Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting in Europe? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME.
Hi Andrea,
Our 10 year-old daughter has recently started talking about diets. We maintain positive body image in our house, neither of us have ever ‘dieted’. It doesn't appear that she has body image issues, but rather, uses the word ‘diet’ as a way to say she has eaten too much and is full and ‘needs to go on a diet’ so she doesn’t feel so full later. How should we navigate this touchy area so we don’t cause food/body issues going into her tween/teens? Thanks!
- On Top of it Mom
Dear On Top of it Mom,
Another great Ask Andrea topic! Thank you. Based on your description, it sounds like you are wondering whether your daughter has picked up the term ‘diet’ somewhere and is incorrectly using this word to describe a sense of fullness after eating. Another possibility is that you are wondering whether she is making the leap from her experience of fullness to the spectre of “fatness”. What I think you are alarmed about is the naturalness with which that F word has already become learned by your little one outside your home. If the latter has merit, you are worried about our societal fat phobia impacting your impressionable child. This has prompted you to wonder how you will broach the topic of body image, weight and shape with your beloved 10-year-old.
I will get straight to the point on this. I think you are realizing there is an onslaught coming for your daughter. You are bracing yourself for the realities of your family’s need to push up against hardened beliefs about weight and misinformation about dieting that have become cultural norms. Given that these cultural norms are unhealthy and unsafe, there is a need for each and every one of us to fight to address them. We can all band together as a society, young and old and of all genders, to make a dent in changing the lives of children around us. So let’s get started. We can do this!
As humans young and old, we have to contend with so many messages about the acceptability of our bodies and your question is a reminder to us all how young we can get indoctrinated by unhealthy cultural messaging. Parents of all children, regardless of how they identify their gender, have to have frequent and open conversations about the cultural pressures faced by girls and women especially to be and look in prescribed ways. The messaging never takes into account the true facts of biology. Firstly, I’ll make a few suggestions for parents with young children. Then, I’ll make some suggestions for all of us.
Parents of young children, commit as a couple to stop talking about your appearance or your need to lose weight with each other and in the household. Your kids pick up your neuroses very quickly and will imitate you. If you are finding it too hard to come to terms with your weight and shape issues, at the very least, keep a lid on them. Do what On Top of it Mom does and enjoy what you have, which also means enjoying food and an active lifestyle and rejoicing in what the body can do. Unless it is for a current or developing illness (e.g. eating to manage diabetes), now is the time to stop your own weight preoccupation and model body pride and satisfaction in all the wonderful things we can do like walk, ride, dance, and jump. If you are unconvinced that your children are little learning machines, picking up everything from you and elsewhere as observer-learners, look into the work of American Psychologist Albert Bandura who is responsible for what we call Social Learning Theory (and for added impact, look up the original video for his Bobo Doll experiment!).
Ask your daughter “What does “diet” mean”? It will then be important for you to be prepared to give her a biology lesson. Yes, biology and here is the rationale. Most people understand that to diet means to lose weight. If the basics of biology, exercise, and nutrition are outside of your area of expertise, fear not, the upcoming links will be of help. It’s important for parents to teach their children- of all genders and together in the same room at the same time- about the changes that the body will make, starting at about age eight or nine. Around this age, children’s bodies start to change in subtle ways. At this point, it’s not completely overt, like what happens with the changes related to puberty. In puberty, more significant changes start to happen. For example, girls will start to develop more body fat and will become less coordinated. The reason that girls become temporarily less coordinated is that their shoulders are widening in connection to their hips doing so. These body changes are precipitated by increases in estrogen. Girls then need to re-learn how to run, throw and jump. At this time boys will become more aggressive, stronger and leaner. Boys will get faster. Lastly, girls get their periods throughout this process. This time is a critical point at which girls can drop out of sport or can develop eating fears and self-image problems. We need to attribute these temporary changes to hormone surges and to start to have these discussions much earlier with our children. We need to help children anticipate these changes and stay ahead and be the first ones to teach our kids about bodily changes and the biology behind them. The earlier we explain the reasons that these temporary body changes are occurring, the more we can protect our kids against misinformation and myths about weight and shape. It’s important to explain to children that this is a temporary blip in time (knowing that things will change gives us a greater sense of control).
Diets are unicorns. A paradigm shift needs to occur in the myths we buy into about dieting. There is an over-focus on fatness and there is misinformation, even in the medical community, about the dangers of fatness. The prevailing research is moving in the direction of not weight loss or fat loss but, what is termed “body composition” and the importance of lean muscle mass in overall wellbeing. You’ve heard of the phrase “A pound of flesh”? After checking the podcast link below, you will be better able to be prepared to have good talks with your kids about what true health is and discover why we would all likely take a pound of muscle over a pound of flesh. Muscle matters! It’s important to point out to our kids that it’s about being strong and that we need to eat to be strong. The proper application of exercise and nutrition focuses on body composition, not getting smaller through dieting. It’s important to preserve lean muscle. This is a more positive way of looking at the body, which children can do little about- they can’t take biology on in that sense. They have to roll with the temporary changes and we need to inform them with accurate information. Listen to exercise physiologist, Dr Stacy Sims explain the problems with diets, body composition and the importance of strength over weight loss here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GElibLunFAM.
When your child says they want to go on a diet, ask them “What would that do to improve society”? Then just listen and be patient and gently point out if misinformation has set in.
And finally, everyone, let’s please stop commenting on people’s appearances! Keep it to yourself that you think others look good or don’t. Yes, that’s right. Stop saying “You look good” or “You have lost weight” to co-workers, acquaintances and friends. These comments are cultural and learned and linked to our preoccupation with appearance. We are so used to commenting on people’s weight loss but we would all do well to stop this to curb our preoccupation. We comment on our weight far too much and complain to others that we need to lose weight far too often. The other day I caught myself saying to my 13-year-old niece “Oh, you look so beautiful” and then cringed as I realized I was not being mindful of the fact that this contributes to self-consciousness, and that I am celebrating her for something she doesn’t have a lot of control over as a teen. Our bodies rarely remain the same but noting an aspect of our appearance tends to indicate that it should always be that way. We haven’t seemed to catch on to the undeniable fact that our bodies are ever-changing. To label our appearance as good or bad which we do when we are making an appearance remark, implies consistency over time, whereas the reality of our bodies is that things are very up and down. Our bodies don’t stay the same because they are living organisms. Puberty, pregnancy, parenting during the exhausting toddler years, stopping playing football, chronic illness and disability, working at a desk job, and retirement are all times when our bodies change. For more information about weight stigma, listen to Dr Jeffrey Hunger (I know, what are the chances of that name for a weight stigma researcher!) in conversation with Dietician Rebecca Scritchfield https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQWSXhoBuk&t=11s.
Finally, thanks On Top of it Mom for another great question to the column. Let’s support each other and our unique community by committing to refrain from making appearance comments. Oh yes, we can!
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work is a Registered Social Worker and Registered Psychotherapist (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program.