Weight Issues in Teens: 8 Tips To Support Your Kid With Weight & Eating Issues
The spoiler for this post is that supporting your kid with weight and eating is all about letting go of exactly what your child does or doesn’t eat or weigh and instead it is about being a confident role model and not acting off of fears that your child will be “too big” “too small” etc.
Instead, the focus needs to be on providing balanced meals (including fruits, veggies, proteins and carbs BUT also fun snacks and desserts) and fostering an eating space that is fun, fueling, consistent but flexible.
Following the advice below will ensure that you’re providing a stable foundation for your child’s relationship with food and body. We all are faced with our culture’s obsession with diets, eating “clean” and weight loss/thinness, and as parents I believe it’s our job to lessen this blow by creating a solid foundation for our children to stand on and come back to.
This foundation is:
All bodies are good bodies
Your body shape and size will change throughout your life
Dieting is unhelpful and you deserve to put your energy elsewhere
Meals and snacks are important in order to sustain a full life
Food can be both practical and fueling, but also social, fun, and comforting
Every body needs different amounts of movement and people enjoy doing different things
The tips below are direct guidance around what to do, and what not to do. It’s okay if you read through some or all of these and go “oh no, I’ve been doing this.” You are learning and doing the best you can, and parenting is all about learning, and re-routing when needed.
1. Hurtful Comments About Weight
You will need to stop commenting on your child’s weight and shape. This means any and all comments, since comments about weight/body will cause your child to internalize the following message: “My body is a problem and/or one of the most important things about me.”
I have talked to so many teens and adults who were on the receiving end of parent’s concerns about them being “unhealthy” or their bodies being “too big.” The clear result is that the attempts made to try and help kids be “healthy” actually contributed to disordered eating, body distress, and large preoccupations on eating.
When we take the attention off these areas, kid’s feel more valued for who they are rather than what they look like or “how healthy” they are. Additionally, relieving this pressure will help alleviate the related complicated eating dynamics that arise (like restricting and binge eating!) when children feel like their bodies and food choices are under a microscope.
Comments about food and body can also come from other family members, as well as health practitioners, so it’s important to ask that your child’s health care team not discuss concerns about weight with the child in the room, and if needed to find new health care professionals to be on your child’s care team who can look at health more holistically. Side note, check out these cool free downloadable cards you can hand to health care professionals!
Weight loss should never be a treatment goal for a child. The Academy of Pediatrics actually recommends that doctors DO NOT discuss a child’s weight. If your doctor is focusing on weight loss with you and/or your child–red flag. The body shame that will ensue for your child, and the issues with food that will develop are not going to improve your kid’s health. The more weight is focused on and diets are pursued, the less likely a person is to settle into whatever their normal weight actually is.
In situations where a child has lost weight, (regardless of their initial weight/BMI) it’s important to respond with curiosity and ensure that they are eating sufficiently. Larger bodied kids often get praised for weight loss, and smaller kids get concerned responses– both situations warrant curiosity as to what is going on.
2. Stop Weight Loss Comments About Yourself
It’s not enough for you and the people around you to avoid comments about your kid’s weight. You need to lead by example, and stop weight loss comments about yourself. Kids learn about how to treat themselves from watching. Your kid will internalize your weight loss comments for themselves. Our language becomes our children’s self talk.
Think about each moment that is about your body or their body as a distraction. Every time we say “I feel so ugly in these pants” or “I can’t seem to lose this baby weight,” we are making it clear that this is an important focus in life.
What our children really need is to be released of the burden of achieving a specific body so that they can focus on the things in their lives that really matter the most to them. Not to mention we are really setting them (and ourselves) up for failure by subscribing to the idea that we CAN change our bodies for the longterm (Since most “diets” and “weight loss attempts” fail/result in weight gain and weight cycling).
Weight loss comments and comments about your body shape/size in general are unhelpful. Figure out what you need in order to refrain from engaging in this weight and body talk, and you and your family will benefit!
3. Stop Dieting - Cleanses, Elimination Diets, and the Whole30
This is another big one. You will need to stop dieting yourself, if you are engaging in “yo-yo” diets they will only complicate your child’s relationship with food and weight even if you are not pushing it on them.
You may even be trying to hide your dieting from them, but it’s very likely that they pick up on your attitudes around eating, and the subtlest of eating habits. When you stop dieting, you free yourself from being distracted by controlling your food and body, and you have the opportunity to be a better “normal eating” model for your kids.
When you frequently engage in different diets, to the point that you seem to be permanently on a diet, you are sending the message to your kid that there are “good” and “bad” foods and that bodies are supposed to look a certain way. This is more likely to lead to your kid sneaking and hiding food as well as engaging in restrictive and binge eating behaviors.
4. Stop indirectly commenting on your child’s weight, shape and eating habits.
Okay, this is one that many well informed parents miss. “Maybe we should all go to the gym!” or “Do you really need to eat that?” I can tell you from my time talking with countless teens…they know why you are saying these things. Just because you aren’t saying “you need to work out or lose weight!” doesn’t mean they don’t know you’re worried about their body. They usually know.
