There doesn’t need to be an off-ramp they just have to take it for life. Why would someone think they would keep the weight off? If they could they would have before Ozempic.
> Why would someone think they would keep the weight off? If they could they would have before Ozempic.
I think the intuition many people have--which I am not at all defending as correct, but it certainly isn't so obviously wrong that we should scoff at someone for thinking it works this way--is more like "if my weight was stable before I did this intervention, I just need to lose the weight and then my weight will once again be stable after it"; in this mental model, one would assume you only need lots of willpower to lose weight: after, you only will need as much willpower as you already know you have to not gain it back, as it isn't as if you are gaining weight currently.
I could see it building habits that persist even when no longer using the drugs. They've found other things to fill their time instead of eating, and things which would previously trigger them to start eating now trigger them to do other things.
There's of course a risk that when they stop the drugs that hunger will drive them to re-establish those habits, but now that they have new habits that fight that hunger they are in a much better position to resist it than they were when they'd initially established their eating patterns.
That's literally the implication of these findings.
But one can always hope for a miracle drug that you can take for a bit, then stop, and have its effects last. Now we know that Ozempic is not that drug.
I imagine the idea for some is "if I can just get myself healthier, I can then stay motivated to maintain the healthier lifestyle required to stay skinny without the drugs"
