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Building a positive relationship with food and your body
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Parents and Carers – Body Image and Healthy Eating
Session 7
Breaking free from diet culture
Track your progress
What does 'normal'
eating look
like?
Includes
social foods.
Includes having
varied food
groups.
Variable in the
amount and type.
Usually comprises of
3 main meals
and 2-3 snacks, however,
this can vary based
on many factors
e.g. how active
you are, your appetite,
the environment
etc.
Flexible.
Listening to hunger
and fullness queues.
Eating regularly is
the best way to
manage appetite.
Enjoying your food.
Sometimes
eating
fast food or
takeaways.
Using some
restraint in your
food selection
to get the right
balance
of foods.
Normal eating or disordered eating?
Drag and drop the sentences into the correct bubble below...
Disordered eating
This is correct
Normal eating
Incorrect! Try again
Do you think the statements below are normal eating or disordered eating?
Drag the sentences into the correct bubble
Sometimes overeating and sometimes undereating
Avoiding whole food groups due to food rules (all carbs are 'bad')
Food and weight occupying most of your waking thoughts
Allowing food to have moral value (eating a specific food makes you a bad person)
Measuring and weighing food
Choosing desired foods without guilt
Eating regular balanced meals and snacks of normal portion (e.g. 3 larger meals and small snack or multiple smaller snacks)
Meeting nutritional needs through varied diet
Ignoring your bodies hunger signals
Being able to maintain a healthy body through regular and relaxed intake
Answers
What affects your young person's ability
to eat 'normally'?
Take a moment to list some ideas:
What they read on social
media, magazines and the
internet.
Their eating habits
observed or learnt
from childhood.
Pressures from
peers and society
to look a certain
way.
Their knowledge of food and
what normal eating
behaviours are.
The diet culture
we live in.
Diet culture
A system that values weight, shape and size over health and wellbeing!
What does diet culture mean to you?
Labelling
foods
Ignoring body
cues
Associating
worth with
how you look
Equating thinness
with health
Associating
worth with what
you eat
Food rules
Food anxiety
Avoiding foods
too high in fats,
carbs or calories
Food label gives
you permission
to eat
Eliminating food
groups
Food guilt
Examples of
diet culture!
Avoiding
situations
because of food
Feeling or need
to justify eating
Exercise for
punishment
Diet talk
Complimenting
weight loss
Scale dictates
happiness or
worth
Believing you must
take supplements
for health
Why diets don’t work
Diets are usually short term interventions focused on rigid, strict and restricting food plans with the aim of losing weight.
Physiological and psychological effects:
- Diets are often overly prescriptive in the deficit of intake that leads to semi-starving of the body and physical body feeling deprived. Physiologically and psychologically, the body starts to increase it’s signalling to get what it needs…food.
- Young people may feel like they are constantly thinking about food, preoccupied by making food choices or have a building sense of craving food.
- This deprivation of brain and body can lead to overconsumption of food intake and poor food choices, which can undo the aims of the initial diet.
- Following overconsumption, young people may then feel guilty about eating too much and feel a need to restrict further to make up for the overeating. This can lead to a vicious cycle.
Creation of food rules:
- Diets usually promote labelling foods into categories of 'good foods' and 'bad foods'.
- Psychologically, this can lead to over restriction of the 'bad foods' and significant guilt if a young person gives in and eats a 'bad food'. Eating a bad food or banned food, can make a young person feel like they have failed in their diet.
- This can trigger thoughts that they might as well eat as much as they can since they failed anyway, with view of then going back to denying themselves the food in the future.
It's my cheat day!
This is so bad for you.
I start my new diet tomorrow.
What influences diet culture?
Advertising!
The UK diet industry is worth $2 billion a year
Competition and comparison
Social
media
Things to bear in mind...
Anyone can call themselves a "nutritionist".
It is not a legally protected title – an Instagram “nutritionist guru" may have no qualification.
Research reveals social media influencers give bad diet and fitness advice.
Breaking food rules
His
Stop comparing your food choices to someone else’s.
