These headlines are from news sources that promise to tell us the latest and greatest, research-based information about our health. For those of us who have/had eating disorders, these types of headlines are more than just clickbait – they tap into the obsessive side of ourselves that desperately wants to follow rules and be OK. Someone with an eating disorder sees these headlines and wants to follow them. Someone with an eating disorder has body size to our self-worth, and they want to do what the “experts” tell us is “healthy.”

If you have a child who has an eating disorder, please open regular conversations about how headlines like this can trigger eating disorders. Help them work through the painful act of rebelling against the words that tell us how to be healthy by restricting food, dieting, and over-exercising. Help your child maintain recovery by reminding them that true health is accomplished only when we accept our bodies and don’t live in fear of food and fat.

Here are some key triggers for those of us who have/had eating disorders when we see headlines like this:

Headlines that suggest we should “eat less” or “exercise more.”

The assumption in these headlines is that we all need to lose weight. Even if the headline doesn’t explicitly state weight loss as the goal, we all know that the reason why we want to “trick” ourselves into eating fewer calories or “motivate” ourselves to exercise more is to lose weight. This assumption is deeply triggering to someone who has an eating disorder.

In recovery, your child will work hard to realize that their body is fine just as it is and that they don’t need to control, starve them, or purge the body of food. Additionally, simply eating less and exercising more is not a recipe for losing weight long-term. Diets based on this recipe fail 95% of the time and actually result in weight gain. That’s a tremendous failure rate, and yet headlines continue to promote diets as if they are scientifically valid.

Headlines that suggest weight is linked to being “good” or “bad.”

Any suggestion that restricting food or exercising makes us ‘good’ can lead people with eating disorders to feel intense shame and guilt. In our recovery, your child needs to learn inherent worthiness decoupled from weight, food intake or exercise patterns. Yet everywhere we go, we read about “cheat days,” and how to trick our bodies into either eating less or exercising more. These messages can upset your child’s recovery chances.

Before and after images showing someone who has a larger belly and then a smaller belly.

This is the oldest diet marketing trick in the book. The image of someone’s belly looking distended and then small, as magically influenced by a restriction-based diet and/or over-exercising induces a visceral response for most of us. Most people feel disgusted by the ‘before’ and deeply desire the ‘after.’ Before and after images tell us that fat is gross and controllable. This is called weight stigma, and it’s a form of discrimination. It’s also deeply triggering for people who have eating disorders and have associated small body size with being worthy and “good.” These images are fatphobic and set unrealistic expectations for what a diet can accomplish.

Headlines that suggest a direct link between health and a specific food.

Nutrition science is limited to correlation. We simply cannot run human studies to determine whether there is causation between food, weight, and health. But media outlets love it when nutrition scientists find even a statistically insignificant correlative link between a particular food and a particular health outcome. Scientists frequently speak out against how their research has been presented in the media, but the media still persists in presenting statistically insignificant correlative data as fact.

Headlines that suggest there is a link between exercise and weight.

It has been proven that exercise, while it has many benefits, does not lead to weight loss. In fact, for many people, exercise increases appetite and therefore weight gain. But exercise-driven headlines are very popular. Over-exercising is a frequent precursor to eating disorders and often accompanies food-based restriction, binging and purging.

Keep this in mind as you work to reduce the media impact on your child’s eating disorder and body image.

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

When Julia’s baby girl was handed to her, it began. “Is she perfect?” Julia asks. Of course, of course, she tells herself.

She checks each of her fingers and toes, strokes her head, and hopes for a future in which she will be happy and … well, to be honest, she hopes she will be thin. Because life is just easier for girls who are thin, she thinks. Because I want what’s best for her (and what’s best is to be thin), she thinks.

Thus begins a story of mothers, daughters, and body image.

At the playground, Julia watches her daughter and compares her body to the other children. She assesses: is she fatter than the others? Thinner?

Julia carefully observes all of the body types on the playground. Some are fatter, and some are thinner. Some are tall, and some are short. Is her daughter going to be “normal?” she wonders. Because normal is good. Normal is thin. And Julia wants what’s best for her baby girl.

All the right things

Julia makes sure to watch what her daughter eats. She’s careful about feeding her lots of fruits and vegetables. She prepares healthy whole foods and feels good about limiting sugar and snacks. When the doctor asks what she’s feeding her daughter, Julia feels proud and successful. She’s doing this right.

