Promoting Positive Body Image: a Guide for Adults

Promoting Positive Body Image: A Guide for Adults

Consider how you view food. Healthy eating is a part of daily living and is needed to fuel your body. Avoid labeling foods as “good or bad”.

Take a look at the reasons you exercise. Make an effort to get active for the joy of feeling your body move, not out of guilt or obligation.

Examine the ways your attitudes about your own body are shaped by common prejudices. Educate children and youth about the importance of the person, not the image.

Examine how you treat children and youth of each gender. Are you emphasizing beauty and thinness for girls, and athleticism and muscularity for boys? Reinforce children and youth for qualities other than appearance.

Think critically about the ways that television, magazines, and other media portray unrealistic images. Help children and youth become consumer savvy.

Be a positive role model. Recognize the importance of self-acceptance. Control self-talk by changing negative messages to positive ones. (i.e., Change “I’m so stupid” to “everyone makes mistakes”).

Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew. Adapted from: Russell, S. & Ryder, S. (2001). BRIDGE. Eating Disorders, 9(1), 1-14. FOUNDATION OF HEALTHY BODY IMAGE:

Fat and Thin

Many people have strong personal feelings surrounding the issues of “fat” and “thin.” In order to help children and youth with these complex issues, adults need to:

 Examine the messages that may be passed along about weight.

 Reinforce the importance of accepting people of all sizes through your words and actions. Recognize that healthy bodies and happy people come in all sizes.

 NOT complain about body shape or size (your own or others).

 NOT allow weight-related nicknames (e.g. “Bean-pole” or “Chunky”).

 Express appreciation for the ways that your body is special and unique. Emphasize the positive functions of every body part!

 Dispel the myth that physical appearance is more important than internal qualities. How a person looks is not an indication of the person they are on the inside. Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew Adapted from: Dina Zeckhausen’s Storybook Full Mouse Empty Mouse