Hers
It’s okay if you eat more than someone else, man or woman!
Does your young person have any rules around how they eat or the foods they eat?
Do they have any deliberately avoided foods?
Make some notes below...
Most days
Eats a mix of both.
Also no food rules
Having grapes for dessert because it’s what you want.
Some days
Eats mostly processed foods.
Other days
Eats mostly 'whole' foods.
Most days
Eats a mix of both.
Mental
Not physically hungry but have a craving for some chocolate.
Hunger
Totally okay, eat mindfully to identify satisfaction and enjoy without guilt!
Using your list of rules and avoided foods, cut these up into individual pieces of paper and fold to place in a jar.
Choose one or more out of the jar to challenge each week.
You can challenge that rule as frequently as daily or as little as once in the week.
Challenging food rules
and avoided foods
Task: Together with your young person consider how you could challenge some of their food rules.
Consider where this rule came from:
Is it based on evidence and a credible source?
Is it relevant to your age group?
Is it relevant to your gender?
Is it designed for a healthy population of for medical purposes?
Consider the impact of the rules or avoided foods
to other parts of your life:
Does this rule or avoided food stop you being able to do social activities?
Does it stop you attending social events?
Does it impact your mood negatively?
Does it negatively impact your physical health? Such as, fatigue, illness,
dizziness, weight, energy levels etc.
Note: It will likely take more than one attempt, so consider placing them back in the jar for another attempt.
The harm of diet culture
Harmful to health
Normalises disordered eating
Dominates your thoughts
Promotes eating disorders
Steals joy from life
Waste of time
Waste of money
Increases guilt and shame
Makes digestion worse
Increases risk of physically ill health
Hurts relationships
Exercise becomes punishment
What are your take home messages about diet culture?
A healthy relationship to food is not based on a restrictive diet.
You are awesome as you are!
Don't go on a diet.
Superfoods don’t exist.
All food is neutral.
Challenging diet culture
Have a think about how you can challenge diet culture personally and how you could support your young person to be more aware of the diet culture they live in?
Can you think of a good magazine or news headline to challenge diet culture?
Diet culture influence
Diets are usually short term interventions focused on rigid, strict and restricting food plans with the aim
of losing weight.
In the body image sessions, one task was to complete two self-worth pie charts. One chart focused on aspects currently highlighted as influencing your young persons self-worth, and the second pie chart focused on how they would like their future self-worth pie chart to look (based on their goals, values, beliefs and desires).
Task: To complete with your young person
In a blank pie chart, draw out how much priority what they eat and how they look has on their life?
Are there other aspects of their life that have been neglected due to their focus on diet and image?
How would they like their pie chart to look in regard to what they would like to hold important?
Some ideas...
Build awareness
Begin to notice the messages around you that are from diet culture. This includes conversations about weight, body shape and dieting.
Know the facts
Recognise the unhelpfulness of diet culture. Know that skinny doesn’t always equal healthy. Remember why fats and sugars are ok, and even needed, in our diets.
Walk away from diet culture
When you see it say "no not today" to diet culture.
It’s ok to leave these conversations – or even call them out! Talk about something else.
Do something else – engage in hobbies, voluntary work or learning something new.
Surround yourself with anti-diet culture messages
Listen to podcasts and follow social media around intuitive eating and body kindness.
Find friends that have similar beliefs to you.
Empower others to break free of diet culture.
Create a diet culture free zone
Clean up your social media feeds.
Avoid diet products – food and drinks, supplements, books and magazines.
Encourage your young person to choose what they genuinely want. Encourage them to think about how hungry they are. Encourage them to remember some of the mindful eating and intuitive eating ideas.
Steer them away from ordering based on any food rules they have or diet culture influences.
Task
Ordering off a menu
What would you like to order today?
The pad Thai because
they like the cuisine and
peanut taste.
Task
Ask your young person: What did you order and why?
Examples from other young people:
The quesadilla
because they love
cheese.
The souvlaki because it
reminded them of a
holiday in Greece.
Reflections
Well Done!
- Completed
You have
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My Notes
Supporting Videos
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