Fueled by faith

Whether intentionally taught or habitually caught, parents’ perspectives on body image, food, and dieting have a tremendous impact on their children’s worldviews. Their words carry weight in a culture that focuses on a version of “perfection” that praises “being thin.”

Parents’ attitudes toward their own bodies are shaped by various forces, including generational verbiage, personal experiences, the influx of modern online influencers, and prideful comparison of themselves to others.

Capitalizing on the common belief that one’s body is not “good enough,” marketing gimmicks offer quick fixes and constantly changing beauty standards, raking in millions of dollars in revenue. Psalm 139:13-14, however, reveals the ultimate beauty standard – each person is “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the image of God. This battle to love what He has uniquely created impacts every single person, male and female. And the battle begins at an early age.

Recognizing one’s relationship with food

According to Nicole Mesita, a registered dietitian nutritionist, the growing drive for “thinness” pushes young teens toward intentional restriction or other forms of disordered eating to conform their bodies to cultural constructs of beauty and fitness.

In her private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mesita has counseled children as young as 11 who struggle with eating disorders. What parents do not realize is the danger of a disorder going untreated; today, anorexia nervosa is the most deadly psychiatric disorder, according to World Psychiatry.

“The first thing that parents can do is honestly come face-to-face with their own issues with food and get help with that,” Mesita told The Stand. “Talk to … a Christian therapist who works with people with eating disorders and then maybe a dietitian. Even if you don’t have a full-on eating disorder, you could still have a disordered relationship with food that can lead to [you having] an eating disorder or someone around you having an eating disorder.”

While women and girls are primarily the patients who seek help, men undergo more silent struggles, bulking or excessively exercising to fit a certain physique through methods that seem more harmless.

Mesita said patients often reflect on diets their parents implemented throughout childhood, as well as varying expectations for siblings with different body shapes. Although parents may view such comments and food rules as harmless – or even helpful and loving – they can have the opposite effect.

“We’re not talking about presenting [ourselves] as an ultimate model, but rather as someone who’s striving to live in accordance with Jesus’ teaching,” she explained. “That’s really what we’re doing; we’re trying to model what a healthy relationship with food and our bodies looks like to our kids, and it’s very difficult to do that when we’re constantly following a lot of rules.”

Embracing God’s design

When parents spend the majority of their time thinking negatively about their bodies, they distract their minds from the virtues God calls His people to meditate upon in Philippians 4:8. As a mom of three, Mesita said she is careful to never body-shame herself with her children and encourages them that an individual’s health is not always correlated to body size.

In His perfect design, God created an innate hunger and fullness regulation system that helps people be fit to serve others. However, Mesita said culture has pulled humanity away from God’s original design, transforming weight and size into “a distraction we’ve created to be comfortable in our own flesh.” Too often, the fear of not meeting today’s standards distracts us from the truth that we are made in the very image of God, and our bodies house His Spirit.

“Being neutral about body sizes is the best thing that you could do,” Mesita added. “Being neutral about body sizes and food, creating these neutral systems … your kids will pick up on that, and they’ll be able to understand that their worth isn’t going to be attached to the size of their body.”

Rather, they will understand that God “created us in different sizes of imago Dei,” said Mesita.

Such an understanding allows believers of all ages to live well – and confidently – as bearers of God’s image in a world that praises perfection.