I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
I can speak only for myself. But when I was overweight, the heels of my feet would crack into such deep fissures that I could remove skin like thick pieces of jerky.
I lost 90 pounds and now the heels of my feet are as soft and supple as a baby's bottom.
Being overweight causes all sorts of weird side effects.
Anectata: I sleep much better after losing about 25 kg, and don't snore anymore. I didn't really think before about how your airways can get fat, but now that they're thinner, I had to relearn how to swallow, because food/drinks tried to go up my nose. I guess my point is that resting better has all sorts of secondary improvements.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
Interesting. Part of the reason I was eager to use retatrutide was the reversibility. Fantastic drug and entirely reversible. I self-tested and the effects I had on it were reversed entirely in its absence. Similar to caffeine or amphetamine at the doses I have tried (which are not high), removing the intervention resulted in a return to a prior state over a fairly short period. I'd say that, in general, some of the good properties essential to an intervention for a non-debilitating condition are:
* uniform dose-response: easy to increase effect by changing dose
* reversibility: automatic reversion to pre-intervention in a short-term is gold standard - allows for regret escape
* low-cost
GLP-1 drugs have these properties which I like. I'm surprised to hear that someone would prefer the alternative, but I must imagine that cost and the dosing structure (sub-q injection is annoying) must dominate decision making here.
The side effect of drastic muscle loss isn't quickly reversible though.
Because muscle is about 3x as expensive to maintain as fat, unless you are on some major strength training to maintain, muscle is the very first thing that your body gets rid of when losing weight.
So now you are off the GLP-1. But you also have to eat fewer calories to maintain a calorie deficit because you no longer have all that calorie burning muscle.
* And depending on when you start your GLP-1 journey, men when they hit 40 naturally lose between 5% and 8% of their total muscle mass a year (women, probably earlier). In addition to the muscle loss due to weight loss.
* And it takes approximately 3 times longer in your 50s to create a pound of muscle that it does in your 20s.
* And you can't train like you did in your 20s or you will hurt yourself.
* And as you age, your body can't absorb the protein it needs to build muscle as efficiently as it did when you are young. So you need to eat even more food to compensate.
Ok. This is now more of a rant about getting older than it is about GLP-1s.
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
For me, historically drugs like this for ADHD or depression or gastric bypass or whatever tend to lose effectiveness over time as the body adjusts. Not for everyone but for enough where you've got a short term gain that ultimately compounds the original problem.
Medication can be a slippery slope into side effects and rotating dosages/medicines. Especially for behavioral medicines.
Water and food have a milder risk profile. The FDA (https://glp-1.health/blog/glp1-obesity-eligibility-bmi-chart...) recommends "GLP-1 weight loss medications (Wegovy, Zepbound) if your BMI is 30 or higher, or if your BMI is 27 or higher with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or sleep apnea". This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
> This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
Importantly, this is different from "GLP-1 meds have been shown not to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio"
Anyway nearly all of the side effects for these drugs are just discomfort. Not even really obvious they should be called "risks." Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans who are not already diabetic or have HTN will soon, and it would be quite a surprise to learn these drugs don't have protective effect.
Bariatric surgery has most of the same upsides as GLP-1s and is a one-time cost. But I agree with the other commenters that "forever drug" is mostly fretting without an actual reason. The Hunger that engineered foods are deliberately designed to induce is a forever thing too, now there's a counterweapon.
If it sounded like I don’t think other people should take them, that was a mistake on my part.
I’m just really not what you’d think of as a model candidate for them, so I’m not quite ready to commit to my first and only, not exactly free, rest of my life pharmaceutical dependence.
That may not seem perfectly rational to some… but ya’know… I’m the one who has to live with my brain.
I find it amazing people don’t believe this. I lost about 50kg and people treated me better. They didn’t randomly shout ‘fat fuck’ in the street for a start.
I would point out that there's a middle way between those stances: GLP-1 receptor agonism has anti-auto-immune effects.
