Love You More Podcast
Love You More Podcast
Ep 66: Parenting Beyond Diet Culture with Oona Hanson
July 22, 2025
Love You More
Ep 66: Parenting Beyond Diet Culture with Oona Hanson
Episode summary:
Grab your coffee and settle in for a heartfelt conversation with writer, educator, and parent coach Oona Hanson to explore how diet culture affects families, especially boys, in today’s appearance-focused world. Oona shares personal and professional insights, including her own child’s experience with an eating disorder, and reflects on the often-overlooked body image pressures boys face around fitness, leanness, and muscularity.
Oona offers compassionate, practical advice for parents raising sons who may be internalizing harmful cultural messages. From gym culture to restrictive “healthy” eating, she helps parents spot red flags and respond in ways that support their child’s well-being. She encourages families to build resilience and stay connected in the face of challenges.
More about Oona:
Oona Hanson is a nationally recognized writer, educator, and parent coach who supports families navigating diet culture and eating disorders. With master’s degrees in Educational Psychology and English from California State University Northridge and Middlebury College, and an undergraduate degree from Princeton, she brings a rich academic background to her work.
Oona has worked as a Family Mentor at Equip Health, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to treat children with eating disorders, and she founded Common Sense Camp to help parents teach essential life skills to kids. She has been featured on CNN, People, USA Today, and The Washington Post, and she has presented at major professional conferences and published in academic journals.
Favorite Quotes:
“We’re so steeped in diet culture that we don’t even recognize it. It’s like the air we breathe or the water we swim in. And that makes it harder to spot when something is going wrong.” - Oona
“Your body isn’t the problem. The culture is the problem. And not everyone knows that bodies come in all sizes.” - Oona
“It’s tempting to rush in and fix it, but we actually need to sit with our kids in their discomfort. That’s how they know they’re safe with us.” - Oona
“We are influencers too. If we want our kids to feel good about their bodies, we have to work on feeling good about ours.” - Oona
“Being anti-diet is not anti-health. We can support our kids’ well-being without sending them down a restrictive path.” - Oona
Resources:
Oona’s Website
Oona's Instagram
Oona’s Substack- Parenting Without Diet Culture
Zoe Bisbing's Website- Body Positive Home
Zoe Bisbings's Substack
Freedom App
Ellyn Satter Institute
Substack
Jennifer's Instagram
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Instagram
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Website
you
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Love You More podcast. I am your host, Jennifer McDaniel, and today I have a guest that I'm so honored to have. I have been admiring Una's work from afar for quite some time, and it's really a pleasure to be able to hear her speak out loud. I've just been reading her words, so to be able to hear her speak and hear her voice articulate her thoughts is really a pleasure, and it's such an honor. So let me read her bio to you. Una is a nationally recognized writer, educator, and parent coach who supports families navigating diet culture and eating disorders. In addition to her private practice as a parent coach, Una has worked as a family member at EquipHelp, where she was part of multidisciplinary care teams treating children with eating disorders. Una has presented at the International Association of Eating Disorders Professional Symposium and the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, and she has been published in Focus, the Journal of Lifelong Learning and Psychiatry, UNA holds a master's degree in educational psychology from California State University Northridge and a master's degree in English from Middlebury College. Her undergraduate degree in English in English is from Princeton University. Passionate about helping kids build confidence and self-efficacy, Una developed Common Sense Camp in 2020, a program to help parents teach their kids essential life skills during lockdown summer and beyond. A regular contributor to CNN, Una and her work have been featured widely, including in People, US Today, US News Report, Today, PopSugar, Grown and Flown, Your Teen, and The Washington Post. She is a frequent podcast guest and has appeared on television programs including Good Morning America and Good Day LA. She and her family reside in Los Angeles. Welcome, Una.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it is wonderful to have you. And I'll start with my question that I ask all of our guests, which is about self-care and what self-care looks like in your life.
SPEAKER_03:Well, lately it has looked like using the Freedom app, which is a distraction blocker that I use to focus either on my writing or to keep me from, you know, doom scrolling, which is very easy to do these days. And so I'm sort of fighting fire with fire where like I bought an app to help me keep off certain apps. So that's really been a good self-care tool for me, like realizing that trying to white knuckle it with willpower, like I'm no match for like a meta algorithm, you know, so yeah, the Freedom app has really lived up to its name. So I'm loving that. And sleep is my other big one. I keep pretty regular bedtime, even if I can't sleep that well, I keep that schedule as much as I can. And that's, that's really my, that's like the foundation of my self care for whatever else I do the next day. If I haven't slept, you know, things tend to go sideways. So those two things are top of mind for me today.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Tell me about the Freedom app. I don't how does that how does it work?
