Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle: You're listening to Talking to Teens, where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle.

We're talking today about the science of teen body image.

A lot of research has been done lately on what factors make teenagers and young adults feel confident and comfortable in their skin, as opposed to feeling insecure in their bodies. It turns out, there are a lot of subtle things that we do and say as parents that can lead our teens to struggle with their body image.

Even the most well meaning parents are often not setting our teens up for success in this area. Our guest today is doctor Charlotte Markey. She has studied body image, eating behavior, and weight management for over 25 years.

She's the author of four books Including the new book Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life.

Welcome to the Talking to Teens podcast. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Charlotte Markey: Thanks for having me It's good to see you again.

Andy Earle: Yeah, really excited to have you back here. We had a great discussion previously on body image but you have a new book now called Adultish.

I'm really curious to dive into that one.

Charlotte Markey: Yeah, I am too.

Andy Earle: Talk to me about where this came from. Why Adultish? What did you feel had not been said yet or was missing from the current literature on body image and why is a new book needed?

Charlotte Markey: We know the transition to adulthood, the late teens and early adult years are a vulnerable time for young people in terms of the development of mental health problems.

It's also a time when a lot of young people lose their day to day support people, their families and some of their close friends because they go away to school or start jobs the combination of this vulnerability, independence, and lessening of support can be a bad combination for young people.

And I really wanted to provide a mental health resource. It's really not just mental health. It's physical health. It's a little bit of everything, because I think that young people need accurate information. They have a lot of TikToks and they don't necessarily have a lot of accurate scientifically based information about how to take care of themselves.

The thread that weaves the topics together is body image, which is just feeling good about yourself and comfortable in your own skin.

Andy Earle: And there's so much research in the book, which I thought was really cool. You talk about myths and look at research to see are these things really accurate?

You have stories from young people that you've interviewed and also from other experts. And also frequently asked questions that you break down and answer in a cool way. There's so much, good stuff in here. And I think so many really practical pieces of advice and strategies.

One thing I found really interesting is you talk about body appreciation and gratitude and how that may improve body image and wellbeing in general. How do we engage in body gratitude or body appreciation? What does that look like?

Charlotte Markey: We're socialized, I think, to pick apart our bodies and be cruel to them.

Most of us, and I don't necessarily exclude myself here, will look in the mirror and start picking. I don't like what my hair is doing today, or why isn't my nose smaller, or whatever, right? And really, to have a healthy body image, we have to work on changing that internal narrative and thinking a little bit more about actually, I really like my hair.

I have good hair. Growing up we're told not to be boastful and there's so much social recrimination if you brag about yourself and in certain ways. And yet the picking apart yourself is actually pretty destructive for mental health. So when we're talking about body appreciation and gratitude, a lot needs to stem from, what do I like about myself?

It doesn't have to necessarily be said out loud. You don't have to break all social conventions, but it's okay to say it out loud sometimes. And it's certainly important to say it to yourself.

Andy Earle: Is that something you get in the habit of doing on a regular basis or just one time and that helps you or how does that work?

Charlotte Markey: There's actually some research I did with a graduate student a number of years ago that showed that even just asking people to list out some body either appearance issues or functional issues that they feel grateful for improved their body image in the short term.

So it was just like, sit down and make a list, essentially. And people said all kinds of things. Weird things even. Things I had never thought of. A lot of men with a lot of hair comments. It doesn't matter. It's personal. It's how we feel about ourselves and it shouldn't be about shame.

It should be about coming to terms with, Hey, maybe I'm not perfect, but I've got these things that I do like. So maybe make a list once. It feels silly. There's actually data to suggest it might help. I also think we really need to get better at, when we spend that time checking on our appearance in whatever way it is, pushing the negative thoughts aside and allowing space for more of the positive thoughts. Kind of day to day.

Andy Earle: You really pick a fight in the book with diet culture. There's a whole chapter on cancelling diet culture. Why is that?

