While debate rages on about the use of GLP-1 weight-loss injections like Mounjaro, one thing is certain - the rate at which they are being taken and becoming part of everyday conversation continues apace.
Data from earlier this year claims that while around 200,000 people are accessing the drugs through the NHS, as many as 1.4 million people in the UK every month are getting them through private online pharmacies. Many of those people who are taking those drugs will be parents - and, as parents are prone to do, have probably wondered about how to broach the subject with their children.
As parents, we know that kids absorb so much - even that which we might try to keep from them. But first and foremost, if possible, Dr Anna Colton- a leading clinical psychologist specialising in the psychology of food, eating and emotional wellbeing in children and adolescents - says keeping the issue from them is the ideal.
When asked how best to approach talking to your kids about weight-loss drugs like Mounjaro, Dr Colton - who is the author of How To Talk To Children About Food- says: ‘Ideally don’t discuss it with your child whatever age, unless it’s essential - which probably might be if they’ve seen the jabs in the fridge or they’ve seen you injecting them. So don’t let them see.
‘This is because unless you’re significantly overweight, meet NICE criteria for GLP-1s or have medical need, they feed right into diet culture and the communication to children is that being thinner and shrinking your body is important - so important that you will inject yourself with a medication to make it happen.
‘This is different if you meet criteria or are very overweight because then the explanation is about health and the health consequences of being very overweight / obese.’
If you do need or want to talk to your children about taking the drugs, Dr Anna suggests:
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Make clear these are medications for adults only
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Focus on health and medical need. For example: 'Because I’m overweight my joints hurt, I can’t exercise as much as I want or need.'
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Explain it’s not a quick fix but can help when combined with a healthy diet, exercise and lifestyle changes.
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Tell them that these are medications. They have side effects and there are both benefits and risks to using them.
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Explain the nuance: these medications can help some adults but they also carry risks, and some people don’t react well to them or can’t take them.
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Be clear, they are a powerful medication, not something like a throat lozenge that you can buy over the counter without much risk
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Explain you need medical oversight and management to use them
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Be clear they should not be for people who don’t need them
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Be clear they’re not for children or teens
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Name diet culture and explain how they feed into this.
If you are planning one of these conversations and are worried about saying the wrong thing, Dr Anna also suggested some things it might be best to avoid in talking to children about GLP-1s:
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Avoid any messages that feed into the diet culture narrative about the moral value of thinness and the messages that being fat or overweight is a choice, a lack of self-care or morally reprehensible.
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Avoid framing losses as a 'look how skinny I’m getting' win. Keep the focus on health.
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Avoid normalising them because we don’t want children growing up believing that they will need to use GLP-1s or will just be able to pop a pill (by the time they grow up) to lose weight.
Dr Anna says that as a person who works with lots of people who have eating disorders, the issue of GLP-1 drugs are becoming more and more part of her workload and conversations: 'For some it's interfering with their recovery, because it feeds straight into their struggles. A couple of my anorexic patients have considered using them - they’d be able to get them just by uploading a false weight and photo. And this is massively dangerous.'
She adds: ‘We need to work even harder now to help children accept their bodies and to appreciate their qualities, personality and build their self-esteem based on these and not on their weight and shape. GLP-1s feed right into diet culture.
‘Their availability to buy without a prescription from the doctor means that people who don’t meet criteria can use them and lose weight, so the value of thinness has grown exponentially and the stigma of being in a normal sized body, let alone a larger one has increased.’
If you are worried or feeling guilty about the messaging your children may be receiving, Dr Anna says that if you genuinely do need the drugs ‘remind yourself that this is part of you looking after you and that will help your child. Be interrogative with yourself of why you’re using them and if you can genuinely say you need them (to improve your physical health or reduce bingeing or significant food noise) then you can reassure yourself this will help your child - just don’t talk to them about using GLP1s unless you have to.’
She also advises eating with your kids to continue to model healthy eating and mitigate the idea that eating isn’t healthy - she says it’s also key to ‘avoid connecting your or their worth to weight and looks.’
If you’re not on weight-loss drugs, but are worrying about the narrative around them might be affecting your children - or they’ve asked about them, Dr Anna also offers some tips on how to talk to them:
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Answer questions asked honestly
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Be really clear they’re a medication not a lifestyle choice
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They are powerful medications for people who are very overweight or obese and whose health is compromised
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They need to be used as a tool in a toolbox - with a healthy diet, exercise and lifestyle changes
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They are not for people without these
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There are benefits and side effects
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They’re not risk free and when people come off them they usually put the weight back on unless they’ve worked on their relationship with food, and made diet, exercise and lifestyle changes.
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Name the diet culture loud and clear and talk about how loud this is - educate your child on diet culture too. What it is, where it is, how it shows up, why it’s so damaging.
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Talk about how all bodies are different, that some people live in larger bodies, some in smaller and no two bodies are the same
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Help them appreciate their body for everything it does - the functions - not the way it looks
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Talk about their friends liking them for who they are not how they look
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Help them appreciate their qualities, like personality or humour.
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Model a good relationship with your body (this is often the hard bit if you struggle with body image)
Rhiannon Evans is a freelance writer and editor, and was previously Acting Digital Director, Features Director, Commissioning Editor and Special Projects Editor at Grazia. She launched Grazia’s parenting platform The Juggle. The unique community is a place for parenting advice, laughs and discussion - and constantly campaigns for working parents.