These comments are still harmful because they usually come from a place of anxiety/fear from parents, and they diminish a child’s trust in their own eating and body.
As long as these comments are coming from your own fears about their body or health, your kid will feel that, and will still receive this message: “My body is a problem.” “Mom/dad is worried about my weight/thinks I’m unhealthy/lazy/etc.” Oh, they will also rebel against you—hard. If you suggest the gym, most likely, they will never go to the gym, and if they do, they won’t enjoy a minute of it.
5. Stop believing in terms like “overweight”
Consider that everything you learned about the “right” and “healthy” body type might be wrong. The term “overweight” alone has become this all too powerful word that makes people feel terrible about themselves. The truth is that “overweight” is a word that was applied to the BMI scale, and the BMI scale is truly a terrible indicator of anyone’s health.
“Thin” or “lean” are really just unattainable standards set out by society, media and the diet industry as a whole. We need to free ourselves and our children from the idea that being thinner is “better” “more beautiful,” and “healthier.”
So you will need to keep the big picture in mind AND consider that they might naturally have a larger body, and that’s ok!
Your child will grow into an adult. (Am I blowing your mind?). They are learning right now as a child/teen. They are figuring out their relationship with food/exercise, and letting them do that even when it feels messy will pay off over the longterm.
If they are taught that they need to use food and exercise to control their body, then they are going to have a crappy relationship with both as they continue to grow up and become an adult. AND studies show that kids with histories of childhood dieting and weight control encouragement from caregivers are in fact more likely to be at a higher weight as an adult than their body would have been at in the first place.
Even if it feels like commenting on their body or encouraging them to go workout to feel better about their body will help them…it won’t. They are learning now, it’s uncomfortable and messy, but they are figuring it out.
Just because a child is larger DOES NOT mean they will be unhappy or “unhealthy” as an adult. If you’re coming from a place of “I don’t want her to have the struggles I’ve had with my body image,” consider that he/she won’t if they are actually taught that their body is normal and they don’t have to start the whole dieting for life process, which saves a person so much time, money, and health issues. (Yo-yo dieting isn’t great for the body).
6. Apologize when you slip up.
It’s okay to say, “oh my gosh, I just did that thing I used to do didn’t I? I’m so sorry—that’s not about you.”
7. You will need to allow yourself, and your child to eat a variety of foods, including ones you might have deemed “unhealthy.”
Bring in that Oreo. Get that sugar cereal once in a while. For help on how this all works, I highly suggest Ellyn Satter’s book: Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family. It doesn’t mean you’re offering Oreos all day every day. But we need to allow all sorts of foods for kids to learn how to be competent eaters and to prevent restricting, binging and sneaking/hiding food.
8. Online Eating Disorder Therapy
You might need to go to therapy if all this feels impossible.
If all of this is feeling like way too much. Or if you feel conflicted or frustrated, like none of this makes sense and you strongly disagree. Please make an appointment with an eating disorder therapist or dietitian/nutritionist for yourself. Explore your feelings around all of this.
If you feel you could benefit from body image support, consider my $25 on-demand short course: Body Image Workshop.
Additionally, for more information about how to prevent and spot eating disorders in pre-teens/teens, you can check out my online eating disorder courses for parents. This is an affordable downloadable package that you can watch and digest in your own time. It includes:
2 courses: Feeding your pre-teen/teen & I think my teen might have an eating disorder
Video support and education
Handouts with support on how to talk with your child
Handouts with meal planning support
Handouts with resources for where to go next if you’re concerned
Weight Issues in Teens: Key Takeaways
You may need to explain to your child that you’re just now coming to terms with the fact that you’ve been making unhelpful comments about their weight and eating, and that this is because of you and your own learning process and misinformation from media/doctors etc.
Help them understand that the reason for your previous comments or behaviors are because of this misinformation and the culture we live in. A child/teens mind needs to hear you say this, because their brain will always assume it’s because of them. Admitting this to your child will NOT create disrespect or mistrust on their part towards you, in fact they will actually respect and trust you more. And you’re modeling that it is ok to make mistakes and then talk about it and make changes. And that’s great too :)
Encourage all foods, and embrace all bodies.
Step away from dieting, and strict food rules.
Understand that this stage is not about controlling a kid’s weight, but setting them up for an uncomplicated relationship with food and body later in life.
References:
Golden, N. H., Schneider, M., Wood, C., COMMITTEE ON NUTRITION, COMMITTEE ON ADOLESCENCE, & SECTION ON OBESITY (2016). Preventing Obesity and Eating Disorders in Adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(3), e20161649. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-1649
Neumark-Sztainer D. (2015). Higher weight status and restrictive eating disorders: an overlooked concern. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 56(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2014.10.261
Neumark-Sztainer, D., Wall, M., Story, M., & Standish, A. R. (2012). Dieting and unhealthy weight control behaviors during adolescence: associations with 10-year changes in body mass index. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 50(1), 80–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.05.010
