Looking forward to more formal studies though!
>> and all just love the way it makes you feel
Maybe it will turn out to be an antidepressant as well. That would be quite a coup.
Other pharmaceuticals at the phase 3 stage (such as Buntanetap for Parkinson's disease) are super difficult to get, even with the right to try exemption in the US.
They are buying from Chinese dealers. And sadly, as with most GLP-1s they likely will need to take them for the rest of their life or suffer some incredible rebound weight loss/ negative health effects.
These medications are incredible if you are overweight and need them. But they are not a panacea. Also arguably buying these drugs from Chinese dealers means there is no recourse if you get a bad batch.
There is a pseudo testing setup around Finnrick but talk to anyone with a PhD in biochemistry and there are numerous ways these molecules can be improperly manufactured.
Surprised to see so many on HN being relatively careless with their heath
it was an edge case I had not considered.
It doesn't increase your appetite for healthy food. It will punish you for eating bad food. "Don't eat that steak, you're going to have crazy stomach pain tomorrow if you do!"
When you are on a GLP medication, commonly your digestion slows and will make you really prone to constipation and acid reflux. I've learned to eat just 3-6 ozs when I do steak, and generally opt for the veggies instead of the potatoes now. Feel much better in the morning.
The surprising thing for me, having settled into a ~1400kcal budget, is how tricky it is to hit protein goals. You go into this thinking it'll be like going low-carb, you'll just eat a lot of beef, but the fun cuts are not efficient protein delivery vehicles. Hitting the kcal budget is effortless; getting the protein in, not so much.
When it didn't work, one of the failure modes was that I still craved fatty/fried food, but I got terrible stomach pain from it, which is the worst of both worlds. If I'm still going to be unable to resist food, I don't want to be punished for it any more than I already am by being overweight!
I saw this was a feature, not a bug.
It did work for around two weeks, though, and it was great. I constantly felt mildly carsick, so I didn't really want to eat anything, but also didn't have much trouble eating my macros.
I've read hundreds of anecdotal experiences from people on these drugs, and haven't encountered anyone taking 15mg without success.
Shrug, it's a mystery to me as well. It did take many months to get to that point.
I had the good fortune of responding well and being at a great starting point: despite being 40% body fat I exercised a lot and had great labs to begin with. Anecdotally I've found starting metabolic health to make a huge difference in dose response.
I could take more caffeine to reduce my desire for food, but it is already too close to bedtime. I could try to focus on work (I am) but I keep getting intrusive thoughts about the fact that I could just get ice cream/cookies/chicken fingers/burrito/quesadilla/insert food here in just a few moments.
I wish I could take these drugs, unfortunately I cannot. Terrible side effects.
Strangely, after visiting Japan I found it quite easy to eat a healthy low calorie diet for about two weeks. Now I’m back to constant food noise, despite trying to stick to a Japanese-style diet (lots of fish and vegetables and fermented foods).
The people who say “just eat less” don’t understand what the actual problem is.
People, on average, eat until they're no longer hungry. Problem is, there's only a loose relationship between your caloric needs and your hunger response. That's how you end up with underweight people who are trying to put on muscle saying they can't possibly eat any more and still can't put on weight, while having overweight people who eat twice as much as that guy and have to actively choose not eat more. Both people can make a conscious choice to disobey their signals, just like how you can choose to hold your hand to a hot stove. But it takes a lot of energy to keep up that willpower. Effective weightloss drugs solve that problem, by treating the actual problem: the hunger.
This would be true if not knowing what an appropriate portion size is was the one thing keeping most people from losing weight. If that was the case, traditional dieting would have a far better track record with long term weight loss.
There is a large enthusiast community of the body building variety (who are usually first) who are already performing a bit of an unscheduled human trial and I have to say the results are amazing. We have both injectable retatrutide and pill form retatrutide to look forward to (pill form is unannounced but I have a hunch!).
It seems like it does something else. https://sph.brown.edu/news/2025-07-24/brain-science-glp-1s-a... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11202225/
Not sure about the AI style transfer images... sure it's a valid way to get the illustrations you want but I don't have to like it...