My mom is obese because she developed an autoimmune disorder while she was pregnant with me that attacks her thyroid. She has extremely abnormal thyroid cells that have to be biopsied twice a year and she has to take daily thyroid medication or she will die. She is about to start on Ozempic as well because the thyroid medication is not enough.

To manage her disease, she eats much less and much healthier (e.g., steamed kale for dinner every night) than everyone else in my family, and yet she is the obese one amongst us.

Please stop acting like life-saving drugs are evil and everything can be managed through willpower alone. My mom would be dead without modern medical science, and I would have died in the womb with her.

> or quitting crack.

Statistically, people that manage to quit most chemical addictions have lower recidivism rates than people who lose weight through dieting.

So, possibly it is?

I for one have far less trouble keeping any of my drug and alcohol use to reasonable levels than I do avoiding overeating. I can quit drinking or smoking pot for months or years on end without even much thinking about it, but my attempts to lose weight without tirzepatide tended to be huge struggles that I would crash and burn on after 6 or so months.