Yoga Mob Berating Innocent Staff In Viral Video Is Almost Too On The Nose

'The silence is deafening'

Ozempic no replacement for willpower when it comes to weight loss



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.

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Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images

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.

I joined a cult — and I'm not leaving



A few years ago, I went all in on CrossFit.

Not casually. Not “a couple of sessions a week.” I mean fully immersed. Dawn classes. Protein evangelism. Callused palms held up like merit badges. A vocabulary that slowly became unintelligible to my friends and family.

Effort has been engineered out of daily existence. The result isn’t ease but restlessness. So people voluntarily buy pain.

It worked, too. I got strong. Very strong. But eventually, the thing that had promised discipline started to feel devotional. The workouts were brutal, yes, but the culture grew insistent — about identity, about belonging, about the strange idea that redemption could be loaded onto a barbell.

I left CrossFit because it started to feel like a cult. Manson family vibes, minus the desert and the murders. It had a creed, but a shallow one: Pain conferred status, while rest felt vaguely shameful. And like most people who escape one intense, borderline insane tribe, I did the most predictable thing imaginable. I joined another.

Enter Hyrox.

20 miserable meters

If CrossFit thrives on variety, Hyrox runs on ritual. The same test. Every time. Everywhere. Eight one-kilometer runs, each broken by a workout station designed to sap dignity and drain glycogen in equal measure.

Sled pushes that turn legs to jelly. Burpee broad jumps that make grown adults negotiate with God. Farmer’s carries that compress your entire life into 20 miserable meters. Lunges, rowing, wall balls, the works. No mystery. No surprises. No excuses. You know exactly what’s coming. Which somehow makes it worse.

What began as a handful of lunatics in a warehouse now stretches from Boston to Brisbane. Americans, in particular, go absolutely gaga for this brand of glorified self-flogging. Last year, some 70,000 Americans lined up to compete in Hyrox races.

It’s measurable. It’s standardized. It has timing chips, age brackets, and leaderboards that humiliate you with forensic precision. And as a fully indoctrinated Hyroxer, I can’t pretend I’m above it. I get it.

Something primal

I’ve raced in the U.K., Ireland, and Thailand. Thailand, in particular, feels surreal. You’re preparing for an event designed to dismantle your nervous system while palm trees nod approvingly, someone hawks knockoff iPhones nearby, and ladyboys shout suggestive comments. And yet amid the madness, something primal asserts itself. Suffering, it turns out, is a universal language.

Hyrox isn’t “for everyone,” and it shouldn’t be sold that way. There’s a strange modern habit of presenting extreme physical challenges as all-purpose answers. As if every personal demon can be exorcised with sprints. For some people, this stuff is genuinely stabilizing. Structure helps. Training gives shape to days that might otherwise dissolve. Discipline can be a lifeline.

For others, though, it’s avoidance, plain and simple. I’ve met men and women who, without an outlet this intense, would almost certainly be annoying their lawyers or alarming psychiatrists. Not everything can be lifted, lunged, or rowed into submission. Eventually the joints revolt and the scoreboard stops flattering you.

Comfortably numb

The global popularity tells us something slightly uncomfortable about the moment we’re living in. Modern life is comfortable to the point of numbness. Effort has been engineered out of daily existence. The result isn’t ease but restlessness. So people voluntarily buy pain. They pay for race entries, overpriced shoes, and punishing workouts simply to feel alive again. Hyrox doesn’t negotiate. You run, or you don’t. You move the sled, or it doesn’t move. The feedback is immediate and unforgiving.

And it’s precisely that simplicity that has prompted the next, inevitable escalation: Olympic ambition.

Hyrox’s new Science Advisory Council, a small army of researchers from New Zealand, the U.K., and Europe, signals a sport that wants legitimacy. Standardization, data, physiology, performance analysis — the entire scientific kitchen sink has been thrown at the 2032 dream. On paper, it makes sense. The format is fixed. The judging is clean. The variables are controlled. If breakdancing can make it into the Olympic ecosystem, why not a race that looks like a PE teacher’s revenge fantasy?

Why not, indeed.

