I read that and assumed this must be some joke article and/or art stunt. After reading the article and linked sources, I'm still not sure that ain't true.
Been blogging on and off for 20 years. Most of the old stuff is on now deleted blogs (which I plan to import back one day!), so this one only has a few recent things, mostly short book reviews so I can remember what I read.
I didn't like the person he became towards the end of his life, but Dilbert gave me a lot of laughs and was a perfect representation of what the corporate world looked like to my younger self. May he rest in peace.
He was quite a public person and aggressively tried to shape public sentiments. It's perfectly valid to have an opinion on him without knowing him personally.
If I may ask, do you think you will be able to cope with the lack of willpower once you stop taking the drug?
I don't want to sound dismissive or argumentative, I'm asking out of pure curiosity, forgive me if I sound negative, I'm rooting for people who try to improve their health.
Time will tell. I have experience losing weight but could never lose 10lbs - my goal is at least 20. And I have experience taking and tapering off other medication.
I also play sports and work out and am making time for those pursuits - literally calendering workouts as opposed to maybe sometimes doing it.
In years prior the stakes were pretty low. My last bloodwork was a wake up call. I’m optimistic I can stay where I want to be once I get there.
I’m more concerned about alcohol, and falling back into the habit of saying yes to that weird desire to have a drink at 6pm on a Tuesday that turns into a few more.
that’s the dirty secret. once you start this drug you basically need to be on it for life.
I mean, you _can_ get off it, but studies show the effects reverse pretty quickly. Crucially, if you decide to get off of the drug, you’ll likely end up in a worse position than you started. Why? Many Ozempic patients lose some bone density. That can be an issue as you age. So if you get off the drug, your food habits revert to baseline, you gain the weight back, AND you have less bone density than when you started. Not a great plan.
If you need it, can tolerate the side affects, and can afford it, staying on ozempic for life makes the most sense. I believe the idea is that you can reduce the dose after you’re in a good weight range, and continue taking it as “maintenance”.
We should be clear here - bone density loss is not something intrinsic to ozempic, it has to do with your rate of weight loss, exercise and dietary habits, etc.
It is entirely possible for someone to modify their diet, lift weights, etc., while on ozempic and gain bone mineral density.
But if you don't do those things and just lose a bunch of weight really fast, you're going to lose density (and lean muscle mass)
I’ve been taking Zepbound for a year and a half now. I’m at 210lb/95kg, as a 6’2”/187cm man. A year and a half ago I weighed 318 pounds. Ozempic had substantial mental side effects, and was not great for me. Zepbound on the other hand has been a dream.
As I lost weight I discovered a love for bike riding, with a lot of E-Bike assist at first, then progressively less assistance, and took my wheelchair user daughter on several 20+ mile bike rides over the spring and summer. I’ve been going to the gym and building muscle mass. I have more muscle mass than the average man my age, and have about ten pounds of belly fat but I’m a normal healthy weight. My life is completely changed for the better. I feel as if I’ve been freed from a curse that’s been lifted due to a wonder drug.
I will say the muscle loss is real, I had to chug protein shakes and did some physical therapy to fix my hip, at only 39 I hurt my muscle and had to learn some exercises to ensure I could walk properly. Once I got down to my current weight, that problem has resolved itself with working out, and I’m in maintenance and working toward building muscle definition (although I could probably lose another ten pounds of belly fat, if I really wanted to, but important it isn’t visceral fat on my organs, so it isn’t negatively impacting my health). Amazingly my BMI isn’t an accurate indicator of health anymore because I’m more muscular than the average person, according to the body scanner at the gym (bikes in a hilly area really work the legs!)
It does give me pause, but I plan on taking this medication for the rest of my life, or at least until a better medication comes along. Weight loss is a skill, and one I’ve been good at for awhile, which is likely why my results have been so good and beyond the average. The hard part has always been keeping the weight off, weird metabolic effects or blood sugar crashes from eating sugar, and sleep apnea caused by obesity or food or something getting me into a vicious cycle where my life just falls apart. I’ve noticed I crave better foods, while still sometimes enjoying a small snack on occasion. I had a single yogurt cup today with some strawberry, some unsweet iced tea (I can’t stand sugary drinks anymore! They taste far too sweet), and two servings of homemade matzo ball soup I made for my family.
I’d much rather be thin now and not having the terrible side effects of being morbidly obese than worrying about some future problem I might have because of going off the medicine. My children are young and I want to be able to spend time with them and teach them better habits than what I learned from my parents, even if the key to that self control is through medication.
It sounds like you're making great changes to your health. Although BMI is a population metric and has its flaws it is accurate for the vast majority of people. The reason the weight component _seems_ low is that being overweight is so normalised. Most UFC fighters are in the normal weight range and are clearly more muscular than the average person. Society isn't suffering an over-abundance of buffness, it's just people are generally carrying lots of extra weight.
I guess the difference is that one can point to the ToS and say "look we said no deepfakes" and block you if you upload a deepfake produced locally, but not if you use the built-in deepfake generator.
I remember when terrapower was supposed to build a kind of reactor which would use depleted/unenriched uranium which was basically a hole in the ground slowly burning up, but now it seems they're doing a molten sodium "classic" reactor, is that the same thing and I am confused, or did they change their strategy?
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