You're both right. I'm angry at the systems AND at some of the individuals. My mother told me I'd be "so pretty if I just lost weight" approximately 5,000 times growing up. My college roommate used to eat pizza in front of me and say "I just have a fast metabolism, I guess!" while I ate a salad and felt like a failure.

But you're right that the real enemy is the framework. The moral model of obesity. The idea that fat = lazy and thin = virtuous. That framework has done more damage to more people than I can even calculate.

GLP-1 medications aren't just treating bodies. They're dismantling a mythology. And that is why so many people are threatened by them.

Obesity medicine physician here. I want to apologize on behalf of my profession.

We were taught, in medical school, that obesity was a lifestyle disease. Eat less, move more, counseling, done. We weren't trained in the neuroendocrinology of appetite regulation. We weren't taught about GLP-1, ghrelin dysregulation, hypothalamic inflammation, or epigenetic set points. We gave you 15-minute appointments and a pamphlet on portion control and called it treatment.

That is changing. Slowly, but it's changing. Obesity medicine is now a recognized subspecialty. The clinical guidelines now explicitly state that obesity is a chronic disease requiring medical treatment. GLP-1 RAs are part of that paradigm shift.

But I know that doesn't undo decades of being dismissed, shamed, and undertreated. I'm sorry. You deserved better. You deserve better now.

What a thread. Pinning this in the mental health section because the psychological damage of the "willpower" narrative is one of the most important topics we discuss here.

You were not lazy. You were not weak. You were fighting biology with guilt and shame, and you did the best you could with what was available. Now there's something better available. Use it without apology.