Causes of Eating Disorders Archives - Page 2 of 9

Posted on May 5, 2022May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

Diet culture myths and eating disorders

Myths you should ignore to prevent eating disorders

So many of our cultural health norms are not actually healthy, which is why I’ve put together a list of the four diet culture myths you should ignore to prevent eating disorders.

Look, it’s not our fault that we’re confused about health. We’re surrounded by powerful industries that create and reinforce health myths. We have the diet industry, the food industry, and the fitness, beauty, and fashion industries. They are all motivated and skilled at making us believe they have the answer to being healthy. But while health does require the basics: food, housing, and food, consumer goods are not the path to health. Health is an inside job.

Raising healthy kids

Jon and Theresa always wanted the very best for their two kids. Theresa is a nurse and Jon runs marathons. Together, they thought they knew what to do to raise healthy kids. But now that their kids are tweens, they see signs of disordered eating.

“My first hint that something was wrong was when whole containers of peanut butter and loaves of bread would disappear,” says Theresa. “We don’t keep candy, cookies, or chips in the house, but when we went to parties I would see my kids hovering over the food table, grabbing every bit of junk food they could get their hands on. It was shocking to see them put away so much food so quickly. I tell them they will get stomachaches, but they don’t stop. It seems like they have a limitless capacity for junk food.”

Jon agreed. “At first I thought that meant we needed even stricter rules, but now I’m not so sure. It seems like maybe we’ve raised them in such a carefully-managed environment that they just go crazy when they’re out in the real world. I just don’t know how we can keep them healthy anymore – my rules don’t seem to be working very well.”

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

The relationship is what matters

Often parents worry so much about feeding kids a “junk-free” diet. But in doing so they don’t realize that their kids’ relationship with food and their body is what’s most important. And without a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, kids are susceptible to disordered eating and eating disorders.

Theresa and Jon are worried that their older daughter is developing binge eating disorder. “She’s eating a lot more than usual at night and then skipping breakfast and lunch almost every day,” says Jon. “Sometimes we catch her in the pantry at night, and she seems so desperate and unhappy. Last night she was sobbing in my arms about how much weight she is gaining. I told her she’s beautiful, but it didn’t help.”

“I realize that we have created a lot of food rules and restrictions in our house, and even though our goal was health, it’s not working out so well,” says Theresa. “We both grew up with SpaghettiOs, Pop-Tarts, Top Ramen, and frozen pizzas and burritos, and maybe being so strict with food as parents was an overcorrection.”

Theresa and Jon are not alone. We want to do everything we can to raise healthy kids, but sometimes common health advice gets in the way of them having a positive relationship with food and their body. Even though health myths are everywhere, parents can safely ignore most of them, especially if they want to prevent eating disorders. Health doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s not easy parenting in the midst of all these health myths. But we can do it!

Here are the four parenting myths you can ignore to prevent eating disorders:

Myth 1: my kids will never stop eating sugar and junk

There is a powerful myth in our culture that kids, and all people, are insatiably drawn to sugar and “junk” food. And while there is plenty of evidence that food companies strategically create food that appeals to our genetic predisposition to eating lots of life-giving calories, this doesn’t tell the full story.

Yes, our bodies are very attracted to sweet, salty, and fat-filled food. But bodies are not naturally insatiable unless they are experiencing restriction (famine). In fact, it’s becoming increasingly understood that eating an entire sleeve of Oreos is more likely based on the fact that you have negative beliefs about the Oreos and have told yourself not to eat them than the Oreos themselves. You read that right: restriction, not access to delicious food, breeds binge eating.

There are many people who raise kids using Intuitive Eating and/or Ellyn Satter’s Eating Competence method. With these eating styles, people feed themselves healthfully but don’t avoid foods(except for allergies), eat according to appetite, and don’t use weight as a measurement of success. These styles of eating have been associated with the highest levels of health across multiple domains, from cardiovascular to mental health. They are also protective against eating disorders.

Parents should serve kids regular meals featuring a variety of food. Meals should include starches, fats, vegetables/fruits, protein, and dairy (if there’s no lactose intolerance). To avoid binge eating or an unhealthy relationship with food, serve desserts and other tasty, highly palatable foods as part of your regular rotation.

I know it’s hard to believe, but when you serve all the foods, you’ll raise kids who naturally modulate their food intake and don’t suffer from a scarcity mentality that drives binge eating and/or dieting and restriction. The best thing you can do for your child’s physical and mental health is to raise them to have a healthy relationship with food.

Myth 2: I need to lose weight to be healthy

We live in a culture that is cruel to bodies, so it’s not unusual for parents to be actively working to lose weight with diet and fitness programs. Or on the other hand, parents may feel so discouraged that they don’t feed their bodies well, move them enough, or otherwise treat them with kindness and respect.

Disliking and tearing apart our bodies and trying to achieve health with weight loss is a cultural obsession that is linked to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Surprisingly, intentional weight loss is not associated with increased health and is associated with higher lifetime BMI.

There are many myths linking weight loss to health, when in fact it is the most common precursor to weight gain and eating disorders.

Ask yourself:

Am I actively trying to lose weight?
Would other people judge my exercise program as intense or extreme?
Do I think I need to lose weight?
Am I struggling with binge eating?
Would other people say that my eating is “pure,” “clean,” or otherwise admirable based on social media standards?
Am I avoiding events and celebrations because I feel ashamed of my body?
Before attending events and celebrations, do I try to lose weight so I look better?
Do I have bad body thoughts almost all day, every day?

One of the most important things we can do to prevent eating disorders is to heal our own relationship with food and our body. Our children listen when we groan and complain about our bellies, thighs, and other body parts. Our children are watching when we limit our dinner to a salad with no dressing. They know when our exercise is more compulsive than pleasurable.

It’s best if we can adopt a non-diet approach to health. This is not “letting ourselves go,” it is respecting our bodies. This includes eating healthfully (see what that means above), and movement, which is great for almost all bodies. But dieting to lose weight or adopting extreme fitness programs can have serious consequences for our own bodies and our kids.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Myth 3: I need to manage my kid’s weight

The essential health behaviors we need to manage for our kids are:

Meals and snacks: serve a variety of foods regularly, reliably, and in a pleasant environment
Movement: provide access to free play, P.E., individual/team sports, and/or family physical activities like hiking or dancing together in the living room
Sleep: depending on their age, our kids need 8-12 hours of sleep. Sleep is essential for both mental and physical health and should be carefully managed.

But should parents “manage” kids’ weight? Should we monitor it and restrict their food and/or increase exercise if their weight increases or has always been higher than we’d like it to be?

The simple answer is clear: no. The idea that parents need to control kids’ weight is one of the most harmful myths contributing to eating disorders.

And I’m not coddling kids by saying this. The most common outcome of parents who restrict kids’ food with the goal of weight loss is actually higher lifetime weight. That’s right: attempts to control weight actually increase weight. Dieting and weight control in childhood and adolescence predict higher BMI in adulthood. This is because of a syndrome called weight-cycling.

Basically, when you intentionally lose weight, your body kicks in a bunch of biological systems to deal with the perceived famine. Your body has many non-conscious methods such as slowing your metabolism and extracting every single calorie from your diet to try and maintain homeostasis. It will do everything it can to get you back to the weight you were before, often with a little extra to keep you safe.

Restrictive diets and intentional weight loss are both strong predictors of an eating disorder.

It makes sense in our society that parents worry about kids’ weight. Nonetheless, parents should not try to manage or reduce kids’ weight. Focus on healthful feeding, enjoyable movement, and sleep, and trust your child’s body to settle into the weight it’s meant to be.

Myth 4: health is something I can see

Multi-billion dollar industries are dedicated to convincing us that health is visible. After all, if we believe that health is something we can see, we are more likely to buy the products that promise to make us look healthier. Gorgeous models are hired and Photoshopped to sell us the idea that beauty and thinness equal health. But it’s simply not true.

The myths saying we can see health by observing someone’s weight contribute to eating disorders. Health is an inside job. Heavier people are just as likely to be healthy as thinner people. People who are not gorgeous can be just as healthy as gorgeous people. So what can parents actually do to improve kids’ health? Raise your kids in a healthy environment by following these guidelines:

Don’t diet and don’t let kids diet (dieting is associated with weight gain and eating disorders)
Feed kids healthfully (using Ellyn Satter’s Eating Competence model)
Get kids moving for fun and function (with friends and with you)
Protect kids’ sleep (meet the minimum age-based requirements)
Build healthy emotional connections with your children (enjoy them and make family time meaningful and fun)
Help kids learn to self-regulate their emotions (begin by co-regulating with them to build this skill)

These are the basic foundations of health. If you achieve these six things, your child has the structure and support they need to be healthy. And if problems arise, as they probably will, you’ll have the tools to help your child feel better soon.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Moving forward

Theresa and Jon are getting parent coaching to help them build a food- and body-friendly household for their kids. They’re working on being a lot more flexible with how they define health and developing new communication and emotional skills. They can see that certain health myths were increasing their kids’ risk of eating disorders.

Their daughter has responded well to their changes. She is eating more regular meals and experiencing fewer binge-eating episodes. There is less stress around food and she can comfortably eat a few cookies without feeling the urge to binge eat all of them and then restrict afterward to try and make up for it.

Last week they went to an annual family event that is known for its delicious and formerly forbidden foods. This year, Jon and Theresa noticed that their kids ate and enjoyed the food, but they also spent far more time with their cousins. They were not chained to the food table, but rather socialized and enjoyed themselves.

Both kids are more relaxed around food. It took a little bit of time, but now they are showing all the signs of being competent eaters. Eating is a lot more fun and less stressful for everyone. And Jon and Theresa feel more confident and secure that they are raising their kids in a truly healthy environment. Diet culture and eating disorders are linked, so this is an important step forward in raising healthy kids.

Ginny Jones is on a mission to change the conversation about eating disorders and empower people to recover. She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource that supports parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

For privacy, names and identifying details have been changed in this article.

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

Posted on April 20, 2022May 1, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

3 brutal truths about kids’ body image

I’m going to level with you: I didn’t like writing this article about the brutal truths about kids’ body image. As someone on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from body hate, it hurts my heart that this research indicates that our kids are definitely not free from body hate.

From my perspective, two things are going on right now. First, we have high rates of dissatisfied body image in kids and the problems that arise from that, including eating disorders. Second, I see some progress in how our society treats bodies. We’re seeing more acceptance of the fat acceptance movement. And while the “body positive” movement is fairly problematic, it has expanded people’s ability to see beauty in a variety of body sizes.

Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls show is an example of a powerful shift in media. Her own performances on stage are athletic and powerful. And this show makes it clear that higher weight and fitness are not opposites.

Lizzo’s show is important because a significant driver of body image is the media. Our kids consume constant messages about bodies and so-called wellness programs, cleanses, weight-loss journeys, fitness challenges, and more. Engaging with media today almost always means learning dangerous beliefs and behaviors disguised as empowerment and self-care.

It’s not easy out there, but keep reading. Because at the end of the tough stuff I’m about to share, I’ll give you some ideas for how you can improve your child’s body image. There are a lot of things you can do, and you have the power to keep your child safe despite the fact that we live in a nasty societal soup of negative body image.

Here are three brutal truths about kids’ body image:

1. Most people have bad body image

All kids live with grownups, and that’s bad news for their body image. A Glamour magazine survey showed that 97% of women report having at least one negative thought about their body image every single day. Almost all women and about half of all men are dissatisfied with their body image.

In a 2019 survey of UK adults, one in five adults felt shame, 34% felt down or low, and 19% felt disgusted because of their body image in the last year. Around 35% of adults felt anxious and/or depressed about their body image. And 13% experienced suicidal thoughts or feelings because of their concerns about their body image.

Many of these adults are parents, and body image issues tend to trickle down. A 2016 Journal of Pediatrics study found that more than half of children aged 9-14 years old were dissatisfied with their body shape.

But of course, it’s not the parents’ fault. We live in a societal soup of body hate. Bodies are ridiculed, shamed, and discriminated against every day.

Our kids’ doctors, teachers, coaches, friends, and extended family all teach them that bodies are something to be evaluated and judged. Add to that entertainment media like TV, movies, advertising, and video games, and harmful body image messages become inescapable. And that’s before social media, which is a known (and serious) contributor to poor body image.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

2. Girls have bad body image

I think most people realize that girls are likely to have negative body image. After all, female bodies are constantly objectified, and the media, entertainment, beauty, and fashion industries endlessly promote very thin, white, and idealized female bodies. The pressure on the female body to be conventionally beautiful, thin, graceful, and “perfect” is intense. And the data shows that our girls feel this pressure.

50% of 13-year-old U.S. girls and 80% of 17-year-old U.S. girls are unhappy with their bodies. [1]
80% of teenage girls worry about becoming fat. [1]
40-60% of elementary school girls are concerned about becoming “too fat.”[2]
40-60% of girls reported feeling worried about their weight. [2]
80% of teenage girls report fears of gaining weight and of being in a larger body. [1]
36% of German girls felt fat, 22% were terrified of gaining weight, and 36% reported regularly feeling upset about their weight or shape. [3]
50% of Spanish girls expressed a desire for a thinner body, despite having a lower body weight. [4]

3. Boys also have bad body image

But it’s not only girls who suffer from bad body image. Boys are increasingly reporting negative body image. While girls almost always want to be thinner and conventionally beautiful, boys are just as likely to want to be more muscular and larger. In the past 10-20 years the highly-muscular male body has become increasingly idealized and objectified, driving boys and men to develop what’s called “bigorexia.” Boys increasingly use protein powders, special diets, extreme workouts, and sometimes steroids to pursue the ideal of a lean and muscular body.

25% of U.S. boys were concerned about their muscularity and leanness and wished for toned and defined muscles. [5]
17% of Australian boys were dissatisfied with their bodies. [6]
3% of Australian teenage boys report body dysmorphic symptoms. [7]
30% of U.S. teenage boys reported a desire to gain weight to be more muscular. [8]
17% of U.S. teenage boys perceived themselves to be underweight, despite being of normal weight. [8]
Among Australian teenage boys, 12% met the criteria for an eating disorder characterized by marked body image disturbances. [8]
20% of German boys felt fat, 15% were terrified of gaining weight, and 25% reported regularly feeling upset about weight or shape. [9]

What parents can do to improve kids’ body image

Parents have a significant impact on how kids feel about body image. We have the power to counteract the dangerous societal messages that teach kids to feel bad about themselves and strive for impossible body standards. Here are a few tips for parents who want to help kids have better body image:

1. Respect your body

You are your child’s most important model. How you feel about and treat your body matters! Your body is not a project, and it’s not something that you need to control and dominate. The best science available shows that people who follow the principles of Intuitive Eating tend to have the greatest health. These principles include not trying to control for weight or achieve a specific weight or size. Learn to feed your body well, move it, rest it, and care for it with the dignity and respect it deserves. Your children are watching!

2. Respect other people’s bodies

Other people’s bodies are none of your business, and gossiping about them is wrong. Catch yourself when you’re tempted to comment on someone else’s body either positively or negatively. Focus instead on other qualities. If you hate someone, rather than focus on how fat they are, explore which character traits bother you, and talk about those. Their weight is not a character trait. If you love someone, rather than focus on how beautiful they are, find out what character traits draw you to them, and talk about those. Of course, you can point out neutral characteristics when necessary. Saying things like “she has long hair,” or “he’s very tall,” is not the same as making a character judgment based on someone’s weight. We should all know the difference and teach it to our kids.

