A new meta-study — a study of studies — reveals an inconvenient truth about weight loss itself: Willpower still matters. Manufacturers of GLP-1 injectables like Wegovy and Ozempic would prefer we forget that, since forgetting it is profitable.

The counter-claim — that diets and exercise are no match for our genes and environment — is one fat-positivity influencers have pushed for years. Now it has been eagerly adopted by companies like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to market their new, lizard-venom-derived blockbuster drugs.

People who stop taking weight-loss drugs regain weight at an average rate of 0.4 kilograms per month — roughly 10 pounds per year.

Business is booming. One in eight American adults have taken a weight-loss drug at one time — and this is only the beginning. Uptake remains far below its theoretical ceiling: More than 70% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, including roughly 40% who are clinically obese.

Shred-pilled?

What comes next is obvious. Adoption will surge as delivery methods improve, especially pills. People don’t like needles. Pills are much easier to swallow.

Just before Christmas, the Food and Drug Administration approved a pill version of Wegovy, imaginatively branded the Wegovy Pill. Pill versions of competing drugs, including Mounjaro, are expected to follow this year.

Some time ago, I predicted that a weight-loss drugmaker would become the largest company in the world within a decade. I made that prediction when Novo Nordisk — the Danish maker of Wegovy and Ozempic — became Europe’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of roughly $570 billion, more than $200 billion greater than Denmark’s entire GDP. (It has since fallen a few spots.) I now refine that forecast: The pharmaceutical company that perfects the weight-loss pill — balancing results, side effects, and cost — will be the largest company on Earth.

There are already more than one billion obese people worldwide. There is no obvious reason why every one of them couldn’t be prescribed a daily pill.

RELATED: Fat chance! Obese immigrants make America sicker

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Chubby checkers

Which brings us back to the meta-study. One of the central unanswered questions surrounding these drugs is what happens when patients stop taking them. Does the weight stay off — or does it return?

In practice, many people don’t stay on them long. Roughly half of users discontinue weight-loss drugs within a year, most often citing cost and side effects, which can include severe gastrointestinal distress, vision problems, and — in rare cases — death.

What happens after discontinuation matters enormously. If the weight returns, many users will be forced to remain on these drugs indefinitely — possibly for decades — to avoid relapse. Pharmaceutical executives have generally been reluctant to acknowledge this implication, though some have done so candidly.

Habit-forming

The researchers behind the new meta-study asked a sharper question still: How does stopping weight-loss drugs compare with stopping traditional interventions like diet and exercise?

The answer is stark. People who stop taking weight-loss drugs regain weight at an average rate of 0.4 kilograms per month — roughly 10 pounds per year. That is four times faster than the weight regain seen in people who stop exercising and restricting calories.

Four times.

The explanation is not mysterious. Pills do not build habits. Diet and exercise do. With drugs, appetite suppression is outsourced to chemistry rather than cultivated through discipline. Remove the compound, and users are left with the same reserves of willpower they had before. Evidence so far suggests that changes to brain chemistry, hormone signaling, and metabolism fade along with the drug itself.

Even when people who diet and exercise relapse, the habits they developed tend to soften the fall. That counts for something.

None of this is to deny that weight-loss drugs can be a valuable tool. For many severely obese people, they may represent the only realistic chance of meaningful weight reduction. If we want to reduce the burden of chronic disease, drugs like Wegovy will have a role to play.

But their rise should not excuse the abandonment of harder truths. Sustainable weight loss still depends on choices, habits, and character — and on reshaping a food environment that makes bad choices effortless and good ones rare. Pharmaceuticals may assist that work. They cannot replace it.

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Both Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to appear after the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed them for closed-door depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein and the federal government’s handling of his crimes. The slippery duo even sent letters to Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in advance of their scheduled dates, calling the subpoenas invalid and nothing more than political retribution.

Now the committee is seeking to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress, which could result in jail time if they’re found guilty.

Many conservatives are elated at the prospect of seeing Washington’s most scandal-laden couple behind bars, but Glenn Beck says jailing the Clintons for this particular crime would be a huge mistake.

He equates incarcerating the Clintons over contempt of Congress to giving an arsonist a book of matches.

“We now have all of these scandals, all of these NGOs making all kinds of money on your tax dollars, funding the destruction of America as we know it. We’re all in bed with giant corporations and the WEF — the Clinton Foundation is all lined up in it,” he says.

This insidious network is behind all the violent anti-ICE protests, the death-to-America-style riots, and the push for socialism that is destroying the country from the inside. But all the while, these elites have been quietly building an elite-controlled system that will be implemented when the old system has been successfully burned to the ground.

The Clintons, Glenn explains, have their finger on the red button that could set off chaos like we have never seen before and usher in the Great Reset he has been warning about for years. To tempt them to push it — especially at a time when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) is hinting at civil war — is insane.

It’s not that prosecuting and jailing the Clintons are completely off the table, but to use your ace card on the Epstein case, which Glenn insists will never go anywhere, is stupid.

“Are we going to find out what really happened with Epstein? I don’t think so — ever. Why? Because all of the evidence has been in the hands of the Republicans and the Democrats and the Republicans and the Democrats over and over and over again for years. … [The evidence] has all been destroyed. It’s all gone,” he says.

It’s no secret — even to the Democrats — that the Clintons “are very bad people. … They have spooked everybody because they’re so good at being very bad people. Even the people in the press who used to be for them are now just so scared of them,” Glenn continues.

“You don’t try to kill the king unless you can kill the king. You don’t try to take out the Clintons and wound them, because they’ll kill you. And I don’t mean that literally. Or do I?” he winks.

If you really want to take out the Clinton empire, “you better come prepared with the goods,” and unfortunately, to the utter dismay of all, the Epstein case isn’t the “goods” we were told it was.

Even so, there are plenty of “goods” on the Clintons, says Glenn. “We have it all,” he says, referring to the long list of documented scandals the Clintons have been central in.

While Glenn would “love” to see Bill and Hillary perp-walked for committing the same crime that landed former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro behind bars, he knows that it would only cause more chaos in America’s streets.

“Remember, they’re the arsonist. You don’t want to hand them matches. And it’s not because they’re above the law, not because they’re untouchable, but because this specific path leads to nowhere good. You don’t have anything on them. And they will use it for all that it is worth,” he warns.

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary, watch the video above.

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