In this episode of Behind the Bite, Dr. Cristina Castagnini interviews Oona Hanson, a parent educator and eating disorder advocate. Oona shares her journey from being an educator to focusing specifically on eating disorders and diet culture after her own child developed an eating disorder. The conversation covers crucial information for parents about recognizing warning signs, navigating treatment challenges, and creating a supportive environment for recovery. SHOW NOTES: Click here Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behind_the_bite
In this episode of Behind the Bite, Dr. Cristina Castagnini interviews Oona Hanson, a parent educator and eating disorder advocate. Oona shares her journey from being an educator to focusing specifically on eating disorders and diet culture after her own child developed an eating disorder. The conversation covers crucial information for parents about recognizing warning signs, navigating treatment challenges, and creating a supportive environment for recovery.
SHOW NOTES: Click here
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behind_the_bite
Welcome to Behind the Bite, where we delve deep into the real life struggles and triumphs surrounding food, body, and weight. I'm Dr. Cristina Castagnini, a psychologist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, bringing you a unique blend of personal experience as a recovered individual with over 25 years of professional expertise.
In each episode, we'll share the courageous journeys of individuals who have faced these challenges firsthand, alongside insights from dedicated professionals in the field. Whether you're seeking healing in Inspiration or simply a deeper understanding. This podcast is here to empower you on your own path to a better life.
Join us as we explore stories of resilience, discuss the latest insights, and strive to foster a community of support and growth. Together we can break down barriers, challenge, stigma, and pave the way towards healing and living authentically.
If you're a parent today, I don't have to tell you that raising kids in this world is hard. Between social media influencers, wellness trends, and the relentless pressure to be quote unquote healthy, it can feel impossible to know whether your child is just following the latest fad or struggling with something far more serious.
And let's be real. I'm a parent too. So you know what? We're already juggling enough. The last thing we need is more fear, more guilt or more misinformation when it comes to keeping our kids safe. And that's why I'm excited about today's guest, Oona Hansen. She is a powerhouse in the world of parent education and eating disorder advocacy.
She's an educator, a parent coach, and a go to expert in navigating diet culture's grip on our families. You may have seen her on Good Morning America, read her insights in CNN, People, USA Today, or Parents, or followed her incredible newsletter, Parenting Without Diet Culture. And mark your calendars because she has a book coming out in 2026.
But Oona isn't just an expert. She's a mom who's been in the trenches. She thought she knew all there was to know about food, body image, and raising healthy kids. Until her own child developed an eating disorder. Suddenly she was the one facing the same fears, confusion, and overwhelm that so many parents experience.
And through that journey, she realized something very powerful. Parents need support. They need to know what to look for, how to have tough conversations, and most importantly, That they're not to blame. Today, we're diving deep into what parents really need to know about eating disorders, how to spot warning signs in a world that normalizes disordered eating, and the sneaky ways diet culture shows up in our own parenting, sometimes without us even realizing it.
Oona is here to share real practical strategies for navigating all of it from talking to kids about social media trends to handling the stress of supporting a child through recovery. So if you've ever worried about your child's relationship with food, body image, or self worth, today is really an episode you can't afford to miss.
So let's get into it. Welcome to the show. So glad to have you here. I'm glad to be here. All right, so I ask everybody who's on this show, like, why are you doing the work that you're doing or how did you get into it? So would you mind answering that question? Yeah, I was already doing parent education. I'm an educator at heart.
But the reason I started to focus on body image and diet culture and eating disorders is that I thought I knew a lot about those topics. I learned the hard way that I did not. I had a child development eating disorder and it really took us by surprise and it took us a long time to even, Realize what was going on and knowing my background working with adolescence.
I have a degree in educational psychology I thought I knew a lot, but I really I always say I knew just enough to be dangerous and It's really become my mission to help other parents learn what I learned the hard way, help other parents learn an easier way, including how to help, what their role might be when it comes to helping their child recover if they do end up with a kid who has an eating disorder.
Usually it's very personal for most people and I think that's really the best is when you have the lived experience because then you really get it when you're working with people. Is that what you find too? Yeah, and I was really lucky. I worked for a few years at an eating disorder treatment program that really prioritized lived experience right alongside the clinical and medical training profession, the professionals with the letters after their names.