(I don't know yet if anyone has determined whether this is a direct effect of GLP-1R agonism, or whether it's just that e.g. sugar and other simple carbs are pro-auto-immune, and GLP-1R agonism makes you put less of those in your body. But there does seem to be a consensus on the effect itself.)
The anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs show up visibly, e.g. on the face, entirely separately from the effects of weight loss (because this effect still occurs even when the dose of GLP-1RAs is too low to provoke weight loss), in the form of decreased puffiness, oiliness, acne, chapped lips, etc. It causes a bunch of small changes that make somoene look like they're "taking better care of themselves" (even though they may have been taking assiduous care of themselves before, but didn't look it, for autoimmune reasons.) People definitely judge others on how "healthy" they look, so this could definitely help someone to get a job.
But the anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs also show up in entirely unconscious behavioral changes — not in anything cognitive, like "confidence", but rather due to GLP-1RAs' anti-autoimmune effects being at least partly effective in treating chronic, usually-not-well-managed autoimmune pain disorders (think fibromyalgia) and autoimmune energy disorders (think ME-CFS.) Being less achey and having more energy makes people behave differently — whether that be on the macro level in subconscious decision-making, or on the micro level in terms of how speech is performed (people have reported becoming less "croaky", and their usable vocal range expanding) and in how nonverbal communication is performed (it's easier and "cheaper" to move your face and head and body, so you do.)
Note how, for these behavioral changes, some of these might be obvious (like your voice changing), but others are things you might not be aware has changed. For facial expressions in particular, people learn to use their face in certain expressive ways when they're young, and don't often notice when their face stops "responding" fully/correctly to their brain's commands to perform these expressions. As far as you're concerned, you're doing what you always did — it's just that, at some point, you developed an autoimmune condition that attacked (or plugged up with waste) some nerves or muscles or tissues or whatever, that made those higher-level signals from your motor cortex stop translating well to actual initiated actions. Most people don't periodically test their facial expressions in a mirror, so you only get info about the breakdown of these capabilities reflected in other people's reactions toward you changing. And, likewise, if these capabilities were to be suddenly restored, you'd only find out through others' reactions to you as well!
This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
I know of a guy who, before attending in-person meetings for the first time with new people, sends the message "FYI, I am 7 feet tall." He's gotten enough weird looks or outright stunned people that he takes precautionary measures.
Perhaps not in the early part of the hiring pipeline but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible), sooner or later the full physical appearance is going to get judged.
I did have a weird experience right before the pandemic where the CTO of our company, who had never met me in person before but we'd been on tons of Zoom calls, got visibly upset and even said he'd been tricked, because I was older than he thought. That wasn't a good sign for my future in the slice of the company. The irony here is that he was near retirement age and has since retired. Still, my professional headshot, which was at least a decade old, appears to have set expectations. Guess even on a video call people sometimes see what they expect to see and only during an in-person meeting do they have to confront reality.
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
Usually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
Those fat cells will be screaming for fat when empty. GLP-1s are a drug for life currently, we aren't treating them as such but we should because there is no avoiding the need to continue to quiet those fat cells down from their errant signalling to the brain.
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
Among baseline partnered men (which is where partnership dissolution is
well-defined), I find a 6.8pp increase in men leaving their baseline partners
(s.e. 2.9), which rises to 12.1pp after 1.5+ years (s.e. 6.1). Unlike women,
partnered men leave existing relationships with weight loss.
40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world.
Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.
I for one am glad for all the people now finding better employment opportunities, better health, and (anecdotally) better outlooks on life thanks to their weight loss. Awesome throughout.
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Hmm, I've got Rybelsus, it did something. I can reduce my daily meal from 3 to 1 lately, and even on 2 meals I can eat half of it compared to what I typically eats ordinarily, to get full appetite.
Still, with all the things I've tried I still gained weight. And I have been noticably getting harder to sleep at night because the hungry feelings comes back. Maybe it is the oral Rybelsus waning off idk
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
Women and men are not judged according to the same standards. We're not super sexually dimorphic as a species, but certainly enough to matter in terms of evolved social responses.
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
Which is kind of wild!
