Creating a “safe zone” from diet culture at home
Would you rather…
Your children grow up honoring their bodies’ needs, appreciating and showing their bodies respect, and finding joy in food OR have your children focus on ensuring their bodies conform to society’s standards of beauty regardless of how that impacts their relationship with food and self-esteem?
I’m hoping that’s an easy answer. I’m also curious – what was your experience growing up? Did you grow up with strong influences of diet culture, either at home or around you? Imagine the path your relationship with food and your body may have taken if you had a safe place to turn to when that pull of diet culture came calling.
You can be that safe place – the “safe zone”– where your family can build resilience to diet culture, ask questions, and observe what a positive relationship with food and body image looks like. How empowering would that feel for you and your kiddos?
Let’s look at 7 ways to create a “safe zone” at home:
1. First and foremost, be the role model for your family. Especially with younger kiddos, you are their biggest influence, and they lean on your words and actions. If you have older kiddos or adolescents, it’s absolutely okay to share with them that you are working on creating a “safe zone” at home. Be open about the process and invite them to share their questions and experience of food and body image. See my previous blog about nurturing a positive relationship with food at home to help you get started.
2. Honor diversity in body types and size at home and outside of the house. Being “healthy” does not fit into one ideal body type or size. We cannot determine someone’s health – nor is it any of our business – by their outward appearance. Don’t compliment weight loss or criticize weight gain, especially if you don’t know that person’s full story. Those comments may be inadvertently fueling an eating disorder, minimizing a health condition, or ignoring circumstances in that individual’s season of life that may be playing a role in their weight. I know the idea of not complimenting weight loss can sound odd – what if the person that lost weight is proud? Shouldn’t you be celebrating with them? Again, know the full story. If you know that someone lost weight AND has been working on their relationship with food and body image – maybe you celebrate a newfound freedom from dieting and commitment to focusing on their body’s needs. There’s so much more to celebrate than just the number on the scale!
3. Normalize body changes. Our bodies are not meant to stay the same size or shape throughout our lives. That may seem obvious, but those changes can feel really uncomfortable to navigate – for anyone of any age. Talk about these changes with your kiddos, especially during puberty. It’s normal for girls’ appetites to increase and to gain weight as preparation for puberty, which is usually accompanied by a growth spurt. But too often, this is the age where young girls start “dieting” or well-meaning parents get concerned about weight increases. I’m curious, would you have wanted someone to normalize those body changes for you during that period of your life? How would that have changed your own body image?
4. Find trusted food and nutrition resources to help you identify diet culture claims and debunk myths when you don’t know the answers.
The number of resources and articles on nutrition and dieting feels endless, so finding credible resources that you can turn to when you or anyone in your family has a question can be invaluable in creating a “safe zone” around food and body image. Look for resources (dietitians, physicians, mental health practitioners) that are going to provide evidence-based, scientific, and judgment-free information. No fearmongering allowed!
5. Use positive and neutral language when speaking about food and bodies. I might say that in every post, but it’s so important and so easy to default to diet culture language. We may not catch every little comment or phrase but make the intention to do the best you can! Challenge and call out comments that don’t fit a positive message, like when you hear, “oh that’s just junk food. It’s just empty calories.” Actually, a calorie is a unit of energy, so if a food has calories, it’s providing energy. That’s not empty, nor is that junk - our bodies need energy! It’s okay to have conversations later if you think your kiddos overheard but it wouldn’t be appropriate to say something in the moment.
6. Move to honor your body and feel good, not earn food or burn calories. Exercise and movement almost always get wrapped up in our relationships with food and our bodies. And our kiddos are observing the ways that we interact with movement and exercise as well. Find ways to move your body that YOU enjoy, not because you “should” hop on the treadmill or go to the gym. There are so many other avenues of moving your body if those don’t suit you. When speaking about exercise to your kiddos, talk about how your body feels, what it does for you mentally, or just keep it simple and say it’s because you have FUN doing it (whatever that may be)!
7. Avoid pressuring kiddos at the table. Whether that looks like “encouraging” them to eat more, politely “suggesting” they take more veggies instead of bread when they’re still hungry or requiring that they take just one bite of a new food, these are all forms of pressure. And I totally get that these forms of pressure come from well-meaning places – we want our kiddos to get enough to eat, like a variety of foods, and get all the nutrients. I will have more to come on this in future posts, but we ultimately want to trust our kiddos to trust their bodies, and they’re going to have a hard time doing that if outside pressure starts influencing their natural ability to listen to what their bodies are saying.
{How your kids can create “safe zones” outside of the home}
Look for accounts that promote body positivity and an “all foods fit” philosophy with food. It’s okay to unfollow accounts that don’t fit in your “safe zone.”
Surround yourself with friends that share your same views on food, body image and movement.
Use your voice! Call out negative food and body image talk. It takes courage, but you’ll change the narrative.