Really focusing on that as such a huge asset to support recovery. Because even someone who has, like a clinician that has their own lived experience of an eating disorder, their role isn't necessarily that lived experience perspective, right? They're really delivering a treatment, they're developing a different kind of Therapeutic relationship usually and I realize that's evolving.
I know it used to be therapists had to be like that blank slate and that has really started to evolve. I think and give people more flexibility if they do want to disclose things that they think would be helpful to their patient or their client. But I really, yeah, I really value lived experience. I think especially.
With eating disorders, because of all the myths and misconceptions that, parents are to blame, maybe especially mothers are to blame, depending on when someone did their training, they might hold a lot of these misconceptions and someone with lived experience can really help rebuild that parent's confidence and self compassion because a lot of parents blame themselves.
I really find that blame or shame can be pretty counterproductive when you're trying to help someone recover. So I think, yeah, exactly that. The lived experience of parents or guardians who've been through this I think is essential. I wish I had that when we were going through this. I had some peer support of people who were in it, right in the trenches with us, but not someone who had come out the other side.
So I love being able to be that person for parents who are looking for that kind of support. Yeah, I think that's a lot of, I've talked about this on here. It's like a lot of the reason I do this is I didn't have that either when I went through mine. I didn't have anybody who could say, Oh yeah. I've been there, I've done that, and oh, by the way, I've recovered because there was also, when I was going through this, there was the myth of, you don't fully ever recover.
You always struggle with it, right? And so I can imagine for parents, that's so powerful that they have you there just as so much hope your child can get through this. I've been there. I understand what you're going through. That was just must be so amazing for them to have you there.
And I love you brought up that idea of hope and recovery. I think that myth still persists that people think this is a life sentence and it doesn't have to be. I mean I think for a long time because of the way treatment was generally delivered or where people understood or didn't understand about eating disorders often kept people trapped A kind of partial recovery that was really pretty miserable for a lot of people.
So I understand like someone who's a parent might have someone they know in their life who seems to be still struggling even into their like middle age years, for instance, and think, Oh my gosh, is my kid going to be struggling for decades? But more and more we're hearing people sharing their story that, really robust, resilient recovery.
is possible. And if someone is struggling, it doesn't mean they're doing recovery wrong, right? So it's like holding both of those things at the same time, I think is really important. But that hope piece, yeah, if you think there's no hope for your kid to live a happy, healthy life it's really hard to do the hard work of supporting someone with an eating disorder to recover.
So one thing I want to ask you, I get asked a lot especially in this day and age with social media, I think it is confusing, right? There's so many influencers that kids are following, especially the adolescents that it's confusing to know is my kid, struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, or are they just.
You know following what these influencers are telling them to do and so for parents who are just looking at their child going they're just doing seeming to do what all their friends are doing if these social influencers are telling them to do How can somebody know if their child's actually struggling or not?
I don't think parents have to know how to diagnose their child, right? That's where a professional like you comes in right to help really give a full assessment But I also think if parents have that gut feeling that something isn't right I think they should listen to that. Disordered eating is so normalized and even promoted as healthy, quote unquote, in our culture that it is really hard to notice.
And look, parents might be doing You know pick a pick one of these diets that don't call themselves diets parents might doing it be doing new more intermittent fasting or Keto, am I allowed to say these kind of names? I hope that's not too. Okay. Okay. Yeah, or they might be you know, who knows right?
They might be engaging in some of these behaviors as well, right? moms and dads parents and guardians of all genders could be Having a disordered relationship with food or their body or with exercise. So it could be really normal even in the family and we also have these ideas like, oh, teens like to experiment like, Oh, my teen wants to be vegetarian or vegan or my teen wants to try this new, workout.
I should support their like identity exploration and all these things make sense, right? Or Oh, teens are supposed to be withdrawn and moody. I'm not gonna like over worry about things seeming a little off. So there's so many factors that make it really hard. So the one thing I want to say is to parents, it can be really hard to spot warning signs, especially the things your kid might be doing.
It might be the very thing their pediatrician told them to do for their health, right? So spotting these red flags. It's not easy, but I think as a parent you get that gut feeling, or you can often. Sometimes you're completely, it comes out of the blue and you don't realize what's going on. But I do think parents get a gut feeling that something isn't right, and I think it's worth talking to someone.