3. Respect your child’s body

I know there is a ton of fear-mongering about kids’ bodies and weight out there. I get it. It’s scary to be a parent when it feels as if how we feed our kids is critically important to their health. The evidence shows that parents do influence lifelong health, but not in the way you think. A restricted diet, rigid exercise program, and worrying about their weight will not improve their relationship with their bodies. What does improve body image? Serve family meals daily and enjoy each other while eating. Serve a wide variety of foods, including fruits and veggies but also desserts and snacks. Be active and move your bodies as a family. Establish sleep schedules and keep them sacred (with age-appropriate modifications) all the way through high school. These actions will benefit your child’s lifelong health, regardless of their weight today or in the future because they are about respecting the body and treating it with love.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

4. Teach media literacy

Most adults do not believe they are influenced by the media, but the data shows otherwise. We are all deeply impacted by media portrayals of what it means to be good, successful, and loved in our society. And in the current media and social media environments, thin people are portrayed as all of those things, while fat people are portrayed as bad, unsuccessful, and unhappy. Actively teach your child about media literacy and the impact of media representation on what we believe. Home is where our kids consume most of their media, so it’s important to regulate media consumption and talk about it regularly. Don’t let your 8-year-old consume social media without supervision and limits. You can gradually reduce your limits as your child ages, but never stop talking about the influence of media on how we feel about ourselves and others.

5. Look out for signs of trouble

In our society, it is extremely hard to feel 100% positive about your body all the time. Your child will likely have negative body image moments, days, and possibly more. But keep an eye out for if your child’s body image is impacting their psychology and/or behavior. Don’t allow dieting or food restriction of any kind in your home, as dieting is a major indicator of and driver of poor body image. It’s also the most significant precursor to eating disorders. If you believe your child has a negative body image that is impacting them in a significant way, seek support from a non-diet mental health professional who is trained in body image and eating disorder issues.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Body Image And Eating Disorders

References

[1] Kearney Cooke, A., & Tieger, D. (2015). Body image disturbance and the development of eating disorders. In L. Smolak & M. D. Levine (Eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Eating Disorders (pp. 283-296). West Sussex, UK: Wiley

[2] Body Image, Second Edition: A Handbook of Science, Practice, and Prevention, Cash and Smolak, 2011

[3] Schuck, K., Munsch, S., & Schneider, S. (2018). Body image perceptions and symptoms of disturbed eating behavior among children and adolescents in Germany. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health

[4] del Mar Bibiloni, M., Pich, J., Pons, A., & Tur, J. A. (2013). Body image and eating patterns among adolescents. BMC public health, 13(1), 1-10

[5] Calzo JP, Masyn KE, Corliss HL, Scherer EA, Field AE, Austin SB. Patterns of body image concerns and disordered weight- and shape-related behaviors in heterosexual and sexual minority adolescent males. Dev Psychol. 2015;51(9):1216–25

[6] Mond J, Hall A, Bentley C, Harrison C, Gratwick-Sarll K, Lewis V. Eating-disordered behavior in adolescent boys: eating disorder examination questionnaire norms. Int J Ea t Disord. 2014;47(4):335–41

[7] Schneider, S. C., Mond, J., Turner, C. M., & Hudson, J. L. (2017). Subthreshold body dysmorphic disorder in adolescents: Prevalence and impact. Psychiatry research, 251, 125-130

[8] Nagata, J. M., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Garber, A. K., Griffiths, S., Vittinghoff, E., & Murray, S. B. (2019). Boys, bulk, and body ideals: Sex differences in weight-gain attempts among adolescents in the United States. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64(4), 450-453

[9] Schuck, K., Munsch, S., & Schneider, S. (2018). Body image perceptions and symptoms of disturbed eating behavior among children and adolescents in Germany. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health

Posted on March 23, 2022May 1, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

How to talk about your daughter’s body

Many parents wonder how they can talk about their daughter’s body without hurting her body image. I’ve come up with some guidelines for what to say and what not to say when you talk about your daughter’s body. I’ve also included the three things you should also be talking about that will impact your daughter’s body image and mental health. Combined, this advice will have a significant impact on how she feels about herself.

What you can say about your daughter’s body

There are a lot of wonderful things you can say that will increase your daughter’s sense of worth and strength. But the fact is that female bodies are under tremendous pressure in our society. This means that when you talk about your daughter’s body you need to be aware of the social pressures on her body and adjust your comments accordingly. This will help her grow into a strong, resilient, and self-aware person.

Talk about what her body does

The majority of your comments about your daughter’s body should be related to what her body can do instead of what it looks like. For example, talk about how she uses her body to have fun, like turning cartwheels or running down a hill. Or you can talk about how she uses her body to get places and do things like walk to school, eat delicious food, and laugh with her friends. Her body is involved in all of those activities, and they have nothing to do with what her body looks like. When you talk about your daughter’s body you should spend most of your time focusing on her body’s incredible functionality. For example*:

Your legs were flying when you ran down that hill!
I’m really glad that you’re able to walk to school every day and that your body is able to get you where you want to go.
Aren’t you glad you have a tongue to taste this delicious ice cream?
Do your eyes see how delicious that pizza looks? I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks?

*My examples assume ability. Of course, not all bodies can do all things, and I acknowledge that.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

Talk about how her body feels

It is a key skill for a woman to tune into whether she feels comfortable or uncomfortable, pleasure or discomfort. This is a skill that will keep her safe, healthy, and happy for life. You want her to be able to tune into her body’s signals and trust herself to make good choices.

Therefore, try to avoid telling her what her body should feel and whether she is comfortable or uncomfortable. Instead, be curious about her experiences of comfort and discomfort. Here are some ways you can talk about her body’s comfort level and raise her self-awareness:

It looks like you feel uncomfortable in that shirt, is it itchy or scratchy?
Grandma’s hugs feel warm and cozy to me, how do they feel to you?
I’m sensing you might be cold, is that true?
Your body looks angry right now because your fists are clenched, is that true?
It seems like you’re feeling worried because you’re pacing around the room.
Would you like to hug Uncle Jeremy goodbye today?
You’re telling me your tummy is very full, which is uncomfortable. Let’s just rest here together for the next 20 minutes and see how you feel.

Talk about how she looks

There will be (hopefully many) moments when your daughter seems like she is the most beautiful thing in the world. It’s OK to think your daughter is beautiful! Beauty is something we find in nature every day. The important thing to notice is that natural beauty is never perfect. It also isn’t being marketed and sold to us. Unlike the beauty industry, which enforces harmful standards and extracts a hefty price, we don’t have to pay for nature, and it’s not selling us a solution to a manufactured problem.

Look at your beautiful daughter as a part of nature. When you talk about your daughter’s beauty, you should feel deeply that she is

beautiful inside and out …

with, not in spite of her flaws …

and she does not need* to do anything to make herself more beautiful.

*she may choose to do things like dress up, use makeup, etc., but those should be choices she’s making, not compulsions she’s performing to seek worthiness.

But sometimes it’s not a deep existential experience. You just want to give her a quick compliment and tell her she’s cute, adorable, or gorgeous. Maybe she looks great in that color, or her eyes are sparkling today. That’s OK, too! Just keep these compliments short and sweet. Avoid making them the main way you share your admiration of who she is.

What you should not say about your daughter’s body

Unfortunately there are some major landmines when it comes to talking about your daughter’s body. You should avoid talking about the following things:

Don’t talk about what she weighs

Body weight should be a neutral number, like height or shoe size. But of course that’s not the case. Decades of intense marketing and advertising have taught us that the higher a woman’s weight, the less attractive and worthy she is. This is appalling, but it’s the society we live in.

Therefore, I typically advise parents to not talk about weight in any way unless they have been specifically coached in anti-diet, weight-neutral practices. This is because all of us need significant un-training in order to talk about her weight without stigma and shame.

Don’t talk about how she compares

Women are taught to compare body parts, outfits, and all aspects of their appearance to other women. They are taught there is a scarcity of love and worthiness that can only be attained through “winning” at beauty standards. Your daughter deserves to grow up knowing that she is worthy exactly as she is, and that she does not need to compete against others to earn your (or anyone’s) love.

Don’t compare your daughter’s body, beauty, weight, or appearance (positive or negative), to anyone else. Show your daughter that her body’s weight and appearance have nothing to do with her value by never comparing her body to another’s body.

Don’t talk about what she’s wearing

Your daughter will wear clothes that you don’t like. Think very, very carefully about what you say about those clothes. Because her body should, first and foremost, belong to her (not you or anyone else). That means that what she puts on her body should almost always be up to her.

If you feel compelled to comment on what she’s wearing, take a breath. Think deeply about whether your comments about what she is wearing are necessary or helpful. Are they kind? Do they respect her as the sovereign ruler of her own body?

If you truly believe her clothes are “inappropriate” (look out for fatphobia and rigid gender norms here), you can make a simple statement. Say something like “I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time with that outfit. I need to think about why it’s hard for me in order to give you a good explanation, but right now I’m not comfortable with you wearing that to school.”

Only use this statement rarely. Trust that she will find her own path. Support her in wearing clothes that feel authentic to her unique self, not your vision of what you wish she would look like. Remember that fashion crimes are not criminal, and bodily autonomy is a basic human right.

The foundation of self-acceptance

The dos and don’ts of body talk are important. But it’s also important to build a foundation of body acceptance. Here are three essential steps to raising a daughter who doesn’t hate her body:

1. Watch how you talk about your body and other bodies

Think carefully about how you talk about your own body and other people’s bodies. Our kids learn from what we do more than what we say. So if you are criticizing your own body or talking negatively about other people’s bodies, that’s a problem.

Rigid and ridiculous beauty standards are fatphobic, sexist, and damaging to mental health. Eating disorders are skyrocketing, and anxiety and depression about weight and appearance are a major problem. Girls and women experience both at much higher rates than boys and men, making this an important thing to think about if you have a daughter.

Here are common things you might be tempted to say about your body that you should stop saying:

I can’t wear that (subtext: it’s not flattering/I’m too fat)
No way could I eat that (subtext: it will make me gain weight)
I can’t leave the house without makeup (subtext: my natural face is unacceptable)
If I eat that I would have to spend the rest of the day in the gym (subtext: eating food requires compensatory behavior)

Here are common things you may be saying about other people’s bodies that you should stop saying:

She looks amazing now! (subtext: because she lost weight/is thin)
That person just doesn’t look healthy (subtext: they are fat and fat is bad)
She’s let herself go (subtext: she’s gained weight and that’s bad)
How can she leave the house like that? (subtext: she’s not meeting societal beauty standards and she should)

Remember that even very young children (toddlers!) will pick up the subtext. It’s impossible to live in our society and not translate technically benign statements into fat-shaming and body-shaming. Your daughter is watching and listening to you all the time. For the sake of her long-term health, work on your own body image and weight stigma, and release outdated gender norms.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

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Increase media literacy

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2. Build media literacy

Our society is cruel to bodies. Parents need to counterbalance this cruelty by teaching media literacy. These conversations need to happen early and often.

Sexism, fatphobia, and objectification are a significant part of our media landscape, and if you aren’t talking about this, your child is picking up messages about beauty and how women are valued without your consent or input. You don’t need to raise your child in a bubble, but you do need to actively counter-educate her about how the media influences what we think and believe.

At a minimum, you should talk to your daughter often about these concepts:

Almost all advertisements, TV shows, movies, and social media posts involve heavy editing and filters. Even if they don’t use filters, the person has likely spent hours perfecting their hair, makeup, and outfit, getting the right pose, and setting up professional lighting, etc. What you see on the screen almost never represents what a person looks like in real life.

Bodies, particularly women’s bodies are often used as sales tools. For example, an apartment building may use a photo of a woman in a bikini to advertise their apartments. This advertisement may appear next to another one featuring a man who is wearing a suit and tie. We need to ask questions about this. For example: why is the man wearing clothing but the woman is wearing almost none? Also notice that many times women’s bodies appear without their heads or even as individual body parts in order to sell products. This depersonalizes the female body and treats it as an object and a sales tool.

Just because someone on social media or TV says something is true does not mean it is true. Many times the person is speaking from personal experience, but that experience cannot be extended to you. Additionally, a lot of times the person is being paid or is hoping to be compensated when they promote products or services.

If something on social media or TV sounds too good to be true or promises a quick, easy fix, then it’s probably not true. Most things in life are full of nuance and complexity.

Pay attention to diversity – or lack thereof. If everyone you see in the media is white, thin, heterosexual and cisgender, then adjust your media consumption, or at least talk about the problem.

Advertisements are successful when they create a problem that the product can solve. Therefore, media messages about “problems” are made up by advertising agencies. For example, wrinkles, weight, cellulite, and skin color are largely genetically predetermined. We have very little control over these features. The products designed to “solve” the so-called problems are neither necessary nor do they work as promised.

3. Talk about her other qualities

Spend the bulk of your time talking about your daughter’s non-body qualities. This is really important, because the problem is not talking about your daughter’s body, but rather talking about her body at the exclusion of her other qualities. Her body is a part of her, but she should not believe that her value and worth are based on her appearance.

In general, you should spend the majority of your time focusing on her non-body-based qualities. Body and appearance comments should be the small minority of what you talk to your daughter about.

Instead of focusing on your daughter’s body, talk about her:

Creativity
Sense of humor
Kindness
Thoughtfulness
Attention to detail
Mental flexibility
Courage
Friendliness
Trustworthiness
Dependability

Grit
Passion
Purpose
Curiosity
Dedication
Adventurousness
Daring
Warmth
Loyalty
Open-mindedness

When you talk about these qualities, praise her for her behaviors, not the outcomes. This has been demonstrated in the research around the “Growth Mindset,” which is that focusing on outcomes can raise a perfectionistic, rigid mentality. Outcome-based praise can also be de-motivating and spoil the joy of trying new things. Here are a few examples:

Behavior	Outcome
It’s really great that you put so much effort into your school project.	I’m proud of you for getting good grades.
I love that you’re putting so much creativity into your role in the play.	You’re the star of the show!
You were very brave to try out for the softball team.	You making the softball team is very important to me.

As with appearance, of course you can sometimes mention outcomes, but be sure that the majority of your praise is about the behaviors you admire. Navigating body image and eating disorders is difficult, but following these steps should help you raise a strong, confident person!

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Body Image And Eating Disorders

Posted on February 24, 2022May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 3 Comments

What to do when your tween says they’re “fat” and other tricky situations

It’s not uncommon for a tween to say they’re “fat” or otherwise struggle with their body image.

This is an understandable but devastating side effect of living in our culture. One study found that nearly half of girls aged 3-6 years old are afraid of being fat. It only gets worse as they get older unless parents actively intervene.

Our society is deeply fatphobic. Our kids are not immune.

Parents need to help kids, particularly those who are larger, live in their bodies safely and without shame. Here are my eight tips for parents facing tricky body image situations.

This advice helps when treating eating disorders, preventing eating disorders, and preventing a broad array of mental health issues.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

1. Don’t tell them it’s just baby fat/they’re not fat, etc.

When your tween says they’re “fat,” your first response may be to try and convince them they are not. But that’s not the best approach.

