The decision we didn’t rush into

It's on the side of the bus. It's in the group chat. It's the thing your mother-in-law brought up at lunch, and yet, for something that has become almost impossible to avoid, it remains a difficult conversation to have. In three years, GLP-1’s, a class of medicines that started in diabetes care, has become one of the loudest conversations about women's bodies in a generation.

Perhaps you’ve been part of the conversation, perhaps you’ve been observing it build or had to shelter from it altogether. You may have noticed that Ancient + Brave haven’t, until this moment, been a voice amongst it all. 

That was deliberate, although not for the reasons you might think. It isn’t because we don’t care.  It’s the opposite. We cared enough to spend the best part of a year caught between two uncomfortable choices: stay silent while our community navigates this changing landscape, or speak and risk becoming one more voice telling women what to do with their bodies.

That is why we, Jenna, Ancient + Brave’s Director of Science + Innovation, and Jo, Director of Nutrition + Education, have written this together. Between us, we bring perspectives from science, nutrition, and as women working within wellness, but this piece holds far more than just our own views. Over the past year, we have listened to nutritionists, eating-disorder specialists, women working across wellness and business, and, of course, our own valued Inner Circle community. We have taken all of it- the science, lived experience, questions, discomfort and disagreement- and brought it together.

Here’s where we’ve landed. Wherever you stand on this - in it, out of it or not thinking about it at all - we won't ask you to explain yourself. 

A medicine that outgrew the clinic

GLP-1 has become the shorthand for a growing family of these medicines like Semaglutide and tirzepatide, better known by brand names including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. GLP-1 is not new, and it did not begin as a medicine. It is a hormone our own bodies produce. Over 15 years ago, Jenna’s own research explored how diet-derived metabolites, including those produced by gut microbes, influence our own GLP-1 release, gut-barrier and immune function. What is new is the scale and speed with which GLP-1 has moved from a specialist area of biology into a medication discussed in many everyday conversations.

GLP-1 mimicking drugs were initially developed for type 2 diabetes. They work by mimicking or amplifying the effects of naturally occurring hormones like GLP-1, which help regulate blood glucose, slow the rate at which food leaves the stomach and communicate directly to parts of the brain which govern appetite and satiety. 

Over the past 3 years, these medications have moved from specialist medical treatments to pharmacy windows, group chats, bus stops and a substantial counterfeit market.  Women make up the majority of people taking them, and were consistently underrepresented in the trials that brought them to market, so the group most affected has the least evidence behind it.

In our own community, we have heard a full range of experiences: profound improvements in health, emerging effects that reach beyond appetite to mood and behaviour change, and the more challenging side, difficult side effects, anxiety around food, muscle loss, lack of pleasure, concerns about access and long-term use, and the complicated feelings that can accompany a changing body.

Because this has never been only a conversation about a medicine.

The great debate

Of course, many medicines are debated, and some carry stigma or profound personal meaning. But few become beauty headlines, dominate wellness launches or invite public judgement about what taking them says about a person’s body, discipline or identity. GLP-1 medicines sit differently in culture and are different whether we like it or not. 

The sheer complexity of this conversation is hard to overstate, because unlike other prescription medicines, it doesn't just live in the realm of clinical evidence and hard facts. It is bound up with our individual experiences and relationships with our bodies, with decades of messaging around weight, health, beauty and appearance, and with deeply ingrained ideas about what health is supposed to look like. It touches healthcare and nutrition, but also body image, diet culture, inequality, ethics and the way we collectively talk about health, weight and women. And women are particularly exposed to that collision. They are major users of these medicines while also living within a culture that has always put a disproportionate emphasis on how a body looks. 

We see all of it. All the angles. 

We see those who feel judged and stigmatised for wanting to lose weight, including for choosing medication to help them do it. We see the layers of pressure, the cultural noise that can sit alongside the deeply personal desire to feel comfortable, capable and at home in your own body.

