Ep. 27 | Ending Body Shame: Raising Kids Who Respect Their Bodies

I knew, from the moment I got pregnant I didn’t want my kid to have the same body image issues I’d spent a lifetime experiencing. To be honest, when I got pregnant and even in the first few years of parenting, I believed that I didn’t want them to have the same perceived “weight issues” as me, but the truth is I wanted them to be thin.

That felt like the only solution at the time, because it was the only one I’d ever been taught. Once he started school, and as I left the health and fitness industry behind me, I started to get curious:

* Was I really focused on health, or thinness?

* Were my actions helping them have a positive relationship with their body, or teaching them to control their body through diet and exercise?

* Was I teaching them binary rules around food? e.g that some foods are good or bad? And how do I make that determination?

The answer, unfortunately was a resounding YES. Despite everything I experienced at the hand of diet culture, I found myself repeating the same behaviours.

It was during the pandemic that my relationship to diet culture really shifted, I started learning more about intuitive eating, fat liberation and after being body shamed - under the guise of “health” in early 2022 - I decided I was done dieting and pursuing intentional weight loss.

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Unlearning my internalised fatphobia, ditching diets, and healing my body image is one of the best things I did for myself AND my kid. I don’t claim to be an expert, I’m doing my best and figuring it out as I go, but as I share in this episode a number of friends have asked me how I’m building this body positive relationship with my kid and it’s been a topic of conversation on my socials too.

So I thought we should take a deep dive and talk about ways we can encourage body respect in young people, and how to end the inheritance of body shame.

Topics discussed in episode 27:

* The negative impact of restrictive food behaviors in children

* Why I don’t believe it’s my responsibility to prevent fatness in my child

* How I supported my child after he was body shamed

* Language and tools that encourage him to respect his and other people bodies

* The negative impact of diet talk and diet culture in the household

* Questions I ask myself when navigating body image related questions or experiences with my kid

Chapters:

00:00 Exploring Parental Responsibility in Body Image

02:44 The Impact of Fat Shaming on Children

03:38 Creating a Trusting Parent-Child Relationship

06:01 Breaking the Cycle of Diet Culture

09:53 Reflecting on Childhood Body Image

14:44 Navigating Parenting with Body Image Issues

20:42 Raising A Body Confident Kid & Teaching Body Respect

25:52 Parental Responsibility in a Fatphobic World

30:42 Questions for Weight Neutral Parenting

🗓️ Next week:

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