Don’t say that they will grow out of it. And don’t insist that they are not fat, they are beautiful.

These statements can make a child feel even more ashamed of their body. And it also opens the door for your child to perpetuate anti-fat bias in the world.

Teach them to be a good friend to themselves and a good citizen at the same time by acknowledging anti-fat bias and teaching them how to talk about bodies with dignity and respect.

Don’t say anything that suggests that fat is bad and something to get over and/or be ashamed of.

Instead, talk about what it means to live in a larger body in our society. Help them understand that we are more than bodies. Give them the tools to live in the body they have.

2. Find out the feelings behind the word “fat”

Fat can be a neutral descriptor, but it can also be a way to be cruel to ourselves.

Teach kids that it’s not OK for them to be rude to themselves or use the word “fat” as a stand-in for negative feelings.

Often when kids call themselves “fat” in a negative way, it means they are struggling with negative feelings. Ask questions.

Find out what “fat” means to them. Help them find the feeling words that fit.

In our society a tween who calls themself “fat” often means they feel sad, lonely, or rejected.

Seek to understand and validate the feelings without trying to convince your child that they are already thin enough. The more we deny their experience, the deeper it will dig into their psyche.

3. Teach them about weight stigma and fatphobia

Bodies are a social justice issue. Body politics are filled with racism, sexism, and sizeism. Parents need to recognize that weight discrimination is harmful just like other forms of discrimination. Parents need to become social justice warriors who are willing to fight back against our culture of body hate.

We can build a kinder world for our children (and everyone), but it’s not going to happen without effort.

Teaching kids about weight stigma and fatphobia is protective and will help you raise a kinder human. Bodies are beautiful, unique, and healthiest when treated with dignity.

We need our kids to recognize that trying to control bodies or judging people for their bodies is harmful and unacceptable.

All bodies deserve dignity. Help your child know this deep in their bones.

4. Work on your own food and body issues

Your own body and food issues will trickle down to your child. Our kids are finely attuned to how we feel, so we have to work on ourselves to help them grow up strong and healthy.

I’m not blaming you here. We have all grown up in a toxic culture that treats bodies as objects to be controlled and criticized. But when you have a child, it’s time to dig deeper and uncover your own food and body issues.

If you are dieting or otherwise controlling your weight, it’s time to stop. I know this is revolutionary, but we need to heal ourselves so we can help our kids thrive.

Please get support if you don’t know how to live without your bathroom scale and food plans. A therapist, dietitian, or coach can help you learn to practice Intuitive Eating and find peace with your body.

5. Teach them to accept their bodies (and never diet)

Trying to change our body size and shape doesn’t work, and dieting increases the risk of an eating disorder by up to 15x.

To prevent eating disorders and other serious mental health issues, I encourage parents to commit to the goal of helping kids never, ever, diet.

This means we need to help them accept their weight, whatever it is. This is counter-culture, so we need to constantly remind our kids that body acceptance is the best path to health.

You may feel proud of a child who says they want to “eat healthier,” but this is the modern-day code for dieting. Instead, teach your child to listen to and trust their body instead of following external rules and goals.

Of course, you can stock and serve fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins. But serve them alongside carbs, fats, cookies, chips, and other great foods.

All foods fit in a healthy lifestyle. And the more you support a nuanced, gentle approach to bodies, the healthier your child will be.

6. Help them manage peer teasing (and bullying)

It sucks, but kids are cruel to other kids’ bodies. If you have a child who is larger, they will likely experience discrimination and teasing. But even smaller kids may experience cruel body-based taunting and jeers.

It’s not fair, but don’t make it worse by ignoring it or pretending it doesn’t happen.

Teach your child to be confident and assertive about their body. Give your child some possible responses to fatphobic jokes, and support them in standing up for themselves and others.

This is not unlike anti-racism work, where it’s very important to prepare kids to not be passive bystanders when they witness body-based teasing and bullying. All kids should be given the tools to be “upstanders” when it comes to body-based teasing and bullying.

Make it easy for your child to report body-based teasing and bullying to you. And be prepared to speak with your school’s administration when it inevitably happens. This is an under-reported aspect of bullying, so don’t hesitate to say something!

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

7. Teach them to respond to adults who say “watch your weight” and “eat healthy”

Kids know that “watch your weight” and “eat healthy” is code for “your body and appetite are unacceptable.” Teach them that these comments are common, but they may hurt your child’s feelings, and you understand why.

Empower your child to politely but assertively respond to these adults. A simple “I’m good, thanks,” can work well. They can also say “please don’t talk about my body/weight/food.”

Some adults may become offended, but that’s just because they haven’t thought about how harmful their comments about weight and food can be. There’s nothing inappropriate about your child setting boundaries about what adults say to them about their body and food.

8. Work harder to find age-appropriate, comfortable clothing

If you have a child in a larger body, you’ll need to work a little harder to help them have fun with fashion. Larger kids need a little extra effort and attention because the clothing industry does not recognize size diversity.

Do your research and make sure that stores carry their size before you take them shopping.

Remind them that the problem is never their body, it’s the sizeist fashion industry. And when things don’t fit, teach them to blame the clothes, not their body.

It’s sadly normal

It’s sadly normal for kids to feel bad about their bodies in our culture. It’s not uncommon for a tween to say they’re “fat” or otherwise struggle with their body image.

The best thing parents can do is be prepared and proactive rather than reactive when it comes to body image issues.

And if your tween does say they’re “fat” or are otherwise distressed about their body, respond with compassion and understanding rather than trying to dismiss their feelings.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

Posted on February 1, 2022March 20, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 2 Comments

Fear & worry in eating disorder recovery

If you have a child who has an eating disorder, then you should expect to see fear and worry. This is because eating disorders often show up with, and in response to, anxiety. Eating disorder behaviors can be an attempt to cope with anxious feelings and thoughts. And luckily, parents have a significant impact on kids’ anxiety.

But unfortunately, our instinctual responses to our kids’ anxiety can accidentally make it worse over time!

In fact, there are treatment programs in which parents of anxious kids are the only ones who are treated. That’s right: while it’s ideal if your child is also getting treatment for anxiety, it’s not a requirement for them to start feeling (and acting) better. You can do a lot to change the course of their anxiety. Anxiety is highly responsive to relationships. You will either see it grow or decrease depending on how you respond.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

Self-Esteem
Self-Regulation
Mindfulness
Calming strategies

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What does anxiety look like in an eating disorder?

Anxiety can be a bit tricky to see without some practice. Many people who develop eating disorders have learned to cloak their anxiety with anger, sadness, fighting, and withdrawal. Here are the top signals of anxiety, fear, and worry when there’s an eating disorder:

Worry about weight
Fear of food
Anger about rules, restriction, and efforts to control eating disorder behaviors
Sadness about perceived failure and disappointing their parents, friends, etc.
Fighting and negotiating about recovery steps and expectations
Withdrawal, shutdown, or a refusal to talk or engage in family activities

Anger, fighting, and sadness are the most distracting versions of anxiety. And parents typically respond to them with confusion and surprise. It seems like you’re asking your child to do something that makes perfect logical sense, so why are they so upset about it?

The key is to know that they are upset about it because their anxiety has been triggered, and one of the ways anxiety maintains control is to put out distractions from the bigger issue, which is the fact that their anxiety response is over-reactive.

The solution if your child has a lot of worry and fear, or if they are angry, sad, fighting you, or withdrawing when they have an eating disorder, is to learn how to respond to anxiety better.

How to deal with fear and worry in eating disorder recovery

First, let’s set the table. I want you to start talking about worry, fear, and other scary feelings regularly. Have regular conversations with your child about what anxiety is, how it shows up, and how you’re going to respond to it now that you know this.

NOTE: lots of kids hate the word anxiety. I’m going to use it in this article so you know what I’m talking about, but you may do better if you use more kid-friendly words like worry, fear, stress, anger, etc.

The most important message I’m sharing today is that worry, fear, and other big feelings will show up, and that’s OK, but we’re not going to let them make important decisions about what we do and don’t do.

Demystify anxiety. It follows a predictable pattern. It’s rarely helpful to be surprised by it, try to ignore it or force it to go away. Instead, it’s best to talk about it, recognize it, and even welcome it into your life without letting it control your life.

Never threaten anxiety. Let it exist; just don’t let it run the show.

1. Expect anxiety to show up (it will!)

One of the most confusing things about having a child with an eating disorder is how resistant they can be to recovery. Even if they say they want to recover, it may seem to you as if they are not taking the action they need to recover.

It’s important to think a bit differently. While it’s true that your child may not be taking the action they need to recover, it’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because anxiety keeps showing up and telling them it’s not safe to recover.

Anxiety’s job is to warn us of danger and keep us from doing things that make us uncomfortable.

But the only way to heal from an eating disorder is to feel things like fear and worry and do the thing you need to do anyway.

The only way out is through!

So the first thing you need to do as a parent is to stop being surprised by anxiety. Start to expect it. Expect anxiety to show up every time you put food in front of your child, and lots of other times, too.

A child who has an eating disorder typically has a hair-trigger response to even small threats. Their amygdala is highly-responsive right now. So you’re going to see anxiety a lot. Don’t be surprised; expect it.

2. Tell your child that it’s OK to feel afraid and worried sometimes (it makes sense!)

Most parents automatically respond to anxiety reactions like worry, fear, and anger by trying to shut it down or ignore it. This makes sense because your own anxiety senses danger and wants to keep you safe. I get it.

But instead, you need to face your own anxiety about your child’s anxiety head-on. Remember: the only way out is through!

When you try to debate, diminish, or ignore anxiety, it gets stronger, digging in deeper and justifying its existence as the savior.

Instead, when you see your child getting anxious, name it. Say something like “oh look, here’s some worry. It makes sense that you get worried sometimes. I get it.”

You can replace the word “worry” with other words like sad, angry, frustrated, irritated, scared, etc. Try to find the word that makes your child feel seen, heard, and understood. This takes some practice, but you can do it!

This removes the need for the child to justify and defend their anxiety. When you remove the opportunity for debate, you take away an essential part of anxiety escalation.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

Self-Esteem
Self-Regulation
Mindfulness
Calming strategies

Learn More

3. Remind your child that the path to feeling better is not to avoid fear but to face fear (and do it anyway!)

Once you have acknowledged that anxiety is present in the form of worry, fear, anger, etc., take some time to let your child feel that you believe them when they say they feel however they feel.

When you sense that they “feel felt,” then you can move on to the next stage. It’s OK if you need to try this a few times. This takes practice and is almost never perfect. That’s OK!

Now you want to remind your child that feeling worried and nervous is perfectly normal, but that we can’t live our lives according to anxiety’s demands.

Of course, this means that you should have those pre-conversations with your child about what anxiety is, how it shows up, and how you’re going to respond to it now that you know this.

Your response to anxiety is: worry, fear, and other big feelings will show up, and that’s OK, but we’re not going to let them make important decisions about what we do and don’t do.

4. Believe that your child can learn to tolerate their fear (they can!).

One of the biggest impediments to kids learning to tolerate anxiety is that parents worry it is not possible. Here again, we recognize that your worry as a parent can impact your child’s relationship with worry.

So come up with a mantra for facing your fears and doing it anyway. The only proven way to reduce anxiety is to train the amygdala and your thoughts to face anxiety and build up the muscles of tolerance and acceptance.

Remember that trying to avoid anxiety will make it get stronger, but facing it and doing the scary thing anyway will build the muscles that are needed to respond to anxiety appropriately. With practice, your child will do this by themself over time. But it’s very hard to do this without help and support at home.

How this looks at the dinner table

Here’s a quick scenario about how worry and fear can show up at the dinner table with an eating disorder.

Take 1: letting anxiety run the show

Child: I can’t eat. I’m full. You can’t make me!
Parent: You have to eat! It’s important! You promised!
Child: I already ate enough. You know I can’t handle more. I’ll throw up!
Parent: You have to eat this food. It’s good for you. Just eat it so we can get on with life, will you?
Child: You gave me too much! I can tell you added butter and oil – look! It’s just sitting on top. Gross!
Parent: No I didn’t! It’s the same thing I make every time. I didn’t change anything!

In this scenario, the parent is accidentally engaging in a debate with anxiety. This gives the anxiety a sense of power and control. And it usually makes the situation worse, not better.

Take 2: standing up to anxiety

Child: I can’t eat. I’m full. You can’t make me!
Parent: Yeah, you often feel this way at dinner. I get it.
Child: No you don’t! You don’t understand anything!
Parent: It seems like you’re really upset.
Child: Yes I am! I hate this!
Parent: I get it. I really do. But remember that we talked about this, and we’re not letting worry run the show anymore. Let’s put worry aside for dinner tonight and we’ll talk to it some more after we eat if we need to.
Child: You’re just trying to control me!
Parent: Yeah, I know that’s what your worry says, and I understand that’s how it feels. Like I said, let’s get through dinner and then see what worry has to say to us later.
Child: that’s stupid (they take a bite).

In this scenario, the parent is not fighting with or trying to make the anxiety go away. They’re acknowledging and validating the existence of anxiety and asking the child to do the hard thing even though they feel anxious.

Practice, not perfect

This is a practice, and it takes time for parents to learn a different way of responding to anxiety. If this sounds impossible right now, I get it. But trust the process. It works.

Anxiety is one of the most common mental disorders, and we have thousands and thousands of research papers examining what it is and how it works. There is a lot of data to support this treatment approach to a child with anxiety.

One of the things we know is that for most parents, their instinctual response to anxiety will accidentally increase a child’s anxiety over time rather than decrease it. But at the same time, when parents learn and practice new skills for responding to anxiety, they will see a decrease in anxious outbursts and behaviors.

Anxiety is the most treatable psychological disorder, and since it underlies and drives so many other disorders, including eating disorders. Emotions during eating disorder recovery are hard to handle, so it makes sense to learn some new skills for responding to anxiety differently.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

Posted on January 10, 2022May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 7 Comments

How to protect your daughter from diet culture

If you have a daughter, then you can and should protect her from diet culture. While this isn’t one of the things most of us think about when we have a child, it has become critically important as body hate, disordered eating, and eating disorders are on the rise.

Women in our society are constantly told to control their hunger and weigh less. Diet culture indoctrination begins early in a girl’s life. As a result, most kindergarten girls will tell you they don’t want to be fat because being fat is bad. They already believe that the path to not being fat and bad is to eat less and exercise more.

All of this pressure and noise about women’s bodies begins early in our daughters’ lives. Over time it flourishes and often blossoms into body dissatisfaction, dieting, disordered eating, and eating disorders.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

But you can protect your daughter from diet culture. You can help her respect her body and live a healthy life. Here are five steps to doing it:

1. Educate yourself

Begin by learning about weight stigma and weight cycling. These are the major problems associated with diet culture and weight stigma and are therefore a key way to protect your daughter from them.

Weight stigma is discrimination against fat people and being fat. It’s closely aligned with racism, classism, and sexism. When internalized, it turns into body hate – the belief that your body (and by extension you yourself) is bad if you have fat. Weight stigma is strongly associated with disordered eating.

Next, dieting predicts weight cycling. While the $70 billion diet industry sells the promise of lasting weight loss, the truth is that while many people can lose weight initially when dieting, most gain it back, often plus more, 2-5 years later. Weight cycling is associated with poor cardiometabolic health.

