Ok, someone help clarify this for me. This seems to me to be what he's saying;
***
It's not about calories, it's about hunger. So the drugs work, because they decrease hunger, which decreases the calories we take in.
****
How does that not translate to: "we lose weight because we take in less calories"?
It seems Dr. Fung is confusing two levels of causation and trying to salvage his view of caloric intake:
1. Why do you lose weight on these drugs? Your hunger is less and so you take in less calories?
2. Why do you lose weigh ton these drugs? Because you take in less calories.
I think this is subtly trying to bring in the very confused, incoherent idea that "losing weight is not about will power." I love the ridiculousness of this because almost in the next breath, people will often say (if they're not plugging a drug solution), 'So it's not will power, What you have to do is choose healthy foods.'
ie., you're using volition. So people who have for years misdefined "willpower" as blind force now say "choose healthy foods," which involves making choice - ie will power.
This is a word game.
I don't know, maybe drugs will be a long term goal. I remember seeing research on anti depressants as long ago as the early 90s. The research ALWAYS limited the success to 40-45%, even for the most severe depression (and therapy has the exact same rate of success, by the way).
Yet, to this day, you'll find psychiatrists claiming drugs have a 90% cure rate for depression.
I hope we don't see the same thing with weight loss drugs. Meanwhile, there IS another solution - if you do not use "blind force" (what people call "willpower") you may be astonished, if you're not familiar with things like psychoneuroimmunology, that behavior choices AND attitudes (!!!) affect all of the same hormones that the drugs affect.
Yes, it takes a lot more intelligence and caution - but if you want to insist it's impossible without the drug BECAUSE you are a complete slave to hormones - you can believe what you want but that is simply anti-scientific.