So we were talking about how it's hard for parents to see and understand some of the signs and symptoms, especially if they're maybe doing some of the things themselves. Yeah. So I think I want to give parents a lot of compassion and. If you do notice your child changing really anything significant about their food or exercise or the way they're interacting with maybe clothing or mirrors, like if you pick up that there's something happening, I think it's always worth having the conversation and to come at it with it.
The old standbys of like curiosity and compassion. You're not like accusing them of anything. You're not if we come on too strong, like we're bringing all of our worries to the table what are you doing? Are like we come at it with that kind of energy, they're less likely to be open.
And honest with us. So I think just asking the question Hey, I've noticed some changes. Could you tell me more about that? And, they might say you stopped eating dessert. So I went that's a conversation to be had as a family. If your child says I'm fine, I'm just being healthy.
Again, that's what do you, what does healthy mean to you? If there's a lot of defensiveness, like my, in my experience, If the child really gets upset that you're bringing this up really gets upset, to me, that's often that's another red flag that something is going on. If they're really pushing you away and they have a thousand reasons why what they're doing is good or quote unquote healthy or no big deal or they're fine, I think that's where a parent might really want to get some outside support.
Maybe talk to the child's doctor. Talk to an eating disorder professional and be prepared to, that this might be, this might, there might be more going on than you think and I think that's one of the most important things parents should know is that, depending on the age of the folks listening, like I think of like Karen Carpenter documentaries or like after school specials taught us a certain kind of, stereotype or really a myth about eating disorders, that someone might be.
Like visibly emaciated or like never eat, right? And that's really rare. And I think when someone does present with those outward symptoms or behaviors, people are already concerned and they're probably getting the support they need. It's the rest of the population where you might be seeing your kid eat.
They might not be so called underweight according to the BMI designation. And You might see, they might seem okay. They might be doing great in school. There are all these signs that look like, oh, everything is great. So it's important to know that those extreme stereotypes or myths about eating disorders are true for only a very small percentage of the population of people who struggle with eating disorders.
So it's good for parents to know, the truth or the facts about eating disorders, that they don't have a look. As I know you talk about on the podcast, they can affect anyone, any gender, any age, any body size any socioeconomic status, And your child doesn't have to have a history of trauma or bullying or, bullying you could put under trauma, of course you, they don't have to be teased about their weight to, we have all these ideas of what the typical patterns are, and there really are so many ways that an eating disorder can develop.
So again yeah. I encourage parents to listen to their gut, ask questions with compassion and curiosity, and depending on the child's reaction, you'll see where that next conversation goes. And when in doubt, get support from a, from an expert, from a friend who knows something about this. There are some great resources online, obviously, about eating disorders.
So don't wait if your gut tells you something is a little bit off. I'm curious you'd mentioned, okay, that parents might be doing some of these Behaviors are doing some of these programs too and I want to talk about that because I don't think we do have these conversations enough because I still do hear these commercials for things and they're touted as what healthy or, you mentioned new and you mentioned some of these things and people are, that's confusing for people, I think, right when they're commercials for them and, It's okay if there's commercials for Noom and there's like Weight Watchers and there's all these things, right?
How can they be bad for you? Aren't they, quote unquote, healthy? Why are you bringing them up on this podcast is some things that Could be eating disorder or not okay to do. So I want to have that conversation because I think there's so much confusion about that. And I just cringe when I hear people saying they're, doing MyFitnessPal still, or they're like, calculating their calories, or doing all these things, or doing keto, or paleo, or what all these things are.
And people are like, wait, that's good to do. Those are fine to do. So I don't know, how did these conversations come up for you with parents? Yeah, we've all been taught that weight and health are like this very simple equation and that, that thinner is always better and that more exercise is always better.
And sometimes it's not until you're faced with something as serious as an eating disorder that you realize, all the things you weren't understanding before, how the relationship between weight and health is so much more complicated and the relentless messaging, and now, we've got a whole new channel of the weight loss medications, where it's like it's now even louder, and it's coming, all these companies that Used to say oh, you just have to follow our plan and use willpower and strategies and all these things are now saying, oh, actually, those don't actually work.
What you need is this medication. And the irony is that people in the eating disorder field and people in the anti diet and body liberation space have been citing this decades of research saying that diets. don't actually work for most people. They're not affected at their stated goal and that they come with risks of things like weight cycling, disordered eating, negative body image and eating disorders.
