Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonism - GLP-1, common in obesity medicines - is not essential to weight management, according to preclinical research led by Richard DiMarchi and Matthias Tschöp, with funding from their startup company Bluewater Biosciences.
I’ve noticed first hand the impact of environmental factors.
I moved from a place where I needed the car for EVERYTHING. This include taking off the garbage. Even going for a walk wasn’t possible without taking the car first.
Most of the food I was eating was imported (mainly from the US). I was able to find few local fruits and vegetable but choices are quite limited and the supply erratic.
Then I moved back to France, I now live in a small village where everything is available at a walking or biking distance. School, work, small grocery shop, bakery, doctor, pharmacy, coworking space, kids activity. I’m might be using the car once a week now.
There is plenty of farmers in the area with local produces and even supermarkets have a wide selection of decent fruits and vegetables but I prefer the local producers as I can.
I stopped working out, I have not purposely changed my eating habits but without any surprise I am in a much, much better physical shape now.
This is something that can be difficult to convey to non-Americans. The go-to assumption is that Americans are just lazy and dislike walking. At my last apartment, it was literally illegal (and wildly dangerous) for me to realistically walk to my local grocery store. I had to cross a major highway to get there, and there were no sidewalks or crosswalks nearby.
If I wanted to drive to the store, it was a quarter mile. Half a mile for the round trip. Basically just across the highway. Go down to the end of my street, cross the highway, and arrive at the store. Easy.
If I wanted to legally walk to the grocery store, it would be a 16.5 mile round trip. Because the nearest pedestrian highway crossing was ~4 miles away. I’d have to go all the way down to that crossing, make the cross, then march all the way back to reach the store. And that also assumes that I’m going to be able to legally make it to the crossing… There were several sections between my apartment and the crossing that had no sidewalks, so I’d have to walk in the road for at least a mile in each direction. Here is a quick and dirty diagram to illustrate what I mean:
That’s ~8 and a quarter miles in one direction, not to mention the fact that I’d then have to take the same route back, with my arms full of grocery bags. Yeah, it’s no fucking wonder that I choose to drive instead.
4 miles between pedestrian crossings should be illegal. Here, though it’s for sure a car city, the small roads that go under the stupid highway that bisects the city are about 1/2 mile apart. And where there is no sidewalk, on smaller roads, legal to walk in road, off to the side, facing traffic.
Not everyone even has a car. Or license.