SPEAKER_03:So it's not, even though it's called freedom, it's not free. But essentially, what's cool about it is you can... sync a bunch of devices. So I use it for both my laptop computer and my cell phone. And you can designate certain websites that are blocked, you can even block your email, you can customize it to whatever you want it to block. And you can set a session time, let's say you need to write in a focused way for an hour, you can just set it for an hour. You can also pre schedule it. So that's a nice feature for someone who's trying to get into a routine or break an old routine, where you might say, that you can't access those apps for the first couple hours in the morning, right? If that tends to suck the time and joy out of your morning, you can preset it so that you just can't even go on those apps. Now, if something were to come up where you truly had to access something you had blocked, there is a way to edit your session, that's what it's called. But they create enough friction in that process that it's not something you're gonna quickly go, oh, I really need to check the birthday messages on Facebook. I'm gonna quickly go on. It keeps you from doing that. Yeah, and they give you a free trial. So it's something people can try out. And there are other apps that do similar things, but this one really worked for me. So I've been using it for about a year.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, wow. And have you found that... like when you're not intentionally using it that you're actually seeing your patterns change outside of the use of the app
SPEAKER_03:yeah i remember there was a time pretty early on using the app where i thought i had set the app to start blocking everything and so i wasn't even I physically could have gone and gone on all these distracting websites and apps. But in my mind, it's like, oh, those aren't available. And I was kind of in a flow of writing. And it was a fun discovery to realize it was actually helping me change my patterns. And then there were times where I realized, oh, wow, I'm due for some freedom app time. I I use it even just for personal, like if I know, you know, one of my kids is going to be home at a certain time, you know, just trying to kind of create that support that I need. Because again, trying to use raw willpower, it's really hard. Like these things are designed to keep us on them. So it's a good tool for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for introducing that. It's a totally new tool. And it is kind of wild that we have to use these sorts of things these days to be able to manage that. But it makes sense because all the books that we read and all the strategies we try, they last for not so long. And then we go back to our old habits. So this sounds like a great thing to check into. So thanks for introducing it to us. I want to talk a little bit about your lens and how it has evolved with some time. So you are an expert in eating to disorders and diet culture. And just sort of curious, like how, how that became your area of interest?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, I think, you know, I didn't know I've been living in diet culture this whole time, right? So for 50 years, I've been living in diet culture. But I didn't have that term until probably like 10 years ago, I would say is when I first heard that phrase. And it it just kind of made everything clear in a way, like things that I took for granted as just innate or natural and starting to recognize the ways that there's a whole system in place and a very profitable set of industries that benefit from these systems and that we're all kind of swept up in this, even if we don't realize it. So people describe diet culture as the air we're breathing or... the water we're swimming in, and you often don't realize it. You take it for granted because for most of us, that's all we've ever known, to see bodies in a hierarchy, to put food in a hierarchy, to constantly compare ourselves, whether it's our level of fitness or our weight or our appearance, our hair, our skin. It gets so granular, especially for women, although men are really being targeted by these industries now as well. So it really was helpful for me to have that term. It's an imperfect term. It doesn't quite cover everything that's involved in this process of putting food and bodies into hierarchies, but it was really helpful to me. And I learned about it, you could say, the hard way. I had a child develop an eating disorder, and it was going on for almost a year before we realized that it could be an eating disorder. And it's largely because of diet culture. that we didn't realize that anything was wrong because the current sort of Trojan horse is the concept of healthy eating. And for growing adolescents, a narrow idea of healthy eating or what they're learning in school is healthy eating can really make a kid quite unhealthy. But If you don't know to see those red flags as a parent, I mean, it's now probably the most common thing I hear when parents come to me for help. They say, my son or my daughter, they were just trying to eat healthy, or they went on a healthy eating kick, or they went on a fitness kick over the summer. And they didn't see that some of these things were leading to disordered eating and eating disorder symptoms. So that was really my entry point into learning about diet culture. I mean, eating disorders are more complex than just diet culture.
