The New York Times wrote a piece “Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry. But It Is Fighting Back” that reported people happy with results that I’ve found from living more sustainably. Except my way didn’t cost me anything, trade one dependence for another, or risk any side effects. It didn’t require willpower either. People think it did, but I think they just don’t know how to change habits without using willpower.

The quotes in the article of people’s results from taking Ozempic sound almost as desirable as mine, not counting their extra costs, side effects, and dependence.

For decades I couldn’t stop from consuming doof. I concocted bargains and elaborate attempts to reduce, but failed, at least as long as I just tried to avoid things I craved.

My sustainability journey wasn’t designed to avoid doof, but I ended up with that result as a side effect. I now realize when I craved doof, I thought I loved food, but craving and addiction aren’t love and doof isn’t food.

Now I genuinely love my food. My friends tell me, “You don’t have to say how much you love your food every time you eat,” but it’s hard not to. I love fresh fruits, vegetables, and so on, all the more having learned how to buy and prepare them with less time and money than for doof. Also, doing so helps people without access instead of exacerbating their problems, as buying and consuming doof and packaged food does.

Ozempic users’ results, despite costing more, risking side effects, and merely substituting one dependence for another. The story presents their results as positive, but they pale in comparison to mine. Here are some examples from the article:

I stumbled right into what has become, under the influence of the revolutionary new diet drug, Taylor’s happy place: the produce section. He inspected the goods. “I’m on all of these,” he told us. “I eat a lot of pineapple. A lot of pineapple, cucumber, ginger. Oh, a lot of ginger.”

Taylor, who lives in Hayward, Calif., used to nurse a sugar addiction, he said, but he can no longer stomach Hostess treats. A few days earlier, his daughter fed him some candy. “I just couldn’t,” he said. “It was so sweet it choked me.” His midnight snack used to be cereal, but now he stirs at night with strange urges. Salads. Chicken. He has sworn off canned sodas and fruit juices and infuses his water with lemon and cucumber. He dropped a heavy bag of lemons into the cart and sauntered over to the leafy vegetables. “I love Swiss chard,” he said. “I eat a lot of kale.”

Such results mimic mine, except with extra cost, risk, and dependence.

Also:

Patients on GLP-1 drugs [which includes Ozempic] have reported losing interest in ultraprocessed foods, products that are made with ingredients you wouldn’t find in an ordinary kitchen: colorings, bleaching agents, artificial sweeteners and modified starches. Some users realize that many packaged snacks they once loved now taste repugnant. “Wegovy [an active ingredient in Ozempic] destroyed my taste buds,” a Redditor wrote on a support group, adding: “And I love it.”

Repugnance is why I describe my results as not requiring willpower. I feel repugnance toward doof. I don’t need willpower to avoid things I feel repugnance to. I hope Ozempic also creates repugnance toward other ways our culture has found ways to addict us, like social media, gambling, fast fashion, and shopping needlessly in general, because I found repugnance for them too.

And:

Before Wegovy, said Wynns, who is now 35 pounds lighter than he was in the spring, his “whole life was fast foods.” Now, “my first place I hit when I get to the store is produce,” he said. “My favorite is Mount Rainier cherries and apples, peaches, pears.”

Most of the other participants felt like that. Almost everyone’s cravings for ultraprocessed foods had been replaced with a lust for fresh and unpackaged alternatives. A 32-year-old scientist who works in a university chemistry department spoke about discovering, for the first time, the true flavor of food. “Celery tastes like celery,” she told the group. “And carrot tastes like carrot. Strawberry tastes like strawberry.” Since taking Wegovy, she said, “I just started to realize that they taste wonderful by themselves.”

The article talks about weight loss. Do people also gain muscle from more exercise and connection to community from shopping at farmers markets and volunteering with their time saved too? If not, I recommend my book and workshops over taking the drug.

And:

it has been easy, she said, because the treatments have transformed her experience of flavor and mouthfeel. A HoHo no longer seems like food. “It tastes plasticky,” she said. “Or feels plasticky in my mouth.” Freed from her addiction, Kenney believes that she can now taste the true HoHo — she can perceive what Hostess treats, loaded with sugar, actually are. Jennifer Pagano, Mattson’s director of insights and artificial intelligence, was leading the focus group. “It sounds like, you know, I’m hearing from all of you: It’s the simple pleasures of food, food in its natural state,” she said.

I could go on, but I hope I made my point: you can get these results without drugs.

I know people will send knee-jerk responses that I’m being insensitive and don’t understand their struggle from people who don’t know what I know or not. Sorry I wrote directly and not with all the boilerplate qualifications that some people have genetic issues etc. Please insert them mentally where you feel they belong.

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