Living a fat lifestyle means you won’t get hired and will be paid less than people who aren’t fat. The effects of obesity discrimination—which can include poor health care, loneliness, depression, and high levels of stress—can actually shorten the lives of obese people.
The choice to take the drug becomes “the devil’s choice,” says Osborn. “Say that I have a right to live as I am now – or exchange this right for more freedom and opportunity in society.” The fat acceptance movement instead pushes for fat people to be given the same rights as everyone else, regardless of size.
Novo Nordisk’s “It’s Big Than Me” campaign, featuring actress Queen Latifah as its face, has drawn widespread criticism. Through this, the company is trying to align with the rhetoric of fat acceptance—eliminating weight stigma and bias and dispelling the misconception that obesity is simply a lack of willful self-control—while marketing a product that aims to make obese people slimmer. “By saying that if you make them lose weight, you are giving them a chance to do better, you are not—you are only reducing the person, and you are selling them small as a way out of the pressure.” said Marquisele Mercedes, a doctoral student in public health at Brown University.
However, these concerns are countered by an obvious fact: Anti-obesity drugs can treat a serious problem. Although the causes of weight gain are still unclear, the consensus among researchers has come to one indisputable conclusion: Being overweight does not indicate a lack of willpower. Research has proven, time and time again, that dieting doesn’t work to lose weight and keep it off. Obesity is a complex, biological and ecological problem that scientists have not been able to solve and that cannot be compared to a simple matter of calories, calories. “That idea is wrong,” says Francesco Rubino, professor of metabolic surgery at King’s College London. “It is not true that obesity is caused by excess energy.”
Having effective drugs that can intervene when other methods have failed provides health benefits for others. Being overweight leads to many debilitating and fatal risks, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, and some types of cancer. The drug can also help solve the mystery of what causes weight loss, Rubino says. On top of reducing appetite, people who take semaglutide seem to have less desire to engage in behaviors that are produced by dopamine, such as drinking alcohol or shopping, according to David Macklin, a doctor who has helped many patients with the drug.
But this support is not available to many people. It is indicated for a certain group of patients: people with a weight of 30 kg / m², the medical definition of obesity, or for people with a BMI of 27 kg / m² or higher (and they are known as obese). if they have another obesity problem that threatens their health, such as high blood pressure. (It’s worth mentioning that BMI, the most widely used diagnostic tool in the world to determine obesity, has been shown to be an inaccurate and biased health measure.)
