How Your Experiences Growing Up Shapes Your View of Your Body: Diet Culture Starts in Childhood

Why do some women strive to be very thin, and others are comfortable with a variety of body sizes? Why do some people feel distressed when their body size changes, even if it is still healthy? This is a very complex topic that needs some discussion.

From my own experience working with patients, a lot of women reference childhood experiences as shaping their own body ideals. Diet culture starts to infiltrate when we are very young.

Childhood Experiences that Can Shape Your View of Your Body

• How you heard your mom talk about her own body. People recall their own mothers calling themselves fat, lamenting weight gain, and saying they would be prettier if they were thinner. When young girls hear this, they internalize a disgust for being fat.

• Trusted adults' views about food and guilt. When kids hear adults saying they were bad because they ate dessert, or they feel guilty because they took seconds, it teaches kids that eating any more than minimum is a bad behavior.

• How your mom talked to you about your body. Some women remember shopping with their mothers and hearing comments that certain clothes made them look fat, or their body only looked good in certain colors. This can teach children to be ashamed of their bodies.

• Your parents' reasons behind their food choices. Do you remember your father choosing a food because it was fat-free, sugar-free, "diet food," or low in calories? When kids see that, they learn that foods should be chosen for those reasons.

• Your grandparents' comments to you about your body. Young girls may remember grandparents calling one sister the "pretty one--but if only she was not fat," and the other sister the "thin one--but too bad she isn't pretty." When children are compared like this, they all feel inadequate about their bodies.

• Your experience being bullied about your looks. Kids are bullied because they are tall short, fat, have the "wrong" color eyes or hair, of for other traits that are different. Many people describe those experiences as the reasons why they are self conscious about their looks as adults.

Overcoming Diet Culture as an Adult

You can't change your childhood experiences, but you can control the messages you repeat. Be mindful of the messages you tell yourself and the messages you impart to your own children about their bodies and about diet culture.

It is a slow process to change beliefs as an adult. Watch out for the language you use when you talk about yourself. See if you can intentionally change the words you use to gentler ways to talk about your body.

Be mindful of the language you use when talking about your body in front of your children. Give your children positive messages about their own bodies. Let your children understand how much your think they are beautiful, and that their bodies are good how they are right now.