Parents, this is how to talk about weight and dieting with your kids

Many parents believe they can prevent their kids from gaining weight by talking about weight and dieting. But talking about weight and dieting tends to backfire in a big way. In fact, the most common outcomes are weight gain over the lifetime of the child and/or eating disorders. But all is not lost! There’s so much that parents can do to raise healthy kids using a non-diet approach that focuses on health behaviors, not weight and dieting.

The non-diet approach to health is based on research conducted into Health at Every Size® (HAES®). This approach means you take good care of your body by feeding it good food, moving it, and getting enough sleep and other essentials. The difference between HAES® and a weight-focused, diet culture approach to health is that with HAES® there is no focus on weight loss as an outcome of your healthy behaviors. While weight loss diets are strongly associated with weight cycling and eating disorders, both of which cause great harm, a HAES® approach is strongly associated with positive health outcomes.

How to talk about weight and dieting with kids:

1. Do protect your child from negative weight talk

Outside of your home, your child may still be subject to negative weight talk. Help protect them by teaching them about weight stigma. Consider opting out of school weigh-ins and ask pediatricians not to talk about weight in front of your child.

2. Do talk about health behaviors with no weight association

Bodies can be healthy in a wide range of weights. Rather than focusing on weight, focus on behaviors that are healthy. Help your child get enough sleep, exercise, human connection, and a wide variety of foods, eaten regularly throughout the day, with others when possible.

3. Do approach food from a neutral standpoint

Parents who restrict and outlaw certain foods set their kids up for negative food behaviors and beliefs. Instead, pursue an all foods fit approach. Provide a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and proteins. But don’t restrict other foods that are fun and delicious.

4. Do recognize the impact of weight stigma, anti-fat bias, and bullying about weight

If your child is worried about gaining weight, getting fat, or wants to lose weight, that’s pretty normal. Unfortunately, we live in a diet culture that permeates almost every area of your child’s life. When your child complains about their body or says they want to go on a diet, ask them questions and find out what’s going on. Learn more about their social environment and what is contributing to their feelings. Then, validate that their feelings are normal. Living in a body in diet culture is hard. But at the same time, remind them that in your family your focus is on health behaviors, not weight. Support your child in feeling their feelings without supporting them in dieting to lose weight.

How not to talk about weight and dieting with kids:

Parents are very influential when it comes to kids’ health. Keep in mind that trying to talk to your child about losing weight or supporting dieting has serious negative consequences. Instead, follow these guidelines: 

1. Don’t allow your child to diet

It’s tempting in our culture to go on a diet to lose weight. I get it. But at the same time, the science is clear: diets don’t work, they lead to weight cycling and weight gain, and cause eating disorders. As hard as it is, maintain a strict no-dieting policy in your household.

2. Don’t discuss fat and obesity negatively

If you discuss weight, do so from a neutral standpoint. Respect each person’s unique biological, environmental, social, and emotional conditions. Don’t ever make assumptions about a person’s health or behaviors based on their weight.

3. Don’t criticize your child when they gain weight

Weight gain is a natural part of development. There will be periods during which your child’s body changes, sometimes significantly. Hold back from commenting on weight gain. It will not help and may cause harm.

But what about health?

There are serious negative consequences to talking about weight and dieting with kids. However, parents who want healthy kids can still create conditions in which each child will thrive.

Because while parent conversations focused on weight and size are associated with increased risk for higher weight and disordered eating behaviors. But conversations focused on healthful eating without a weight association are protective against disordered eating behaviors.

And every member of the family can benefit from a non-diet approach to health. This is a healthy approach to food and movement with zero focus on the scale.

Lots of parents criticize weight in front of kids

Because of diet culture, most parents engage in regular “fat talk” in front of children. This includes:

• 76% of parents speak negatively of their own weight in front of children
• 51.5% of parents speak negatively about “obesity” in front of children
• 43.6% of parents speak negatively about their child’s weight in front of the child

Source: Associations of parents’ self, child, and other “fat talk” with child eating behaviors and weight, International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2018

This is not surprising, but it is surprisingly harmful. Although criticizing weight is common in our society, it’s recognized as having negative health impacts, including weight gain, disordered eating, negative body image, and mental health disorders, including eating disorders. 

