimes (but not always) generate plenty of value for the people making those decisions.

But that isn't really true when you're talking about plays like this. More people are made worse off than better.

But the cash outflow to purchase those shares makes the company less valuable at the same time. In a completely efficient market, the amount of money that the company pays to buy back a share should be exactly balanced by the ownership percentage of that share, resulting in no net change to the price of the company's other shares.

I don't think it would get me off alcohol though. I only drink to relax and be more social. Not because I enjoy it or the taste. But it means I drink rarely anyway.

The problem with your argument are the words, "you" and "your".

You are making the mistake that pj50c is exactly arguing against. People arguing in effect, that "__you__ should do something."

"If only __you__ understood...."

"If only __you__ could control your lizard brain telling you you're hungry...."

Those are your beliefs. They are not mine. And this is what people talk about when respecting "boundaries".

I'm not saying you can't have you're opinion. And you can say, "I believe x, y, and z. And here's why...." And I'd be fine with that.

In fact, I'd probably be more open to listening to you.

Purely focussing on people who are fat because they eat too much (which includes myself, albeit also now formerly morbidly obese thanks to Mounjaro):

(1) The studies find a statistically strong correlation, but that doesn't mean everyone who is morbidly obese has poor self control. The raw data still tends to show a big overlap of obese people with good self control and thin people with poor self control - so it's not reasonable to say anyone in that group is just a rounding error.

(2) The way that food self-control is usually measured is, for example, delayed gratification testing with food. It's not surprising that an obese person will do worse at this, but it doesn't necessarily mean the issue is self-control. It could be that their experience of hunger is stronger than the person who is able to exercise more restraint, so even if they're exercising the same level of self-restraint, they're going to give in sooner. It'd be like saying someone who can hold a plank for longer has more determination. There's a bit of that obviously, but then there's also (much more importantly) how fit and muscular you are.

(3) Self-control itself can be, and often is, a medical issue. Obviously there's ADHD/Autism/depression/thyroid issues/so on. which affect your mind in the general sense, but many common drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics, antihistamines, etc. are also well known for causing obesity. Science still doesn't know why, exactly, they cause weight gain, other than it's through increased caloric intake - but not clear what drives it.

(4) This one is more speculative, but when I started taking Mounjaro, my general self-control increased. This is quite a common reported side effect. There's no evidence (yet?) that it directly affects your brain in any way that would affect self-control, but nevertheless it seems to for many. Separately, we know that being hungry seems to reduce your general self-control. It doesn't seem like a huge leap of logic to think that maybe the reason Mounjaro is having such powerful psychological effects on people is actually because being hungry is quite a powerful general non-specific motivator -- in which case, the studies testing calorie consumption against general measures of self-control might be producing a correct result but have the cause and effect the wrong way round.

Cards on the table, I'd say the proximal cause for why I'm fat is because I am less to resist food than the average person. However, my general self-control seems to be pretty much fine, and I only got fat after I started taking antidepressants for anxiety. Impulsive would be one of the last words anyone would use to describe me - it's just isolated to food as far as I can tell. Prior to Mounjaro, I was just thinking about eating pretty much all the time. While I'm eating, I'd be thinking about what I'm going to eat next. I was never NOT hungry.

Congratulations!

People assume that hunger is the same for everyone, and that can be used to simply rank the level of willpower people are exerting against the drive. But it's not. Some people have different appetites which leave them skinny or permanently hungry. Some people can and do eat a lot more than others for less weight gain.

This is why the drugs are so effective: they're appetite suppressants.

Another trick is to try splitting that sandwich in two and eating the second half after 45 minutes (when you get hungry again).

Hunger signals can be very confusing. Is it an actual hunger signal or is it a craving for another hit of dopamine? As a formerly morbidly obese person, who through deliberate fasting has tried hard to understand what actual hunger feels like, I have to admit I still don't trust my own instincts in that regard.

Sometimes what I fear the most isn't hunger, but the let-down that comes with not being fully satisfied.

The food must be tossed though because we have too much food in 2025, not too little. As i've explained to my parents and aunts and brother... if you consume the food you've not saved money by fully extracting the food's value. The food's value to your body is in a curve. Once you pass the nadir, the food becomes toxic. Thus, you are paying to kill yourself.

