Like many parents, Grace and McLellan have divergent views about the issue. The new AAP guidelines - as well as the rising awareness of the new class of effective weight-loss drugs - have touched off controversy among many parents who are now debating whether, when and how to treat a child's obesity. Those guidelines help direct pediatricians in their treatment recommendations, which can, in turn, affect the likelihood that a patient might get diagnosed, get treated or get their care paid for by insurance. New drugs like semaglutide - approved for weight loss under the brand Wegovy - tamp down hunger and boost metabolism adolescent bariatric surgery achieves similar results.īoth treatments were added early this year to the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended treatment guidelines for children as young as 12 or 13 - acknowledging the increasing threat of the disease in children.
Today, there are treatments for kids with severe obesity that weren't available to Grace and McLellan growing up. "I didn't have a lot of friends all the way through middle school, even high school," she says.
Grace, a software engineer who wishes to use only her middle name to protect her daughter's privacy, says the feeling that obesity was a personal failure isolated her as a child. "All I've ever known was dieting and the harm I had done to my body." "It is trauma, because we've seen what has happened to ourselves," says McLellan, a childbirth educator specializing in helping plus-size mothers. Now, each of these mothers has a 12-year-old child confronting social issues related to weight, and both strongly wish to help their own children tread healthier paths. Studies have also confirmed what both women suspected all along: Diets usually do not result in long-term weight loss because food and exercise account for only some part of the puzzle.īoth women felt duped and overlooked by doctors who - mistakenly, it turns out - viewed obesity as a lack of willpower. Since then, scientific understanding of obesity has transformed doctors now consider it a disease driven by genetics, the brain and other organs, as well as by environmental or psychosocial factors. Both tried every known diet plan and pill available at the time, only to have doctor after doctor admonish them to restrict calories and exercise still more. haven't met, but they share a common childhood trauma: Both came of age in the 1980s and '90s feeling burdened by shame and stigma over their body size. Two mothers - Jen McLellan in Albuquerque, N.M., and Grace, of Bethesda, Md.
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