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You are here: Home / SELF LOVE & BODY IMAGE / My campaign to ban ads for slimming clubs and weight loss products near kids #FreeFromDiets

My campaign to ban ads for slimming clubs and weight loss products near kids #FreeFromDiets

June 4, 2019 by Molly Leave a Comment

I try really hard to make my home a space free from diet chat and negative body talk. It wasn’t always this way, but the moment my (then) 5 year old asked why I was weighing spinach was a wake-up call.

Although I’d never been to a slimming or weight loss club, I’d spent many years of my adult life dabbling in diets – yo-yoing on and off the restriction bandwagon telling myself I was on a “health kick”, when it was actually about losing weight and changing my shape, nothing to do with my health at all. But that moment with the spinach brought everything into focus and I realised I had no rational response ready for my daughter. And so began the process of self-acceptance and body image education.

That was a few years ago now, and since then I’ve been on national telly in nothing but body-paint, hosted various events around body confidence, launched a hit podcast on body image, made a few popular videos on YouTube on the subject, and used my Instagram daily to spread messages of love and body acceptance. I hate to use such a cliche, but it’s been a “journey”.

During the past couple of years, when I’ve been immersed in interviewing people on this subject, reading research around it, hosting events and listening to other peoples’ experiences, one thing has really struck home: the UK’s body image is at a critical low, with children as young as three years old suffering for not feeling good enough in their skin.

So when I realised that ads for slimming services and weight loss products could be advertised right under their nose, on their school railings or even on posters on the walls of their various kids’ clubs, I felt like something needed to be done. We can do all the positive work we like in schools and avoid all the diet chat at home, but if we’re doing nothing to tackle some of the negative messages out there too then I feel like it’s one step forwards and three steps back.

There’s a wealth of research to show diets can lead to disordered eating – and even eating disorders in some cases. But even getting away from the research on diets themselves, it’s the underlying message of diet culture (often disguised as a “lifestyle choice”) that is so dangerous.

Schools, sports clubs and places of leisure for children and young people should all be safe spaces for under 18s, where they are not at risk of being body shamed, exposed to harmful messaging around dieting and diet culture, or encouraged – whether inadvertently or not – to focus on ideas around restricting food and aspiring to a particular type of body.

These ideas are at odds with the core message being promoted by slimming clubs and weight loss products – that in order to live a happy and fulfilled life, to be a worthwhile member of society and to inspire others, you must be thin or have a body that meets the narrow beauty ideals we regularly see in the media.

We have tight regulations around the way junk food is advertised, with a 100m restriction on the placement of billboards for these products near schools. So why don’t we have the same for slimming services and weight loss products, when there’s so much evidence pointing to how damaging they can be to both our physical and mental health?

To be clear, this campaign is not about banning diet clubs or weight loss products from existing altogether. I’ll never advocate for them, simply because I couldn’t after all the research I’ve read and people I’ve interviewed, but I’ll never judge anyone for wanting to go to a slimming club either – your body, your choice. But I’d argue that in an internet world, with Google, there’s no justification for putting banners and posters and leaflets around about these services. Schools and kids’ clubs are not the place to recruit new members.

And on a final note, this campaign is also not about banning kids from learning about nutrition, intuitive eating and the joy of moving their body in exercise. But there’s a big difference between this and children learning about “syns” and calorie counting and restriction and aspirational body types.

As an aside, the whole health issue is a completely different topic (but can be summarised as: you can never know much about a person’s health just from their size – despite a lot of misinformation around; if you’re concerned about health you need to include mental health in that bracket too, and all the evidence shows that stigmatising people and shaming them into “getting healthy” can have serious mental health consequences; we need to stop placing so much moral value on health because it’s massively ableist – what if someone has an impairment or is differently abled, does that mean they’re of less value than anyone else? It’s about respect – and everyone deserves respect regardless of their physical health status).

Anyway, if you feel the same I’d love you to watch this campaign video and then join the hundreds of people getting behind the #FreeFromDiets movement. We’ve had over 550 signatures in 24 hours and it’s gaining momentum every minute.

Our children deserve to know they are more than just their bodies. Support the campaign and get involved here.

Filed Under: SELF LOVE & BODY IMAGE Tagged With: anti-diet, body confidence, body confidence and kids, diets, FreeFromDiets campaign, slimming clubs

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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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