An effective weight-loss drug sidesteps the need for self-discipline to eat less and therefore promotes more self-indulgence. I see Wegovy as being a step in the wrong direction as it will also discourage daily walking as a form or exercise and to improve mental health.
Michael Broad
NEWS AND VIEWS – UK: The lack of self-discipline in the modern era is the root of many of the day’s problems. Arguably it is a major or the major cause of global warming. Humankind needs the self-discipline to change its damaging habits and stop doing what it likes to do. But humankind is too lazy to change its ways and to spend a lot of money and be poorer in the interests of tackling climate change and saving the planet. People want to go on driving diesel-driven SUVs or, in the case of India, they want to go on burning coal to power their industries because they don’t want to spend the money and expend the effort to get off coal burning and into sustainable fuels.
The same by the way applies to China. But that isn’t due to laziness; it’s due to the fact that they want to get ahead and dominate the rest of the world.
But laziness or a lack of self-discipline is endemic and it got a lot worse in the UK after Covid-19.
Furlough too generous
The furlough program in the UK was far too generous. It made people lazy. It turned people off self-discipline. Where there was at least some self-discipline before Covid there is less nowadays with far too many people ostensibly off sick when they’re actually just lazy, lacking the self-discipline to get back to work.
Many more off ‘sick’
Half a million more people are out of the labour force because of long-term sickness today than in the past. Between June and August 2022, around 2.5 million people in the UK reported long-term sickness as the main reason for economic inactivity up from around 2 million in 2019 according to the Office for National Statistics.
Wegovy
This mass lack of self-discipline in the UK – and I would argue in other parts of the world – is made manifest by the need to use a weight-loss drug which can cut heart attacks and strokes and which has been found to be successful IN A STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE MANUFACTURER OF THE DRUG! It’s reported that jabs for up to 12 million people will ease strain on ambulances as well as waistbands as suggested by a five-year study.
The UK government has said that the drug will be a key tool in easing pressures on the NHS. The drug is called Wegovy and is going to make the Pharma company, Novo Nordisk, that makes it many billions of dollars. The findings exceed expectations. It’s a drug which will help millions lose weight. And thereby lose a predisposition to obesity-related conditions such as strokes and heart attacks. And of course, Type II diabetes.
Steve Barclay the Health Secretary, said that it’s important that people used the drug alongside diet, physical activity and wider behavioural support to minimise weight regain. A fat chance of that will happen! Excuse the pun.
Just eat less
The fact that the big Pharma companies are even producing such a drug indicates a huge lack of self-discipline. You can achieve exactly the same thing by cutting down on food intake and burning more energy through moderate amounts of exercise. And exercise also improves mood. Wegovy does not improve mood.
It isn’t that difficult. You just eat less. It might take you about eight years as it did to me to change your diet. For a lot of people, it needs a complete rethink about their diet. A big part of the problem is that older people continue to eat what they ate when they were young. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to reduce calorie intake by about 50% to 66% when you are over the age of about 65. And it takes time to get it down but with self-discipline you can do it.
Expensive
Wegovy will cost £74 a month for the lower dose version. The UK government think that it’s cheap at the price. That’s because treating type II diabetes is much more expensive. And that probably goes for the other diseases as well. But it is still £74 a month times 12 million times 12 per year which makes: £10.7 billion. The country does not have that kind of money and we wouldn’t need to spend it if people had some self-discipline.
This lack of self-discipline, as mentioned, is dramatically affecting the planet. We just don’t want to change. We want to continue to be self-indulgent. To do what pleases us without thinking of the long-term consequences.
For example – oak furniture
For example, we want to buy oak furniture. There’s a company in Britain which sells oak furniture online. They probably claim that they are sustainable but they are not. The oak must come from the Amazon rainforest and other virgin forests in Asia. And people buy this furniture because they like oak but they are not thinking about the long-term future of the planet and how oak furniture denudes rainforests which destroys the habitat of the wildlife in those forests and which contributes to global warming because forests absorb carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis. The people who lack self-discipline don’t think about that.
For example – plastic usage
Another example of a lack of self-discipline is the great difficulty in getting people off plastic items. In developing countries there is still a gargantuan amount of plastic pollution in major rivers such as the Ganges and the Yangtze which is then washed into the oceans where every square metre of the massive oceans is polluted with minute particles of plastic which in turn is ingested by marine wildlife and, ironically, it comes back to harm people because we eat marine wildlife. People just don’t want to change their ways as I mentioned to get off plastic and into something more sustainable and more environmentally friendly.
Unhealthy foods
They don’t want to change their ways by changing from a fry up breakfast to something far healthier and better for animals. People should be heading towards veganism or at least vegetarianism in order to protect animals which are routinely abused on intensive farms. Note: vegan foods are losing popularity as I type this! We are going backwards.
Lazy people don’t want to think about it. People don’t want to kiss goodbye to their unhealthy, fry up breakfast. Or their steak and chips.
It always appals me when I see fat people eating huge meals in cafes and restaurants. I don’t go to restaurants any more but these people lack self-discipline. They just don’t see the long-term issues of the behaviour both for their health and for the health of the planet.
Wegovy panders to a lack of self-discipline
And in producing Wegovy the big Pharma companies and the UK government of pandering to this lack of self-discipline. They are in effect promoting a lack of self-discipline. They are sidestepping the need for self-discipline. They are allowing people to be lazy as it is much easier to pop a pill than to stop eating!
I see a big downside to this drug not a massive upside. I see the potential for long-term problems in taking it. The world doesn’t need drugs to support a lack of self-discipline. It needs drugs to change the minds of people to give them the much-needed self-discipline that the planet requires if we are to get out of the global warming crisis and improve the lives of all of us including animals.
