A healthy diet and physical activity are essential to good health, but decades of evidence suggest they don’t lead to significant weight loss, Oldfield said. No. You typically lose 3-5% of your weight.” (Oldfield receives a fee from the drug’s sponsor, Novo Nordisk).
This issue was exposed in a large Wegovy trial published in 2015. jam Early last year. About 611 volunteers received “intensive behavioral therapy”. After eight weeks on a very low-calorie diet under supervision, he continued on his low-calorie diet for over a year.
They were also asked to exercise 100 minutes a week, which was eventually increased to 200 minutes, and received 30 visits from a nutritionist. “It’s extreme and unsustainable,” Oldfield said.
After this enormous effort, they lost an average of 5.7% of their body weight.The subgroup that did all this When Wegovy lost 16 percent of her body weight, an average of 16.8 kilograms.
Approved for weight loss by the Australian Medicines Regulatory Authority last year, Wegovy mimics the natural hormones that slow down your stomach, making you feel fuller for longer. It also seems to affect how the brain regulates appetite.
The drug is associated with side effects, particularly nausea, and about 6% of volunteers drop out of clinical trials. Experts warn that this is not a silver bullet and should be combined with diet and exercise.
A few years ago, Professor Stephen Simpson, director of the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sydney, and his team ran a series of focus groups looking at ways to change people’s opinions about the causes of obesity.
“People, especially those with life experience, have an ingrained view that they’re to blame. It’s deeply ingrained and widespread,” he said.
This bias is also reflected in the recent response to the Wegovy shortage, Simpson said.
The most effective tool he found in focus groups was “breaking the frame.” That is, to confuse people’s idea that obesity is primarily caused by bad choices.
“I quickly learned that one of the most powerful ways to push it back is that it’s biological. There’s a powerful biology that supports obesity.” It clearly shows that there is a strong biological basis,” he said.
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