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Fostering A Positive Body Image
Stacey Nye, PhD, FAED
Body image is a state of mind, our mental picture of how we look from the outside, along with
our thoughts and feelings about that mental picture. It includes visual (what you see in the mirror), mental (what you think and feel about what you see), and kinesthetic (how you move through space). It
can be positive, negative, and / or distorted.
It is not static, and it responds to changing feedback from the environment. By age 13, 53% of American girls are unhappy with their bodies, and by 17, 78% are dissatisfied. Many factors contribute to the development of our body image.
Causes
Families and peers teach us about our bodies by direct feedback and modeling
their own body image issues.
Culture, society and the mass media teach us by bombarding our senses with the message that thin is beautiful, conformity is desirable, and nonconformity is a result of laziness or aberrant behavior.
The selling of the “perfect body” to our children promotes unrealistic
expectations about the ability to attain a thin ideal. Our children are taught that they can achieve this body size if they just buy or do the right thing. They are taught that there is something wrong
with them if they don’t look like the ideal, and the only way to be happy is to achieve this look, at any cost. Since only 1% of the population actually looks like this ideal, low self worth (especially in
girls who are socialized to overly-rely on their appearance for identity and self esteem, rather than personality and achievement) ensues.
If a negative or distorted body image develops, this can lead to eating disorders.
How do we help our kids develop a positive body image?
Positive body image is a combination of liking what we see in the mirror,
appreciating and respecting our bodies for what they can do beyond what they look like, and having other things in our life that we feel good about, such as personality, talents, or spirituality.
Families can help kids develop a positive body image by acting as a filter:
filtering out negative influences and reinforcing positive ones.
- Be a good role model of body love and self acceptance.
Promote respect and tolerance of diversity. When we model respect for and acceptance of ourselves and others, regardless of body size or other physical attributes, we send a powerful message to our children that helps build their self esteem.
- Educate your kids and yourself about the genetics of weight.
Weight is the result of heredity and environment. For example, obesity tends to run in families. A child with no obese parent has only 3-7% risk of becoming obese. The risk increases to 40% if one parent is obese, and 80% if both parents are obese. Accept your body's genetic predisposition.
- Get you and your family off the diet rollercoaster and adopt an intuitive eating
lifestyle. Never diet. If you limit the amount and quality of food needed to satiate hunger in hopes of losing weight, it will backfire, triggering preoccupations with food and ultimately compulsive
eating in response. You may lose weight in the short run, but 95% of weight that is lost through dieting is regained.
- Establish family meals, and try to eat at regular times, usually
3 meals and 1-3 snacks per day. Respond to internal cues of hunger and fullness. This kind of normal eating enhances our feelings of well being and promotes clear thinking, mood stability, normal
growth in children and stable weight for adults. Children naturally self regulate, unless something (or someone) comes along to disrupt this process.
- Have healthy food choices readily available.
By mildly encouraging children to choose foods from all five food groups we can ensure that they are getting a balance of the many nutrients needed for health, energy and a strong immune system. Model moderate eating, avoiding the disruption of extremes by overeating or under eating, overindulging in high-fat, high sugary foods or eliminating these foods altogether.
- Make physical activity the norm, and be physically active for health and fun, not as a method
of weight loss.
Live actively for better health, and because it makes you feel good. Help your children to take pleasure in being active in their own way, as a normal part of every day life. Share the benefits of having active fun together as a family.
- Educate your children on how to evaluate advertising and the media. Become media savvy.
Advertisers spend tons of money on strategies specifically designed to make you feel that there is something with you. This promotes a society that ostracizes and stigmatizes people who deviate too greatly from the perceived ideal.
- Help your kids develop an identity that goes beyond their appearance by teaching them that we
are more than what we look like. Celebrate and enjoy each child's special characteristics and talents, beyond their appearance.
- Develop an approach to wellness that reflects the whole person, mind, body and spirit.
These dimensions interact and complement each other, contributing to a richness of life that cannot be achieved by focusing on just appearance (or any ONE of them).
As a family you may not be able to filter out all hazardous messages. But
as long as parents work towards building a foundation for lifelong health, they can help their children develop a strong identity and maintain positive body esteem.
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