If you’ve been doing the brave and messy work of divesting from diet culture, healing your relationship with food, and learning to have more compassion for your body, chances are you’ve had a moment that made you pause mid-step. The kind that really sneaks up on you, and you think…
Oh, shit.
Because you suddenly realize you’ve said some things that (unintentionally) hurt other people.
Maybe you commented on someone’s weight loss in front of your kid. You joked about “needing to be good tomorrow.” You hesitated before getting into a photo or complained about your body in the mirror.
These are the small, seemingly ordinary moments that most of us grew up around.
When it comes to parenting, diet culture has a particularly powerful way of turning that realization into shame. It whispers that you should have known better or that you’ve already messed it up. But truly, you haven’t. You’ve now got awareness of the pattern, and that is a powerful step forward.
In today’s episode, I’m joined by eating disorder and body image therapist Zoë Bisbing to talk about what kids are actually learning about bodies and food—long before anyone ever sits them down to “teach” them anything. Children absorb tone, tension, praise, fear. They notice which bodies are celebrated and which are scrutinized. They feel when food carries anxiety.
Prevention, Zoë reminds us, isn’t about the perfect feeding approach or getting those difficult body conversations exactly right. It’s about cultivating an environment and relationship where the emotional climate around food and bodies feels safe.
We get into so much, including:
Zoë’s journey from inpatient eating disorder treatment to prevention work—and how becoming a parent reshaped her lens.
The “invisible curriculum” kids absorb about bodies and food: hierarchy, morality, and worth.
Why shutting down “I feel fat” with reassurance can accidentally close the door to connection.
What to actually say when your child brings you a hard body moment—and why taking a breath matters more than having the perfect script.
Body grief as a necessary, protective part of building body image resilience.
How “fix-it” energy can communicate fear—and what it looks like to tolerate discomfort instead.
Why prevention isn’t about perfection, but about creating an emotional climate where kids aren’t alone in their pain.
I truly hope it’s become clear (over the past several years of this show) that no conversation I have is about some mythical “right” way to do all of this stuff. And today’s episode is no different. It’s about building enough safety, enough repair, enough steadiness over time that kids grow up knowing their worth was never contingent on shrinking, optimizing, or earning their place. And we all deserved that.
Whether or not you’re a parent, I think you’ll love—and get so much out of—this episode. For me, chats like this get to the heart of body image healing. And Zoë is…just an absolute delight!