As she enters puberty, her daughter’s hips and thighs and belly and breasts get pudgy. Julia panics and worries, “is she going to get fat? That would be terrible! I need to help her avoid weight gain! It’s for her health! It’s for her future!”

Her daughter’s body grows and changes. Julia is very uncomfortable because now she sees a woman emerging. If she is not a thin woman, Julia believes she will suffer. She thinks that being thin is what we all want for our daughters, right?

Mothers and daughters typically have a shared body image. How Julia feels about her own body affects how she feels about her daughter’s body.

But something is wrong

Julia is not mean or bad. She hopes that her daughter has a socially acceptable body so she can avoid being teased, bullied, and discriminated against. She wants her to look great in photos and swimsuits. Julia hopes that when her daughter goes to the doctor, she’ll be told she’s healthy and well.

But Julia’s daughter is not healthy and well. Something’s wrong. Her mother’s careful attention to her body has interacted with a society that is cruel and dominating towards women’s bodies. She grew up in classrooms that taught some foods are good, and others are bad.

Julia’s daughter was weighed at school with her classmates and learned that weight is very, very important. She watched shows and movies where the heroines were thin, and the bad guys were fat. TikTok tells her that tiny waists and bare, tight midriffs are best.

In middle school, her friends start dieting, so she does too. Julia thinks it’s good that her daughter is taking responsibility for her health and making healthy choices.

At an early age, Julia’s daughter recognized the tremendous societal pressure to be thin. She internalized those beliefs. Now she believes that she is only worthy and can only be successful if she is thin.

An eating disorder

Julia’s daughter develops an eating disorder. Eating disorders are based on many factors. But it’s impossible to ignore the role of a very messed up social environment that tells females that to be successful, loved, and “good,” they must maintain small bodies.

It is impossible to ignore the relationship between mothers and daughters, body image and eating disorders. But eating disorders are not a mother’s fault. They are not a daughter’s fault.

Julia’s daughter’s eating disorder is not her fault. Her concern for her daughter’s weight makes perfect sense in our society. She has been doing the very best she could based on all the best information about how to raise a healthy child. But her well-meaning beliefs about fat and control interacted with our toxic culture, and now her daughter needs help.

A legacy of control

Julia grew up in the same diet culture as her daughter. And, of course, she couldn’t help but believe that raising a thin daughter is best. Being thin makes life easier. Being thin means her daughter will fall in love with someone wonderful. It means having an amazing career. if her daughter’s body is thin, it will never hold her back from living the life Julia dreams of for her.

And Julia has spent her life worrying about her own body. She doesn’t know another way. Julia sensed her own mother’s fear that she would be fat.

She spent her life watching her mother and every other woman she knew to watch her weight to fit the body ideal. Julia used Kate Moss, Monica Geller, and Ally McBeal for inspiration. She drank Slim-Fast and Diet Coke and did workout videos with Suzanne Sommers. Julia knows that to be successful and loved and worthy in this world means she must be thin.

Time to change

But now Julia sees now that it’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to realize that her daughter (and she herself) is worthy at any weight. That society’s messages about women, weight, and health are seriously messed up.

The problem is not Julia’s body or her daughter’s body; it is a society that tells women that they must stay tiny to be loved. It is a society that keeps half the population starving while simultaneously keeping us down, underpaid, and undervalued.

“No more!” says Julia.

Julia and her daughter decide that rather than try to control their bodies, they will accept themselves and each other. Rather than accept that their bodies need to be controlled and dominated and tiny, they’re going to love themselves and their bodies, no matter what they weigh or look like. Because they are more than bodies, and it’s time to start claiming their birthright and behaving like that’s true!

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

Advertising is a danger to kids’ self-esteem and body image. And since advertising is everywhere, this impact is deep-reaching and serious. When we were kids advertisements were on TV, billboards, magazines, and buses. But today we also get served advertisements on social media. And since teens spend an average of eight hours and 39 minutes per week, that’s serious.

Self-objectification and advertising

Self-objectification is the practice of comparing yourself to other people and, importantly, media and advertising images of people. Self-objectifying behavior looks like comparing your own body to those of your friends, strangers, family members, and, of course, models, actors, and social media influencers. It’s basing how you feel about yourself on whether someone else is better or worse than you due to their physical appearance.

