What parents should be doing to teach their kids/teens to feel good about their bodies?!?

Limit what you can from your daughter’s/son's exposure to the media and popular culture when they are young. This is valuable because it will allow them to develop their creativity, imagination and their own ideas from experiencing relationships and first hand experiences. Of course as they grow, media messages will start to get in, so having rules and routines from the start can help them control their own experiences as they grow and mature. As we all know there is helpful and healthy messages to take in, but there is also so many unhelpful and unhealthy messages out their, and having them be early and skeptical about some message will help them be informed consumers. 

Help them process the messages in the media. Often times there is such a limited focus in the media, try to help them avoid the narrow focus on appearance and consumerism that often dominates the media. By helping your daughter/son process the messages they see on the screen and develop their own ideas about them, you can prepare them to better resist the media’s pervasive stereotypes, and privileges that are displayed all throughout the media. Sit and have a conversation that is open and honest about your experiencing consuming media, and ask them to do the same. 

Avoid making negative comments about your own body. When adults make comments about their own body, children often feel like they most join in, even if it doesn't make much sense to them. When the conversation about dinner starts off with "I ate too much at lunch, I'm only going to have a salad for dinner, so I can fit into that dress I bought for the cruise", your kid begins to want to imitate that, just as they have learned just about everything else for you. As a teen it does take on a life of its own, and they will either reject that message completely (which can also be unhealthy) or follow that message exactly (which again can also be unhealthy). Its best to take a neutral stance about food, not labeling them as "good" or "bad", as well as teach your children to eat when they are hungry and stop eating when full. 

Avoid commenting on other peoples weight loss or weight gain. A lot of parents congratulate kids on losing weight or even find themselves saying things like “That outfit looks great on you – so slimming!” But all this does is remind kids/teens that they are more loveable and valued when skinny. If a child really does have a weight related health issue, addressing that with a trained health professional will be a lot more effective that reinforcing the inaccurate message that losing weight is a cure-all for everything from illness to social problems that kids/teens already get every day in the rest of their lives.

Teach children to take a holistic approach to their health and happiness. Often times parents can be overly focused on one aspect of their kids/teens life, for example the parents who get really jazzed about their kids sports, or their kids grades or their kids friendships, or their kids body shape. Just like you as a parent that wears the variety of hats of mom, career women, stay at home mom, coach, wife, teacher, nurse, etc. your kid/teen offers all types of those things too. For example, lets say you really want your teen to get into the best college, so you focus in on their grades to the point that you talk about them at least 3-5 times a week, or you ask to talk to their teachers, or you simply primary reward them with praise when they do well in school. This can lead a child to become so focused on pleasing you and the expectations that have been set, and ignore other strengths they have, like being a good friend, or acting in a school play or just being a teen. I say this all, to promote their be balance in a kids life, focus on mental health, academic success, their happiness, their relationships, their physical health and all things in between. If you do this as they grow they will be more resilient as adults and things will take care of themselves, so stop putting so much pressure on yourself and on them. 

Teach Kids That Weight Gain and Changes to Body Shape Are a Needed and Expected Part of Getting Older. For a lot of kids, the changes of puberty are rough. Bodies can morph from something familiar to something foreign seemingly overnight. Often, that means that adolescents develop more visible body fat, and girls, in particular, may develop breasts and see their hips, butts, thighs, and bellies grow. But this is not a problem. It is a just sign that someone is growing up. Kids should be reminded that we need fat on our bodies. It’s crucial for brain development, for menstruation, and to keep us warm – just to name a few basics. 

If you want to learn more on this connect with Stephanie Konter-O'Hara, LPC at the Contact page

Media Bombards Us All the Time

I have heard the word "slim" and "lean" replace the word "thin" or "skinny" recently, in an effort to be more, what? In my opinion stating words the represent a body size other that what the reader is can alter the way an individual feels about their own body. These "diets" of eat as much as you want and stay slim.... well isn't that a wonder plan, just like every other diet that ever existed. All of that language and thought process still can lead anyone to a dangerous mind set where their focus is on the size of their body, not the health of their body. 

I recently even saw a yoga teach post on Facebook about the joys of "allowing herself to eat a fruit bowl", ummm excuse me? Why do we need to have these rules where we "allow" ourselves to enjoy something?! Its food, its purpose isn't to be moral, or good and bad, or off limits. Having this mentality enables the relationship we have with food have so much power over our mindset.

What happened to when we were all toddlers and we ate intuitively what and how much our body was asking for? When eating till were was satisfied was exactly what we needed, and eating fruit was a necessity not a privilege we allow ourselves. After all we do live in a country and a world where people cannot always have access to the foods they need to survive, so why are we denying ourselves from what we need, if many of us middle class Americans can eat what we need to be healthy almost everyday. 

