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You are here: Home / SELF LOVE & BODY IMAGE / Body image workshops for teachers and other anti-diet wish-list must-haves

Body image workshops for teachers and other anti-diet wish-list must-haves

December 11, 2019 by Molly Leave a Comment

On a rainy, cold, dark and dreary day two weeks ago in London a team of people met to discuss how to end the marketing of diets and weight loss products around kids. It wasn’t a high profile meeting endorsed by celebrities or featuring #gifted goodie bags and a who’s who of Instagram influencers, but then no one said creating change was glamorous.

When I launched the #FreeFromDiets campaign back in the summer I had no idea how it would go down. It started with a few angry rants on Instagram Stories about diet club reps handing out leaflets at various school gates up and down the country, and then it snowballed into a fully fledged campaign with a petition and a video and a website and a team of ambassadors and a campaign manager.

Every week I get DM after DM after DM from parents all over the UK telling me stories of weight loss brands using schools and kids’ clubs as a recruitment ground for new members.

Aggressive marketing techniques include handing out leaflets in school book bags to take home to parents, hanging huge banners on school gates, putting up posters in kids’ club changing rooms. I even heard from one mum who was shocked to find a rep for a big diet brand dressed up as the Easter Bunny in her local park, handing out balloons and leaflets enticing parents to join her local club.

It seems it’s gone unchallenged for so long that it’s become normalised, a part of every day life for so many.

So while the rates of pre-teens getting treated for anorexia doubles in a decade, the number of mental health issues associated with poor body image rises and many children literally skip school altogether because of low self-esteem linked to how they feel in their body… the big diet brands quietly rumble on, using the very places children should be safest from messaging around weight loss and perfect body ideals as prime marketing locations for new members.

Mums are big business – and never mind if the kids see the ads, many brands offer free membership for kids too! Get the whole family through the door in one go and triple your wins! Everyone’s happy (apart from the kids who go on to develop eating disorders and the mums who hate themselves after regaining the weight, and the children who don’t raise their hand in class for fear of their body being wrong… but we won’t worry about them. You can’t please everyone).

Headlines about obesity epidemics and simplified narratives around health keep the diet brands safe from scrutiny, it seems. They can use the health argument to justify hanging banners on school gates which sell the thin = happy / thin = successful / thin = healthy message. They just want to help people! They just want as many people as possible to know that for a minimal fee they too can lose weight and get their life back on track. Their work is practically charitable, really. (We’ll skim over the fact many of these diet ads show pictures of chips and “junk foods” – photos of the very foods the ASA recently banned from being advertised within 100 metres of a school due to said obesity epidemic.)

And apparently the reality of the problem is too meta to cover in the news, as journalists regularly get in touch saying they’re interested in the campaign and want to cover it, but only if I can get proof of a rep actually handing a leaflet to a child and saying something along the lines of “You’re fat, read this, then come to my club”, before locking them up in a (low calorie) ice cream van Child Catcher style and stealing them away into the diet branded sunset. Of course this isn’t happening, the reality is far more nuanced and less tabloid- shocking, but no less dangerous.

The rates of pre-teens with eating disorders has doubled in the last decade. One in five girls aren’t raising their hand in class for fear of being judged over how they look. Children are under-performing at school and some aren’t attending altogether due to the way they feel about their body. But yes, let’s just blame it all on Instagram and photo editing apps and “the media”, because that’s easier than addressing the fact thousands of our children are walking past huge banners for diet brands on their school railings every single day.

And so I guess it’s no surprise that none of the diet brands agreed to join us for our first round table event, to find a way to work together to market their products in a more responsible way, away from children. Change doesn’t happen overnight and all that.

But what was pretty cool was the fact that Girl Guiding UK joined us for the discussion, offering amazing insight into the point of view of young people, and telling us about the brilliant work they’re doing to counteract negative body image and narrow beauty ideals and promote self esteem amongst young girls. And what was also pretty cool was the fact we had two health professionals – an eating disorder therapist and a GP – at the meeting too, along with an activist who only went and met with London Mayor Sadiq Khan two days afterwards and told him all about the campaign. Pretty cool indeed.

If you’re interested in finding out about what was discussed on the day and some of the key areas we’re working on to counteract diet club messaging around kids (while we simultaneously work to get it eradicated around schools completely) then you can read the full round table report here.