Finally, dieting is predictive of weight gain and eating disorders. In other words, it’s not healthy and does the opposite of what it promises.

Take some time to learn about the truth about intentional weight loss, and once you’re ready, start educating your kids. This is a great way to protect our daughters from diet culture. Teach them:

Diet culture is rooted in discrimination, racism, classism, and sexism

Dieting is not actually healthy for our bodies, and in fact predicts weight gain

The $70 billion diet industry creates and profits off body dissatisfaction and weight stigma

Our children deserve to know the truth about diet culture and weight stigma, and it’s unlikely they’ll learn it out in the wild. This is something that needs to come from you.

2. A body-positive household

Most households are living with some form of weight stigma and/or diet culture. Maybe you actively diet every January. Or maybe you are naturally thin but constantly talk about your aunt, who is naturally fat, as someone who needs to “take care of herself,” by which you mean “lose weight.”

There are so many ways that we accidentally promote weight stigma and diet culture in our homes, and I’m not here to criticize you for doing any of these very normal things in the past. Truly. I get it. I lived it!

But I am asking you to give it up now that you know better. Here are the beliefs that a body-positive household adheres to:

1. Nobody should be criticized or shamed for their body at any weight.

2. You can take good care of your health without focusing on weight as an outcome or result.

3. Health includes physical, mental, social, and emotional factors. It cannot be determined or measured by weight.

4. There is no body size that deserves more or less respect. All bodies deserve respect at any weight.

A body-positive household will protect your daughter against diet culture because she will live in a pro-body environment rather than an environment that shames and criticizes bodies. At the heart of body positivity is dignity. All human beings deserve the dignity of living in their bodies without criticism or judgment.

3. An anti-diet approach

Once you know all of this, the next step is to institute an anti-diet policy at home. This means that barring any medical restrictions for medically-diagnosed allergies or diseases, nobody should be restricting food. This includes all forms of food restriction and banning foods for any reason other than that you don’t like them.

This is a revolutionary way to live and can be scary for anyone who has been following diet rules for most of their lives (e.g. most of us!). My greatest assurance for you is that following an anti-diet lifestyle will give you and your children greater freedom and better health – both physical and mental.

An anti-diet lifestyle is also protective against eating disorders and disordered eating. One study found that girls are up to 18x more likely to develop an eating disorder if they diet. And girls are more likely to diet if they live in a home in which dieting is modeled and permitted. That fact alone should be enough to encourage you to implement a no-diet rule in your home.

Hundreds of studies have found that Intuitive Eating, which is a way of eating that is responsive to hunger and appetite, is healthier than any type of diet. It may surprise you to know that weight-loss diets do not improve cardiovascular fitness long-term, but Intuitive Eating does.

The important thing is that nobody in the home should be actively trying to control, manage, or lose weight. It is important to get rid of household scales and any other tools that are used for the purpose of weight management. This can be a huge adjustment, so it may help to work with a Registered Dietitian to help you get started.

4. Dealing with society:

The previous three recommendations are things that you can control in your household. And they are a great place to start. But your daughter will go out in the world and encounter diet culture everywhere. Here are some common places she’ll see it and ways you can respond to protect her from negative consequences:

Social media is filled with diet culture. While it’s often not possible to shield our daughters from diet culture on social media, we can minimize its harmful impacts by living a body-positive, anti-diet lifestyle at home. But to take it even further, make sure you talk openly about the issues with social media.

In my experience, it’s best to try and take a balanced approach rather than criticize such an important aspect of her life. For example, you can say things like “I love that on TikTok you can learn so many dances, and I only wish we could see more body diversity in the dancers.” Then let her respond. She may point out that she follows several dancers who are in larger bodies. Or she may just huff and stomp away. But you can trust that just mentioning body diversity will remind her to actively seek body diversity on social media.

Criticizing social media rarely works well. It is a power move that can have negative consequences. Instead, try to open up conversations and put safety measures in place such as time limits on apps. But the best thing you can do is engage in ongoing discussions about the pros and cons of social media.

Movies/TV/Radio

Movies, TV shows, and even random comments on the radio are often fatphobic. Once you start looking for weight stigma and diet culture, you’ll start to see it everywhere. My suggestion is to point out fatphobic comments as they happen.

For example, if a TV show has a character that suggests someone “needs to eat fewer brownies” (because they’re fat), then I suggest you immediately say “Oh no, so fatphobic. Knock it off!” to the character on the screen. Your kids may look at you strangely, but that’s better than allowing weight stigma in your home without objection.

If a radio host mentions it’s time to get back to the gym and work off some extra pounds, you can say “that’s not how it works, buddy.” These light but direct comments help your daughter start to see the weight stigma that surrounds us and make sure that you are exposing it when it happens. The best response is when she asks for an explanation from you.

Magazine Covers/Billboards

While few teens get magazines delivered anymore, they will still see fatphobic magazine covers, particularly in the grocery store checkout line. There may also be billboard advertisements and bus stop ads for weight loss, fat-removal surgery, and more. These forms of constant exposure to weight stigma and diet culture are subtle but have a big impact.

I suggest you point them out as fatphobic and wrong. You rarely need to get into long discussions, but be ready to do so if you think your daughter wants to talk some more about a disturbing message or image she’s been exposed to. It’s best to keep the door open on these conversations so she feels safe coming to you with questions.

Remember that the thing you can control here is what you say and how you respond. Your daughter does not have to agree with you or discuss this deeply with you for your words to have an impact. Focus on your presentation more than her response to it.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Dealing with school:

Whether it’s from a teacher, peer, or coach, weight stigma runs rampant in most schools. Your daughter will most likely encounter diet culture at school, and you want to protect her from that. Here are some common places she’ll experience it and ways you can respond to avoid negative consequences.

Health Class

I frequently hear from parents who believe that a health class was a trigger for their daughter’s eating disorder. This is deeply distressing but not surprising given that we live in a society that has mistakenly aligned low weight, food restriction, and over-exercise with health.

It’s best to assume that any health classes provided at your daughter’s school will include some version of diet culture. The most common things I hear about are education about “good” and “bad” foods, introducing calorie counters, step counters, and other tools, and misinformation about fat being the “cause” of disease.

I suggest you prepare your daughter for this misinformation in advance and talk about it at home often. Don’t allow health class to go unchallenged, no matter how well-meaning the teacher is.

Additionally, if you feel up for it, talk to your school administration about the dangers of teaching children to diet, a known cause of weight cycling and a major factor in the development of eating disorders.

Peers

Because our culture is full of dieting and weight stigma, it’s likely that your daughter’s peers will be dieting and fatphobic. This is not about them being individually wrong or bad. Fatphobia and dieting make sense in our culture. Because of this, we never want to blame the individual, and instead recognize the societal forces at play.

I recommend talking to your daughter often about diet culture and weight stigma and helping her problem-solve and brainstorm ways to respond when they show up among peers. Your daughter does not have to be a social justice warrior who confronts diet culture and weight stigma at school. But it will help if she has some responses in her mind at least to keep herself safe and centered when it happens around her.

Conversations with peers about weight stigma and diet culture are nuanced and challenging. Support your daughter in finding her own path rather than telling her what she “should” do. It’s much more effective to guide her in finding her own response.

Coaches/Teachers

We know that coaches and teachers are part of our society and therefore often suffer from weight stigma and diet culture. This is understandable and makes sense. However, when weight stigma and diet culture is actively taught to our daughters, it may be necessary to speak up.

As always, your first line of defense is a good offense. Arm your daughter with the knowledge and strength to recognize diet culture and weight stigma and counteract it, at least in her own mind. Maintaining a body-positive, anti-diet household will go a long way to protecting her from the worst offenders.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Approach conversations about teachers and coaches with an open mind and heart. You don’t want to condone fatphobic behavior, but be careful not to overreact when your daughter tells you about it. Because overreacting can lead your daughter to get defensive on behalf of a coach or teacher who she may respect and like. Let your daughter lead the conversation and do more listening than talking.

However, if you feel a coach or teacher is teaching dangerous concepts to students, you may want to speak with them directly or talk to the administration. For example, if a coach is doing weigh-ins and openly shaming girls who have gained weight, that’s something that should be addressed. Likewise, if a teacher begins a calorie-restriction project in class, you should speak up.

Living in a society that is cruel and dominating towards female bodies is hard. And it’s difficult to raise a body-confident girl in this culture. But it is possible. You can raise a daughter who is free from body hate, disordered eating, diet culture and eating disorders if you protect her from weight stigma. Good luck out there!

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

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

Posted on October 18, 2021May 1, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

How to talk about food and body issues with your child

Talking about food and body issues can seem loaded. Many parents simply don’t know what to say so they avoid saying anything. Other parents feel uncomfortable with the subject and want to change their kids’ minds about food and body issues as quickly as possible. This can leave the child feel unconnected and unheard.

So what is the solution? How can we talk to a child who is struggling with food and body issues? The answer is active listening, a well-known communication technique used around the world to connect people.

Definition: Active Listening

“Active listening is a technique of careful listening and observation of non-verbal cues, with feedback in the form of accurate paraphrasing, that is used in counseling, training, and solving disputes or conflicts. Active Listening requires the listener to pay attention, understand, respond and remember what is being said in the context of intonation, timing, and non-verbal cues (body language).” Wikipedia

Here are the main ways I think about active listening when it comes to food and body issues:

Listen carefully for the feelings underneath the words: is your child asserting independence and autonomy? Seeking validation? Wanting attention? These are all good reasons for our kids to reach out to us!
Avoid giving advice or opinions: be very careful about jumping in with advice or your opinion. This will often shut down the conversation, lead to defensiveness, or encourage fruitless circular arguments.
Reflect what was said: the first main technique is to simply reflect back what they said. Just pick up a few critical words and repeat them back to your child. This makes them feel heard and usually gets them talking more openly.
Reframe what was said: sometimes your child gets in an obsessive loop about their appearance or food. In these cases it’s more helpful to reframe what you heard as a feeling rather than a fact. This often helps you connect on a deeper, more meaningful level.

This sounds simple, but it’s not easy for most of us. It takes practice, but it is a skill anyone can learn.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
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Increase media literacy

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Talk less & listen more

Most kids tell me they wish their parents gave less advice and listened more.

Most parents tell me they can’t stop themselves from giving advice. It feels compulsive and automatic. They feel as if that’s their only option for responding to a child.

But when we give advice, we end rather than open conversations. Giving advice is the opposite of active listening. Advice-giving shuts down conversations, while active listening opens them up. Advice-giving can make our kids pull away from us or anxiously reach for us when they should be solving their own problems. But active listening helps our kids get to know themselves better while simultaneously making them feel more connected to us.

The next time your child shares something with you, practice not telling them what to think, feel, or do about it. Instead, use active listening to help them expand on what they’ve said and get to know their thinking.

Too often we rush in with an opinion and/or suggestion for how our kids should feel, think, or behave because we are worried that our child is not capable of making good choices. When parents give advice, they are trying to stop their kids from making bad choices. But the only way to learn how to make good choices is to make bad choices and face the consequences. Parents should not stand in the way of bad choices unless the consequences are truly dangerous or hurtful.

Advice most often leads to a conversation shut-down, defensiveness, or useless debate. Active listening opens the conversation and helps our kids figure out who they are, what they like, and what they believe.

This is how we teach our kids to be autonomous adults. And it’s also how we gain a deeper connection with our kids.

How to talk about food and body issues

Here are some examples of how parents can respond to inflammatory statements about food and body issues with active listening. These responses will help open up conversations rather than shut them down or turn them into lengthy debates about the validity of each person’s perspective.

Food preferences

When they say: I hate Brussels sprouts

Advice: You might want to say something like “But they’re so good for you and they’re delicious!” But this approach will make them either dig their heels in or ignore their own preferences. For example, a child might decide that your pushback on food is an area in which they can seek individuation and autonomy from you. In this way, they may be less willing to even try the food or consider liking it in the future because now it’s a power struggle rather than just food.

Active Listening: Instead, try reflecting what they said back to them: “You don’t like Brussels sprouts.” This is a simple statement of reflection. You recognize they are stating a food preference, and it’s not your job to editorialize or change it. The point is that food preferences are personal. It’s not an area where we can help our child by debating the value or deliciousness of a certain food. That usually backfires. So just reflect their preference back to them. They may choose to tell you more, which allows them to explore the preference on their terms (not yours).

Weight worries

When they say: I hate that I weigh this much!

Advice: You might feel as if you have to counteract their statement with something like “Your weight is fine! You’re perfect! Stop thinking about it!” But this approach will likely start a debate about how much they weigh, what they look like, and the value of different body weights. This is not a good place to have a conversation. It will lead to circular arguments and fruitless debates.

Active Listening: Instead, try redirecting the conversation to something useful: feelings. You can say something like “It sounds like you’re feeling bad right now.” In our culture, weight has become a way to judge someone’s worth, and kids can feel as if their appearance is who they are. We want to counteract this tendency by talking about who they are, not what they look like or weigh. Keep the focus on feelings, not fat, and you’ll have a much more fruitful conversation.

Eating

When they say: I skipped lunch today

Advice: You might want to jump in to share your disappointment and fear about their behavior. This makes sense but is unhelpful. If you say something like “Oh no! Why? Did you forget? You know you need to eat!” your child is likely to either shut down or get defensive. Any advice about eating can feel judgmental, and that’s not a good place to be when it comes to food. Of course, you want your child to eat well, but try to avoid any sense of coercion or judgment when it comes to eating.

Active Listening: Instead, try reflecting on what they said back to them. You can just say “You skipped lunch.” It sounds very simple, but this makes them feel heard and they are more likely to now tell you why they skipped lunch. It may sound like an excuse to you, but the important thing is not to correct their thinking but to help them explore why they make choices so they can make different ones next time. It’s best if we provide a non-judgmental environment where they choose to explore their choices rather than a punitive or critical environment where they stop sharing with us or don’t develop their own decision-making skills.

Getting dressed

When they say: Nothing looks good on me!

Advice: You may be tempted to say something like “You are beautiful and perfect and look great in everything!” The trouble with this approach is that it will start a debate about their body’s “flaws” and their appearance. This is not a helpful road to go down. It can lead to circular arguments and unhelpful debates. The more you try to convince a body-conscious child about their beauty, the more they will push back, and this pushback can become entrenched and drive their misguided beliefs even deeper into their psyche.

Active Listening: Instead, try saying something like “It sounds like you’re feeling like you don’t have any good options.” This opens the conversation to how they are feeling rather than their body. One of the things we need to help our kids develop is the ability to recognize that feelings are not facts. We don’t do this by telling them they look good. We do this by showing them that we’re interested in their inner world more than their outer appearance. When you use active listening, you’re not telling them how to feel, but you are helping them tell you how they feel by reframing what they’ve said and asking open-ended questions.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

Advanced challenge:”I feel fat”

“I feel fat” is a common conversation starter when a child is distressed, unhappy, and feeling overwhelmed with emotion. If you respond to the content of the comment, you miss the opportunity to address the purpose of the comment, which is to connect with you and get support. You may also get stuck in a negative and fruitless conversational loop and accidentally perpetuate weight stigma, negative body image and eating disorders.