SPEAKER_01:But
SPEAKER_03:diet culture, and obviously eating disorders were around, have been around before Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat. They're around before fashion models and all of that. But eating disorders... are more common because of diet culture. Diet culture fuels eating disorders, and diet culture makes them harder to spot and harder to treat. So that's why I do focus on both of these topics. And some parents come to me for help just around the diet culture piece, right? They see their child struggling with their body image, or they're starting to have questions about whether they're eating the so-called right way or not. And it may not be an eating disorder, but the parents who are aware of diet culture can see that this could take their kid down unhealthy path. So the good news is that that term diet culture, I think, has helped raise awareness for so many parents about the risks and kind of the vulnerabilities that their kids may have in a culture that's telling everyone to be as small or as muscular as possible.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. No, that's so beautifully said. And I'm curious about, so today we're going to talk with an emphasis on boys, but the question I'm going to ask you is for all, and it's It's for the conversations about body image. And it's such a vulnerable and fragile conversation the parents have with their kids. And I'm just curious, how do you guide parents in those conversations related to body image? If a child is either complaining about, you know, in my case with my oldest son who is often very shy about maybe his body size not being big enough or whether it's someone's child who's feeling their body is too big, can you just share how we as parents should engage in those conversations with our kiddos?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I want to start by sending a lot of compassion to parents because we often didn't have this role modeled for us when we were kids. So we probably haven't heard, like if we had body image struggles, We may not have even expressed them to our parents. And if we did, we might have heard things like, oh, honey, you're beautiful. Or, you know, that's, you know, that's so vain. Or the other one is, oh, everyone else is so worried about how they look. No one's even going to notice. There are a lot of these phrases that have kind of been floating around in the culture that our parents picked up from the culture and then we picked up from them. And so it makes sense if we know, I don't know if that's the right thing to say, but parents don't always know, well, what can I say? And I don't think there's one right or wrong, but I think there are some things that parents can think about. The first is that this is probably gonna be a punch to the gut if this is something that you struggled with and you were hoping to prevent in your own kids, right? You might think, but I've been doing all this work. I don't disparage my body. I put on the swimsuit and go to the pool in the summer with my kids. I... offer a variety of foods. I don't make fat jokes. A lot of us, I think, make a lot of choice, conscious choices to try to protect our kids' body image. And it's not usually enough because the culture is going to send them these messages that make them question themselves. So I think the first thing that parents can think about is just really listening and sitting with our kids. I think it's tempting to want to rush in and fix it. And by fixing it, I mean you might kind of diminish their concerns. You might give them a compliment. Or some parents, well-meaningly, might say, well, why don't you come to the gym with me? Or why don't we try to eat healthier, right? So there's a couple of ways that parents think they're helping or fixing the supposed problem that actually can undermine a child's body image and undermine their connection with us. So a child who's coming to you with these concerns that's already showing that you have a strong relationship with your child they feel safe coming to you and we want them to keep feeling safe coming to us so if we have a complete meltdown and or shut down the conversation or whatever whatever our maybe like natural reaction is that might send the message that we can't handle these hard conversations so if you've already done that you're like oh no i'm listening to this podcast and i think oh gosh i didn't handle that well it's okay and we can always go back and make repair, right? Whether it was last week or last year, you could always go back to your kid and say, you know, you came to me with that question about how you were feeling about going to that pool party or going to prom or how your bat mitzvah dress fit, or whatever the sort of incident or issue, like ballet class, the soccer team tryouts, whatever it was that kind of triggered this body concern, we can always go back and reference that and say, hey, I think I reacted in a way that probably wasn't very helpful. Do you want to talk about that more? I'm here to listen now. So you can always go back and make repair. Yes. So if you're thinking, okay, this hasn't happened yet, but I'm going to be ready, I think the biggest thing is to list and ask kids to tell you more. So that buys you a little time, right? You can be like, oh, like, what do you mean by that? Or what made you think of that? Or, you know, tell me more. I want to understand how you're feeling. So really leaning in rather than trying to shut down the discomfort, showing our kids like discomfort is tolerable for them and for us. And this is really hard, right? Like the concept of distress tolerance. This is really, really tough. And then I think, you know, for parents who want to protect their kid's body image long term and protect their relationship with food, we do not want to encourage restrictive eating, over-exercising, right? That if parents, even parents who think, oh, but my child is being bullied about their size, whether they're, you know, seen as too small or too big or whatever, we can encourage unintentionally end up siding with the bully, right? If we say, okay, well, let's change your body, because we're reinforcing the idea that the bully is right, that there's something wrong or problematic about our child's body. So I really want to caution parents against thinking, well, like, oh, I'll just have my kids like start working out more or give them whatever different kinds of food or again, like reinforcing the idea that our child's body is a problem. We unwittingly participate in this kind of body shaming that the bully or whatever, you know, whoever is giving our kids those messages. And again, it makes sense if you do this, because our culture has said, oh, if you don't like your body, well, then change your body. And with our kids, we really want to send the message that your body isn't the problem. The culture is the problem. And not everyone knows that Bodies come in all sizes. And I'm here to support you because this is hard if you feel like you don't fit in. We're going to keep talking about this. So you're not closing the door on the conversation either.