Two psychologists explain how to cultivate healthy behaviours and body image in girls.
Weight loss is one of the most common health and appearance-related goals.
Women and teen girls are especially likely to pursue dieting to achieve weight loss goals even though a great deal of research shows that dieting doesn’t work over the long term.
We are a developmental psychologist and a social psychologist who together wrote a forthcoming book, Beyond Body Positive: A Mother’s Evidence-Based Guide for Helping Girls Build a Healthy Body Image.
In the book, we address topics such as the effects of maternal dieting behaviours on daughters’ health and wellbeing. We provide information on how to build a foundation for healthy body image beginning in girlhood.
Given the strong influence of social media and other cultural influences on body ideals, it’s understandable that so many people pursue diets aimed at weight loss. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and celebrity websites feature slim influencers and “how-tos” for achieving those same results in no time.
For example, women and teens are engaging in rigid and extreme forms of exercise such as 54D, a programme to achieve body transformation in 54 days, or the 75 Hard Challenge, which is to follow five strict rules for 75 days.
For teens, these pursuits are likely fuelled by trendy body preoccupations such as the desire for “legging legs”.
Women and teens have also been inundated with recent messaging around quick-fix weight loss drugs, which come with a lot of caveats.
Dieting and weight loss goals are highly individual and, when people are intensely self-focused, it is possible to lose sight of the bigger picture. Although women might wonder what the harm is in trying the latest diet, science shows that dieting behaviour doesn’t just affect the dieter. In particular, for women who are mothers or who have other girls in their lives, these behaviours affect girls’ emerging body image and their health and wellbeing.
Research shows that mothers and maternal figures have a profound influence on their daughters’ body image.
The opportunity to influence girls’ body image comes far earlier than adolescence. In fact, research shows that these influences on body image begin very early in life – during the preschool years.
Mothers may feel that they are being discreet about their dieting behaviour, but little girls are watching and listening and they are far more observant of us than many might think.
For example, one study revealed that, compared with daughters of non-dieting women, 5-year-old girls whose mothers dieted were aware of the connection between dieting and thinness.
Mothers’ eating behaviour does not just affect girls’ ideas about dieting, but also their daughters’ eating behaviour. The amount of food that mothers eat predicts how much their daughters will eat. In addition, daughters whose mothers are dieters are more likely to become dieters themselves and are also more likely to have a negative body image.
Negative body image is not a trivial matter. It affects girls’ and women’s mental and physical wellbeing in a host of ways and can predict the emergence of eating disorders.
What can mothers do, then, to serve their daughters’ and their own health?
They can focus on small steps. And although it is best to begin these efforts early in life – in girlhood – it is never too late to do so.
For example, mothers can consider how they think about and talk about themselves around their daughters. Engaging in “fat talk” may inadvertently send their daughters the message that larger bodies are bad, contributing to weight bias and negative self-image. Mothers’ fat talk also predicts later body dissatisfaction in daughters.
Negative self-talk isn’t good for mothers, either; it is associated with lower motivation and unhealthy eating. Mothers can instead practise and model self-compassion, which involves treating yourself the way a loving friend might treat you.
In discussions about food and eating behaviour, it is important to avoid moralising certain kinds of food by labelling them as “good” or “bad” as girls may extend these labels to their personal worth. For example, a young girl may feel that she is being “bad” if she eats dessert if that is what she has learned from observing the women around her. In contrast, she may feel that she has to eat a salad to be “good”.
Mothers and other female role models can make sure that the dinner plate sends a healthy message to their daughters by showing instead that all foods can fit into a balanced diet when the time is right. Intuitive eating, which emphasises paying attention to hunger and satiety and allows flexibility in eating behaviour, is associated with better physical and mental health in adolescence.
Another way that women and especially mothers can buffer girls’ body image is by helping their daughters to develop media literacy and to think critically about the nature and purpose of media. For example, mothers can discuss the misrepresentation and distortion of bodies, such as the use of filters to enhance physical appearance, on social media.
One way to begin to focus on healthy behaviours rather than dieting behaviours is to develop respect for the body and to consider body neutrality. In other words, prize body function rather than appearance and spend less time thinking about your body’s appearance. Accept that there are times when you may not feel great about your body and that this is okay.
To feel and look their best, mothers can aim to stick to a healthy sleep schedule, manage their stress levels, eat a varied diet that includes all the foods they enjoy, and move and exercise their bodies regularly as lifelong practices, rather than engaging in quick-fix trends.
Although many of these tips sound familiar, and perhaps even simple, they become effective when we recognise their importance and begin acting on them. Mothers can work towards modelling these behaviours and tailor each of them to their daughter’s developmental level. It’s never too early to start.
Science shows that several personal characteristics are associated with body image concerns among women.
For example, research shows that women who are higher in neuroticism and perfectionism, lower in self-compassion or lower in self-efficacy are all more likely to struggle with negative body image.
Personality is frequently defined as a person’s characteristic pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. But if they wish, mothers can change personality characteristics that they feel aren’t serving them well.
For example, perfectionist tendencies – such as setting unrealistic, inflexible goals – can be examined, challenged and replaced with more rational thoughts and behaviours. A woman who believes she must work out every day can practise being more flexible in her thinking. One who thinks of dessert as “cheating” can practise resisting moral judgments about food.
Changing habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving certainly takes effort and time, but it is far more likely than diet trends to bring about sustainable, long-term change. And taking the first steps to modify even a few of these habits can positively affect daughters.
In spite of all the noise from media and other cultural influences, mothers can feel empowered knowing that they have a significant influence on their daughters’ feelings about, and treatment of, their bodies.
In this way, mothers’ modelling of healthier attitudes and behaviours is a sound investment – for both their own body image and that of the girls they love.
Get in touch with the Eating Disorders Association of New Zealand if you need help finding a private provider in your area by phoning 0800 2 EDANZ or emailing info@ed.org.nz
If you need urgent help, contact your GP or local mental health provider. Or if you need to talk to someone else:
• LIFELINE: 0800 543 354 or 09 5222 999 within Auckland (available 24/7)
• YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat.
• NEED TO TALK? Free call or text 1737 (available 24/7)
• KIDSLINE: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
New York Times: The best ways to foster healthy eating are also the simplest.