Start by validating your child’s feelings. Your child needs to feel as if you heard and understand what they said. But instead of focusing on the word “fat,” or their body, identify a feeling that you can validate, like:

It sounds like you’re feeling overwhelmed.
I can hear how worried you are right now.
It can be stressful to live in a body in our society.

It takes maturity to recognize that bad body thoughts are usually about feelings, not external appearance or weight. Parents can help kids shift from blaming their appearance to feeling their feelings. Don’t give up – this will take time and patience. But it will also help your child gain body peace!

Next, during a neutral time when your child is not complaining about their body, talk to them about the harm caused by using “fat” as a stand-in for negative feelings.

Here’s what I say:

“In our culture, it’s common to say “I feel fat.” But this is said as a negative, and it means we believe that fat is bad. And that’s not something I’m willing to accept in our house. It’s called weight stigma and is a form of discrimination against fat people. So when you use that phrase, I’m going to ask you to talk about your feelings instead of fat.”

NOTE: If your child is in a larger body and chooses to reclaim the word “fat” as a neutral way to define their body, that’s great!

That’s very different from using the word “fat” as a stand-in for a feeling. And it’s not appropriate for a thin person to use the word “fat” as a way to complain about their body.

The nuance here is that the word deserves respect, and we need to pay attention to the intention and tone.

Active listening for food and body talk

The goal of using active listening for food and body talk is to help your child open up to fruitful conversation. The downside of giving advice about food and body issues is that you can either shut down the conversation or expand it in unhelpful ways by getting into circular arguments.

When a child is obsessed with food and body issues, ongoing debates about food and body are not only fruitless, but they can create the opposite outcome that you’re striving for. For example, an ongoing debate about whether a person is fat or not can merely entrench the child’s idea that feeling fat is a valid point of debate. It’s much better to help your child tap into true feelings (fat is not a feeling!) and find out what’s going on beneath the circular argument they’re engaging in.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Body Image And Eating Disorders

Posted on October 6, 2021March 21, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 1 Comment

You’re wearing that?!

Why power struggles over clothes aren't worth it

How to avoid power struggles over clothes

Getting dressed should not be a battleground, and most of the time you don’t need to get into power struggles about clothes. Power struggles over clothes can result in the following side effects for our kids:

Low self-worth
Poor sense of self
Rebellion
Underdeveloped autonomy
Damaged parent-child relationship
Mental health issues, including eating disorders
Perpetuating unhealthy social norms

The first and most obvious reason for this is that your child’s body is their sacred property. It is theirs to own and care for. If we try to dictate what they wear, we can get into dangerous territory in which we cross personal boundaries, reinforce toxic beauty standards, and promote negative messages that impact self-worth. Since these are risk factors for eating disorders, we should avoid controlling or criticizing clothing choices whenever possible.

Getting dressed is personal. And it’s a chance for your child to safely explore and develop their identity and autonomy. Children who have a strong sense of self wear clothes that they enjoy, that are comfortable for them, and that allow them to express their individuality and/or membership in a group. These children grow into strong individuals who are not prey to the whims of beauty standards, the thin ideal, or other unhealthy societal messages.

Most of the time you don’t need to get into power struggles over clothes. You rarely need to tell your child what to wear. Instead, prioritize their comfort and preferences. Let them find and express their own individual style.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

You don’t need to control clothing (most of the time)

It’s true that in some situations parents can make suggestions about kids’ clothes. But these are extremely rare. And clothes shouldn’t be a place to have power struggles, but rather a discussion, compromise, and agreement. Keep your boundaries and remember that their body is theirs, not yours.

Sure, younger kids may need more guidance about clothing in certain situations. But in the vast majority of situations, parents can and should let kids make their own choices about what to wear with minimal guidance.

Most of the time getting dressed is an issue you can leave up to your child. And the less you say about their choices, the less likely they are to rebel or struggle with perfectionism or identity issues.

Why not comment on what your kid wears?

If you’re thinking about making a comment about what your child is wearing, take a breath and think about why you’re doing it. What is your goal? Many times parental control over clothing comes from a desire to protect our child from social shaming. We believe that if we dress them the right way they will be liked by their peers and other adults.

That’s a worthy and understandable goal.

But the problem is that the most important person your child wants to be liked by is YOU. And when you try to control what they wear, they, unfortunately, begin to believe that what they wear is more important to you than who they are.

Another reason parents comment on kids’ clothing is because they are afraid that they (the parent) will be judged by friends, family, and society. In this case, your feelings are valid, but you need to manage your behavior and avoid crossing an important boundary between parent and child. You should not ask your child to solve a problem that is yours to handle. If you worry about being judged, figure out how to process and deal with your worry without imposing it on your child.

What we do matters more than what we say

You never have to say it or even think it consciously. But if you pay a lot of attention to what your child wears they will interpret your interest and attention to clothing as something that makes a big difference to how you feel about them.

Kids don’t hear what we say. They hear what we repeatedly do. So even if you say you love your child unconditionally, if you are commenting on their clothes often then you are showing them that appearance is very important to you.

They will either seek your approval by focusing on their appearance or they will rebel as soon as they can to prove to you that they get to do what they want to do with their bodies. Either way, they are building an identity based on what they perceive to be your perception of them rather than learning to look inside and learn about who they are.

Clothes are not the most important thing

The most important thing for parents to do is validate that their child is worthy and lovable exactly as they are. And we want them to build their own sense of self rather than a reflection or rejection of what they think we want them to be.

Of course, we live in a society that has expectations, structure, and rules. And in some cases, there are rules about what kids need to wear.

But most of the time we don’t need to have rules about clothing. Most of the time this is an area where we can step back and let our kids build their autonomy. Doing this builds confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem. All of these are protective against eating disorders and other mental health conditions.

When we let kids dress themselves, they grow up stronger and more resilient against peer pressure. And that’s a very good thing.

Think back …

Many times when we think back on our own lives, we can remember how frustrating it was to have parents tell us what to do. Maybe your mom liked to dress you in her style – not yours. Maybe your dad bought you dresses that were itchy and scratchy but you had to wear them anyway. In most of those cases, you probably felt at least somewhat controlled and dominated. That’s because what goes on your body should be up to you.

When a parent gets into power struggles over clothes they need to evaluate their values and consider the lessons being taught. We all want to raise kids who have a strong sense of self. And that comes from experimenting and listening to themselves – not others. Personal style is personal, so we want to give our kids space to develop it themselves.

Maybe you loved having your parents tell you what to do. Maybe you love fashion magazines and following beauty standards. You get to do whatever you want with your body. But think carefully about your own child. Do they like it when you tell them how to dress their bodies? If not, then that matters. Their opinions and preferences matter as much as yours do.

Just because we liked something as kids doesn’t mean that’s how we should parent the kids we have. And just because we like to wear a certain style or have a vision of how we want our child to look doesn’t mean our kids should be compliant to our wishes.

Our kids may be young humans, but they are still humans with their own identities, preferences, thoughts, and feelings. And when we try to take away their most basic rights of how to dress we could impact our relationship with them … and their relationship with themselves. Repeated power struggles over clothes are not worth the risks.

How a clothing power struggle begins

Power struggles begin when parents try to control what their kids wear, either overtly (wear this/not that) or covertly (are you really wearing that?). This can damage a child’s sense of autonomy and self-worth. Here are some examples of how power struggles begin when it comes to clothes:

Overt Comments

That’s not flattering
Wear this instead
You look awful in that
I laid out your outfit for today
Don’t wear that
Go change your clothes
You can’t wear that
That’s hideous
That’s inappropriate

Covert Comments

Are you sure you want to wear that?
Maybe you want to put on some makeup?
I’m not sure that’s the right choice
Do your friends dress like that?
Can I make a suggestion?
[wince]
[wide eyes]
[gasp]
[eye roll]

Note that you don’t need to say a word for your child to know what you’re thinking. Our kids are intimately tuned in to what we think about them, so pay attention to your facial expressions as much as your words.

What to do instead

Next time your child comes out of their room wearing something you disapprove of, avoid the power struggle. Instead ask yourself:

Is what I’m about to say about them or me? (think deeply about this – it’s usually about you)
Is what I’m about to say kind and respectful? (would I say it to a coworker?)
Is what I’m about to say supportive of my child’s individuality and autonomy?
Am I imposing rigid and outdated social norms on my child, and if so, why?
Am I trying to control my kid’s clothes because I’m uncomfortable with their size, shape or gender?
Does what I’m about to say show my child that they are lovable just as they are?

Asking these questions is essential to raising a strong, confident child who knows who they are, what they like, and trusts their parents love them for those things. It’s never too late to give kids the freedom of dressing according to their unique preferences. And it’s a huge and worthwhile gift that we all have the power to give.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

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But what about values?

Perhaps you believe that you should control what your child wears because your values are important to you. For example, maybe you value modesty and your daughter prefers short shorts and tight tops. Maybe you value order and your son prefers baggy pants and ragged t-shirts. Or maybe you value femininity and your child is non-binary and prefers gender-neutral clothing.

To handle this I suggest that you hold one value above all else: dignity. To possess dignity is to have absolute, intrinsic and unconditional value regardless of appearance or actions. This means that each and every person, regardless of age, gender, sexuality, size, weight, race, income, intelligence, appearance, etc., deserves to be treated with respect and as an autonomous thinking person.

When dignity lies at the heart of your family values you recognize that while you can have rules, expectations, and structure, each person still gets to behave autonomously in key areas such as dressing themselves. This can be seen as the dignity of self-expression.

You can also separate your personal values from your family values. While you personally may have values that guide your behavior or how you dress, your family should have just 3-4 shared values that guide your household. For example, dignity should be more important than modesty, order, and gender roles.

But what about the dress code?

If your child attends a school that enforces a dress code, I suggest that you talk to your child about the dress code and tell them what you expect in clear and simple terms. Then let them handle it. In other words, if they get in trouble for violating the dress code, that will be a natural consequence that is theirs to handle.

Dress codes disproportionately target females, higher-weight individuals, people of color, and trans kids. In many cases, your child’s rejection of being “dress coded” may be a sign of a healthy self. I’m not saying they should break rules regularly, but dress code rules are rules they can safely test without lifelong consequences.

Unless they are at risk of expulsion for violating the dress code, this is probably something you can leave up to the school to handle. It’s their rule, let them enforce it.

Most of the time your child will either decide it’s not worth getting in trouble or find creative ways to skirt the dress code. Either way, this is a healthy and appropriate way for them to learn social boundaries without you policing them.

But what if it’s a signal?

Sometimes when a child suddenly changes their style it could be a signal that something is wrong. Clothing can be communication. So I suggest you tread carefully here and focus on feelings, not clothes.

Pay attention to how your child is behaving and other things that are going on for them. If you believe they are facing a challenge, then how they dress is just a symptom of the challenge. Address the cause, not the symptom.

Maybe they are lonely, overloaded, stressed, grieving, depressed, anxious, or experiencing poor body image and eating disorders. If you focus on the symptom (clothes), you often create larger issues. If you focus on the cause, you may be able to help your child feel better.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Body Image And Eating Disorders

Posted on September 23, 2021March 21, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

When your child has an eating disorder and a drinking problem

Many parents find themselves at the crossroads of an eating disorder and a drinking problem. The disorders are linked and often seen together. So how can a parent help?

Understand why your child has an eating disorder and a drinking problem
Learn the steps to recovery
Support your child’s recovery

Many people who have eating disorders also have a problem with alcohol use disorders. It helps to understand the correlation between alcohol and eating disorders. This requires looking closely at the true reason for disordered behavior.

1. Understand why your child has an eating disorder and a drinking problem

Let’s start by understanding why your child has an eating disorder and a drinking problem.

Eating disorders typically involve an obsession and compulsion with eating and exercise behaviors. Similarly, alcohol and drinking also involve obsession and compulsion.

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Both of these conditions can be seen as ways to regulate emotions. The unconscious drive may be to protect against uncomfortable feelings and emotions. Both eating disorders and drinking can be a way to avoid feelings of anger, loneliness, anxiety, and depression. They can be a way to feel less unhappy, lonely, or stressed.

Some facts about drinking

By age 15, about 33 percent of teens have had at least 1 drink.
By age 18, about 60 percent of teens have had at least 1 drink.
In 2015, 7.7 million young people ages 12–20 reported that they drank alcohol beyond “just a few sips” in the past month.
5.1 million young people reported binge drinking (for males 5 or more drinks and for females 4 or more drinks on the same occasion within a few hours) at least once in the past month.
1.3 million young people reported binge drinking on 5 or more days over the past month.

Eating disorders and alcohol use can create a vicious cycle. The person avoids uncomfortable feelings and doesn’t develop healthy coping mechanisms. Instead of learning to process stress and discomfort, people who have eating disorders and drinking problems rely on coping behaviors.

People who have eating disorders and problems with alcohol have common personality traits. These include sensitive dispositions, anxiety and perfectionism. These traits are often considered the foundation on which eating disorders and alcoholism are founded.

The signs of eating disorder and a drinking problem are very similar

Changes in mood, including anger and irritability
Academic and/or behavioral problems in school
Rebelliousness
Changing groups of friends
Low energy level
Less interest in activities
Problems concentrating and/or remembering
Coordination problems

People who have eating disorders and alcohol problems tend to use more even when they can see that it’s working against them. They may feel tremendous remorse and regret and promise to stop drinking forever, only to begin again later that same day. The notable exception to this is anorexia, which is “egosystonic” or fits the person’s view of themselves. While most other eating disorders and problem drinking are “egodystonic” and lead to feelings of shame, anorexia feels in-keeping with the person’s identity.

For example, someone who has bulimia may wake up feeling disgusted by their binge and purge episode the night before. They feel ashamed of their need for this devastating behavior and promise to stop. They start out being “good” by restricting food the next day. But they will likely return to binging and purging at night.

Regardless, both the person with the eating disorder and the person with alcohol addiction feels compelled to continue doing it.

The known contributors to eating disorders and problem drinking are very similar

Genetics
Social factors, such as media and advertising or the influence of peers
Family dynamics
Accessibility
High stress
Depression
Anxiety disorder
Abuse, neglect, or other traumatic experiences in childhood

Just like with eating disorders, trauma is highly linked to substance use disorders. In fact up to 70% of adolescents who are being treated for substance use disorders have a history of trauma. Teenagers who are exposed to physical or sexual abuse are even more likely (3x) to struggle with substances. And more than half of teens who have been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develop substance use problems.

With all of this information, it’s important for parents to understand why these disorders arise. We often focus on the psychology of eating disorders and alcohol use without thinking about the underlying causes. However, when we pay attention to the causes of eating disorders and alcohol dependency, we can treat them with greater results.

2. Learn the steps to recovery

Now that you understand why your child has an eating disorder and a drinking problem, it’s time to look at recovery.

It makes sense to want to stop the behavior right away. But it’s important not to lose sight of how difficult this will be without learning new skills. And new skills require practice and reinforcement. Therefore, we like to look at recovery as having three parts:

Stopping the behavior: in this part, your child learns to live without their eating disorder behaviors and drinking. This may happen in an inpatient treatment center or at home. Many treatment approaches tackle this first. This is especially important if weight suppression is an issue. It will be hard to recover from an eating disorder when weight suppressed as it has physical and mental complications.
Learning emotional regulation: people who have eating disorders and drinking problems have trouble with emotional regulation. Emotional dysregulation is normal and natural. It’s a physiological response to stressors. Your child was using an eating disorder and drinking to regulate their emotions. So now they need to learn new skills.
Practice and reinforcement: traditional treatment usually ends before a person is fully recovered. Recovery can be practiced and reinforced at home. But many times a person returns to an unchanged environment. In these cases we know they are likely to pick up their old patterns and behaviors.