We can’t protect our children from these images and messages. But we can speak up and let them know how dangerous these images and concepts are. Objectifying images are dangerous to everyone. Unrealistic advertising hurts our kids, and it hurts us. It is not benign.

Nobody admits they are impacted by advertising. But in fact, we are all susceptible to its subconscious power to influence what we think is “normal” and beautiful. This leads to unrealistic expectations for ourselves and our children.

Self-objectification and eating disorders

Almost all eating disorders are based on the desire to be thinner. Thus, most people who have eating disorders are engaging in self-objectification. Self-objectification is defined as looking at yourself as an object as if you are a third-party observer. When self-objectifying, most people are judging themselves as worthy or unworthy based on their physical appearance. This is particularly pervasive in girls and women due to the sexual objectification perpetuated in the media and advertising.

Fredrickson and Roberts identified self-objectification as “the first psychological consequence to emerge among girls and women as a result of living in a sexually objectifying cultural milieu.” Rather than valuing themselves based on how they feel or what they can do, someone who self-objectifies judges themselves based on how they appear to themselves as a third-party observer.

“An objectified body is a malleable, measureable, and controllable body. By viewing and treating themselves as sexual objects, it is argued that girls and women act as their own first surveyors in anticipation of being evaluated by others. Thus, the body becomes the site of reparative action and vigilant monitoring to manage the sexual objectification. When girls and women view themselves through this self-objectified lens, they take a peculiar stance on their own bodies that is fundamentally disruptive to the self–body relationship.”

Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, Volume 2

Eating disorders are usually an attempt to control the body and make it appear more socially acceptable. When kids get stuck in eating disorder thoughts, we must consider how advertising has impacted them and whether self-objectification is a contributor to their eating disorder.

Talk about advertising

No matter how smart you are, and no matter how smart you think your children are, don’t be silent when it comes to advertising images and messages. Make sure you speak up every single time you see something that suggests impossible beauty standards or Photoshops away individual character.

Talk to your kids about how Photoshop has completely overtaken media, and that nobody can possibly look as good as the models do. Even “real people” on social media use apps to adjust themselves. They whiten their skin, remove “extra fat,” and slenderize themselves beyond recognition.

Our children deserve to feel good about themselves regardless of the size of their waist or color of their skin. They deserve to be more than a Photoshopped rendition of themselves.

Here’s a great TED Talk by Jean Kilbourne about the dangers of advertising and how it impacts us as a society.

How to respond to the danger of advertising on kids’ self-esteem

Parents must respond to the danger of advertising on kids’ self-esteem often. It’s not enough to have this conversation once or even twice. Given the huge quantity of media they are consuming on their phones, our kids need a lot of guidance on this topic. Here are seven things parents need to talk about to counteract the danger of advertising on kids’ self-esteem:

1. Establish a firm household policy of body respect
2. Don’t allow body bashing
3. Don’t allow dieting or intentional weight-loss efforts
4. Point out that most media images are “fake news.” Those people don’t really look like that – they are using filters, poses, lighting, makeup, and other techniques to look like that
5. Talk about sexual objectification and how bodies are used to sell products and make money for corporations
6. Discuss the extreme measures actors and models go to in order to look like that, including starving, steroids, and over-exercise
7. Educate about the power of images and the impact of images on our brains. We must actively counteract the powerful media images to avoid the worst of negative body image and eating disorders

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

by Jennifer Kreatsoulas

“I want more cake!”

Ten minutes later…

“Can we have more cake tonight?”

These were the very first words out my 3- and 5-year old daughters’ mouths the morning after my birthday. It was 7 AM and their taste buds were already gearing up for chocolate cake with chocolate icing. “Let’s focus on breakfast first” was the best answer I could come up with!

As a parent in recovery from anorexia, conversations with my daughters like this one always leave me feeling a little unsettled. I question if my words and body language came from my heart versus my old “ED head” beliefs. Did I pass judgement on their hunger or the food they want to eat? Did I suggest that a food is “bad” or send the message that their pure passion and enjoyment for eating most foods is wrong or something they need to control, temper, ignore even?

