Ep 31: Eating Disorders and Exercise

Dana Suchow, founder of Do The Hotpants, discusses what parents
need to know to discuss eating disorders with a teenager. She
also explains how to connect with teenagers about exercise in a
positive way, words you should absolutely avoid when talking
about food, and a lesson in where negative body image comes from.


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Full show notes


If no one takes care to combat eating disorders in teenagers,
unhealthy dieting can lead to damaging long term health problems.
In serious cases, malnutrition can lead to death.


Does your teen seem uncomfortable about what they eat? Does your
teen struggle to keep weight on? Do you even know what your
teenager thinks about his or her body? These can be unfamiliar
and uncomfortable questions, but it’s so important to ask them.


The secretive nature of eating disorders in teenagers can make
unhealthy dieting a deceptively difficult problem to identify and
address.


To be clear, having a teenager who struggles with body image or
food consumption does not mean you are a bad parent! Billions of
advertisement dollars have gone into convincing all of us that
our bodies are ugly. Advertising companies know we buy more stuff
when we feel bad about ourselves, so they use billboards and TV
ads to train us to hate our own bodies. In this way, eating
disorders in teenagers are the natural product of emotional
marketing. While these ads primarily target girls, boys are
affected, too.


My special guest today believes that in just 10 to 20 years,
advertising will put just as many boys at risk of developing
eating disorders as girls. If this is true, then eating disorders
in teenagers will soon be a more relevant issue for all parents,
not just parents of girls. So what can parents do to
combat a thriving industry that’s invested in teens hating their
own bodies? I spoke with Dana Suchow to get an idea, and
it turns out there is a lot that parents can do.


Dana is the founder of DoTheHotpants.com, a website that she
initially started as a fashion blog. Eventually, she transformed
the website into a platform for people to safely share their own
stories about body image and eating disorders. Having struggled
with an eating disorder herself, Dana has personal experience on
the matter. She knows firsthand how important it is to have
conversations about a healthy understanding of body image.


A Delicate Subject Matter


Eating disorders in teenagers can be an extremely sensitive
subject to breach. They are very secretive and highly personal.
Parents need to be very careful with how they approach this
subject because even though you mean well, bringing it up in the
wrong way can actually backfire.


Dana remembers a personal example of when a conversation about
her eating disorder went poorly. Dana’s roommate in college
noticed how she was struggling to eat food. Her roommate
vocalized her concern for Dana, but Dana remembers getting
instantly defensive. She felt like her roommate was talking down
to her, even though her roommate was really trying to help.


Dana explains how people who struggle with eating disorders want
so desperately to hide what’s going on. When a teen feels like
their secret is being threatened, they can become fragile and
defensive. Striking the right tone to navigate this conversation
is tricky. What helps address eating disorders in teenagers most,
Dana says, is that parents get on the same level as their teens.


Getting on the same level means empathizing, something Dana
believes parents need to focus on. Empathic words like, “I get
it,” and, “you’re not alone,” mean so much to teens who struggle
with an eating disorder. If parents share they also feel down
about their body from time to time, teens might be more inclined
to open up about themselves. On the other hand, their defenses
will stay up if they sense you are mad, or disappointed, or
ashamed.


In order to understand eating disorders in teenagers, though,
you’ll want to have a better awareness of the greater problem:
uneducation.


“Uneducating,” or Questioning Negative Input


Currently, we live in a world that is so fixated on thinness and
youth. You can probably imagine the “ideal” body in your head!
It’s the body represented on 99% of movie posters: a thin, young,
white woman who has no disabilities. She has no body hair,
perfect makeup, and the list goes on and on.


We need to unlearn this!


When we don’t have representation of all the ways girls can
exist, we start looking at girls through a narrow lens. Dana
believes that advertisements teach us there’s only one, narrow
type of girl can be loved, which is related to her body type. The
negativity your teen has towards certain body types (even her
own), isn’t coming from her voice alone. Part of that voice is
modeled after what she sees and hears represented in popular
culture. This prejudice has been ingrained by marketing tactics
for so long that we might hate any body that doesn’t look like
the singular, narrow norm.


However, you can’t shame women for trying to fit
in. We live in a world that rewards people for fitting
in, so instead of judging those who represent unrealistic norms,
we should ask insightful questions about unlearning.


For example, Dana references the movie Wonder Woman, a great
movie in many ways, that also provides parents an opportunity to
talk about unlearning the “normal” appearance of Hollywood stars.


If you go watch Wonder Woman with your girls, you can ask them
after the movie:


“When did all the Amazonian women get electrolysis to get rid of
their body hair? When did they all find the time to
shave?”
You want your child to learn that every woman deserves to fit in.
This means questioning why not all women are represented in
popular culture. Like with Wonder Woman, you can enjoy a movie
and still question if it’s encouraging a culture that promotes
eating disorders in teenagers.


This is only one of a dozen different topics I went through with
Dana!


An Ongoing Conversation


When discussing eating disorders in teenagers, there are so many
angles, rabbit holes, and doors that lead to the next. We
certainly couldn’t touch on every aspect of this discussion in
one interview, but there is one thing Dana wants to make clear:


Parents are not powerless when it comes to addressing
eating disorders in teenagers!


Eating disorders in teenagers is a delicate subject matter, but
champions like Dana are working hard to help us parents learn
more so we can help our kids. If you were to fill a book with
everything we talked about in this interview, these would be the
chapters:


The un-shaming process

Accepting the power of advertisements

“Pulling back the curtain” on these industries

Destigmatizing “fat” bodies

Idolizing looks vs idolizing health

The love-hate relationship with social media

Redefining “overweight” and debunking the BMI (again!)

Positive language around teen exercise

The privilege of “clean eating”



The scope of this problem is massive, but sculptable. If we’re
going to protect against eating disorders in teenagers, we’re
going to have to do the work! You can help do your part by giving
this episode a listen!


Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder tre...