Parents usually mean well when talking to kids about weight and dieting, but even if your intentions are good, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a negative impact. The trouble is not you or your child, it’s just that we live in a body-toxic culture in which body weight has become a stand-in for health despite evidence that weight is not an important indicator of health and that dieting to reduce weight has serious negative health consequences.

Why parents talk about weight and dieting

Weight and dieting talk doesn’t arise from nowhere. It’s everywhere in diet culture. Most media outlets trumpet the perceived dangers of weight. Doctors regularly engage in clunky attempts to discuss weight. And many families engage in generational fat talk and fat shaming. Even when these talks are intended to help, the evidence shows that they cause far more harm than good.

Over 40% of young women and 27% of young men said they received encouragement from their mothers to diet to lose weight. And about 20% of young females and 18% of young males said they’d gotten similar messages from their dads.

But parental pressure to get and stay thin is associated with poorer health in young adulthood. There seems to be a cumulative effect on adult behaviors centered on weight, weight-related behaviors and psychosocial well-being.

Parents who talk about fat negatively increase their child’s risk of mental health conditions. This includes eating disorders.

Diet and weight loss talk seems simple, but it’s not

We think that weight loss is attainable, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Dieting and weight loss sound like simple topics (just eat less and move more!), but in fact permanent weight loss is nearly impossible based on a number of biological factors. Even though weight seems to be a straight-forward equation of calories in and calories out, the truth is far more nuanced. 

First, human bodies naturally vary in weight. Out of 100 people, exactly one will be at the 50th percentile for weight, one will be at the 1st percentile, and one will be at the 100th percentile, and so on. Your child was born in a body that is biologically programmed to be at a certain percentile, and it’s likely their early growth curve followed that percentile, with dips and peaks to account for growth spurts. Barring extreme measures, it’s extremely unlikely that a person will permanently move to a lower weight category.

Second, dieting for weight loss slows the metabolism, likely permanently. This means that every time a person diets and loses weight, their body becomes more efficient at maintaining its weight on fewer calories. The body does not want to exist at a lower weight, and will fight its way back up to the original weight. Often it will overshoot its previous weight in order to add a few pounds for safety. This is known as weight cycling, the impact of which has severe negative health consequences. 

Talking about dieting and weight loss causes weight gain (I know! It’s wild!)

Many parents believe that they can save their kids from weight gain by teaching dieting and weight control. They think they can improve kids’ health by preventing weight gain. They teach their kids that weight gain is bad and that they should diet and control their weight.

But adolescents whose mothers or fathers talk about weight and dieting have higher BMI than those who don’t. In other words, parents who try to avoid weight gain by talking about weight control increase the chance of weight gain in their kids.

Parents who attempt to control kids’ weight actually create conditions that seem to increase weight.

Girls who are pressured to diet by their parents were 49% more likely to be larger adults than girls who hadn’t gotten parental pressure. Boys who had a similar experience were 13% more likely to be larger. These results take into account genetic and environmental conditions. Therefore, it appears that an anti-weight environment may increase weight.

This is because weight is more than just calories in/calories out. It’s a complex biological, environmental, social, and emotional equation. And parents who tell kids to control their weight or engage in dieting influence their kids’ natural weight trajectory and create the perfect conditions for negative body image and weight cycling.

Talking about dieting and weight increases the chance of eating disorders

Parents who urge their kids to diet boost their kids’ odds of gaining weight. Also, parents who talk about dieting and weight also have kids who have an increased risk of eating disorders.

Disordered eating behaviors are strongly linked to hearing hurtful weight-related comments from family members. Eating disorders, like weight, are complex. They are based on multiple factors including biological, environmental, social, and emotional. Parents are never to blame for eating disorders. But their behavior can make an impact.

Messages about dieting from parents are linked to higher odds for poor self-esteem, body satisfaction and depression in young adulthood.

Parents who pressure their kids to control their weight and fear weight gain are inadvertently promoting eating disorder behaviors. These behaviors, which include food restriction, binge eating, and purging, create significant health conditions.

Parental pressure to diet increases the risk of “extreme weight control behaviors” (i.e. eating disorders) by 29% for girls and 12% for boys. Parental talk about weight and dieting often backfires and worsens health.

Overall, what parents do around weight and food matters more than what they say. Diet culture and eating disorders are strongly correlated with each other. Investigate your own relationship with food and weight. Explore Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size® to gain more understanding of the concepts covered in this article.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Diet Culture And Eating Disorders