What's wrong with diet culture? Isn't that helpful to be being exposed to new ideas that we can implement that could make us healthier and be improving our fitness? What could possibly be bad about diet culture?

Charlotte Markey: Yeah, that's a good way to frame it in terms of picking a fight, because it's a fight I've been fighting for at least a decade. Probably closer to two decades. There's just not data to support that most dieting, the way we conceptualize it in popular culture, is effective. And in fact, it can be harmful to people's physical and psychological health.

People sometimes will say this is what I do, and it works for me. And my response is typically great. If that's what works for you, that's fine. I can tell you what the data say, and the data say that 95 percent of the time most of the dieting information available is going to turn out to be bad information that's not going to be useful or helpful.

You can be in the 5%. It's not impossible. but it's not incredibly likely.

Andy Earle: Yeah, we all think we're in that 5%.

Charlotte Markey: I do have sympathy for those feelings. And, every now and then, I will see an advertisement on Instagram or something. Because of what I do, the algorithms get confused sometimes. And someone will try to market a diet to me.

Even me, who's been picking this fight for 20 years will see some advertisement and think, Oh, what is this? Maybe, for that two seconds, I understand how these plans and programs and sometimes they're books or potions or pills, whatever they are. They inspire hope, right?

Because who doesn't want to improve themselves in a variety of ways? And if someone tells you they have the answer, it's like the holy grail. I get it. But it's important to squash those feelings down and remember that in the real world, we need to think long term in terms of what's good for us.

And most of these diet culture ideas are very short term oriented.

Andy Earle: What seems to be more helpful or more effective is instead of focusing on the next fad diet or supplement that's supposed to change everything for us, is getting more in touch with our own body and our hunger cues and how foods are affecting us or how we're feeling before we're eating, as we're eating, after we're eating, things like that.

You talk about interoception. And the principles of intuitive eating and paying attention to those feelings and cues inside of us. How, as parents, can we promote those skills with our family and with our teenagers?

Charlotte Markey: We can model intuitive eating, which is hard because most of us who are parents grew up in a time where diet culture was loud and we lost our ability to eat intuitively.

I think we really paid attention to the rules of Weight Watchers, the rules of the Atkins diet, and we stopped listening to our own bodies. So we can learn how to be more intuitive eaters ourselves. We want to encourage our kids to pay attention to their own body signals.

And it can be hard because our kids body signals are not always on our schedules as parents. I know what it's like if you're a parent and you're making dinner, and your teenager comes in the kitchen and starts eating a meal. And you're like, wait a second, we're having dinner in a half hour.

According to intuitive eating, what we should be letting our kids do is have that meal because they're hungry. And then if they don't want our dinner, they can sit at the table with us and talk. And we can save the leftovers. By letting things like that happen, we're teaching teenagers that what their body tells them matters.

And if they're hungry now, they should eat now. And so even though it's a sort of silly example, it's really part of a larger way of viewing food and how we're feeding our families. And it's not necessarily how we were fed. And, again, as a parent, it can be maddening. But I do think when our kids can take or leave food because they know if they're lucky enough, to have food security, that it will be there and can be eaten in accordance with their needs.

I think that's really a gift to give them.

Andy Earle: You have some really interesting research in the book by Dr. Leanne Birch talking about how children's ability to eat according to physical cues was worst when their parents were most controlling of what they ate. That's so interesting because as parents, we do want to help them develop good habits.

We're like, you have to eat breakfast or you have to eat your vegetables before you can have another helping of the noodles, or you can't have dessert until you finish everything on your plate. I remember sitting at the table for so long because I wasn't allowed to leave until I finished my vegetables. And having these fights with my parents because I just don't like brussels sprouts. I think we're teaching them to eat vegetables because vegetables are important. Or, if you take the food, you have to eat the food because you need to learn how to take the right amount. But what we're talking about is not necessarily intuitive. Maybe we want to surrender more control over to the kids and let them eat more in the way that feels right to them, even if it might not align with our schedule or what we cooked for dinner

Charlotte Markey: Yeah, and again, as a parent, I'm sympathetic to people who resist some of this, but I think you have to remember parenting is a long game. It's a marathon. So we want kids to be able to feed themselves in accordance with their needs. And of course, we want to expose them to vegetables, right?

