A Parent’s Guide to Supporting Healthy Body Image in your Household
Parents are the models of health and wellness in the family all while facing unique pressure to manage activities in their day including work, shuffling children from school to practices to home, maintaining relationships, and preparing meals. As a parent myself, I understand the unique pressure to balance the children’s needs with my own needs. Because food is such an integral part of survival, so much emphasis rests on our family’s daily meals and snacks. In all the chaos, we often hear messages about good and bad choices related to food and bodies.
“I hate when I’m so pressed for time that I have to hit the drive thru and feed my kids garbage for dinner.”
“I’ve been so busy this week that I’ve missed my workouts. I’m really starting to let myself go.”
The assumption becomes that we are either on the side of health or on the side of poor health, depending on the food choices we make for ourselves and our families. Add to that the rise in youth eating disorders in our culture and the mounting pressure not to contribute to this problem. What is a parent to do?
This article is written as a guide to supporting healthy body image in your household, for your kids, your partner, and yourself.
At a glance:
This article will cover:
How to talk about health in your family
How to talk about bodies in your family
How to talk about food in your family
I have also included parent food for thought throughout this post if you would like to apply this knowledge.
How to Talk about Health in your Home
Of course we want our family to be healthy. Health is the backbone of a good life- but what is health anyways? What words do we use to define it? What words do we not use? Most people would equate health with being thin or within a “normal” Body Mass Index (BMI). But I’ve also seen a member of my own family break down in tears after learning that her BMI indicates she is “obese”; the BMI is simply neither a helpful nor an accurate measure of help.
When we think about overall health, it turns out that food and exercise has been way blown out of proportion. This is because the diet industry is so profitable and has successfully sold the idea of manufacturing “better” (read: thinner) bodies. As parents, we can push back on the notion that healthy bodies equal thin bodies by learning about the Health at Every Size movement. Pioneered by Dr. Lindo Bacon, the HAES movement maintains that society must support all bodies regardless of size as worthy and deserving appropriate and inclusive medical care. Health has much more to do with access to adequate care, nutrition, and providers than it does with size or fat content.
To further illustrate this point, let’s consider perceived markers of health. I’ve created a small chart to distinguish between health markers we can see versus cannot see just by looking at someone.
Overt health markers
Size (although this doesn’t tell the whole story)
Skin tone (flush verses pale skin)
Tooth decay versus healthy teeth (possibly-also determined by genetics)
Covert health markers
Vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, temperature)
Proximity to hospitals, clinics, medical providers
Health insurance coverage or lack of coverage
Family history and genetic predisposition for disease
Access to movement opportunities (gyms, tracks, etc.)
Access to prenatal, postnatal care, and childcare
Historical, intergenerational, and present racial implications on health
Financial access to medication
Proximity to a pharmacy
Proximity to grocery stores that sell vegetables and fruits
Education
Access to birth control, menstrual supplies, sex education
There are far more covert or subtle signs of health than there are overt signs. When you see someone wearing a trendy athletic outfit and drinking kombucha, does that say more about their health or about their access to avenues toward health (i.e. gyms, health foods, high end fitness clothing, etc.)? Let’s also consider the woman who returns to work after giving birth and has no break time or designated space to pump breast milk, so she formula feeds her child. While I formula fed my kids and believe in the mantra “fed is best” conventional wisdom (and the American Academy of Pediatrics) does point to the health benefits of breast milk for the first year of a person’s life.
In short, size and food does little to paint an accurate picture of someone’s health. Perhaps we should define this term differently in our households.
Parent Food for Thought:
Ask your kids what they think makes someone healthy or unhealthy and listen to their responses. Do they initially refer to body size or food intake?
What biases do you hold about health? Is there room to change these perceptions?
How to Talk about Bodies in your Family
It’s common to put larger or fat bodies on a lower peg than thin bodies because we are conditioned by our society to think about size as a key indicator of worth. We tend to stereotype fat folks by assuming that they are lazy, incompetent, or have let themselves go. Larger folks frequently have to compensate by working harder, changing what clothes they wear, or settling for less opportunities because of fatphobia.
It’s not that people intend to be hateful, fatphobia is so ingrained in our culture that it seems like just common knowledge: fat=bad and thin=good. Most people treat fat people with plan hate while claiming to have their health or best interest in mind.
When we add a moral component to descriptions of bodies we send the message to our kids that larger people are less worthy than smaller people. When bodies are descried as good and bad, of course the people occupying those bodies experience judgment as well.
As a therapist I spend hours and hours unpacking my clients’ childhood memories of experiencing bullying. Adults hold years and years of body shame that often originates from the way kids treated them at school.
Parents have a wonderful opportunity to offset the messages kids will receive from their peers. Here are some tips for modeling healthy body talk:
1) Try not to add a moral component to bodies, but rather describe all bodies as neutral.
Describe bodies with the same neutrality that we do hair color, eye color, and height. We do not describe brown eyes as “better” than green eyes. Similarly, all body sizes can be neutral.
“My stomach feels squishy when I touch it. How fun!”
“I am larger than her and that’s fine!”
2) Our children will develop their own relationships with their bodies by mimicking our relationships with our bodies.
What if you openly talked about the aspects you appreciate about your body?
“I am so grateful that my tummy housed my precious babies. Look at these stretch marks that prove it!”
“I love that my legs carried me through this amusement park all day. I am exhausted but I had a great time riding those rides”
“I look great today!”
3) Respectfully correct fatphobic language when you hear it
“It’s not nice to make fun of someone’s size.”
Parent food for thought:
How do you talk about/describe your own body? Does your language indicate you are content with your size or do you frequently discuss weight loss?
Have you ever noticed bodies being moralized? When?
How to Talk about Food in your Family
In addition to moralizing bodies as good or bad, we also have a societal tendency to moralize food. How many times have you heard someone say something like,
“Oh I was so bad last night. I ate a whole plate of nachos” or “I ate terribly for lunch. The staff luncheon served pizza and I just couldn’t help myself.”
While it’s certainly true that vegetables contain more nutrients than Cheetos, we can send a harmful message when we put foods into good and bad categories. There is nothing morally better about a vegetable than a Cheeto. Both are just foods. Our bodies know what to do with both foods and process them both as energy.
Humans have morals, foods do not. There is simply no need to create fear about foods because doing so puts foods on a higher level in our lives than they need to. I like to tell my clients,
“food is neither your best friend nor your worst enemy. It isn’t the reason for your problems but it also can’t be your therapist, husband, or wife. It’s just food.”
Here are some tips for talking about food in your family:
1) Emphasize that our bodies like a variety of foods. Parents can model loving vegetables and loving dessert.
2) Help your kids recognize and honor hunger, cravings, and fullness cues and model that body awareness.
“I am too full to eat dessert.”
“I would prefer something sweet like strawberries rather than something savory like pretzels.”
“That cake is too rich for me!”
3) Approach food and hunger with curiosity
“I’m craving something hot instead of something cold. I think I want some ravioli.”
Parent food for thought:
How do you talk about foods when you grocery shop or prepare a meal? What about when you make your kid’s lunches?
What types of foods do your kids gravitate toward?
Are there foods that are “off limits” due to nutritional value? How do you determine what your kids eat?
In conclusion
Parents can be fantastic models for healthy body image, but it starts with healing our own relationships with bodies and food. We cannot support positivity around food if we moralize foods as good or bad or disparage folks in larger bodies. I recommend learning more about Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating to take you farther along this journey.
I am an eating disorder and trauma counselor in Winston Salem, NC and would be happy to schedule an appointment with you, answer any questions, or help you find the right treatment option. Contact me at taylor@nourishedandknowncounseling.com.