As you can see, the third stage of recovery is critical for ongoing success. And it’s primarily something that’s done at home with parents. This gets us to the next part …

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

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Self-Regulation
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3. Support your child’s recovery

You can support your child’s recovery at home by making some changes. Your main role is in the practice and reinforcement part of recovery. For instance, here’s what this might look like for someone who has an eating disorder and a drinking problem:

Parents learn emotional co-regulation to help their child calm down when dysregulated
Alcohol is removed from the home and nobody in the house drinks around the child
Dieting is not allowed in the home. And nobody in the house talks about weight or labels food as good or bad
The family regularly talks about and learns about the dangers of drinking and dieting. They take action to reduce harm in their community
Parents address issues in the family dynamics that may contribute to stress. For example, treating siblings appropriately, maintaining healthy family leadership, the parental role, etc.
The family focuses on building connection and belonging. In other words, they spend time talking and spending time together

Each family will do this a little bit differently. There is no one-size-fits all solution for eating disorders and alcoholism. But one thing is clear: parents should get help and support. Parents can can learn and grow and support their kids through recovery. If you’re facing this, consider getting a therapist or coach who can guide you.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

References

Alcohol Use Disorder Comorbidity in Eating Disorders: A Multicenter Study

How do eating disorders and alcohol use disorder influence each other?

Eating Disorders and Addictions Cause a Deadly Combination

Alcohol and Trauma: Drinking as a Way to Cope with the Past

Dual Diagnosis – Addiction and Eating Disorders

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Posted on September 14, 2021March 22, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 1 Comment

5 ways to help a perfectionist who has an eating disorder

What can you do if you love a perfectionist who has an eating disorder? Luckily, there’s a lot you can do! First, let’s take a look at some facts:

Perfectionism is both a risk factor for and commonly co-occurs with eating disorders. Many people who have an eating disorder also have perfectionism. And perfectionism is damaging to almost every aspect of mental health.
Perfectionism is preventable and treatable, especially in children and teens. Luckily, perfectionism, which is often a response to anxiety, is both preventable and treatable. Recovering from perfectionism is often a significant part of eating disorder recovery.
Parents can have a significant impact on reducing and treating perfectionism. Almost nobody is as important to reversing the effects of perfectionism as parents. Perfectionism is not hard-wired; it’s a response to environmental factors in the family. This means parents and the family can help reverse it.

When a person is both a perfectionist and has an eating disorder they are attempting to find safety through their eating disorder behaviors. Whether it’s making sure their hair and homework are just right (perfectionism) or limiting their food to only “healthy” choices (eating disorder), both impact quality of life and mental health.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

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Self-Regulation
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Here are five ways that parents can help a perfectionist who has an eating disorder recover from both conditions. These efforts need to be done consistently and intentionally every day to help a child reduce performance anxiety and find peace.

1. Show your child that it’s safe to make mistakes

Many parents tell their kids they can make mistakes, but then when kids do make mistakes, parental behavior suggests that mistakes are unacceptable. Pay attention to how you feel and behave when your child makes a mistake. Loosen your body and face, and feel from within that your child is lovable and fabulous with their mistakes.

What this looks like: When a child comes home with a lower score than you would expect on a test, respond neutrally. Keep your face relaxed, and thank them for sharing their score with you. If they want to talk about it, keep your comments focused on reassuring them that everyone misses their goals sometimes. And one score doesn’t make a grade.

With an eating disorder: When a child complains that they didn’t “eat healthy” or don’t like their body, respond neutrally. Don’t try to convince them that they ate perfectly or look amazing. Instead, let them know that what they eat changes day to day, and food does not have the power to make or break their health. And remind them that looking perfect is an arbitrary, impossible goal, and there is no such thing in real life.

2. Hold off on fixing

Most parents jump in too quickly with advice and solutions. This perpetuates the belief that mistakes are intolerable. Part of how we show kids that mistakes are OK is by being supportive without trying to fix the problem. We can agree that making mistakes is hard, tell them we understand that it feels bad, and show them that we can handle any mistake without changing how we feel about them.

What it looks like: In the case of the lower score, you will be tempted to ask them about their studying techniques or how they can bring their grade up. Resist this temptation! A perfectionist does not need anyone to tell them how to fix mistakes. They need people who can accept their mistakes and trust that whatever happens next is all right. You generally don’t have to worry about a perfectionistic child under-performing unless they are suffering from performance anxiety induced by perfectionism.

With an eating disorder: Avoid trying to help them prepare the perfect meal or find the perfect outfit. Don’t get into long discussions about how they can achieve their goal weight. Let them find their own solutions to their problems rather than diving in to try and fix them.

3. Make mistakes & talk about them

Many parents try to hide their own mistakes or at least not talk about them. Normalize mistake-making by intentionally talking about how it feels when you make a mistake. Look for opportunities to talk about your mistakes on purpose. Make mistakes on purpose and talk about them. This may be challenging for you if you also have perfectionism. But most of us can achieve great things on behalf of our kids’ health.

What it looks like: Open the fridge and see that you forgot something. Say “Oops! I forgot milk again. Oh well, that’s OK, we can handle it.” Don’t say this to your child directly – it’s not an apology. Saying it out loud means they can hear how to handle mistakes with self-compassion.

With an eating disorder: If you make a mistake like commenting on someone’s body (including theirs or your own), just apologize and move on. You don’t have to make a big deal about it or over-apologize. Everyone makes mistakes, and every time you make a mistake is an opportunity to show your child that it’s OK.

4. Talk about other people’s mistakes with compassion

Many parents berate strangers, food servers, retail workers, drivers on the road, and others when they make mistakes. This is modeling to your child that mistakes are something to feel ashamed of.

What it looks like: Instead of criticizing others when they make a mistake, take a deep breath. If it’s your husband who forgot the milk, open the fridge door and say “Oops! Dan forgot milk again. Oh well, that’s OK, we can handle it.” Show your child that you accept other people’s mistakes readily and without criticism.

With an eating disorder: If someone talks about dieting or weight loss, you can recognize that it’s problematic but also normalized in our culture. You don’t need to get overly angry when people do this, though you should talk about it directly with your child. Let them know that you don’t blame the person for their comment, but you also don’t endorse weight loss in any way.

5. Talk about perfectionism

Talk about perfectionism with compassion and kindness. You don’t want to turn “being a perfectionist” into something your child feels ashamed of. Instead, you can treat perfectionism as a part of your child (not the whole). No child is all one thing. We want to be very careful about pathologizing our child and treating them as if they are a victim of their impulses or coping behaviors.

What it looks like: When your child is upset because they made a mistake you can say things like “oh, I see your perfectionism is feeling bad about this. Let’s talk about it.” Then let your child process and untangle their perfectionist part from the part of them that accepts mistakes and feels safe with you.

With an eating disorder: When your child is upset about their eating or body, say things like “oh, I understand what it’s like to have a perfectionist’s voice. I know how hard it is, so let’s talk about it.” Then talk about the part of themselves who criticizes their choices and body.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

Self-Esteem
Self-Regulation
Mindfulness
Calming strategies

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You are the difference-maker

If your child is both a perfectionist and has an eating disorder, follow these five steps to help them recover. Your child’s therapist cannot do this alone in a one-hour meeting. It’s really best if you can reinforce acceptance at home in every possible moment. This is an important part of treating the psychology of an eating disorder.

Perfectionism is a social response, so it’s best treated in social situations. Nobody is better situated to counteract perfectionism than a parent who has consciously and intentionally decided to help their child avoid the tendency toward and consequences of perfectionism. When parents take this on and learn new skills, kids feel better.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

Posted on September 3, 2021May 1, 2023 by Ginny Jones — 1 Comment

Social media filters are ruining kids’ body image

Social media filters are impacting our kids’ body image, and luckily there’s something parents can do to help. We’ve got to have “the talk” with our kids about social media, and we’ve got to do it soon.

We’ve entered a deeply fraught period in which our kids are seeking body modification – surgical, fitness, and food – in pursuit of a completely inaccessible beauty ideal.

The source of this problem? Social media. Social media use is strongly associated with explosive increases in body dysmorphia and eating disorders. There are three drivers of this phenomenon:

1. Social media platforms use algorithms to maximize time spent on the platform because time spent directly equals revenue.

2. Celebrities and influencers exploit social media algorithms and use filters to gain traction (and revenue).

3. Peers seek emotional validation and social proof on social media. Most teen girls will not post a selfie without a filter.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

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Unhealthy exposure

Basically, our kids are being exposed to highly curated and heavily filtered images of “beauty,” and they find themselves coming up short with their real body, hair, and face. Social media filters are making it harder to raise kids with healthy body image.

34% of teenagers spend at least three hours a day scrolling on social media
80% of girls say they compare the way they look to other people on social media
24% of girls think that they don’t look good enough without photo editing
Girls take on average up to 14 selfies in an attempt to get the right “look” before choosing one to post

Source: Dove

What can parents do?

The facts about the dangers of social media for girls are devastating. But there is a lot that parents can do. And most parents are underutilizing their influence. We can counteract the impact of social media filters on our kids’ body image.

While about 80% of parents have the “sex talk” with kids, only 30% talk to kids about responsible social media use. Most of this comes from our own lack of knowledge and understanding about the topic and a healthy amount of pushback from kids when we challenge their preferred form of socialization.

While it would likely be better for our kids’ body image if we banned social media completely, that’s about as unrealistic as banning sex. Abstinence-only programs and policies are a failure. They do not reduce how much sex people have or the consequences of risky sexual behavior.

An abstinence-only approach to social media, while tempting, is unlikely to be effective. Instead, parents should integrate conversations about social media, particularly how the algorithms work, the impact of filters, and the way we feel about ourselves as a result.

It may be uncomfortable at first, but parents should have “the talk” with kids about social media. And just like with sex education, this talk should not happen just once, but instead, be woven into conversation regularly. We also need to be clear that our goal is to share ideas and information. If we try too hard to convince or get buy-in, it can backfire.

Here are the three main elements of body image education with social media filters:

1. The algorithm

Kids need to know that social media is not a natural social environment, but a capitalistic pursuit. Social media companies collected $41.5 billion in 2020. They make money not by providing a fulfilling and safe social environment but by exploiting natural human curiosity and impulses.

Social media algorithms are sexist, racist, and discriminatory. They lean heavily towards promoting posts that perform well for the algorithm, which are most often thin white women in provocative poses.

What to say: kids hate the idea of being controlled, so let them know that the algorithms are designed to generate revenue for billionaires.

2. The filters

Social media filters are so common that unfiltered photos are novel and unusual. And they tend to not get as many likes as filtered photos. Social media filters are now associated with increases in cosmetic surgery.

‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ is a term that was created by plastic surgeon Dr. Tijon Esho in 2018. It describes the increasing phenomenon of people seeking out cosmetic surgery to look like their filtered face in real life. 55% of plastic surgeons in 2018 reported that patients were seeking surgery to look better in selfies.

What to say: filters are so normal that people are taking filtered photos to plastic surgeons … and even surgery cannot achieve what a filter can. That’s the definition of “unattainable beauty standards.”

3. The feelings

Social media has an unquestionably negative impact on self-esteem. The platforms are designed to keep us scrolling because they exploit natural pathways in our brains. Dopamine hits from social media likes are intense, but they are ultimately empty. You can feel great for a post that does well, but then feel crushed if a post doesn’t do well.

Then there’s the comparison effect. We naturally compare ourselves to others. Endless images of filtered, conventionally attractive images that uphold a rigid beauty standard are harmful. Our brains don’t naturally differentiate between what we see on the screen from real life. So we feel less attractive, less important, and as if we must compete to be worthy.

What to say: social media gives us dopamine hits, but they aren’t meaningful or lasting. It drives insecurity and comparison, the opposite of fulfillment and connection.

We can do it!

There is no way to perfectly protect our kids from the impact of social media on body image and eating disorders. But we can do a lot to counteract the negative impact of social media. And it’s not all bad! Some kids adjust the algorithm to fit their interests and hobbies.

Social media does have tremendous opportunities to teach and inform. For example, the rise of transgender awareness has been powered by social media. We just need to make sure that kids recognize the opportunities and limitations of social media.

Recognize that social media companies will never protect our kids from harm. We must take that responsibility on ourselves.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Body Image And Eating Disorders

Posted on June 15, 2021May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

Diet culture myths that get in the way of healthy eating

Food Myths That Get in the Way of Healthy Eating

by Lauren Dorman, RD CDE

Our society is overflowing with food myths that interfere with healthy eating. Half-truths and outright misinformation about nutrition and health are everywhere. Too many of us believe in myths—faulty, inaccurate, and downright untrue things about the food we eat.

When working with families, I want them to understand that I am not going to “fix” a body or track a scale number as progress. It is studied and proven that this way of thinking will likely lead to disordered eating and poor health outcomes. In fact, restriction and weight-based care is most likely to create a poor relationship with food in which you feel addicted or obsessed to foods and yo-yo dieting. Things go much better when I help children and their families understand what a healthy relationship with food means and that all bodies are good bodies.

This is a different concept for many as the world we live in focuses more on the “thin ideal” and “less guilt” food choices. Have you taken a look at magazine covers lately? They are filled with the $70 billion diet culture messaging.

I teach all the families I work with to know that all of this is harmful and poor advice. I help them unlearn many false beliefs about nutrition and they begin to approach health as an entirely different, sustainable way of living.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Diets are dangerous

A 2016 study of 181 mother-daughter pairs found that girls whose mothers were on diets were more likely to start dieting themselves before age 11. And that dieting was associated with overeating, weight gain and chronic health issues.

Studies and research such as these are the reasons most Registered Dietitians educate on a “food neutral” approach. This means that instead of focusing on healthy foods, ask your child “how does the food make you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally?”

Pressuring your kids to eat their vegetables backfires most of the time, and in many different ways. Parents can have different discussions about the foods which can make mealtimes less stressful and more enjoyable for everyone!

A focus on health-promoting and intuitive eating for kids has shown so many positive benefits, including improved body satisfaction, lower rates of emotional eating, higher self-esteem, weight stabilization, improved cholesterol levels and reduced stress levels. If we have a neutral approach to food we can find this whole nutrition thing a whole lot simpler!

As a Registered Dietitian who doesn’t promote or engage in dieting, one of the first things I do with clients is figure out which of these myths they believe. Then I tell them the truth.

Here are four of the most common food myths that get in the way of healthy eating:

Myth 1: There are good foods and bad foods

That’s simply not true. A few readers may find that shocking, but the reality is this: Food does not have a moral value. Some foods have fewer nutrients and others have more—but all food is just food, neither good nor bad. Unless you are allergic to something, there is no reason not to eat it. If you avoid certain foods and feel you shouldn’t have them, you will typically crave them more. Give yourself permission to eat all food and your craving for ‘forbidden foods’ will diminish. By eating widely and thoughtfully, you will end up eating a balanced variety of foods.