We see people for whom GLP medications have been a bridge to a place where looking after their health feels possible again. Where appetite or other aspects of metabolic health become more manageable, mobility returns, or a body gets a chance to find some stability.

And we see those who have done a lifetime of work trying to untangle themselves from diet culture exposure, now surrounded by weight-loss messaging that has only intensified since these drugs arrived. Not just online, but on shop shelves, on tube station posters, podcasts and throughout the media. There are fewer and fewer spaces where bodies and weight aren't part of the conversation.

Both experiences can be true at once.

That’s a large part of why this subject is so emotionally charged.

We know, because it has prompted difficult conversations within Ancient + Brave too.

Why we waited.

As a female-founded and female-led company, these conversations weren't happening at a distance. We are women working within the same health and wellness culture we are trying to navigate responsibly. We know the good this industry can do, but we are also conscious of the pressure it creates, particularly when health, weight, appearance and ideas about what a woman's body should be become difficult to separate.

We studied the science, we grappled with the cultural impact, we debated and challenged each other, comforted, and also changed our minds. We asked the important questions: whether we should enter this conversation at all, what role would actually be useful, where the boundaries should fit, and how do we talk about something this complex without adding to an already deafening amount of noise.

We have not always agreed on the answers. But there were some things we were very clear about from the beginning.

We are not, and never have been, interested in creating a GLP-1 adjacent product, selling you supplements designed to mimic GLP-1 medications, building a brand around weight loss, or capitalising on their popularity. Nor are we here to persuade anyone either to take or not take these medicines. These are individual decisions that belong between you and appropriately qualified healthcare professionals who know your history.

What we were less certain about was whether we should talk about GLP-1s at all.  Because responsible communication matters. But silence is also a choice, particularly when people within our own community are already navigating this changing landscape.  So rather than assuming what you needed from us, we asked.

We asked our Inner Circle

Our Inner Circle is our community of customers who have chosen to share their experiences, perspectives and ideas with us. We wanted to understand how our community felt about Ancient + Brave engaging with GLP-1s, including those with personal experience of the medications and those who wanted nothing to do with the conversation.

Over 560 of our Inner Circle members shared their views about GLP-1s with us. Among them, 17% had personal experience of taking them.  The true figure may be higher: almost one in five people skipped that question, and stigma around GLP-1 use came up again and again in the written responses.

And the responses reflected many of the conversations we had been having ourselves.

Some of you wanted us involved. Some wanted us nowhere near it. In total, 46% said they would welcome, or be cautiously interested in, Ancient + Brave joining the GLP-1 conversation. Around a quarter said they would rather we stayed away or would feel uncomfortable if we entered it. 

 When we asked more specifically whether Ancient + Brave could have a useful role for people taking GLP-1 medications, 42% said yes, either definitely or in certain ways, while almost a third were unsure.

That was not a mandate to charge ahead. It told us that any role would need to be carefully defined, genuinely useful and clear about its boundaries.

There was no neat consensus, and we think that tells us something the numbers alone can’t.

There is a temptation, particularly in wellness, to take something complicated and flatten it into something certain. To pick a side. To find the simple, hooky headline. Your responses reminded us that real experiences don’t work like that.

But there was a clearer signal when we asked what people would value if we did have a role. Practical, evidence-based nutrition guidance came out on top. And one message came through particularly strongly in your written responses: if we were going to enter this conversation, how we did it mattered.

 A woman’s body shape becomes the story. Again.

There is another part of this conversation that we do not want to ignore.  

For generations, women have carried an extraordinary amount of pressure and scrutiny around their bodies.  Diet culture, rooted in a long history, has told women that their value lies in their shape or size. Beauty culture has told us to change our appearance and resist ageing. And let’s be clear - no body or face is ever good enough in these systems. The goalposts change. What’s ‘in’ and desirable is completely different every few years.  Even parts of wellness culture, the system that should care for our wellbeing,  have told us that if we optimise hard enough, eat cleanly enough, if we ‘control’ and ‘manage’, be better, faster -  we can somehow earn the correct life, the right body, and with it unlock ultimate health. 