Although my journeys of parenthood and recovery have at times run parallel to one another, they have also intersected and influenced one another in significant ways. I may question my “food parenting moments,” but at the root of my concern is my vigilant and diligent efforts to model healthy and uncomplicated relationships with and perspectives about nourishing our bodies.

My husband and I are equally dedicated to creating positive food and body vibes at home so that our girls have the most solid foundation possible from which to develop healthy relationships with food and their bodies. To help guide positive conversations with our girls, cultivate their self-confidence, respect their hunger cues, and teach them about healthy and balanced nutrition, my husband and I follow these five rules:

1. Don’t punish or reward with food

When you are at your wits end or tired from a long day, it’s so easy and tempting to use food as a motivator: “Stop whining and I will give you a cookie” or “No dessert tonight if you don’t clean up your toys.” But this is risky business, because then behavior becomes linked with food, and usually it’s a dessert or snack food. These associations of praise or punishment with food can follow a child through life and lead to disordered eating and thoughts related to those types of foods. Additionally, if food is held as a punishment or a reward, then food becomes about something other than the basic need of nourishment, which can lead to serious problems, including anxiety, low self-esteem, body image, and eating disorders.

2. All food is neutral

We live in a society that labels food groups as indulgences, fattening, and bad. Obviously, I could elaborate on this list. More important, however, is the message that food—all food—is neutral. It is the charge, labels, and beliefs that we pass on about food that endows it with such power. By calling some foods good and other foods bad, we teach children to be suspicious of food and, by extension, their cravings and appetite. If we teach that food is just food, that it is neutral, that it feeds our bodies and brains and gives us energy, we send a more positive message about food in general. As parents, we have the responsibility to model and teach about portions rather than demonize and/or forbid food groups.

3. Trust that the body knows

Our society also likes to have a say in when we should and shouldn’t be hungry. While children are young and not yet exposed to diet culture and headlines about curbing hunger, we have the privilege of encouraging connection with hunger and fullness cues. By encouraging children to check in with their bellies (ie, hunger and fullness), we teach them to respect their bodies’ needs. If we challenge the legitimacy of their hunger or fullness, we not only risk mucking with their bodies’ digestive system, but also teach them to question, doubt, or negate their own hunger and fullness. In the same way food is neutral, so is hunger and fullness. We serve our children best by not layering hunger and fullness with emotion or debate.

 4. Don’t comment on body parts or shape

Because of my eating disorder, my family and friends have the advantage of knowing to never comment on my body. That rule carries over to our girls’ bodies as well. And we teach our girls to not comment on others’ bodies. Most children begin with a carefree feeling about their bodies; they move without worry. They don’t see separate body parts or feel limited by the shape of their bodies. Instead, they live to the fullest in the moment. We serve our children best by praising them for all things big and small. If we build up their inner resilience, they are more likely to withstand the pressures they will face about their bodies as they grow up.

5. Don’t question each other’s preferences

We work very hard to not second guess our daughters when they express a desire or need. Whether it’s food, what they want to wear, the TV show they want to watch, or the color crayon they ask for, it is imperative to hear that request and not challenge it with questions like: Are you sure? What about this one? Don’t you want this instead? Do you want that or do you want X instead? When we question our children’s preferences, we send the message that we don’t trust their decisions or judgement. In turn, they may become less confident in their ability to connect with and articulate their needs. They may also become hypersensitive to pleasing the parent rather than fulfilling their own desires.

These rules have been extremely helpful in making sure me and my husband are on the same page when it comes to teaching and modeling positive food and body messages at home. For sure, raising children is a work in progress, and I imagine we will add a few more rules to this list, especially as we approach the teenage years! Negative body image and eating disorders are strongly linked, so this really matters to me.

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Jennifer Kreatsoulas, PhD, E-RYT 200, RYT 500, is a yoga teacher and yoga therapist specializing in eating disorders and body image. In recovery herself, Jennifer is extremely passionate about helping others reconnect with their bodies and be empowered in their lives. Jennifer works with clients in person and via Skype. She also teaches yoga at the Monte Nido Eating Disorder Center of Philadelphia and is a partner with the Yoga and Body Image Coalition. She leads trauma-sensitive yoga classes and teaches weekly flow yoga classes. Jennifer contributes regularly to eating disorder and body image blogs and the YogaLiving Magazine. Website

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

This article has been updated here