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
I can speak only for myself. But when I was overweight, the heels of my feet would crack into such deep fissures that I could remove skin like thick pieces of jerky.
I lost 90 pounds and now the heels of my feet are as soft and supple as a baby's bottom.
Being overweight causes all sorts of weird side effects.
Anectata: I sleep much better after losing about 25 kg, and don't snore anymore. I didn't really think before about how your airways can get fat, but now that they're thinner, I had to relearn how to swallow, because food/drinks tried to go up my nose. I guess my point is that resting better has all sorts of secondary improvements.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
Not exclusively genetic but inclusively genetic. There are of course other factors involved and I think genes are a big one.
OTOH, these other effects could have been directly caused by weight loss. Being overweight isn't exactly healthy!
I really wish these weren’t forever drugs. I would be next in line.
Interesting. Part of the reason I was eager to use retatrutide was the reversibility. Fantastic drug and entirely reversible. I self-tested and the effects I had on it were reversed entirely in its absence. Similar to caffeine or amphetamine at the doses I have tried (which are not high), removing the intervention resulted in a return to a prior state over a fairly short period. I'd say that, in general, some of the good properties essential to an intervention for a non-debilitating condition are:
* uniform dose-response: easy to increase effect by changing dose
* reversibility: automatic reversion to pre-intervention in a short-term is gold standard - allows for regret escape
* low-cost
GLP-1 drugs have these properties which I like. I'm surprised to hear that someone would prefer the alternative, but I must imagine that cost and the dosing structure (sub-q injection is annoying) must dominate decision making here.
The side effect of drastic muscle loss isn't quickly reversible though.
Because muscle is about 3x as expensive to maintain as fat, unless you are on some major strength training to maintain, muscle is the very first thing that your body gets rid of when losing weight.
So now you are off the GLP-1. But you also have to eat fewer calories to maintain a calorie deficit because you no longer have all that calorie burning muscle.
* And depending on when you start your GLP-1 journey, men when they hit 40 naturally lose between 5% and 8% of their total muscle mass a year (women, probably earlier). In addition to the muscle loss due to weight loss.
* And it takes approximately 3 times longer in your 50s to create a pound of muscle that it does in your 20s.
* And you can't train like you did in your 20s or you will hurt yourself.
* And as you age, your body can't absorb the protein it needs to build muscle as efficiently as it did when you are young. So you need to eat even more food to compensate.
Ok. This is now more of a rant about getting older than it is about GLP-1s.
Do you have the same concerns about water or food? Why does it matter that it stops benefitting you if you stop taking it?
It's possible to secure those independently in a wide variety of scenarios. It's harder to DIY your own GLPs.
Oh god… if only I could quit food, too.
No but like... why is it a concern? Money?
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
For me, historically drugs like this for ADHD or depression or gastric bypass or whatever tend to lose effectiveness over time as the body adjusts. Not for everyone but for enough where you've got a short term gain that ultimately compounds the original problem.
Medication can be a slippery slope into side effects and rotating dosages/medicines. Especially for behavioral medicines.
Water and food have a milder risk profile. The FDA (https://glp-1.health/blog/glp1-obesity-eligibility-bmi-chart...) recommends "GLP-1 weight loss medications (Wegovy, Zepbound) if your BMI is 30 or higher, or if your BMI is 27 or higher with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or sleep apnea". This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
> This is because there are side effects such that GLP-1 meds have not been shown to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio for people who are only mildly overweight.
Importantly, this is different from "GLP-1 meds have been shown not to produce a net positive benefit-to-risk ratio"
Anyway nearly all of the side effects for these drugs are just discomfort. Not even really obvious they should be called "risks." Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans who are not already diabetic or have HTN will soon, and it would be quite a surprise to learn these drugs don't have protective effect.
uniquely among maintenance drugs some people report saving money on GLP-1s, they spend less on food than the drugs cost... But think of the farmers!
Bariatric surgery has most of the same upsides as GLP-1s and is a one-time cost. But I agree with the other commenters that "forever drug" is mostly fretting without an actual reason. The Hunger that engineered foods are deliberately designed to induce is a forever thing too, now there's a counterweapon.
