I just hate the idea that there is a magic pill out there be it steroids or retardutide than can solve your problems without work.
I think the thing that people are discovering is that work is still involved. Without attention to diet and exercise, the typical result is a lighter fat person, possibly with improved metabolic health markers. Unfortunately, none of the trials for these things are tracking body composition.
They knew they were getting fat and didn’t care
You're not wrong, here, but the characterization is imprecise. People don't know, or don't care, or are simply indulging their impulses without consideration because they have other priorities in life. Eventually it becomes a problem, but by then the damage is done.
In my 20s I went from working in construction to being a successful tech bro during the dotcom boom, to give an indication of how old I am. For a decade, I was entirely sedentary, ate whatever the hell I liked, and worked my ass off. Nothing else mattered until I was 33 at 340lbs and I watched a friend who was near my age and even more grotesquely obese keel over dead from complications related to obesity.
Once I started caring, all it took was a reasonable amount of diet and exercise to shed 120lbs or so naturally. Took some figuring out and almost a decade. Getting to a healthy state wasn't all that difficult. Getting to the state I'm in now (<10%bf and reasonably muscular) in my 50s was much easier with the help of anabolics and GLP-1 agonists.
If I had intentions of getting on a stage, and the time to focus on that, I'd absolutely be counting calories and eating a very restrictive diet. As it is, I don't have any particular deadlines to get lean, so I can just cut for 12-20 weeks or so. I can titrate my appetite so that I can join my family for dinner and eat whatever without having to measure the food. All the attention I really need to spend on my diet is getting sufficient protein and not going crazy with fat.