You can also have your say on the specific areas you’d like us to focus on here.

Next month we’ll be announcing big plans for 2020, including some really fun and inspiring events that you can get involved in and fundraising activity to fund brilliant new initiatives to counteract the diet messaging (body image workshops for teachers are top of our list!).

I know it’s a scary time. And the news is often depressing and uncertain. But I feel hopeful for 2020 because I see how many amazing people are working to put good stuff into the world, actively create change, give up their time and their platforms for free to make a difference. And this gives me hope.

We’re only just getting started.

Filed Under: SELF LOVE & BODY IMAGE Tagged With: #FreeFromDiets, body happy kids, body image, diet culture

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Hello and welcome! I'm Molly Forbes - podcaster, presenter and blogger with a passion for positivity, confidence and body image chat. Regularly writing and vlogging about empowering female issues from a motherhood angle, I also cover lifestyle and fashion topics for like-minded mums who want to rediscover themselves after having children. Thanks for stopping by! Read More…

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Hello. How are you? . I’ve noticed something th Hello. How are you? 
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I’ve noticed something this lockdown that feels different to first time... the sense of people being more disconnected than ever, more divided, more isolated. 
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Maybe it’s because we’re all on our last nerve now - the loss, sacrifice and stress is amplified that bit more. 
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And we’re so deep in it, often confined in our thoughts at home, our only connection with the outside world via a screen, that it becomes harder to appreciate our differences in circumstances. 
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We forget that we are all just humans muddling through a global pandemic, trying to come out of it alive, with our minds intact and hopefully our jobs too. 
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We’re angry, sad, frustrated, scared. And in the absence of those regular social connections we need a place to direct those feelings. The social media platforms and comments sections on news sites have never been so busy. 
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Except it’s not just faceless people on the internet that we’re upset with anymore. It’s our neighbours, family and friends. 
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Dr Vivek Murthy wrote about the importance of social connections and community in his book Together, pointing out that loneliness has the same impact on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 
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We are sociable creatures. We need community not just to thrive but to survive. 
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So check in with your friends today. Maybe even send them a voice note. Don’t assume you know how they’re doing based on their latest Facebook post. We need to get through this together, not apart ❤️
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[Image description: Molly is looking at the camera, smiling in a tired, resigned sort of way. She’s outside and is wearing a fantastic hat that her husband says looks like a tea cosy.]
✨Art from @emilycoxhead gorgeous book You Are In ✨Art from @emilycoxhead gorgeous book You Are Incredible Just As You Are✨
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A reminder that loving every bit of ourselves isn’t just about embracing all the parts on the outside, but also about accepting - and maybe even celebrating - the bits on the inside too. 
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I’ll go first: I am a worrier and have a tendency to think deeply on things. If we’ve ever had a disagreement - be it an exchange on Twitter in 2018 or a row in the playground in 1992 you bet I’ve stored that away in my brain ready to ruminate on in the depths of a night when I can’t sleep. 
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But in the spirit of loving every bit of ourselves I say that rather than looking at these parts of ourselves as “flaws”, we choose instead to view them with loving kindness and a heavy dose of self-compassion. 
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I worry because I am sensitive, and I care. This sometimes means I’m more vulnerable to allowing others’ opinions of me have too much power... but it also means I feel remorse when I make mistakes and try my very best to learn from them. 
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And this also means I work hard in everything I do because I genuinely care about doing a good job. Meanwhile, my tendency to think deeply on stuff means I’m able to see the nuance in things and appreciate other perspectives, because as I grasp for an answer I often find two things can be true at the same time. 
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These are not traits I would view as “pathetic” or “needy” or “indecisive” in my kids and I would never tell them to “just get over it”, so I’m trying to remember this for myself too.
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Tell me, what parts of the inner you are you working on learning to love? 
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[Image description: A double page spread from Emily Coxhead’s book You Are Incredible. It’s a yellow page with a red heart and white writing which reads “Here’s to loving every bit of you.”]
Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A Let’s talk joyful movement and.... PRIVILEGE! A nice juicy subject for a Thursday evening 😅
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I absolutely love to see the narrative shift (albeit ever so slightly) to the intrinsic benefits of movement. The focus on intuitive movement and moving our bodies for how it makes us FEEL over how it makes us LOOK brings me huge happiness. 