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Wundervisuals/Getty Images

Going mainstream

The Olympics have always been a little ridiculous. They celebrate niche obsessions elevated to national honor. People dedicate their lives to throwing things, jumping over things, sliding on ice in improbable positions. Hyrox fits right in. It’s absurd, yes, but so is speed-walking. So is synchronized swimming. Absurdity has never been a barrier to inclusion.

The more interesting question isn’t whether Hyrox deserves Olympic status. It’s what happens to a cult when it goes mainstream, when something built in warehouses and back alleys gets handed a global spotlight. Like an underground punk band suddenly piped through stadium speakers, intensity changes when scale takes over. What once thrived on proximity starts to lose its edge.

Whatever happens, I’ll line up again. Dublin. Bangkok. London. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, I know what’s in it, and I’m still reaching for another cup. There’s no exit interview. No recovery program. I’m not a philosopher. I just know that in a world drowning in opinions and moral lectures, it’s a relief to face a problem that can only be solved by putting one foot in front of the other, until you can’t.

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Cool under pressure: Why sports are better than exercise



I was swimming at my athletic club the other day when I saw a woman on the second floor running on a treadmill and watching CNN. I always think that’s a weird thing to do. Like, would that make you less stressed or more stressed?

I mean, what fun is running on a treadmill? All that pounding on your knee joints. And for what? And then you’re watching TV? That can’t be good for your mental health.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy ... doing it with your team, against another team.

But you always see that in gyms. Thirty-something women running on the treadmill. Guys too. Guys who don’t like sports but know they’re supposed to “stay active.”

So they run on the treadmill. Their wife does it. Their co-workers do it. People on TV do it. So they do it.

I’ve been in that upstairs area. There’s a weight room too. That also seems weird to me. Lifting weights. Dudes sitting in front of a mirror, admiring themselves doing arm curls.

Not that swimming laps is much better. But I’m in my 60s. I’ve reached that age where I have to go easy. And at least it’s quiet and peaceful in the pool. It’s meditative. And no CNN.

The shape I'm in

Growing up in Oregon, I never saw a real gym. Not like you see in movies, with the grime and the sweat and the old guy with the broken nose.

In the suburbs of Portland, we had weight rooms in our high school gyms. I guess that counts. I remember bench-pressing 150 lbs once, during football season. That was considered good at the time, for someone of my small size and weight.

At college, in Connecticut, I played in alternative rock bands. Music and sports didn’t really mix in the 1980s. So if you were in a band, you wanted to avoid any overt “jock” behavior.

Still, at one point, I joined the local YMCA so I could “stay in shape.” I don’t remember why I did that. I was 20 years old. How “out of shape” could I get?

That was my first urban gym experience. I went there and swam and shot baskets, by myself mostly. Then I ventured into the mysterious steam room.

During the day, most of the patrons of the local Y were older black men. So it would be me and a bunch of white-haired black guys, sitting there in the dense steam fog, sweating into our towels.

Coffee and cigarettes

After that, I enrolled at NYU, where I began my career as a writer. This began a long period when I didn’t think about my health or my physical fitness at all.

I became a coffee and cigarettes person, which kept me slim and trim. I worked in nightclubs for a couple of years. I got pasty. I got pale. But that was good. I was the right age for that look.

It wasn’t until I’d sold my first novel at 32 and moved to Los Angeles that I once again signed up for some physical exercise. I joined the Hollywood YMCA.

Playing with 'the big kids'

There, I planned on swimming laps, maybe shooting some baskets, but within a week, I was playing in pickup basketball with out-of-work actors and recently fired movie producers. There were also some very talented ex-high school and college players in these games. So the competition was sometimes intense.

But that’s what I needed. Competition. I didn’t have the discipline to swim laps in my 30s. I needed something to get my blood flowing.

Those pickup games became the highlight of my week. Since I wasn’t a great basketball player, every time I was on the court, I had to hustle to make myself useful. It was like being a little kid again. Playing with the big kids.

Some of those guys could really play. In many cases, if I could do anything positive in a game, it was an accomplishment. And then I’d walk home along Hollywood Boulevard, glowing with excitement and satisfaction.

Swimming in it

Eventually, at age 37, I ended up back in New York, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Whenever physical fitness came up, people would talk about the Williamsburg pool.

So I signed up and started going there. It was a public pool and not the cleanest. At times, it would get super crowded. The good news was that Williamsburg was the coolest neighborhood in the world at that time (late 1990s).

