We literally have the science, and, over a population and over time, no, they per se do not.
The things that do mostly aren't accessible to normal people (three or four professional nutritionists and trainers and doctors helping out several hours per week; moving to a skinnier country) so "diet and exercise" has been the only available course to recommend, and it's better than nothing, but it's depressingly ineffective.
This is precisely the difference between could and does I was trying to highlight to address this kind of thing in advance: diet and exercise could work, like, on paper they work every single time! Hell, technically, they're even essentially all of the mechanism by which methods that do work, achieve their effect, just indirectly. But just trying to improve diet and increase exercise directly does not work, not over a population. For outliers, yeah, but for most, no. Improving those is a an effect of approaches that do work.
If it's not diet and exercise, what is it? Obesity is a relatively new problem. GLP-1 also seems to work - primarily through addressing diet. So again, curious what you mean when you say "diet and exercise" do not work.
If someone refuses to eat much less food to get their weight under control, I don't see how a nutritionist or personal trainer would help. Maybe a psychiatrist could help them break their addiction.
We literally have the science, and, over a population and over time, no, they per se do not.
The things that do mostly aren't accessible to normal people (three or four professional nutritionists and trainers and doctors helping out several hours per week; moving to a skinnier country) so "diet and exercise" has been the only available course to recommend, and it's better than nothing, but it's depressingly ineffective.
This is precisely the difference between could and does I was trying to highlight to address this kind of thing in advance: diet and exercise could work, like, on paper they work every single time! Hell, technically, they're even essentially all of the mechanism by which methods that do work, achieve their effect, just indirectly. But just trying to improve diet and increase exercise directly does not work, not over a population. For outliers, yeah, but for most, no. Improving those is a an effect of approaches that do work.