Wegovy, Will-Power, and the Limits of Moral Purism

by a Fellow Libertarian

I have read Bryan Mercadente’s latest denunciation of Wegovy and Ozempic. I will say at once that he is right in the abstract. Weight loss does not ultimately come from syringes, nor from pharmaceutical ingenuity, but from restraint, exertion, and the sustained correction of bad habits. There is no chemical substitute for will-power. A man who eats less and moves more will, in the long run, lose weight, and a man who does not will not. On this point, no serious disagreement exists, and Bryan is correct to resist the creeping tendency to medicalise what is, at bottom, a behavioural problem.

It is also true that modern weight-loss drugs sit uneasily with any instinctive suspicion of technocratic fixes. They are expensive, heavily marketed, surrounded by corporate lobbying, and promoted by the same health bureaucracies that helped to create the present crisis through decades of nutritional maladvice. To be wary of them is rational. To warn that they risk becoming a permanent crutch rather than a temporary aid is responsible. Bryan’s article performs a useful service in stating these dangers plainly.

However, an argument that is correct in principle can become incomplete when applied without sufficient regard to circumstance. Bryan himself concedes as much when he acknowledges that some individuals have used these drugs as part of a broader strategy involving a deliberate and sustained change of habits. Once that concession is made, the question ceases to be whether pharmaceutical assistance is intrinsically illegitimate, and becomes one of how, when, and for whom it may be justified.

The missing variable in much of the moralising around obesity is not intelligence but time. Not everyone confronting severe obesity is young and physically resilient. Not everyone is starting from a position of high metabolic flexibility, abundant spare energy, or a social environment that rewards discipline. Not everyone is blessed with Bryan’s steely determination – a determination that amounts to fanaticism. Modern life is structured around inactivity and constant temptation. Food is cheap and omnipresent. It is engineered for overconsumption. Work is sedentary. Stress is chronic. Sleep is often poor. Against this background, the exhortation to “just exercise will-power” can be true and yet insufficient.

In my own case, pharmaceutical assistance was not a replacement for discipline but a means of making discipline possible. By the summer of 2024 I weighed close to twenty-four stone, a condition that was neither sustainable nor benign. Friends intervened, bluntly and kindly, and they were right to do so. I had lost large amounts of weight before, and I knew the theory well enough. What I lacked was not knowledge but traction. I do ask Bryan to use his imagination and to put himself in my position. I knew how to lose weight. At the same time, I was so depressed and so demotivated that I could lose not even a pound. I was like a man who has climbed a mountain once, but is tired. I looked at the peaks far above me. I knew that it needed only one step, and then another, to get there again. But I was tired. The thought of all those steps, most of which would not get me measurably closer to the peaks, filled me with despair. I needed help.

Since August 2024 I have used Wegovy on a strictly limited basis, alongside regular exercise, conscious dietary restraint, and a deliberate restructuring of daily habits. Over sixteen months I have lost almost eleven stone. My BMI has returned to a healthy range. Other clinical markers followed. More importantly, my capacity for movement, effort, and enjoyment of physical activity returned. At the same time, I have bought a toupee to cover a growing bald patch that flatters a vanity which I now think justified. Later this year, I will have plastic surgery to remove some of the loose skin that hangs about my middle.

The injections did not create these changes, but they lowered the initial resistance sufficiently for them to take hold. As I now wean myself off the drug, what remains are the habits, not the needle.

To denounce such use in absolute terms would be a form of moral purism that mistakes the means for the end. The goal is not pharmaceutical dependency, nor aesthetic thinness, nor even numerical targets on a scale. The goal is the restoration of agency: the ability to choose restraint, to enjoy exertion, and to sustain a way of living that does not quietly shorten one’s life. If a temporary medical intervention helps to reach that point, it is not self-evident that it must always be condemned.

Bryan is right to warn against the illusion that drugs can do the work for us. He is right to insist that no injection can confer character. But it does not follow that all pharmaceutical assistance is a surrender of responsibility. In some cases, it is a bridge rather than a destination. In mine, it allowed me to become what I do not believe I could otherwise have become.

The danger lies not in acknowledging this, but in pretending that a single moral formula fits every body, every age, and every circumstance.