What the weight-loss drug headlines aren’t telling us

This week, headlines have reported on people ending up in hospital after using unregulated weight-loss substances bought outside the medical system. It’s frightening to read, and it raises an obvious question: why would someone take that risk?

I’m not going to comment on any specific substance — that’s a question for doctors and pharmacologists, not a counsellor. But the question underneath the headlines is one I sit with often in my work: what makes someone feel that risking their health is worth it, if it might mean losing weight?

This isn’t about willpower

It’s tempting to read stories like this and think people just want a shortcut. But in my experience, it’s rarely about wanting an easy way out. It’s about how long someone has been trying the hard way — the diets, the rules, the discipline — and how exhausted and unseen that effort can leave a person feeling.

When someone has spent years being told their body is a problem to solve, and every approach they’ve tried hasn’t given them the relief they were promised, the appeal of something that finally “works” — even something risky — starts to make a different kind of sense.

The weight of diet culture

We live in a culture that treats body size as a measure of worth, discipline, and even moral character. That message gets absorbed, often from childhood, and it can quietly shape how safe or unsafe someone feels in their own skin.

For many people, the drive to change their body isn’t really about the body at all. It’s about wanting to finally feel acceptable, safe, or worthy of love. That’s a heavy thing to carry, and it’s not solved by any product, regulated or not.

What actually helps

In counselling, the work isn’t about adding another rule or plan to the pile. It’s about understanding what’s underneath the urgency — the beliefs, the history, the fear — and building a different kind of relationship with your body. One based on values and self-respect, not control or punishment.

That process is slower than a quick fix promises to be. But it’s also the only kind of change that tends to last, because it doesn’t depend on a substance, a plan, or a number on a scale. It depends on you.