Anyway, yes, absolutely for someone with this learned behavior, it takes A LOT of work to unlearn it. It's taken me years and sometimes I still get the same hunger, but it dies down. You must understand that this ability to be hungry all the time is completely learned though. After several months of intermittent fasting very strictly, this finally went away. You must understand that you will feel incredibly free when one day you see something that tastes good, that you know tastes good, and don't feel the need to consume it.

Because of my DIRECT experience, I encourage others to pursue this path and do not give up. So while I understand completely where you are coming from, I also understand your friend's disgust over the pizza and hamburgers. This is the normal response to food, especially the highly greasy / sugary stuff like most modern food. The first time I had ice cream after a long no-carb diet, I could barely stomach it. Again, this is normal but no one told me that growing up; in fact, the opposite was encouraged.

> Absolutely wild. Maybe that's the next level of human evolution:

No it really just means you prioritize other things than filling your stomach.

One thing no one ever told me is that ... you don't have to eat. Indeed, on days where I do very little I barely eat anything. Again, that's NORMAL. It doesn't sound normal to many people because we were raised wrong. On days I do a lot of exercise or house work or physical labor (i have a desk job), then I eat more. That's normal. The eating three meals a day whether you need it or not is not normal at all.

But its not hard to find various references to this as a widespread reality:

https://www.cato.org/blog/study-finds-glp-1s-are-effectively...

https://www.wired.com/story/glp1-ozempic-wegovy-semaglutide-...

https://www.aafp.org/pubs/fpm/blogs/inpractice/entry/glp-1-o...

We have free refills (was rare until some time around the late '90s—see the '80s film Gleaming the Cube where there's a sign on a Pizza Hut in a scene near the end of the movie advertising a special on pitchers of soda, which probably seems weird to anyone used to just having their soda constantly topped off, or walking to the fountain and doing it themselves) so it's easy to thoughtlessly sip down three or four glasses of soda with a long meal, and to-go sizes at fast food joints have ballooned in size in the last 20 years or so, like, the medium sizes are often larger than what I'd have classified as a large before.

And yet in a sister thread about Deliveroo we have people talking about what a "game changer" the delivery services are, eating 2 takeout meals a day without really understanding what's in the food. People eat too much.

Can you share it?

"skinnier" countries have way different lifestyles, less driving, more walking, less fast food culture, etc. They don't need to be educated on weight loss because they naturally are not prone to it due to these socioeconomic conditions.

Those countries basically don't exist, or rather they just haven't caught up yet. From 1985 to 2016, there are 117 countries where obesity has increased by more that 10.0% (in absolute terms). In no country was the increase less than 1.9% (which was vietnam, where 1.9% in absolute terms is a 10x increase in the percent of people who are obese).

What I am talking about is people saying things like "Wow you have fast metabolism", without even understanding what metabolism is. Having twice as fast metabolism would mean my body requires twice the amount of calories for the same cellular activity. That'd be terrible!

The truth is I am skinny because i barely eat and if I eat 500 calories above my calculated BMR, I gain 1 pound a week just like the science suggests. I think this is the fact for most people.

>While a person who eats nothing will clearly lose weight

That's a strawman. What I am saying is take your BMR+caloric expenditure from exercise - 500 calories, not starve yourself.

Then exercise more. That's how you increase the "calories out" part of the equation.

Yeah, it takes willpower.

I have never heard another source citing Oxygen/CO2 exchange as a factor for weight change, again, please site a source. O2 levels are certainly a factor of cardio health which can be correlated to overall health and weight.

Yes, macros also matter. But, nothing matters as much as the simple math of calories in/calories out. Its disingenuous, borderline irresponsible, to suggest otherwise.

Yes, breathing is literally how weight is lost, I’m not sure what your point was there.

If you factor in metabolic adaptation, then re-introduction of surplus calories will lead to regaining weight, even if they weren't as many calories as before.

For the reports of mediated cravings, also: some people don't just overeat from physical cravings, but for emotional satisfaction. A binge session on comfort food has almost nothing to do with hunger. This is something addressed through therapy, not pills.

Why does food addiction encompass 40% of the US population?