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I really appreciate the part about the resilience around discomfort of these feelings. I think that that's such a huge piece of everything, honestly. I mean, it's Because we, you know, just what we were talking about with the Freedom app, it's, you know, if I'm feeling discomfort, I might check my email. If I'm feeling discomfort or, you know, maybe I tend to overthink and really get in my mind a lot when I'm feeling discomfort because I try to fix it with my thoughts. But, you know, people fix things with alcohol or... So there's so many things that is... that can come out of the beauty of helping ourselves and our children be able to tolerate the energies and the feelings that are going on inside. So I just really appreciate you saying that part. And that definitely starts with us to be able to sit with the discomfort of seeing our own kids struggling. So Just thank you. Thank you for bringing that part out. And I want to ask you some of the questions that I get from parents as a dietician. when we're kind of pushing back on the body is not the problem, the culture is the problem, but I might get a response like, but yeah, but his physician said that his A1C, you know, blood sugars are high. And I'm not saying that for your, just for the context of what A1C is for our audience, but you know, three month blood sugar control is high or the cholesterol has been rising or they've fallen off their growth curve. Like they're getting information from a medical physician that there is something going on physiologically with their child. body that needs to be fixed? And how do you address those comments?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, it's really tricky when because you can be as body positive, you know, the most body positive person in the world. And the minute a doctor says there's some medical issue with your child, you're like, well, I can't those I can't hold both of these at the same time. And I think, I think it's a false choice, in the sense that you know, being anti-diet or body positive or whatever phrase resonates with you, it's not anti-health, right? And that we can support our kids' health and well-being without reinforcing diet culture, right? And that, you know, we know with the rates of eating disorders and disordered eating and what happens when kids try to restrict their food or change their exercise in certain ways, that that actually can lead them down a really, really unhealthy path. path, right? Eating disorders are so common right now. And they're after opioid addiction, they are the most fatal mental illness. And this is happening to boys and girls. And so I think we really have to, you know, we're, we're being told, like, there's this future risk of this certain health issue. potential health issue, but there's also this immediate health risk of things like eating disorders. That doesn't mean we don't care about blood sugar or whether your kids are getting enough physical activity. We can still care about those things without sending our kid down a restrictive path. There's a great, Zoe Bisbing, who has Body Positive Home, she just wrote a great piece in her Substack newsletter about ways to respond to a scary medical, like a lab result, something like that. So I would really refer people to that. She really breaks down kind of the way you can support a child navigating a health, you know, like let's say a health red flag that the pediatrician has caught. So that's a really good resource. That was just maybe last week or so. I can send you that link if you can't find it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_03:But I think, you know, We want to make sure we understand how our kids are feeling and making sure they know they didn't do anything wrong, that they're not inherently broken. And maybe there are some changes we're going to make to help support their health and well-being without being restrictive. Because we know if the message they get from the doctor is they shouldn't eat X, Y, or Z, And for most kids, it only makes them want those foods even more. And they're likely to, and I'm sure you see this in your work with clients, right, that the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. And, you know, this is where we see kids binge eating, sneaking food. I've even had families where kids were shoplifting candy bars because they weren't allowed to have anything with sugar other than limited amounts of fruit. And they had to get their needs met, and they were trying to be creative. And this was a sign that this restrictive approach, even though it was well-meaning, was having a lot of unintended consequences. So we know that the typical ways we tell people to address health issues, we know that those are going to tend to backfire. So that's where I think really working with an eating disorder informed dietician, if there is a dietary related health concern, the pamphlet that most doctor's offices are going to hand you are going to have this very cookie cutter, black and white guidance that's probably not appropriate for your individual child, and it may not be sustainable. So that's where I think if you know, people can access a registered dietitian who, again, who's eating disorder informed because there are, obviously there are dietitians out there who are still promoting weight loss and restrictive diets. And so I think really finding someone that's aligned with your values as a family and getting that professional support. And it may mean that your child isn't meeting with that person, but maybe you are, right? Because a little kid doesn't necessarily need to have like this kind of microscope on their, you know, every bite because that's probably not going to help their relationship with food. So again, it's keeping also a conversation going with the pediatrician, right? This might be a thing you talk about with them outside of the appointment and say, you know, I'm really concerned about their relationship with food, their relationship with their body. Are there ways we can talk about this where we keep things like weight off the table, right? And that we're really talking about you know, behaviors and the nuance around some of this. It doesn't mean they can never have certain foods that we really understand what this all means. And that's really where a dietician's expertise, I think, comes into play.