America doesn’t make it easy to be healthy. As a 41-year-old woman who’s a lean size 2 because of my diet, lifestyle, and consistent strength training, being healthy is a daily commitment that can feel like a battle in a system that’s fundamentally at odds with our well-being.

From a toxic food environment, to aspects of mainstream culture that have normalized being overweight — ie, “body positivity” — to a pharmaceutical industry that’s at odds with incentivizing our long-term health, we’re largely set up to fail at being healthy. For the 74% of US adults who are either overweight or obese, it can be a crisis of willpower, yes — but as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement have shone a spotlight on — it’s also a crisis of design. 

Pharmaceuticals have their place in our medical system. But relying on anti-obesity medications to get us out of this crisis is putting lipstick on the pig at the expense of addressing the root cause of the problem – and at the expense of our longer-term health. (RELATED: RAW EGG NATIONALIST: Psychotropic Drugs May Be To Blame For Mass Shootings)

Research shows that up to 40% of weight lost from drugs like Ozempic comes from lean mass, including muscle. When we lose muscle, our basal metabolic rate (BMR) drops, meaning we need fewer calories to function, leading to a slower metabolism. Less muscle means you’re burning fewer calories, making it easier to........

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