So those were ignored or pursued by mainstream diet companies until now, right? Until it served like a purpose to sell these medications of Oh, it's not your fault. Like you haven't done it wrong. It's this is the way diets work. This is the way bodies work. Now you just need to buy this product.
And I'm not, I don't judge anyone for taking a medication prescribed to their doctor. That makes sense for them. I'm not here to say, don't ever use these medications, but just to give a little context that like we've actually known for a long time that You know, weight loss efforts may not actually be the most health promoting thing for a lot of people, but it's only recently that some of this has come out through an unlikely source, right?
It's the diet, the weight loss industry telling us what actually our bodies have known all along. So back to the parent who may be doing one of these plans. And again, like there can be that hormonal and body image perfect storm in a lot of families where. Parents are entering middle age, experiencing some body changes as their kids are going through adolescence and everyone's like dealing with kind of some of the same issues, but just at a different stage of life.
And I think this could actually be a perfect opportunity. For parents to take a closer look at the messages that they've taken in over the course of their life and then the messages they are then transmitting to their kids about what it means if your body changes, what it means if you're gaining weight, what it means if you need a new size in your jeans.
Because our kids have to be gaining weight in order to grow and develop into their adult bodies. But if they're in a household where we are constantly saying your body body shouldn't change, I should be able to fit into my, I don't know, whether it's your prom dress, your wedding dress, your high school jeans that message is hurting us as parents, and it's also sending this harmful message to our kids.
I do not blame parents if their child develops an eating disorder. I know a lot of people do blame their parents if they were put on diets without consent, and, I totally respect that, that lived experience. From my perspective, I don't find it helpful as a parent coach to blame, ever to blame parents.
I really zoom out and place the blame at diet culture and our fat phobic world that parents might have thought they were helping their child. If you're afraid your child is going to be discriminated against because of their body size you might rightly think the logical thing to do is to help them try to shrink their body.
So I don't blame parents. But back to this issue of like social media and all of this stuff, I think it's important for parents to remember that we are influencers too. We have an influence on our kids and it's very tempting. There've been some very, some bestselling books written that blame everything on cell phones and social media.
And I don't want to let those companies off the hook because absolutely they could be doing a much better job to protect kids, much better job. They're doing like barely a bare minimum and not even that. But. It's too simple. It's not it. Life is more complicated than that. It's not just the phones and social media.
And it's what we're role modeling and how we're talking about food and bodies in our homes that has a really powerful impact on our kids. So I want parents to hear that message from a place of empowerment. It's not this impossible task. We can't single handedly Change what they're doing at meta or any of these social medias or tick tock.
There are obviously there are people who are very much involved in trying to get some good changes made to those algorithms and things, but as an individual parent. You're going to have a pretty big influence just in your own home, so really leaning into that, and then having conversations with kids hey what's going on TikTok what's trending, right?
Because kids love nothing, especially teenagers, love nothing more than to teach you something, so I think one way in is to ask kids what's happening in terms of what's the, what's today's version of diet culture on TikTok? And that could be a great conversation starter. And you can even say, like, when I was your age, we had the grapefruit diet before prom or whatever where that was pretty nutty.
What's going on in your world? And Really trying to be vulnerable without we don't want to bring all of our like our own teenage baggage to the table But we can bring some of that vulnerability. That can be a great conversation starter Yeah I think you're right because I but it also brings to mind like the whole conversation of how much things Change over time because if there's one thing, you know If there's one thing that quote unquote worked then it would be the same thing that we heard when we were teenagers, right?
so It just demonstrates that it constantly evolves and changes with the times. And like I constantly tell my kids like, Oh yeah, back when I was, your age, it was like carbs were king and like fat was bad and fat made you fat. And that was the messaging, right? We had snack wells and everything was low fat, no fat.
And now it's everyone's so afraid of carbs, right? So it's it's just so interesting how things shift and change over time. And I say that to them saying like. Be mindful and aware of the messaging because, if what I heard back in the day was true, then why did it change so drastically to your generation?
I think a lot of this is education and just having open conversations and really challenging what they're hearing. And Being aware, like I always say, what's the next 15 minute famed diet, right? It's constantly evolving. And so I don't know what you think about that, but I just think it's fascinating.
