Every parent, especially Moms worry about being an Almond Mom stuck in diet culture, potentially causing an eating disorder or doing absolutely nothing to help their teen who has health issues like insulin resistance and mental health issues associated with internalized weight bias.
The healthier the relationship between parent and teen, the healthier the teen. When I say healthier I don’t mean weight. Health is not a number on a scale. I’m talking about relational health.
Megan and her Mom are the best example of a parent and teen relationship being the foundation for reaching health goals.
I’ve been coaching Megan, who just started her Junior year. We’ve been working together over the summer. She’s doing great with her health goals she set for herself. Her Mom reached out to me several months ago about her amazing daughter who has struggled with her weight since she was little. Megan is a leader in her school, has great friends, makes all A’s, has been active in sports, and has an amazing supportive family. Megan’s full of dreams for her life.
Megan feels like her life is 90% great, but the 10% is holding her back. It’s like the 10% is taking over the 90%. Megan has almost a freeze response when she’s bullied. Even though she’s a leader Megan isn’t able to stick up for herself when she’s weight bullied.
My first step was a 30 minute coaching consultation with Mom to go over what’s going on. Mom was on board with my four pillars and my Let’s meet in the middle philosophy. See my viral TikTok video. Read the comments on my post to see how important it is to take a compassionate and not a compliance-based approach.
Mom felt like Megan would be a good candidate for the newly FDA approved GLP-1 medications, but her pediatrician wasn’t comfortable writing a prescription. This is a common scenario. Mom didn’t know where to start. I did. It’s like a flow diagram. We do this in medicine for patient care.
My telehealth practice isn’t licensed in her state, but that didn’t stop me from helping to navigate the process of getting a prescription and supporting Megan’s health goals.
Speaking of flow diagrams, stop here to see if you live in one of the ten states I’m licensed in and go to drkarlamd.com to schedule a specialty consultation. No referrals needed!
Define the problem. Diagnose the issue.
Back to Megan. It’s not the weight. The problem is not having answers, not knowing what’s going on, feeling stuck in self-judging, thinking if it was different then everything would be good, staying stuck in overdesire food cravings and binging.
Don’t push your solution. If you make it all about the “how”, then that’s diet culture and you will get ghosted. It’s like being a transactional parent compared to a transformational parent. I’m writing more on this in my book………..
Spoiler alert: Megan is slaying her health and life goals!
Stay tuned for the next IME-mail where I’ll share how I coached Megan and her Mom to slay her health goals!
Here to help with compassion,
Dr. Karla