At times I think about how other countries and people look at us, having this estranged relationship with food when we have so much access to it. So I'm just asking every individual that the next time they label a food, remember that your thoughts and feelings about that food, isn't necessary a "fact", its just what we have told ourselves about it. Start to be curious about those thoughts and feelings, and figure out what you truly believe for you start putting labels on things. 

Okay, end of rant. 

How To Create A Healthy Positive Body Image

One of the missions I have in life is to help encourage people create a healthy, positive body image. The first step to this mission, is to practice myself, the second is to educate, and finally help emotional healing to occur.

So, I've done work on myself with therapist and will continue to allow my journey and story to evolve. With this practice of self-love I continuly propel myself to be in means slowing down, eating a balanced diet and practicing yoga. Today I want to address how helpful it can be to your mental health and body image, to create and cultivate a yoga practice.

Yoga And You

Find a teacher and a space to do yoga where diversity and inclusion is celebrated. Stay focused on what makes your body feel good. There are classes where having a certain body, or "nailing" the pose isn't the point of the class, those are the classes I encourage you to find. It may take a few times, but I know they are out there.

One of the first tenants of yoga is ahimsa (nonviolence)—do no harm to yourself or others. The media often is creating unrealistic images of beauty that is harmful to you. Therefore, it’s up to you to set those images aside, love yourself and be kind to yourself. You are beautiful as you are.

In your physical asana practice, focus more on what you can do and less on trying to be perfect at it. Mainstream media will continue to post picture perfect images, but I encourage you to change the esthetic and broaden the idea of what yoga looks like. There are entire organizations calling for yoga to be more about the practice and less about the body. In addition here in Denver there are even instructors that focus on being diverse, such as big booty yoga. I encourage you to post pictures of yourself doing your poses, to help break down what others believe about body image and yoga, as well as to celebrate you just doing you!

Disordered vs Disciplined

There is a thin line between what makes up disordered eating from "disciplined eating" or diet as commonly called. Diet culture is everywhere, and it often comes disguised as a "healthy food plan".

Dieting is a preoccupation of food and/or exercise, and is seen as "normal" in our culture, seemingly an innocent attempt at eating healthy. Yet it can lead to disordered eating especially when those "dieting" get positive feedback from others. The more positive feedback one gets, the more likely they are to continue in similar behaviors. 

Anxiety often builds over eating, and/or shame develops as a result of eating. This is the danger of dieting, foods get labeled as "good/bad" healthy/unhealthy", broken down into calories, fats, carbohydrates, sodium and so on. While being educated about the food we put in our bodies, placing judgements on them is the slippery-slope. 

When people begin thinking about food and/or exercises often, it allows them to distract themselves from other emotional concerns in their life. In other words having this preoccupation about food/body shape/exercise allows an individual to avoid and numb other problems. This is reason for concern because the long they utilize eating/not-eating as a coping skill to distract/avoid the worse their health becomes and most likely their problems begin to snowball as well.

If you think you or a loved one is on this path, please don't hesitate to contact me or another professional about these concerns. 

Intuitive Eating, Is A Lot Like Mindfulness

10 principles of intuitive eating:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Intuitive eating says that you are the expert of your body and to eliminate rules for eating. This can be empowering and help free yourself of restrictions and allow you to gain more awareness of your body.  

2. Honor Your Hunger
Hunger is your body’s way of telling you to eat. Start to cue in to your hunger and fullness by taking time throughout the day, to check in with your body, and by asking yourself how hungry or full you feel. By doing this you’ll be able to identify those different levels of hunger and fullness.

3. Make Peace with Food & 4. Challenge the Food Police
Are there foods that you consider off-limits? Or do you feel guilty about what or how much you eat?  So make peace with food by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. Drop the labels of "good" and "bad" or "healthy" and "junk" foods.

5. Respect Your Fullness
Learn to identify when you’re comfortably full the point when you’re no longer hungry and the food you’re eating is losing its enjoyability. Do this by taking time during your meal to ask yourself how the food tastes and how full you feel.

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor of Eating
Eating should be an enjoyable, satisfying experience. Make the time special by eating with others, or making the food with others. Viewing food as precious and valuable can truly help shape the experience of eating.

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Although eating should be enjoyable, it shouldn’t be your main source of comfort. Learning and utilizing other coping skills that revitalize your senses. Smell, touch, sight and hearing can all be as powerful as a source of comfort that taste is.

8. Respect Your Body
Accept and respect your body as it is now, whatever shape and size you are. Your body is a temple, its what protects you, moves you and holds you.

9. Exercise — Feel the Difference
 Tuning in to how exercise feels, and try experimenting with different forms of exercise and finding things you enjoy — if it’s going to the gym you don’t like, think of walking, dancing, bike riding, rock climbing or playing with your kids instead.

10. Honor Your Health
When you start tuning in to how food tastes and how your body feels when you eat, then you’ll also start noticing that some foods make you feel better than others. Strive for foods that taste good to you and, in your overall diet, get in foods that are also healthy for you.