Myth 2: Healthy people don’t eat carbohydrates

This is dangerous and potentially harmful. In fact, scientific research confirms that all human bodies, in order to function properly, need carbohydrates. I have reviewed many food diaries where people eat only eggs in the morning, a salad at lunch, and broccoli and chicken at dinner. For all of these clients, I recommend adding a source of carbohydrates to each of these meals to meet their energy and health goals. Almost everyone feels better and more satisfied when eating a balanced meal.

Myth 3: Don’t eat after 7pm

I can assure you that what you eat in the evening will not magically cause harm or weight gain. One client told me that a teacher advised him to adopt this rule a few years ago, and that ever since he feels shame if he eats a late meal. If you are hungry, your body is asking you for food; it does not matter what time it is. Enjoy and nourish yourself.

Myth 4: Skinny people are the healthiest

Health is not determined by weight. Our society’s relentless focus on what the scale says damages countless people and doesn’t make anyone healthier. Too many people disrupt their physical and mental health by allowing a number on the scale to determine their self-worth. So many other actions that determine your health don’t rely on numbers like pounds or body-mass index (BMI). From my point of view, tossing the scale is a good way to improve your physical and mental health. We all accept that people come in different heights and shoe sizes. Why is it so hard to accept that bodies, too, come in different sizes?

Raising a healthy family

It’s possible to raise healthy kids by ignoring the four food myths that get in the way of eating. First, don’t label foods as good or bad. All foods can fit in a healthy diet. Next, eat carbohydrates. The human body needs and thrives on carbohydrates, and they can be enjoyed at every meal. Also, you can eat after 7 p.m. or any other arbitrary time diet culture has set. Bodies can digest food 24×7. Finally, remember that weight does not determine health. Diet culture and eating disorders are linked. Get rid of the scale and focus on habits that truly promote health and wellness.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Lauren Dorman, RD, CDE specializes in helping families, chronic dieters, and people with diabetes through her virtual private practice. She also provides a workshop “Imperfectly Healthy”. To learn more, follow her on Instagram @dont_diet_dietitian_ or email dontdietdietitian@gmail.com

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

Posted on June 7, 2021March 21, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

Feeling sad in recovery from an eating disorder

Getting sad in recovery for an eating disorder

If your child in in recovery for an eating disorder, it’s very possible that they feel sad. And maybe this is making you sad, too. Most parents feel overwhelmed handling the eating disorder behavior, and don’t know what to do when sadness shows up.

As parents, we want to protect our children from uncomfortable feelings, especially sadness and despair. Most of us came into parenting during the time of a glut of Happiness books, speeches, and articles. Scientists explored exactly how we can increase our happiness with daily tasks, based on the assumption that being happier is always better.

Most of us, when asked, will say that what we want most of all is for our kids to be happy.

We may embrace sayings like “good vibes only” and strive every day to turn lemons into lemonade. When our children feel sad, we jump through hoops to try and remedy it as soon as possible – to return to happy.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

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The tyranny of happy

It sounds really nice to pursue happiness, but the fact is that many of us who pursue a happier life find ourselves actually feeling emptier and sadder. Why?

Because it turns out that sadness is a part of natural emotional hygiene. To expect ourselves – and our children – to live in a state of perpetual happiness is to deny the natural fluctuation of emotions.

Feeling sadness and any negative emotion is not only normal, it’s actually healthier than trying to force ourselves to remain in a constant state of bliss.

When we have a child who has an eating disorder, it’s hard not to think that we need to help our child find a higher state of happiness in life. We may think that recovery from their eating disorder will mean a return to happiness.

Certainly, if our child is depressed, we should seek treatment for that condition. But the opposite of depression is not eternal happiness. The opposite of depression is the ability to feel a full range of emotions, including sadness.

Recovery from an eating disorder does not mean happiness all the time or never feeling sad. It means we recognize and metabolize the full range of emotions including, but not limited to happiness. This means we need to feel free to experience anger, sadness, loneliness, jealousy, and the thousands of other emotions that make us human.

Parents who are afraid of the full range of human emotions are likely to get uncomfortable with this. They may accidentally try to interfere with natural emotional ranges by pursuing happiness rather than allowing sadness and other negative emotions.

But parents need to accept all mood states, not just the positive ones.

Acknowledge feelings

The first step in learning emotional hygiene – the natural metabolism of emotions throughout each and every day – is to acknowledge that our emotions run a wide range. We have to acknowledge that we are not meant to remain in a steady emotional state.

In fact, that is a clear sign of depression: the lack of emotional fluctuation. Take some time in your family to acknowledge that feelings come and go every single day. We all have a broad range of positive, negative and neutral feelings, and that is absolutely healthy.

Name feelings

Building emotional literacy, or the ability to put a name on your emotions, helps to build emotional resilience and reduce shame around negative emotional states. When we talk about our feelings, we allow them to exist without worrying that they will last forever. Talking about emotions is a daily practice that we can all work on in our families.

Some of us find it helpful to print out lists of emotions to help us name them. It’s too easy to call every negative feeling afraid, angry or sad. And that’s certainly a good place to start, but there are so many nuances to those feelings. We can add words like despair, fear, horror, and shame to help us better define our feelings. This will allow them out into the light where they can breathe and move on.

Don’t forget that sometimes we need to combine feelings to get an accurate picture. For example, before a big event, a child may say they feel scared. But upon deeper reflection, they are a combination of nervous and excited. You can even put these words together to form new feelings, like “nercited.”

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

Self-Esteem
Self-Regulation
Mindfulness
Calming strategies

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Welcome feelings

Even if we are able to name our feelings and have a broad emotional vocabulary, we still have to work hard to welcome the negative feelings into our lives.

Almost all of us were taught to reject, deny and ignore negative emotions. A good reason for this is that negative feelings make parents very uncomfortable.

As little children, our parents, in wanting what was best for us, probably tried to get us to stop crying. A better approach would have been to welcome our tears and reassure us that they were perfectly natural and healthy. These lessons learned every day for many years, taught us to hide negative mood states.

We can learn to welcome the full gamut of our family’s feelings. Every member of our family is going to undergo mood states throughout the day. And a good portion of those feelings are going to be in the negative category.

Rather than not allowing negative feelings or trying to pretend that everything is just fine, practice instead welcoming these feelings.

Talk about the fact that life is challenging.

Sometimes it sucks.

But it will suck much, much more if feelings are repressed. In fact, repressed feelings are integral to almost all addictive and maladaptive behaviors, including eating disorders. Sadness is a common psychological symptom of eating disorders. Emotions run high in eating disorder recovery, so most people will be sad at times. But this doesn’t mean recovery is a failure. It means that recovery opens up a person to the full range of human emotion. And this is a sign of mental health.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

Posted on April 26, 2021May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

What to say to larger kids (from adults who’ve been there)

Are you wondering what you should say to bigger kids? Are you a parent, teacher, doctor, coach, aunt/uncle, grandparent, or other important adult to a child who has a larger body?

Luckily, I have a lot of answers for you! A recent social media post collected hundreds of answers from adults who were self-identified “fat kids” and reported what they wish caring adults had said to them when they were children.

A word about the word “fat”

The term “fat” can be used as a slur or a neutral descriptor. In its neutral form, saying “fat” is the same as saying “tall” or “brown-eyed.” Other words for fat bodies, such as “overweight” and “obese,” are currently considered to be stigmatizing. Many fat justice leaders have reclaimed the word “fat” as the preferred neutral descriptor for their bodies.

However, we should not call someone “fat” unless we 1) are doing so kindly 2) have zero thoughts that they should lose weight; and 3) clearly have their permission to do so. And nobody should ever use “fat” as an insult. It’s always best to let people who live in marginalized bodies to define themselves rather than assuming a label on their behalf. And never tell a person in a larger body that they are “not fat” or should be proud to be fat. It’s their body and their choice to define themselves on their own terms.

What not to say to bigger kids

I’m going to just start with what not to say to bigger kids. The fact is that kids in larger bodies are subject to constant scrutiny and discrimination. This is a sad fact of our culture. A lot of well-meaning adults say things to larger kids that they think will be helpful but are in fact incredibly harmful. Here is a quick guide:

Don’t say:

You’re not fat; you’re beautiful: if a child is fat, they know they’re fat. Don’t deny them the truth of their body. When we jump in with a comment like this, we risk adding shame to the word “fat.”
You just need to [eat less/move more/eat healthy/]: the implication here is that weight is a choice. Would you tell a child who is short that they just need to stretch their body? No. So don’t tell a child who is larger that they just need to shrink their body.
You shouldn’t wear that: there are a lot of opinions about what bigger people should and shouldn’t wear. But if you would let a thin child wear something, then restricting a larger child from wearing the same thing is discrimination.
Don’t eat that: there are a lot of variations and ways that adults try to restrict how much and what larger kids eat. But research shows that bigger kids eat about the same as thin kids. The difference is mostly genetics and environment, not food.
You’ll grow out of it: this comment can have lifetime effects because many children then begin to worry about how they can make sure they get thinner. They assume that thin is better, and therefore begin the lifelong pain of hating their bodies.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Here’s what we know for sure: when adults tell kids there is a problem with their weight, those children are more likely to grow up to be heavier than kids who were not told their weight was a problem. This research stays steady regardless of genetics and environment. Thus, all those adults who think that kids need to “watch their weight” are in fact setting them up to gain weight.

Why? Most likely because cortisol (stress) is linked to weight. And kids who are raised believing there is a problem with their bodies feel more stress. Also, restriction of any kind leads to compensation. So if you restrict sugar or any food for kids, they are very likely to binge eat those foods when given a chance. This isn’t deviant or “bad,” it’s simple biology.

Here’s a simple guide: if you’re about to say something to a fat kid that you wouldn’t say to a thin kid, don’t do it. And give larger kids extra love and affection to counteract the discrimination they’re facing elsewhere in the world.

The science behind all my statements about weight is available in our Research Library.

What we should say to big kids

Larger kids, like all kids, deserve love, affection, acceptance, and respect. The rules don’t change based on a person’s body size. What we should say to big kids is mostly the same as what we should say to all kids. But parents who have larger kids should probably say these things even more because larger bodies are treated so badly in our culture. You’re going to need to counteract societal messages to keep your kids safe from eating disorders and other serious health concerns caused by weight stigma. The important thing is to honor and respect your child for who they are, regardless of their body size.

Here are the basics:

You are loved
I accept you as you are
You are beautiful
You are worthy & valuable
You don’t deserve to be mistreated
There is nothing wrong with you

If you find it difficult to imagine saying any of these things to a child who is larger, then I want you to think about why. It would be easy to say these things to a smaller child, right? But we should never discriminate against someone for the size of their body. Even though we have been told body weight is within our control, it’s not. So when adults can easily say these things to smaller children but not larger children, stigma and discrimination are at play.

And children in larger bodies need to hear these things even more than children in smaller bodies. This is because our society is cruel to larger people. It’s not right, but it’s true. So your love and acceptance are needed even more in a child who lives in a marginalized body. Remember that the child’s body is not a choice, but it is an integral part of who they are. You should neither ignore their weight nor perceive their weight as a problem.

The answers below were provided in answer to the question “if you were a fat kid, what’s one thing you needed to hear from a trusted and loved adult?” The post was originally created on Instagram by @fatfuturescollective and reposted by @thebodyisnotanapology. I’ve kept the comments anonymous, lightly edited, and categorized them below.

You are loved

This was BY FAR the most common comment. And it’s heartbreaking that so many people felt unloved because of their bodies. How can you make your child feel loved today?

I love you just as you are.
I’d have wanted to be told I was loved, I was worthy of love and respect, that I didn’t have to try to make everyone like me.
You don’t need to shrink yourself to be loved
You’re actually already just great, so, what feels good and beautiful to YOU? What makes your heart sing? Let’s do more of THAT.
That I was just fine as I was, lovable and valued at any weight.
You are so loved!!!
That I’m perfect and loved just the way I am.
You’re lovely and loved.
No one needs to apologize for the space they occupy. We are all worthy, holy, loved beings.
You are loved, you are good just as you are.
I love you for who you are.
You are precious and worthy.
There is nothing wrong with your shape and size.
Losing weight could not possibly make me love you more.
I’m proud of you for who you are.
You are safe, you are loved, and good enough exactly as you are.
You are loveable.

I accept you as you are

Accepting a child is so close to loving a child that most people can’t tell the difference. Larger children know they face discrimination in the world. Can you be a person who accepts them exactly as they are?

Your body belongs here with us and for you, just as it is.
Your body is amazingly strong and beautiful as it is.
You are welcome to exist as you are, and you are loved.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You don’t need to change and you deserve all the happiness, joy and love you can find in this life.
You do not need to lose weight to be loved.
You’re perfect just how you are and you don’t need to change anything about yourself!
You are not too much and not too little. You are just enough, and worthy of love.
That I was lovable, beautiful, and acceptable just as I was.
You are perfect just the way you are! It would have saved me so much turmoil if someone would have just told me that.
That my weight wasn’t a character flaw, and I wasn’t ‘bad.’
I wish someone had told me not to be ashamed of myself and to love myself no matter what size I was.

You are beautiful

All children want to feel beautiful in their others’ eyes. And larger children get very little validation that they are beautiful. Examine your own biases and make sure that you’re complimenting bigger kids as often as you are complimenting thinner kids.

I would have loved to been complimented on my clothes like other girl children.
I used to really love hearing “your outfit looks great today”. As I got older and gained weight into my teens, I never heard it anymore about anything I did and realized it must be because I was getting fat.
That I’m beautiful. I wasn’t ever told this. So now I have this weird thing where I know I’m beautiful but am never sure if others see my beauty.
Your body is perfect just the way it is.
You are lovely as you are, not “you’d be such much prettier if you lost weight”
That fat changes nothing. You’re beautiful. You’re cherished.
You’re beautiful, you have a bright future, you are so talented, you are so loved, etc.
That outfit looks amazing!
You don’t need to hide that part of your body.
You are beautiful and powerful.
All bodies are beautiful worthy of love and celebration.
You are beautiful, resilient, empathetic, resourceful, and above all, you are ENOUGH.
That dress looks beautiful on you.

You are worthy & valuable

Every child deserves to feel worthy and valuable in this world. This is a basic human right. What can you do to make sure the child feels worthy of your affection?

I would be saving so much money on therapy if they told me my value and worth are not measured by my size!
Your body is and always will be valid and powerful and uniquely beautifully yours.
Your value in life isn’t determined by how skinny you are. People obsessing over your body has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
You’re enough as you are. Anybody that doubts that or tells you differently is wrong.
You are incredible, beautiful, and worthy RIGHT NOW.
That who I am and what I do in life is not defined by my body.
You are worthy exactly as you are. Your dreams, hopes, desires, and passions are treasures are what I care about, not what your body looks like.
We are all worthy of joy and love.
You are not innately bad or wrong for having the body you have; you are enough; you have value; you are brilliant and strong.
The shape of your body does not change your absolute worthiness of love and care.

You don’t deserve to be mistreated

Many bigger kids are mistreated both at home and outside in the world. It’s important for adults to stand up for children who are being mistreated. Don’t dismiss fat-shaming and teasing as “normal.” It’s simple discrimination, and if you wouldn’t accept it based on race, ability, or gender, then you should not accept it based on weight.