So yes, serve vegetables. But if your kid is really not liking the vegetables, then you don't force it because no one likes a food that they're forced to eat. But exposure, and this is what the research is really clear on, repeated exposures can help to nurture liking. Again, this has to mean you're in the position of privilege to offer vegetables knowing they might not be eaten.

And I know that's not everyone's position, but if you can do that, then you want to keep offering. You don't have to give up and say vegetables don't matter. But you also don't have to say no ice cream until you eat your broccoli because there's research that have done that exact same thing with kids.

And what do kids tell us then? This broccoli must be really bad. You have to give me ice cream to get me to eat it. I've always wanted to do the opposite experiment someday with kids and be like, you cannot have this broccoli until you eat your ice cream. But until that day comes and I do that, I don't know if that paradigm works.

Andy Earle: No, you still got two bites of your ice cream in there. You got to finish that before you get this broccoli.

Charlotte Markey: Can we ruin ice cream for people? I'm not sure it's quite that simple because it is innately preferable to eat really sweet, fatty, delicious food. But still it's easy to see when you think about it, how it's easy to ruin broccoli, frankly.

Andy Earle: Interesting research on intuitive eating that you conducted recently looking at young adults around the world in different countries and finding that those who were more likely to eat intuitively also felt more satisfied with their bodies. What is going on there?

Charlotte Markey: I think a lot of it is people who are feeling good about their bodies think about eating as something they do for themselves.

The link becomes apparent in terms of I'm taking care of my body. I respect my body. I feel good about my body, right? These things go together. It's not clear what the chicken or the egg is. This is cross sectional research we did. We didn't follow people across time. But, the converse would be, I don't like my body.

I want to deprive my body. I think it's easy to see how diet culture has taught a lot of us that those things go hand in hand instead of thinking of it in a very positive way, which is, I need this body to last me for a long time. I need to take care of it. I need to nourish it.

What would taste good now? What would fill me up? Cause I have six hours until I can eat after this shift at work or whatever it may be.

Andy Earle: Yeah. It's also, part of a whole constellation of beliefs or attitudes and how we think about our body, having more of a connection with our body, honoring and respecting the impulses of our body, and not blaming our body or thinking that we need to suppress what it's telling us to do. That it's wrong or that it's bad in so many ways.

Charlotte Markey: And we all come into the world able to do this for the most part. We come into the world as infants who cry when we need to be fed. And for the most part, parental figures and caregivers try to respect and honor those needs.

You're crying, you want food? Here's some food. And it is unfortunate then that by about preschool, most of us start to become less connected. Because you want to eat breakfast before you go to school. Or there's a snack time. Or there's all these constraints. And it would be beneficial to most of us to have a little more flexibility there.

If you're not hungry at snack time, don't eat snack. Or if you really want your lunch at 10 30, some of us get up early. That makes sense.

Andy Earle: There's something I also found interesting in the book in addition to picking a fight with diet culture you also pick a fight with celebrities. And you talk about influences about our body image. And some really interesting research in here that says in one experiment viewing celebrities as was found to be associated with negative mood and body dissatisfaction.

And also other researchers suggesting when young girls follow celebrities on social media they check social media more often and experience more depression and anxiety. Wow. That doesn't sound good.

Charlotte Markey: Social media presents a risk factor for especially young people's mental health and body dissatisfaction.

But social media is also a tool of connection. It may be where some people find this podcast and hopefully learn something. That's really valuable. But we want to encourage our kids to be careful about who they're following and why, and have conversations about this. I'm not against celebrities.

I'm against celebrities that are potentially damaging young people's mental health by making young people feel like this is the ideal of what I need to live up to in terms of both appearance and lifestyle.