If it sounded like I don’t think other people should take them, that was a mistake on my part.
I’m just really not what you’d think of as a model candidate for them, so I’m not quite ready to commit to my first and only, not exactly free, rest of my life pharmaceutical dependence.
That may not seem perfectly rational to some… but ya’know… I’m the one who has to live with my brain.
I find it amazing people don’t believe this. I lost about 50kg and people treated me better. They didn’t randomly shout ‘fat fuck’ in the street for a start.
Skinny fuck!
(This is me say good job, and congrats on your new found health :) )
There's 2 sides to this:
1. Halo effect - people treat you better cause you're hot.
2. Confidence effect - you do things you wouldnt have because you now have energy, confidence, and freed up mental capacity from lower food noise.
Attractive people regardless of sex are universally treated better, unattractive - worse.
You could call it a stigma or prejudice, but until calliagnosia[0] becomes a reality, it is what it is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liking_What_You_See:_A_Documen...
I would point out that there's a middle way between those stances: GLP-1 receptor agonism has anti-auto-immune effects.
(I don't know yet if anyone has determined whether this is a direct effect of GLP-1R agonism, or whether it's just that e.g. sugar and other simple carbs are pro-auto-immune, and GLP-1R agonism makes you put less of those in your body. But there does seem to be a consensus on the effect itself.)
The anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs show up visibly, e.g. on the face, entirely separately from the effects of weight loss (because this effect still occurs even when the dose of GLP-1RAs is too low to provoke weight loss), in the form of decreased puffiness, oiliness, acne, chapped lips, etc. It causes a bunch of small changes that make somoene look like they're "taking better care of themselves" (even though they may have been taking assiduous care of themselves before, but didn't look it, for autoimmune reasons.) People definitely judge others on how "healthy" they look, so this could definitely help someone to get a job.
But the anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs also show up in entirely unconscious behavioral changes — not in anything cognitive, like "confidence", but rather due to GLP-1RAs' anti-autoimmune effects being at least partly effective in treating chronic, usually-not-well-managed autoimmune pain disorders (think fibromyalgia) and autoimmune energy disorders (think ME-CFS.) Being less achey and having more energy makes people behave differently — whether that be on the macro level in subconscious decision-making, or on the micro level in terms of how speech is performed (people have reported becoming less "croaky", and their usable vocal range expanding) and in how nonverbal communication is performed (it's easier and "cheaper" to move your face and head and body, so you do.)
Note how, for these behavioral changes, some of these might be obvious (like your voice changing), but others are things you might not be aware has changed. For facial expressions in particular, people learn to use their face in certain expressive ways when they're young, and don't often notice when their face stops "responding" fully/correctly to their brain's commands to perform these expressions. As far as you're concerned, you're doing what you always did — it's just that, at some point, you developed an autoimmune condition that attacked (or plugged up with waste) some nerves or muscles or tissues or whatever, that made those higher-level signals from your motor cortex stop translating well to actual initiated actions. Most people don't periodically test their facial expressions in a mirror, so you only get info about the breakdown of these capabilities reflected in other people's reactions toward you changing. And, likewise, if these capabilities were to be suddenly restored, you'd only find out through others' reactions to you as well!
why not both?
This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
-------------------
[1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/height-surgery-limb-le...
in an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?
Definitely one of the most unexpected bits of WFH is to show up to an onsite and find out your coworker is 6'5".
I know of a guy who, before attending in-person meetings for the first time with new people, sends the message "FYI, I am 7 feet tall." He's gotten enough weird looks or outright stunned people that he takes precautionary measures.
Surround yourself with tiny replica objects and look like a giant. You can skip straight to CEO.
Perhaps not in the early part of the hiring pipeline but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible), sooner or later the full physical appearance is going to get judged.