You don’t owe anyone thinness or good health or beauty, you have the right to be respected however you show up in the world.
I needed someone to tell me that it wasn’t my fault that no one wanted to be my friend or that I was being bullied and teased.
What people say about you is a reflection of themselves.
I needed to hear adults shut down fatphobic comments and jokes as they happened rather than look embarrassed or laughing nervously at them.
I wish someone would have explained to me that the problem was not me, but the insecurity of my peers. That their cruelty was a reflection of them, not me.
I will help make school/gym class/dance class a safe place for you and everyone else.
You’re more than the names they call you. I love you and will take care of you.
That being fat is absolutely NOT the worst thing you can be. Being narcissistic, selfish, mean, abusive, making other people feel less worthy for ANY reason are all worse than being fat.
There is nothing wrong with your size – we are all different & there is beauty in all bodies. When bullies make fun of your size, remember that you are okay, you are loved.
I wish someone had told me that I didn’t deserve to be mistreated and then done something about it.
If people treat you badly because of your body, that is a real problem and you deserve support but it is not your fault. You and your body deserve respect and kindness inherently.
“Who are your bullies?” And “Here’s how I can help.”
Nobody has the right to humiliate you or make fun of you. This is not ok.

There is nothing wrong with you

So many fat kids are told there is something wrong with them. That they are the cause of their body weight. But we know that weight is mostly genetic and environmental. We have almost no control over our weight. Help your child know that their body is good.

All bodies are good bodies. You’re not lazy. You deserve to eat.
There is nothing wrong with you and there is everything wrong with diet culture.
You don’t need to work so hard to change yourself. Just be.
Let’s buy you clothes that fit you. Let’s not buy clothes for you to shrink into or clothes that tent and hide your whole body.
It’s OK that your belly sticks out.
Your body is strong, beautiful, and worthy of all the love. Honor it and it carries you through your joyful life.
The body you have right now is the right body.
That my body was a good body no matter how it looks. It keeps me alive
You have fat on your body, that’s normal, there’s nothing wrong with it and you don’t need to change.
Your body is perfect and you don’t need to change it.

You don’t need to change yourself

Bigger kids feel as if they need to change themselves in order to be loved. Make sure you counteract this harmful belief.

You don’t need to change for anyone. Just be you.
You don’t need to be thin to be happy and healthy.
Your body doesn’t need to be fixed- there’s nothing wrong with it
Losing weight will NOT magically change your life and make everything better.
Move your body because it feels good and you enjoy it. Don’t worry about numbers or loss. Just enjoy the dance.
That you can be “overweight” and healthy (weight does not mean health or lack thereof). That all bodies are different and all shapes and sizes are beautiful!
You don’t have to diet to be a good person. Bodies change and weight does not define your worth. You are enough and you always will be enough.
You don’t need to diet just because someone else thinks you’re fat or because everyone else is doing it.
Skinny and strong are two different things, and your size isn’t evidence of health.
I wish my mom had told me that my body didn’t define what I could and couldn’t do.
Some people are born into smaller bodies. They most likely didn’t do anything differently from you.
You are not the problem, it is society’s expectations that are the problem. Your body is valuable and good, every day, at every size.
People and society will make up stories about you because they can only see one aspect of who you are. Resist the temptation to believe them. The richness of your life and your value don’t lie in these stories. Manifest and cultivate your whole self in context – your inner life as well as your wonderful, able, powerful body.
You don’t have to lose weight to be worthy, and you don’t have to lose weight for people to love you.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

Be yourself

Every person should be encouraged to be their authentic self. This includes dressing the way you want to, doing the activities you enjoy, and living your life regardless of body weight.

You do not need to be a certain size to do all the things!
Sure, you can wear the cute leotard to gymnastics class. No need to cover up in baggy shorts and a t-shirt.
You can let your belly relax.
Wear what makes YOU feel good!
Your body doesn’t define you.
It’s okay to take up space with your body.
Some people are just made to be bigger, bolder, brighter!
You don’t have to compensate to fit in.
Don’t let being fat keep you from trying things. Be physical, be in your body, it’s OK.
You can take up as much space as you want – your thoughts and your heart are valuable and precious; your body doesn’t invalidate those things.
Bodies are constantly changing. Trust your body and listen to its needs. Everything else will fall in place as it should.
You don’t have to sit on the sidelines. Let’s go have some fun!
I needed to be asked “what do YOU want?” instead of having everyone else tell me what they wanted: how my body should look, how I should eat, how to move, and that I should accept all of it. Knowing that I could have questioned all of the shame heaped on me in my youth openly earlier on would have allowed me to share some of that pain rather than bearing it alone.

Listen to your body

Bodies are wise, and they should be in charge of how we feed them. If a body is hungry, it should be fed. So many larger kids are put on diets, and it’s incredibly harmful. Look carefully for subconscious beliefs about how much you think your child should eat, and remember that food is nourishment. It is essential to life. And we know that the No. 1 outcome of food restriction is weight gain.

You don’t need to diet!!!!! Your body is perfect the way it is and dieting will harm it more than being fat ever will!
Have seconds if you’re still hungry.
Eat. I wish I was told it was okay to eat. Instead of receiving dirty looks as I went for more or had dessert.
Listen to your body. If you’re hungry, eat.
Don’t skip meals! If you’re hungry, eat.
You can have as much as you want.
Often the reason we overeat is that we under-ate earlier or are being restricted.
It’s okay to enjoy your food!
I will never put you on a diet or pressure you about your weight or food choices.
Restrictive dieting is not a righteous way to treat your body as a temple. Neither is punishing exercise. You don’t have to earn food.
I’m happy to feed you and glad to see you eat.

Body Image Printable Worksheets

The best tools to feel calmer and more confident in your body!

Boost confidence
Improve self-esteem
Increase media literacy

Learn More

Fat is fine

Just because our culture pathologizes fat doesn’t mean that being fat is a problem. A body is never a problem unless other people make it so. Normalize fatness, and seek ways to let your child know that there is nothing wrong with their body.

Your body is magic. You have no idea yet how much it can do and feel and hold. I’m still learning its depths and wonders and the places it holds pain
It’s okay to be fat. You never have to “grow out of it.”
There’s nothing wrong with you.
You have nothing to fix or change when it comes to your body.
Your body is a miracle, fearfully and wonderfully made, just as it is right now and always.
You will be loved and it won’t be despite your weight.
Fat adults are still loved, healthy and happy people
People are all born differently, some are thin some are fat some are short some are tall, and being fat is nothing to be ashamed of.
Thinness does not equal happiness. Learning to love your body will be one of the most freeing experiences you will ever accomplish.
I wish I’d seen the fat adults in my life loving their bodies and modeling that.
You can be fat and desired, fat and beautiful, fat and strong, fat and healthy. Food is to nourish and sustain you and it’s delicious. Movement is to be enjoyed.
It would have really helped me to know that fat people find love and intimacy and aren’t automatically social rejects. I was so ashamed because I thought I couldn’t be attractive and therefore couldn’t be loved.

If you love a larger kid, then please keep this list of what to say nearby. Remember that larger kids are just as worthy of our love and acceptance as thin kids. And they are highly sensitive to weight stigma, which has serious health impacts. A larger child knows when their parents, coaches, teachers, and doctors think they are “too fat.” And it’s devastating. Adults’ perception of fat is far worse for a child than the fat itself. Let’s do better!

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

Posted on February 26, 2021May 2, 2023 by Ginny Jones — Leave a comment

5 reasons not to buy Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest diet, Intuitive Fasting (book)

This week, Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting “Intuitive Fasting,” the first book under her new publishing umbrella. The fact that this happens to be National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is not lost on those of us in the recovery community. To launch a diet book that actively promotes eating disorder behaviors while using a similar name to one of the books often used in recovery (“Intuitive Eating”) feels really wrong, yet sadly not surprising.

There are a lot of problems with the book. But here are five that immediately stuck out for me:

1. Fasting is not intuitive

Sure, most of us “intuitively” fast when we go to sleep and when we’re not hungry. But any other form of fasting is not intuitive. The definition of intuitive is “using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.” A fast is intentional. It is not instinctive. We all know that fasting, even for religious or other meaningful and necessary reasons, requires massive amounts of self-control. There is nothing instinctive or intuitive about it. When you fast, you deny your intuition, which is always to keep your body alive – i.e. eat!

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

2. Most definitely a diet

Look, I’ve read a lot of diet books. I was a hard-core consumer of diet books for three decades. I recognize a diet book when I see one, and this is definitely one. No matter how they try to package this, the four-week program is most definitely a diet. I define a diet as something that will make me hungry and encourage me to ignore my hunger cues for a future benefit.

Most of the time the goal of a diet is to lose weight. But we’ve learned it’s not cool to say that, so now diets package themselves as “health promoting.” But face it. This book is sold on the wish of weight loss.

Then there’s the diet behavior. Basically this book provides a method for limiting how much food you eat in a day. Here’s a recap of the four-week diet plan included in this book:

12 hours of uninterrupted fasting every day
14-18 hours of uninterrupted fasting every day
20-22 hours of uninterrupted fasting every day
12 hours of uninterrupted fasting every day

But it doesn’t stop with limiting meals. This diet also says it’s ‘Ketotarian,’ designed to put the body into a state of ketosis to burn fat and not sugar. Um, hello diet culture!

Gwyneth described her first four weeks as “pretty much a bone-broth diet.” The “Keto” diet is not new, and it’s not intuitive. It’s a way to try and hack the body, and (speaking from experience) it’s very, very hard on the body and considered by many Registered Dietitians to be unsustainable and unhealthy unless medically advised for specific reasons and under supervision.

3. Promotes eating disorder behavior

One of the main behaviors of an eating disorder is trying to extend the windows between eating food. This is common in most eating disorders, not just anorexia. Most people who have eating disorders restrict food (e.g. fast) for as many hours as possible, trying to extend the time between meals and limit how much they eat through the day.

The more we restrict, the less our stomach can comfortably hold and the more we obsess about food. Fasting behavior sets us up for a snowball effect of restrictive eating and, for many, binge eating. This can easily turn into disordered eating and, for some, an eating disorder. People who develop eating disorders convince their starving stomachs that fasting is healthy and good. All sorts of mind tricks support us in this belief. The result of fasting restriction may be a loss of all desire to eat, binge eating, and/or purging.

4. This is a money-making enterprise

Everybody is entitled to make a buck where they can, but when the bucks come from promoting eating disorders, I take issue. This book is part of the $72 billion diet industry.

The “Intuitive Fasting” book represents the launch of the Goop Press as part of the brand’s new publishing partnership with Rodale Books, a division of Penguin Random House. In other words, this book is a product. It’s not a health program or meant to help us. It’s meant to make money.

In her blog post to promote the book on Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow also promotes 18 other products for sale. Goop looks like a health platform, but it is an advertising platform designed to generate revenue for the company. The content and products are not altruistic, and they are not concerned for our health. A businesses’ purpose is to make as much profit as possible.

5. Ripping off the Intuitive Eating title is not cool

Intuitive Eating is a book that was first published in 1995 by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. It’s a bestseller that appears on almost every eating disorder professional’s bookshelf. It lays out an evidence-based self-care eating framework and has been cited in over 140 peer-review scientific studies to date. Intuitive eating has been gaining popularity and visibility as the culture slowly begins to re-evaluate our relationship with dieting and food. Many people who are in eating disorder recovery utilize the principles from “Intuitive Eating.”

Naming this book “Intuitive Fasting” is awfully close to “Intuitive Eating” and “Intermittent Fasting.” Yeah, I’m sure it passes copyright laws, but it’s shady.

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Fact Sheets About Weight Stigma, Diet Culture, Kids and Diets, and More
Non-Diet Parent Guidelines
Non-Diet Parent Scripts About Responding to Fat Talk, Diet Talk, and More
What to Say/Not Say When Talking About Bodies and Food

Learn More

No need to buy the book “Intuitive Fasting”

Everyone gets to make their own choices in life. If this book appeals to you, that’s completely your decision. But here’s the secret: this book is just a different spin on the same old thing. Every diet book promises health through restriction. Short-term discomfort for long-term gain. That’s the promise. Every time. You don’t need to buy this book to hear another version of it.

Intentional weight loss (diets) result in weight regain (95% of cases), more weight gained (65% of cases), and eating disorders. A person who diets is up to 15x more likely to develop an eating disorder.

This book is unlikely to bring better health, and it’s risky since eating disorders and diet culture are linked. Try Intuitive Eating instead. It may feel like a total stretch, completely out of your comfort zone. But that’s the point! And it’s been shown to actually improve health.

Ginny’s most recent project is Recovery, a newsletter for deeply-feeling people in recovery from diet culture, negative body image, and eating disorders.

Raising healthy kids

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

The relationship is what matters

Myth 1: my kids will never stop eating sugar and junk

Myth 2: I need to lose weight to be healthy

Ask yourself:

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Myth 3: I need to manage my kid’s weight

Myth 4: health is something I can see

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Moving forward

1. Most people have bad body image

Body Image Printable Worksheets

2. Girls have bad body image

3. Boys also have bad body image

What parents can do to improve kids’ body image

1. Respect your body

2. Respect other people’s bodies

3. Respect your child’s body

Body Image Printable Worksheets

4. Teach media literacy

5. Look out for signs of trouble

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

References

What you can say about your daughter’s body

Talk about what her body does

Body Image Printable Worksheets

Talk about how her body feels

Talk about how she looks

What you should not say about your daughter’s body

Don’t talk about what she weighs

Don’t talk about how she compares

Don’t talk about what she’s wearing

The foundation of self-acceptance

1. Watch how you talk about your body and other bodies

Here are common things you might be tempted to say about your body that you should stop saying:

Here are common things you may be saying about other people’s bodies that you should stop saying:

Body Image Printable Worksheets

2. Build media literacy

At a minimum, you should talk to your daughter often about these concepts:

3. Talk about her other qualities

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

1. Don’t tell them it’s just baby fat/they’re not fat, etc.

2. Find out the feelings behind the word “fat”

3. Teach them about weight stigma and fatphobia

4. Work on your own food and body issues

5. Teach them to accept their bodies (and never diet)

6. Help them manage peer teasing (and bullying)

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

7. Teach them to respond to adults who say “watch your weight” and “eat healthy”

8. Work harder to find age-appropriate, comfortable clothing

It’s sadly normal

What does anxiety look like in an eating disorder?

How to deal with fear and worry in eating disorder recovery

1. Expect anxiety to show up (it will!)

2. Tell your child that it’s OK to feel afraid and worried sometimes (it makes sense!)

3. Remind your child that the path to feeling better is not to avoid fear but to face fear (and do it anyway!)

4. Believe that your child can learn to tolerate their fear (they can!).

How this looks at the dinner table

Take 1: letting anxiety run the show

Take 2: standing up to anxiety

Practice, not perfect

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

1. Educate yourself

2. A body-positive household

3. An anti-diet approach

4. Dealing with society:

Social Media

Movies/TV/Radio

Magazine Covers/Billboards

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Dealing with school:

Health Class

Peers

Coaches/Teachers

Non-Diet/Health At Every Size® Fact Sheets, Guidelines, and Scripts

Definition: Active Listening

Body Image Printable Worksheets

Talk less & listen more