Should You Forget “Eat Less, Move More”?

Eat less. Eat better. Move more.

If you’ve been reading the Health Memo for any length of time, you know that’s my simplified solution, my mantra, to the problem of excess body fat we face in the U.S. and around the world. That’s why an article about an endocrinologist from Ireland who said “Eat less, move more is not the treatment for obesity—get over it” caught my attention. The quote was taken from a talk and interview given by Dr. Donal O’Shea that included a series of recommendations to primary care physicians on how they should approach the topic of excess body weight with patients. He went on to suggest that in a short time, medicine will have solutions for obesity that will essentially render obesity obsolete. Semaglutide is just the first jab at it—pun intended.

I went a little further and listened to a talk by Dr. O’Shea in which he went into detail about why 90% of weight gain is irreversible in 90% of the people. Then he used this example: if you donate a pint of blood, your body will replace it over the next six weeks to get your body back to its blood-volume set point. He says your body weight also has a set point and once it’s raised, it cannot be reversed; no matter what you do, your weight will return to its set point. Therefore, medications such as semaglutide and the ones being developed that will impact other receptors are the only solution.

Should we just buy stock in pharmaceutical companies and forget about nutrition and exercise? Dr. O’Shea is a good scientist and is certainly compassionate toward patients. But is he correct? No, and I’ll explain why on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?