So even at the public pool, there were interesting people around. Hipsters, weirdos, indie-rock stars, trust fund bohemians — a true cast of characters!

A young man's game

And then I learned to surf in my 40s, and that changed everything. I would never have to join another YMCA or a gym or a pool again. Or so I thought. Surfing took care of all your physical fitness needs. If you surfed regularly, you were in the best shape of your life, all the time.

Unfortunately, surfing is a young man’s game. It can become genuinely life-threatening in the big, brutal surf of the Oregon coast where I live now. I’ve had to cut way back and limit myself to only the mildest surf days.

Team player

So now I’m playing in a senior softball league, which has been great fun. Competitive sports, to me, are always preferable to just working out.

Basketball, softball, volleyball, whatever. Competition creates adrenaline. Adrenaline cleans out your body and clears your head. And generates testosterone, if you’re worried about that.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy ... doing it with your team, against another team ... what could be more fun than that? And better for you. Much healthier than staring at your biceps in a mirror.

Of course, being older, I can’t go super hard. That’s why senior softball is a good fit. But even senior softball involves speed, skill, split-second decisions, and physical dexterity under pressure.

That might be the most important thing of all: a chance to be cool under pressure. There’s nothing that elevates your confidence and self-esteem like calmly making a key play in a crucial situation. And you can’t do that at a spin cycle class.

In my opinion, exercise with no goal, no sense of victory or defeat, no risk, no danger, no moment of truth where you either make the play or you don’t ... to me that’s just moving your body around. It doesn’t enrich your life.

Old joy

But yeah, I’m in my 60s now. So I’m back in the pool, back in the hot tub, trying to soothe my joints and ease my stiff muscles between softball games. I sweat in the steam room. Now, I’m the old white-haired guy.

But I have to say, I never feel frustrated with my aging body or the physical limitations that seem to come faster and quicker as you age.

The main thing I think about is how lucky I have been. And all the joy I’ve experienced from sports and exercise and the thrill of competition.

EXCLUSIVE: Jillian Michaels on why you should NEVER take Ozempic



They’re expensive, cause an array of side effects, and eventually stop working.

And yet Ozempic and other GLP1 drugs are more popular than ever — touted by celebrities and prescribed to millions of Americans convinced they’ve found their last, best chance of losing weight.

To those not willing to risk their mental health and quality of life for fleeting victory in their struggle with the scale, Michaels has a message of hope: 'Weight loss is simple.'

Nonsense, claims fitness and nutrition influencer Jillian Michaels.

'Zero weight loss'

In an email to Align, Michaels explained why the powerful peptides, which were originally prescribed for Type 2 diabetes and other diseases, are not the best pound-shedding solution for most people.

“The bottom line — they are extremely expensive. You plateau on them. The side effects are scary and the risk of experiencing the more serious ones increases over time,” says Michaels.

The good news? “There is a natural alternative.”

Michaels’ observations about GLP1 drugs reflect the experience of many who have failed to see any progress on the medication. One such user recently called in to the "Mind Pump" fitness podcast: “I’d been on semaglutide [Ozempic] for about six months and saw zero weight loss ... it was very, very frustrating.”

He had slightly more success after switching to a different GLP1 drug, the caller said, but he was still worried about the long-term: “My big question here is, what do you do when they don’t work, and what do you do when they stop working?”

Short-term fix

According to Michaels, his case is far from unique. Citing a survey from one of the country's biggest pharmacy benefit managers, Prime Therapeutics, Michaels noted that “66% of the people put on GLP1 drugs come off them within the first year citing cost, plateau, and side effects. And the risk for more serious side effects actually compounds over time.”

Yet, people remain desperate for these “miracle” drugs, even opting for unvetted knockoffs from online pharmacies. Late last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized thousands of GLP1 products thought to be counterfeit, according to the New York Post.

Many consumers endanger themselves for what they believe offers their one shot at achieving a healthy weight. “That is simply just not true,” says Michaels, pointing to her record of helping thousands achieve these results with natural solutions.

Depression danger

While Michaels admits her way is not the easiest way, she does consider it the safest, scoffing at drugmakers’ claims that the long-term use of their products carries very little risk.