And just perhaps it's no coincidence that just as more women are reclaiming their power, in business, politics, motherhood, even their bodies - that the volume dial is turned up on how we should look. This isn’t new; it’s a historic pattern. 

Now GLP-1 medications have arrived inside that existing landscape.  

So when a woman feels conflicted about wanting to lose weight, ashamed about using medication to do it, judged for wanting to stay as she is, tired of body-checking and food-vigilance,  frightened about her body changing, feeling like her body is somehow failing her, or simply exhausted by having her body continually made into a public conversation, none of it came from nowhere.

Our choices are personal, but they are not made in a cultural vacuum.

And that burden should not and does not sit with individuals alone. The uncomfortable truth is that this is, in many ways, an old story in a new form. Women's bodies are once again at the centre of an enormous cultural and commercial conversation, and there is a particular tension here for any company operating within health and wellness, including ours. We are part of an industry that hasn’t always helped.

We can’t undo that history with one article or another campaign, but we can be careful about what we add to it.  Whatever path you are on right now, there is a space for you here. 

So what is our role?

Simpler than we first thought: stick to what we know.

We know about nourishment. We know about protein, muscle, hydration, micronutrients, digestion, movement, sleep, rest and recovery. We know that food is more than macros; it’s joy, connection, culture, its own type of medicine. We know how the mind and body are not separate from one another, and the many interconnected systems that help us stay well. We know that nourishment comes in many forms.

And importantly, we know that health has never been the same thing as body size.

Our nutritional needs change throughout our lives and with our circumstances. Taking a GLP-1 medication may change the context in which someone needs to think about nourishment, but the underlying fundamentals of staying well do not suddenly become different.

So we can keep doing what we believe good health education should do: help people understand their bodies, make sense of the evidence, stay nourished and resourced, and make informed choices within the realities of their own lives.

That means talking about getting enough protein and supporting muscle. About fibre, micronutrients and hydration. About digestive health. About movement, sleep and recovery. And about eating enough to nourish a human body, rather than reducing nutrition or health to a number on a scale.

These foundations matter if you are taking a GLP-1 medication.

They matter if you aren't.

Brave bodies. Brave minds. Brave choices.

Nourishing female bravery is part of our mission. To us, bravery cannot mean deciding which choices women are allowed to make.   It means helping women have the information, resources and confidence to make their own.  

So you do not need to justify your choice to us. 

You do not need to tell us why you are taking medication. or explain why you are not. You do not need to pursue weight loss to belong in a wellness space, and you do not need to feel ashamed if changing how you feel in your body is something you want for yourself.

That decision isn’t ours to make for you. But is it our responsibility to lift the pressure.

Ours is to ensure that, whatever your context, you can find thoughtful, evidence-informed guidance about nourishing and caring for the body you live in, within a space where shape and size are not placed at the centre, and individual choices are met with compassion rather than judgement.

The landscape will keep changing. New medicines will arrive. New technologies will emerge. New wellness trends will promise to change everything. New standards will tell you to be something else. 

We will stay curious enough to understand what’s shifting, critical enough not to follow the noise, and grounded enough to remember the fundamentals that do not change.

This isn't the end of the conversation. Tell us what you need from us and what you don't. Tell us when we get it right, and tell us when you think we could do better. This landscape is changing, and we would rather navigate it alongside our community than pretend we already have all the answers.

Whatever your choice, you will find nourishment here. A well-nourished woman, fed in all meanings of the word, is harder to dismiss. Harder to exhaust. Harder to keep small. Every hour taken by diet culture is an hour not spent being present in our lives, building, creating, leading, enjoying, being. So let nourishment mean all of it when you land here with us. What’s on your plate, what brings you joy, what soothes your mind. It’s rest, connection, purpose, kindness and parts of you that bloodwork tests or scales can't measure. What we will do is continue to create a space where you find thoughtful, evidence-informed information to help you understand your body, care for your health and make choices that feel right for you - without judgement.