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BUT... even when we take movement away from a diet culture context, I still think there’s often a lack of acknowledgment of the many barriers preventing people engaging in movement in the first place (hot tip: it’s not “just cos they’re lazy” 🙄). 
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When it comes to my own family - here are some of the privileges we live with which make movement easier for us: 
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✨ We live in an area with access to lots of safe green spaces to play and walk.
✨ We can afford to pay for a gym membership, and extra curricular activities for the kids like gymnastics, Street Dance and swimming.
✨ We have access to the technology needed to take part in online classes over lockdown.
✨ We are non-disabled so experience no physical access issues preventing us from joining in with these activities. 
✨ Our work schedule allows us to get out together during daylight hours. 
✨ None of us lives with a mental health condition which might make getting outside / engaging in movement really hard or even impossible.
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Kids access to movement is not equal so if we really care about encouraging more children to move then, as a nation, we need to level the playing field (pun intended). 
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Some accounts which often discuss movement and privilege: @thephitcoach @amysnellingpt @theaishanash ❤️
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[Image description: Molly and her two daughters standing on top of a hill smiling, with their arms in the air.]
It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad di It’s pretty well accepted that certain “fad diets” are not the one. But if our definition of diet culture stops there, and we fail to see how diet culture IS fatphobic in its very nature - and that it absolutely depends on a collective cultural fear and vilification of fatness then we’ll never get anywhere with tearing it down.
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Dressing up fatphobia as “health concern”, or “tough love” or “helping people” is just a fluffy way of saying you don’t acknowledge the huge complexity around health, or the many factors that impact weight, or the research showing the harmful (and unhealthy) impact of weight stigma, or the evidence into the long term effectiveness of diets and intentional weight loss. 
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And essentially, those who assert that health only looks one way, and that people have a moral responsibility to prove their health via the shape of their body and not be a “drain on society”, are saying that only people with their version of a “healthy body” are worthy of respect, equality, dignity.
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Children pick up on these messages and learn from an early age that “fat = bad”, and to see some bodies as better, and more deserving of love and respect than others. This could be why we’re seeing a rising number of pre-teens with eating disorders and mental health issues associated with poor body image. 
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Yes we need to lose the fad diets. But we also need to lose the deeper prejudices and anti-fat biases that make them profitable in the first place, otherwise they’ll just continue to show up in different ways, coming in ever more aggressive and insidious ways for our kids.
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(Image description: A yellow slide with multicolour shapes and a screenshot of a tweet overlaid which reads “FYI you can’t be simultaneously anti-diet culture and pro fatphobia. (And yes, fatphobia includes continuously asking “But what about health?” and not listening to the answer...)
You might have missed this in the news over Christ You might have missed this in the news over Christmas. It didn’t get nearly the same amount of coverage as all the diet-related features that are everywhere right now. It was hidden away behind the before and after “amazing weight loss” stories, celeb diet plans and “o*esity causes covid” headlines. But that doesn’t make it any less shocking or heartbreaking. 
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I believe there’s a link between the rise in children being diagnosed with eating disorders and the rise in children suffering poor body image. These issues are fallout from a culture that idolises thinness, vilifies fatness and continually promotes one, narrow, over-simplified version of health. 
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Diet culture is coming increasingly aggressively for children, and the pandemic with the huge mental health toll it’s taken has not helped one bit. We already knew the number of pre-teens diagnosed with anorexia in the last decade had doubled, and it seems the figures are rising even higher. We need change. Fast. 
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Check out the Body Happy Kids resources, workshops and Masterclass and the #FreeFromDiets campaign in my bio, if you want to help change the culture our kids are growing up in. They deserve better.
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[Image description: a section from a news article about rising numbers of children suffering with eating disorders. Full text can be found in Alt Text.]
I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. Th I’ve been looking a lot at old photos lately. This pic is from summer 2018, when I could hug my mum and travel abroad on holiday. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, smell the salty sea air and hear the laughter of other families playing on the beach. Holding on to these memories and the hope that the hugs, sunshine and bikinis will come again one day. In the meantime it’s video calls, trackie bottoms and WhatsApp. ❄️☀️ 
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[Image description: Molly and her mum standing on a beach in France, in 2018. They are both wearing brightly coloured bikinis, hugging and smiling. It’s a hot sunny day and the sky is blue.]
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