I did have a weird experience right before the pandemic where the CTO of our company, who had never met me in person before but we'd been on tons of Zoom calls, got visibly upset and even said he'd been tricked, because I was older than he thought. That wasn't a good sign for my future in the slice of the company. The irony here is that he was near retirement age and has since retired. Still, my professional headshot, which was at least a decade old, appears to have set expectations. Guess even on a video call people sometimes see what they expect to see and only during an in-person meeting do they have to confront reality.
> but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible)
FYI this is the norm for fully remote positions, at least in my experience
The article has a bunch of speculation that’s not in the paper: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
One key point:
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.
I like "pretty privilege."
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features
Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
honest question - did that cliche ever apply to women? or non-white people?
i'm well aware of the stereotype but 100% of the time, seen it as a scrubby white guy in a hoodie.
> Lookism
Pretty privilege
Halo effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I think people often tend to treat drastic deviations from standard appearance as an indicator for undesirable character traits.
If you are badly groomed as a man, you tend to be perceived as careless.
In my experience if you are obese, people think you lack will power and discipline.
Changing how people view you for the better always has an influence on your personal success.
Why take drugs when you can take home-delivery diet?
This is genuine question, I've started using them and they're one of the best things I've ever paid for.
You get good food, at calculated sizes/calories/etc etc, you don't have to do shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc.
It is insanely convenient and you can manage your weight easily without even any exercises (but they're still recommended tho)
Usually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
Pretty privilege exists.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
I think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.
Also baldness.
Fuck. Good thing I'm self employed.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
Indeed, men on average look worse than women.
very unfortunate ! shows physical discrimination !!
But if everyone takes GLP-1 ... its a level playing field again
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
Those fat cells will be screaming for fat when empty. GLP-1s are a drug for life currently, we aren't treating them as such but we should because there is no avoiding the need to continue to quiet those fat cells down from their errant signalling to the brain.
you described the need to switch to healthy diet and exercise routine to maintain weight after finishing treatment..
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
The original paper is quite readable and interesting in how the researcher works through a number of alternative hypotheses.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
An tangential part of the paper is partnered men:
Another point for "Pretty Privilege / Halo Effect"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_privilege
Market scarcity holds true.
40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world. Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.
I for one am glad for all the people now finding better employment opportunities, better health, and (anecdotally) better outlooks on life thanks to their weight loss. Awesome throughout.
How much of this is confounding due to access and economic segmentation?
Someone who is able to getting and sustaining a prescription for GLP-1 is likely in a higher income bracket than one who does not.
Causation or correlation?
So uh, this is just trying to promote fat shaming and lookism using science as a judgement tool. How cool is that? /s
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
Your reading comprehension is off.
Oh! I thought this would be about migraine.
Shocking news. Humans like attractive people.
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Hmm, I've got Rybelsus, it did something. I can reduce my daily meal from 3 to 1 lately, and even on 2 meals I can eat half of it compared to what I typically eats ordinarily, to get full appetite.
Still, with all the things I've tried I still gained weight. And I have been noticably getting harder to sleep at night because the hungry feelings comes back. Maybe it is the oral Rybelsus waning off idk
Exercise basically doesn't do anything for your weight.
Have you reduced your calorie consumption?
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
People look for different things for "beauty" in men and women.
Taller people--an area where men have a very distinct advantage--make more money and have an easier go of things.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X2...
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
Women and men are not judged according to the same standards. We're not super sexually dimorphic as a species, but certainly enough to matter in terms of evolved social responses.
I don't think anyone can objectively judge the attractiveness of both genders on one scale.
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
Just go to a fast food place. There's a strong tendency to have guys in the back cooking, girls in the front at the register.
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
> Men are mostly unattractive
Could it be that _you_ are simply be not as attracted to men as you are to women?
Studies show that hetero women tend to agree that most men are not attractive.
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
> If looks are important for employment how then men find a job?
This feels very fallacious. Attractiveness can be important but not the only factor that matters.
Height is a way that men are judged as attractive. Likewise, tall men tend to do better than short men on income and promotions.
Go to the barber, to to the tailor, go the gym...
All these things help.
It's attractiveness all the way down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
yes! i still wondering why feminism had to be created /s