“I don’t even know how they arrive at that conclusion,” says Michaels. “The side effects are on the box because they are very legitimate.”

Those side effects include nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, stomach upset, and in more serious cases, pancreatitis or kidney failure. The drug has also been linked to over 100 deaths, according to the Daily Mail.

What’s even scarier? The thousands of cases reporting these adverse effects may just be the tip of the iceberg. “The FDA estimates that its Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) only receives reports for 1–10% of adverse drug events,” says Michaels. The actual number of users experiencing harmful side effects could be tens of thousands more.

Michaels added that people are also more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant after starting a GLP1. This may have something to do with how the drug interacts with the brain’s “pleasure center.”

It’s hypothesized that these drugs impact dopamine release, making substances like food or drugs lose their appeal, continued Michaels. This benefits a person with addiction, Michaels says, but others open the door to depression, malaise, and lack of sex drive due to the same mechanism.

In short, Michaels believes these drugs are only right for a small minority of people such as the morbidly obese with a host of comorbidities or those battling addiction.

“For everyone else, these should NEVER be an option,” says Michaels.

A simpler way

To those not willing to risk their mental health and quality of life for fleeting victory in their struggle with the scale, Michaels has a message of hope: “Weight loss is simple.”

It all comes down to moving more and eating less. “Calories are units of energy. Energy that doesn’t get utilized from calorie intake gets stored as fat,” says Michaels.

In place of paying for Ozempic, Michaels recommends people spend money on goods and services that will encourage moving more and eating less: counseling, healthy food, and membership in a gym or other fitness community.

“Supporting yourself in all the ways possible inside and out goes a long way,” says Michaels.

Those who ditch Ozempic in favor of Michaels’ advice may find themselves experiencing a whole new range of positive “side effects,” including improved mental health, better sleep, and reduced chronic disease, according to a Mind Pump Media article.

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Health coach explains the potential connection between hormonal birth control and bisexuality in women



Emily Detrick, @littleraeofhealth on Instagram, is a certified health coach who specializes in helping “women balance their hormones naturally using mostly food as medicine.”

On this episode of “Relatable,” Emily joins Allie Beth Stuckey to discuss the sinister (and often dismissed) side of birth control.

A long and arduous journey to her own healing led Emily to discover the detrimental effects of birth control when it comes to our hormones.

Many women will recall doctors telling them that birth control has a host of benefits, including regulating your period and balancing your hormones, but according to Emily, these are lies.

“The second I got off birth control, I felt a million times better,” she tells Allie, adding that it felt like “coming home to [herself].”

“Basically none of them are good,” she explains. “I don’t think any woman needs to be on birth control for any reason,” as birth control “doesn’t regulate anything.”

For those who believe that birth control regulates your period, Emily attests that “you don’t get a period on birth control” but rather “a withdraw bleed from withdrawing from the fake hormones,” like “fake progesterone, fake estrogen.”

And for those who praise non-hormonal birth control methods, such as the increasingly popular copper IUD, Emily says that not only is “copper toxicity a big issue,” but also that copper “increases estrogen” and actually “[inflames] your uterus.”

Further, teenagers and young women who are put on birth control “are 70% more likely to be prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication.”

But that’s not the only “psychological impact” hormonal birth control can have, apparently.

“You also may be more likely to be bisexual if you are on the pill and that it can actually change who you are attracted to,” says Allie, referencing Dr. Sarah Hill. “I’ve also heard the argument that women may be ... more attracted to more feminine men ... when they are on the pill.”

“This is true,” says Emily. “There’s data, there’s studies” to confirm this.

“One of the [studies] they did is they showed women on birth control ... AI mockups of men, and then they slightly feminized their features,” Emily explains. “Women on birth control chose the men with more feminine features.”

There was also a study called “the sweaty T-shirt test,” which involved having “a bunch of different men work out in these sweaty T-shirts and put them in bags.” Then female test subjects — some of whom were on birth control and others who were not — were instructed to “smell them, essentially smelling their pheromones.”

They found that “the women who were on birth control chose the scent of men who were more genetically similar to them,” which Emily says is problematic considering “the most viable, resilient offspring” demand “someone with the DNA farthest from you.”

To learn more, watch the episode below.


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