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. What do you think of, I have often referred parents to Ellen Satter's work. She's written several books on the topic, but I'm kind of curious about your opinion on her work.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, she was a pioneer in in terms of really helping families break out of patterns that were not helpful to anyone. So obviously, she's most well-known for the division of responsibility. And I think that framework is a game changer for so many families. When parents don't feel like they have to micromanage every bite, meals just go a lot better. Kids actually get more nutrition. Parents feel better. The whole family can relax. And because of diet culture, sometimes people accidentally use the division of responsibility to kind of impose a restrictive kind of eating on their kids. Right. If they think, oh, it's up to the parents to decide what my kids eat. Well, I'm only going to put salmon, steamed broccoli and quinoa on their plate. And this is you get what you get and you don't get upset.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_03:a lot of us maybe were raised that way. Maybe we were in the clean plate club, right? And we know we don't want to do that, but we also, parents are so confused, right? There's a lot of conflicting messages. So to me, when Alan Satter's approach is used to provide structure, but without restriction, I've seen it go really, really well. There's even some evidence that for parents who are in recovery from an eating disorder themselves, there's some evidence that the division of responsibility is a really effective way for parents to lower the risk for passing on that restrictive eating to their child or disordered eating. So I thought that research was really interesting, right? That it helped the whole family when parents understood their role and kids understood their role. In general, I would say I... In my own family and in a lot of families I've worked with, attuned eating or like that kind of more responsive feeding, I should say, has been more sustainable because of how kids are growing, right? And kids might go through growth spurts that... your typical structure didn't predict, and it can get parents in this pickle. Well, wait a minute, they didn't finish their dinner, but now they're asking for this bedtime snack, but I told them the kitchen was closed. And if the division of responsibility gets too rigid, it's going to create more problems than it's addressing. So that kind of responsive feeding where you're attuned to your child and you have flexibility with some, again, with some structure, you're not letting a four-year-old decide when they're going to have a snack because they're not able to, like a four-year-old who has to think about that is going to have stress around food, right? They're not able to do that. So I think it's really about checking in. Like if you've been using the division of responsibility, but you feel like there's still a lot of tension, this is where, you know, maybe learning more about responsive feeding and see if there's ways to kind of blend those two together.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And just for those people who might not have heard of the division of responsibility before. The parents are in charge, and make sure I'm saying this correctly, you can correct me, but the parents are in charge of what is fed, when is fed, where, and the child is in charge of how much and if they eat it at all. Is that sort of that in a nutshell? Yep, yep. Yeah, so just for the framework of what Una was just mentioning. So I was thinking... You had written an article about, it was Men's Health Month, and you had focused your efforts on eating disorders in boys. And I have three boys, so of course this just really was a beautiful article. And I think that there's so much there that we just don't see or we don't expect to see in boys related to eating disorders and maybe you could just share some of the statistics about eating disorders in boys and things that we you know how it might present differently disordered eating in boys versus girls or maybe not at all I would love to hear more about that
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and for all the parents of boys out there who might have been thinking, oh, I didn't think I had to worry about this. I'm sorry to bring the bad news. But I think, you know, being aware is really important. And yeah, and our boys are growing up in a very different diet culture era than, you know, when we were kids. And so, you know, there have been eating disorders in boys and men, you know, again, as long as there have been eating disorders, but their rates are really skyrocketing for boys right now, which isn't surprising when you look at the messages that boys and men are getting around fitness and nutrition and looking cut and ripped and all of those terms that are just part of our culture now. So I think it's important for parents to know that currently people in treatment Between 25 and 40% of people in treatment for eating disorders are male. And we know that men in general are underdiagnosed. So there are a lot of guys out there who are not getting diagnosed and treated. A recent study from 2020 concluded that one in seven men will experience an eating disorder by age 40. So if you think about your son's soccer team, right? Do the math, right? And... you realize like this is much more common than we might think. So what parents need to know is that boys get all the same eating disorders as girls and boys are more vulnerable to something called body dysmorphia or muscle dysmorphia that sometimes is called bigorexia, which muscle dysmorphia is not technically an eating disorder, but it's often accompanied by eating disorder symptoms. So This might look like a boy who's trying to gain a lot of muscle, cut body fat, and is eating in a way and exercising in a way that's interfering with their health, their development, their social life, their family life. It's really taking over their life. But they're not going to be saying they're on a diet, right? They're saying they want to be built, cut, whatever the term is in their community of other guys. And so this is where I think if your teenage daughter came downstairs and says, like, I need to go on a diet. I need to lose X number of pounds. I think most parents would say, whoa, let's talk about this, right? But if a teenage son said, I really want to go to the gym. And can we buy this protein powder? And can I get a gym membership? Most parents would be like, great. My son's taking care of his health, right? Let's celebrate.
