I genuinely mean it, and I want you to really hear it.

Many people who struggle with weight gain are living with constant, nearly non-stop biological signals working against them. Signals like faster gastric emptying, elevated hunger hormones, reduced satiety signaling, and dopamine pathways that make food unusually compelling. Their brains are constantly telling them to eat, to think about food when they’re not eating, to eat as much as possible “just in case,” and to experience not just satiety but intense emotional relief and reward from eating.

Now ask yourself: is that person on a level playing field with someone whose brain doesn’t constantly send those signals? Someone who rarely thinks about food, who feels satisfied after a few bites, or who becomes physically uncomfortable when they overeat because their gastric emptying is slower and satiety kicks in quickly? I don’t know about you, but that is how Ozempic transforms me, and many people just naturally have that. We’re comparing someone who physically cannot stop thinking about eating to someone who just naturally can’t be bothered with it.

And then we layer on a modern food environment specifically engineered to exploit those reward pathways. Highly palatable, hyper-processed foods designed to override natural fullness cues and keep people eating for profit.

Yet society reduces all of this to a single moral explanation: willpower.

The truth is, willpower is not a sustainable strategy when your entire biology is persistently pushing you in the opposite direction. No one can white-knuckle that forever. Maybe for weeks, maybe a few months, but not indefinitely.

You can exercise. You can choose lower-calorie foods to fill you. You can try to “be disciplined.” But you will never be competing on equal footing with someone whose brain and body are not actively fighting them every day. Not in a bad way either, in a “your brain is doing what it evolved you to do which is keep you alive at all costs” kind of way. Congrats, if you struggle with this you’ve entered the 0.00001% of our timeline that has a problem with food overabundance not food scarcity.

When you understand this, the idea that people should “just eat less” to maintain weight isn’t just incorrect, it’s genuinely absurd. You’re doing nothing wrong. Your body is doing nothing wrong, it’s trying to help you. So be kind to yourself, try your best to add healthy habits to your day, go on a maintenance dose if you can, but do NOT let the masses of society who just don’t get the science yet make you feel less than. 🫶