Nobody hands a person drowning in $75,000 of credit card debt another credit card and calls it a solution. Yet that’s essentially what we’re doing with GLP-1 drugs.
The weight comes off. The photos look great. Then insurance stops covering it, or the side effects win, or the $1,000 monthly bill just isn’t sustainable. And when people stop — the weight comes back. Faster than before. The research backs this up.
That’s not a solution. That’s a loan.
The financial analogy runs deeper than it looks. The credit card industry doesn’t profit from people who pay off their balance. It profits from people who stay in debt. The weight loss industry works the same way. A patient who actually solves their weight problem is a lost customer. A patient who cycles through solutions indefinitely is the business model.
I’m not saying these drugs are evil. Just like some loans make sense, there are cases where GLP-1s serve a real purpose. But for most people, they’re being used as a destination when they should be a bridge — and there’s nothing being built on the other side.
Good financial advisors don’t hand you more credit. They help you understand where the money is going and build different habits. That’s boring. It doesn’t make a great ad. But it actually works.
The same is true for weight. Learning how to eat and move isn’t as dramatic as a weekly injection. There’s no before-and-after photo moment at month two. But you also don’t get a bill when you stop.
Every loan has a due date. Just make sure you know what you’re signing up for.