And young people, especially younger teens, have a hard time knowing and appreciating that this isn't my comparison group. Adults, we have a hard time with this, but I know Kim Kardashian is not my comparison group. I don't feel bad that I don't live up to her appearance or lifestyle ideals.

But younger people don't always have a great sense of, Hey, wait, this is, a different kind of group of people who have a different set of resources and more people making them look this way. And they may actually even be selling a product here. It's a lot to dissect, I think, for a 12 or 13 or 14 year old.

Older teens seem to get better at it. But, social media is kind of Pandora's box that's open. I don't think we'll close it, but we need to figure out how to work with it.

Andy Earle: One place where social media is interesting is that Kids are so worried that if they're not on social media or they're not checking it often enough, then they're going to get left out of conversations.

They're going to get not invited to things or they won't be a part of interactions and jokes happening online. But interestingly you talk about research in the book that had some students reduce their social media use to no more than 30 minutes per day for three weeks compared to other students who did not do that.

And the ones who reduced their social media use were less anxious, less depressed, and they actually reported having less FOMO than the ones who used it as much as they want.

Charlotte Markey: And there's other research now too. I think I discussed some of it in the book showing that a week social media break has some mental health benefits.

So I think there's plenty of teenagers. If you said you can't go on social media at all for a week, would just, freak out at the idea. There's a lot of us adults who might freak out at the idea. But then they survived the week and they're like, actually, I had all this extra time. I went out with people instead because I wasn't just on my phone.

It can be a lot of time. We're getting reports of teenagers being on social media for about four hours a day and online in general for, six hours a day. It cuts into sleep, it cuts into other potentially more positive activities.

Andy Earle: It's really important what you're writing about and talking about in this book. I really hope people will go and get a copy of this one. It's written in such a accessible way that I think it would be really beneficial to go through with your teenagers.

Charlotte Markey: Yeah, that's my favorite idea. I'd say parents buy this, when your kid's 15 and sit down and flip through it with them because it's also an opportunity to start a lot of conversations that, as parents, we just don't always know how to start.

It's awkward to be sitting at the dinner table and bring up an eating disorder or anxiety disorder. But once you make it more conversational it's easier. Kids know that you're there for them and they can talk to you about it.

Andy Earle: Yeah, it could just be such a great jumping off point for all kinds of conversations and it would be really interesting to see where those go. So I really encourage people to pick up a copy of adult ish. And I wonder also where people can go to find out more about the work that you're doing or to follow updates from you.

Charlotte Markey: So the book has a webpage, thebodyimagebookforlife. com. You can go there. All the body image books are on a webpage also, just thebodyimagebook. com. And you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok at char_markey. You'll find me that way.

Andy Earle: Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been great speaking with you and I think it's a really important topic and I appreciate your time and the energy that you bring to this.

Charlotte Markey: Yeah. I appreciate that you had the book and looked at it.

I did an interview with someone yesterday who didn't appear to know it existed, so that was fun.

Andy Earle: We're here with Dr. Charlotte Markey talking about the science of teen body image, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Charlotte Markey: They're trying probably to explore who they are.

Come to terms with their sense of identity. Maybe even develop some sense of their own personal style or fit in with peers.

Andy Earle: One of the things that feels so difficult about body image is that our body is constantly changing. Just when it feels like we're starting to feel good about ourself, then something else changes.

Charlotte Markey: We should all just get much better about not talking about our bodies in that way. I don't even think most of us really believe it's as important as the cultural messaging surrounding these issues has convinced us that it is.

The fatality rate of eating disorders is about 10 to 20 percent, which is incredibly high. There's no mental health problem with a higher fatality rate, aside from opioid abuse. Body image is not just a superficial, I like my physical appearance. It really is, I'm comfortable in my own skin.

Andy Earle: Want to hear the full interview? Sign up for a subscription today. It's completely affordable and your membership supports the work we do here at Talking to Teens. You can now sign up directly through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.