Weight Loss for You and Your Kids: Drug-Free Strategies from Doctors

Caryn Lipson

November 14, 2024

Weight loss drugs for children - are they necessary?

As children are putting on more weight than ever before, doctors are beginning to prescribe weight loss drugs for them, just like they are for their parents. The FDA approved weight loss drug liraglutide for children from 12 to 17 years and it will likely be approved for children as young as 6. Like Wegovy and Ozempic for adults, it is a synthetic version of GLP-1, the hormone that regulates appetite. While Wegovy and Ozempic, brand names of generic semaglutide, are once-weekly injections and stay in the body for up to a week, liraglutide must be injected daily, only lasts for 12-15 hours, and does not provide the same amount of weight loss as the drugs targeted at adults. Patients on semaglutide and liraglutide are at risk for serious adverse effects which may cause lifelong debility even after going off the drugs.

Nutrition and lifestyle problem

Doctors who understand obesity to primarily be a nutrition and lifestyle problem are working to create awareness of the factors contributing to obesity and how to address them through enduring, health-focused habits.

Dr. Mark Hyman, host of The Doctor’s Pharmacy, is one such physician. In the following podcast he sat down with functional medicine physician and nutritionist Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss what makes kids overweight and what to do about it. Dr. Hyman noted (@7:30) that food manufacturers purposely make their foods addictive.

[F]oods that are highly addictive, that are designed to hijack your brain chemistry, hijack your hormones, hijack your metabolism — deliberately, [are] designed by food companies in taste institutes, who hire craving experts to create the "bliss point" of food. I'm not making this up. Literally the terms they use in their internal corporate documents to create, you know, heavy users. I mean this is just criminal in my view criminal, it's criminal. And the food marketing to kids. I mean the average two year old you know, barely talk, but they can recognize junk food and call for it by name when they go to the grocery store and they can't even walk. That is terrifying to me. . . .

Dr. Boham:

Dr. Boham acknowledged that the obesity problem is difficult to combat but emphasized the importance of addressing it. She reviewed the chart that doctors use to determine how children’s height and weight correlate in order to in order to illustrate the gravity of the problem. There are now children who are severely obese and are in the 120th percentile, a category that never existed before.

When you bring your child to the doctor’s . . . they look at the growth chart and they look at the BMI. The BMI or body mass index, is not a perfect marker. I mean there's problems with it, but it is, it is something we use as a guide and it can give you some indication of where your child's at. So if you're greater . . . than the 85 percentile for your child’s age and sex, they’re considered overweight, and greater than 95th percentile on that growth chart you're considered obese and now we have a category for the severe obesity . . . super obese which is 20% over that 95th percentile and . . . so if your BMI is greater than 35% for a child. . .

Dr. Hyman:

Just to put that into perspective — these percentile graphs were made on population data where they look at the entire population and the whole population has to fit into 100% . . . Now they had to create a new category of 120% or more. How does that happen? It happens because the entire population shifts into a category that never existed before. There were no kids who were that overweight unless they had some weird genetic disorder. . .

Dr. Boham:

Five percent of [overweight/obese] children are adolescents in the U.S. and for those teenage years, 7% of girls and 9% of boys are in that severe obesity category. And as you mentioned earlier, a third of children are either overweight or obese. . . . Whatever we can do at this stage of the game with your young children . . is really critical for setting them up for success.

Steps parents can take

Some of the important steps parents can take to decrease their children’s likelihood of developing obesity, which Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discussed, include breastfeeding, having young children go to sleep before 8 pm, getting them outside and moving every day, and developing good eating habits, among others. Dr. Hyman suggested that parents encourage children to help prepare healthy foods in the kitchen from a young age and stressed the importance of families having meals together.

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The following videos follow seven obese children and explore how obesity affects them and the efforts taken to help them lose weight. Also apparent in the videos is the role that parents play in their child’s self-image and weight gain.

The following British documentary “explores with unique access inside three organisations on the frontline of the war on childhood obesity and preventable illnesses the story of what's going wrong with our children's health.”

Junk Food Kids: Who's To Blame | Obesity Documentary | S01 E02‍

"Feel Great, Lose Weight"

British physician Dr. Rangan Chaterjee takes a holistic view of health and weight. In the video below, he talked with Dhru (pronounced Drew) Purohit about his book “Feel Great Lose Weight: Long term, simple habits for lasting and sustainable weight loss” and the very personalized approach he takes to help patients feel better and look better. He explained that he works with each person individually to help them find what is the best approach for them.

‍In my 20 years' experience of seeing patients, people want real transformation. Yes, some want transformation in their physique, but many people want transformation in their energy levels, in the quality of their lives, in how they show up at work, in how they show up in their relationships. And what I would see, Dhru, is that people would go on diets in January, and by February or March, they'd be back in my clinic saying, "Dr. Chaterjee, in January I went on this diet. I did lose a little bit of weight, but now not only have I gone back to where I started, I'm now a little bit heavier." But that's not the worst thing, Dhru. The worst thing is that they don't blame the diet; they blame themselves. They think that they're the failures, that they couldn't do it, they couldn't follow the formula, they're weak. And then they start to feel shame. And shame is a toxic emotion; shame never helps anybody change in the long term. Sure, it can help you in the short term; it very rarely helps you in the long term.

So when I start the book saying, "You're not to blame," it's to really just say, "Hey, look, I get it. It's tough. You have tried before; you may not have succeeded, but that's okay. I'm not going to blame you. Not only am I not going to blame you, there is no need to blame yourself, because I'm going to walk you through the real culprits and the real reason why you are struggling to maintain your health and maintain your weight." But it's not about willpower; it's not about a moral failing that you have; it's not about the fact that you're weak when people around you are absolutely fine. No—your biology has changed. You probably were exposed to certain things in the environment that you weren't aware of that have changed your biology, have changed the way you feel, and now you've ended up carrying excess weight. So you're not to blame. I'm here now to help you.

And the sort of calling line, the top line of this book, really, Dhru, is that you can almost always help somebody lose weight in a sustainable way, in a scientifically responsible way, once you find the right approach for them. And that is what the entire book is about—it's basically saying, "I want to help you find the right approach for you."

One example of an underlying weight issue he spoke about was that of a woman who was subconsciously gaining weight to avoid overtures by men; as a child she had been abused by an older man and was trying to make sure it would never happen again by making herself unattractive. After addressing this trauma she was able to lose weight.

Can yoga help?

Disabled veteran Arthur Boorman, as shown in the video below, regained the ability to walk unaided and lost weight at the same time by doing yoga. Fifteen years earlier doctors told him that he would never walk unassisted again. As the text below the video explains, one should never give up.

His story is proof, that we cannot place limits on what we are capable of doing, because we often do not know our own potential. . . . In less than a year, Arthur completely transformed his life. If only he had known what he was capable of, 15 years earlier.

Better habits, no drugs

While weight loss is a growing challenge for both children and adults, there are proven nutrition and lifestyle strategies that can help achieve lasting results without the need for weight loss drugs and their associated risks.

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The information contained in this article is for educational and information purposes only and is not intended as health, medical, financial or legal advice. Always consult a physician, lawyer, or other qualified professional regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition, health objectives or legal or financial issues.