UNKNOWN:Right?
SPEAKER_03:Now, I'm not saying that that's necessarily disordered or that it's going to lead to an eating disorder, but I think parents should have the same awareness that this could be, that there's something going on, right? Something has planted a seed in your son's mind that something isn't right about his body, about the way he's moving or exercising or about the way he looks. So we don't want to gloss over that. This is our opportunity to say, oh, that's interesting. Like, tell me more. Like, what were you thinking? And, you know, If your daughter showed you a picture of, you know, a size double zero model, well, I want to look like her. Again, parents would be like, whoa, we need to have a conversation. But if your son says, well, you know, you know, whatever latest Marvel movie actor or, you know, Jeremy Allen White from The Bear, right? Saying like, you know, well, hey, he's sharing this like fitness thing he did for this photo shoot. And like, that looks cool. I think we would wake up and say, something isn't quite right here. So parents just need to know that this is a possibility for our sons, and it might not look like how we would picture it looking for our daughter. That being said, boys get anorexia too, and all the other eating disorders. And it may not start out with body image concerns. This is, I think, the biggest thing. Whether you have a son or daughter, kids of any gender, parents need to know that losing weight can catalyze an eating disorder. I think we think of eating disorders causing weight loss, and yes, that can happen, but it also can happen the other way around. So a child who's lost weight, I know I'm preaching to the choir with you, but for folks listening, you know, a child who loses weight because They got braces and their diet had to change and it was uncomfortable. Maybe they had their wisdom teeth out. Maybe they got a nasty neurovirus on a family vacation and they just haven't bounced back and they've lost five or 10 pounds. You know, they started ADHD medication and it was a stimulant medication that dampened their appetite. Maybe they went from AYSO soccer to a club soccer team and they're now training five days a week instead of one or two. And practices are during dinner time and they're so tired when they get home, they don't feel like eating and they just go to bed and you think, well, he's tired, I'll let him sleep. That's kind of accidental energy deficit can be what kicks off an eating disorder. So if your son or daughter or any loved one has lost weight and starts to exhibit some symptoms of you know, being really particular around food or rigid around their exercise or more body conscious, that's something to be aware of that that weight loss itself might have triggered that those new behaviors.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, especially if I mean, I'm thinking about this from personal experience in my own childhood. If there's compliments that start happening, people are starting to say, oh, you look so good. What happened? And then all of a sudden, that turns into that disordered eating as well. It started as unintentional, but then leads to some issues.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. I'm so glad you brought that up because, yeah, I mean, because of the work I do, if someone has lost weight in my life, sometimes my first thought is concern, like, are they okay, right? But our culture has taught most of us to compliment it. Even a growing teenager, right? Which tells you how warped our, like, we've been warped by this mindset, you know, or if someone's lost their appetite, people will say like, oh, you have so much willpower or, you know, that's, you know, we praise it when really losing your appetite is often a warning sign that something isn't right. Now, granted, there are kids who are neurodivergent who may not have the kind of appetite signals that we tend to think of like the growling stomach and all of that. So we need to make sure that all of our kids, this is again where Ellen Satter's work can be really helpful, in that if we can provide regular meal and snack times, this can really help all of our kids, right? Stay, stay nourished and have those opportunities to eat. Cause not every kid thinks like, like, oh, it's, you know, I've been doing whatever my activities are and it's 10 AM. I haven't had breakfast since seven. Like maybe I should have this, like, they're just not thinking that way always. Some kids aren't as sort of like food driven, but doesn't mean they, they don't need to eat. They need that energy. So that's where that, that routine or that structure of providing food at regular times can be really, really helpful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I want to go back to the conversation about the the boys and the boy that kind of came to you and would say, mom, I'm, you know, I want to go to the gym. My friends are going to the gym. I know at our school in seventh grade, they get a free membership to the local gym here. And then there's strength and conditioning classes for the kids as well, which is good to get proper education on how to do these things. But I'm just, I'm kind of curious about how, parents should navigate that. And of course, it's individualized per your kid and how you can see how you know your child, like the attunement piece that you were mentioning earlier. But I'm assuming it's like more questions and kind of hearing what they're thinking and understanding that. But how do you feel about kids middle school age going to the gym and working out and that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that it's so individual, right? There are some kids where like, this is their stress relief, they put on their music, it's social, they start to make friends there, they sleep better at night. It's all good,
SPEAKER_01:right?
SPEAKER_03:And there are some kids who go and start to, you know, they're in that room full of mirrors, and there are grown men in there who are bodybuilding. who are saying, hey, buddy, like, have you heard of this, you know, supplement powder or this protein bar? And, you know, there's a scale in the locker room and, you know, a kid who's vulnerable and you don't always know who will be vulnerable ahead of time, but a kid who's vulnerable can then start to really question, like, is their body okay? And do they need to take these extreme measures? So I think it's really about, you know, you know, your kid and you know, if if their mood starts changing, if you feel like, wow, our lives are kind of revolving around getting this kid to the gym or they're, you can just feel like an energy around it that doesn't feel right to you, listen to that gut feeling, listen to your intuition, talk to your kid and get support. Because if it is already an eating disorder, Your kid isn't going to say, oh, mom, thank you so much for asking me if I have an eating disorder. I was hoping you would ask and now let's go get treatment. Like, I don't think that's ever happened in the history of the world. You're more likely to hear. mom, get out of my business. I'm a teenager now. You don't know what you're talking about. I'm totally fine. This is healthy. This is what coach so-and-so said we needed to do for prep, like to get ready for season. And all my friends are doing it and back off and, and maybe they'll insult your body. Like, and maybe you could hit the gym a little more. Like they'll find the eating disorder. We'll find all kinds of ways to make you back off and feel like you were wrong. And it's a delicate dance, but I really parents listen to your gut. Know that if an if your kid has a huge reaction to your question about their activity level or their food, that huge reaction is actually more likely a sign something is really wrong. And yet most parents would say, oh, gosh, trying to navigate these teen years and I came on too strong, I should back off and let them be independent because that's what adolescence is for. But when it comes to eating disorders, waiting is dangerous. So if your kid, again, has... If the kid's like... oh, you think I'm exercising too much? Like, hey, do you want to come with me sometime, mom? Or like, you know, whatever the, like, if they're casual about it, I'm usually less concerned. Like when parents come to me and say, like, I'm kind of worried about this. The kid seems pretty relaxed about it. That's not a huge red flag. There should still be a conversation. But if there's a big explosive reaction to your question, that's, in my opinion, more evidence that something is really, really wrong.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that defensiveness. Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. We obviously can never know. Like you said, we can't know when a child has a predisposition to some of these things. We can't always know what has been said to them by a peer or what they've been exposed to in the media. But when you think about eating disorder proofing and prevention and thinking about the things that we can... try to do as parents as we're raising our kids? What are some of those things?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I wish we could inoculate kids against eating disorders. And again, if there were some perfect plan, there isn't, but if there were some perfect plan and you followed it perfectly, that still wouldn't prevent every kid from having an eating disorder. But knowing about these things, knowing about diet culture, knowing about warning signs, It means if this happens to your kid for whatever reason, right? Again, that accidental weight loss piece is a big part of it. Genetics are a big part of it. You're going to catch it a lot sooner and you're going to be able to support them sooner. But there are things we can do to lower the risk. One of the hardest things I think is that parents need to know is that we are influencers too, right? It's easy to blame TikTok and Instagram and Instagram Yes, those things can have a real effect on kids' body image because they're seeing images and they're hearing information that is not helpful to them. But we're still their parents. So if we want our kids to feel good about their bodies, Guess what? It's the hard truth. We have to work on feeling good about our bodies, right? And maybe not feel good, but feel neutral or feel respectful or caring about our bodies, not constantly trying to control our bodies. And this is where this perfect storm tends to happen, where parents are maybe entering middle age. Maybe they got a message about their A1C at the doctor. Maybe they just got their fitness tracker and they're trying to hit a certain number of steps every day. And meanwhile, you have a teenager who has to gain weight in order to grow and develop. They're going to have probably a pretty big appetite. If they're not, they're still going to need to get food. Even if they don't have a big appetite, they need to get enough food to keep growing. And it can create this tension in the home. I like to think of it, and maybe this is too Pollyanna or optimistic, but I really think it's a perfect opportunity for if parents are having their own body image struggles or food struggles, and your kids are kind of entering puberty or going through adolescence, this is a great time to get help for yourself and learn ways to take care of your health that aren't creating disorder or eating disorder behaviors that your kids are seeing. And if we do have to do something, let's say, really different in our food, let's say you get diagnosed with a condition and it changes the way you have to eat, Having that conversation with your kids, making sure they know, oh, this is what this is, this isn't something that you have to worry about, and really being open and matter-of-fact about it, I think that can go a long way. But some other basics, not disparaging your body or anyone else's body, right? And that's something I think most parents already know, like, oh, I'm not going to bash my body. But the trickier piece is that we sometimes forget that complementing bodies sends essentially the same message, right? So your point about complementing weight loss, complementing someone's fit look, right? I'm putting that in quotation marks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That our kids are picking up on that, oh, this is what my mom and dad value, or this is the kind of body that they think is worthy. And the same goes with food. I think if we can Avoid categorizing foods unless you need to for allergies or celiac or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. and white thinkers and how much, how often is sometimes like that? It's very confusing. So, you know, calling broccoli, broccoli and ice creams, ice cream can really help make foods a little more kind of neutral, like morally neutral. I mean, I don't, I don't want kids feeling neutral about birthday cake or other special things, right? It's okay for some foods to be like special treats. I don't, I don't think the word treat has to be diet culture. It can be used that way, but it doesn't have to be.
SPEAKER_02:But
SPEAKER_03:when in doubt, calling food by its name. And then also acknowledging that the world makes it hard to feel good in your body and to feel confident about how you eat. I think when we can name, depending on the age of your child, asking them what they know about diet culture. Talk about these cultural messages that we're getting. Because we can make our homes this perfect safe haven. I mean, I guess we'd have to cut off the Wi-Fi. But we can make our homes relatively this safe bubble. But our kids need to live in the real world and know, be able to name like, oh, that's like a wellness grifter or that's diet culture or like that's Photoshopped or AI. Like they need to have those skills. So being able to talk about how we're in this, we're swimming in this water that is telling us something's wrong with our bodies or the way we eat, that's really going to give our kids those tools for the future.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, thank you so much. I wish I could talk to you for like four more hours. I have a whole, you all have to follow Una on her sub stack. She just hits every article she writes. I just can't wait to read. And I wanted to get today to the tracking. She has a wonderful article on the pros and cons of all the trackers that we're being, you know, encouraged to look at and use. So that is fabulous. One of my favorite articles. that you've written recently, but tell us, Una, where we can, you've already given us a few resources, but any of resources that you've created, where we can find your work, any other resources that you might recommend on this topic?
SPEAKER_03:Great question. Yeah. So, yeah. You can find my, in social media terms, Instagram is where I post the most. And there I'm at Una underscore Hanson. If you go to Una Hanson, it's a baby. That's not me. And then, yeah, Substack, my newsletter is called Parenting Without Diet Culture. And my website is una hansen.com. When in doubt, it's an O. And you can also contact me if you want to have a conversation about concerns you're having about your kid. I work one on one. I haven't run groups in a while, but I'm hoping to get that back on the on the schedule. And in terms of other resources, yeah, I'll circle back to Zoe Bisbing's Substack Body Positive Home. And she runs a lot of groups and workshops and things. And she's an eating disorder therapist. So she's bringing in that lens and I think gives a lot of really good practical advice. Like one of my favorites recently was the It's Not Working for My Body Anymore bag where you have family members take clothes that don't fit them anymore. And you make it this very matter of fact. thing. And this can really help your child prepare for the changes that are going to come with puberty and for our whole lives, right? Which we all as parents are well aware of. Our bodies don't stay the same size and shape our whole lives. So she's got great tips like that. And yeah, so I highly recommend that one.
SPEAKER_00:Wonderful. Those are great. It was so wonderful speaking with you. Thank you for putting your voice out into the world and just helping us as parents and your compassion. So grateful. Thank you for your time today, Una.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for having me.