Yeah, and I think, especially if we're talking about adolescents who have a little more critical thinking and abstract thinking available to them. It can be a great conversation just to talk about how wild it is that there's always a new thing popping up, but it's really never new. It's really like recycling something from back in the day, like I, when cottage cheese started trending on Tik Tok again, I was like, Oh, we've seen cottage cheese before.
Like how some of these things just keep cycling and, asking kids like, why do you think that is? Why? Why do these people do these? These trends, like why do these kinds of videos, why does this kind of content get so start trending and get so popular? And we can even get into sort of deeper conversations about who's benefiting when you feel bad about your body, who benefits, when they're telling you this green powder is going to change your life and they're selling the green powder, let's add it up here and figure this out.
It's, Because teenagers hate to be like tricked or taken advantage of. We all do, but I think there's a, there's that like fire of justice that you have when you're an adolescent. And some of us lose that when we get older, some of us get more fiery. But I think for kids, you have that sense of that kind of independence.
They want that autonomy realized, like having the conversation with them it's like the way, the marketing around vaping and cigarettes. I know there's some data that shows. Talking about the health impacts of vaping, it doesn't, there isn't at least what I've seen, it's not like that's the magic trick that like keeps kids from vaping.
But when kids are able to have conversations about predatory marketing, and how they're trying to trick you with these zinfluencers, right? Online. Like that actually can motivate kids to develop the skills to push back like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to be taken advantage of, this person's trying to fool me.
I'm no fool. So I think those are the kinds of conversations that can be really productive in a family. And it might start because of a tick tock your kids watching. So you know, rather than seeing the phone or the apps like as the enemy, I think we can actually like, that's where our kids are and that's where their friends are for the most part.
So we want to, we don't want to invade, just like we wouldn't have wanted our parents to show up at the mall in the, back in the day like how embarrassing but we can still ask questions and really focus on, less on lecturing and more on listening. Speaking of the lecturing do you find that tends to happen because parents are just so freaked out and scared and worried and they don't know what to do, so they just go into the that mode or, like, how do you help parents because, there's, eating disorders are scary, when you hear things like eating disorders are one of the deadliest mental health illnesses or you don't see your kid eating or following their meal plan or, maybe they run up to their room and close the door and don't talk to you, like, How do you help parents navigate all of that because it can be extremely scary to feel oh my gosh Like I don't know what to do they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing or they're not eating or they're mad at me or whatever Like, how do you help them?
Yes, there's so many little nuggets of Tangents I could go on speaking of lecturing I could go on for a long time as you can probably tell I think a couple of things When you mentioned as my kid mad at me, I think when we're raising teenagers, trying to get the perspective that it's often really not about us and it's not personal, right?
Our kids are even just like typical healthy adolescent development. They're going to say and do things that rub us the wrong way and feel really hurtful. One of the best ways to enjoy this age group is to not take, take it so personally. Now, you can absolutely have rules in your household whether it's door slamming or name calling or whatever it is, that can set a boundary and say that's not okay.
But not to take it So personally and I think especially if your child has an eating disorder, you can, the eating, I'm going to externalize the eating disorder, which I think is a helpful framework, especially for parents caring for a child with one, because it's almost like your child's, it's like invasion of the body snatchers, right?
It's like the eating disorder is run, if the eating disorder is running the show and your child's, It's probably running the show in your whole house, right? It's making you walk on eggshells and maybe you can be really afraid to confront the eating disorder or to help your child eat because it's, the claws are going to come out, right?
When you try to approach your child and help them because the eating disorder wants you to back away, right? You as a loving parent are a threat to the eating disorder and so getting a lot of pushback during eating disorder treatment and like conflict it is to be expected and that's where parents need a lot of support to know how to navigate that because Yeah, if we're just, if we're fighting with our kid all the time, sometimes that's like the goal of the eating disorder.
It's let's get my, let's get the parents arguing about things rather than actually helping us eat, or helping us rest, or helping us, do the, assignment from the therapist, or something like that. So just trying to be aware of oh, am I getting bamboozled by the eating disorder too?
So those, just like parents learning how to recognize diet culture maybe in their own practices or just out in the world as parents learn about eating disorders and really externalizing it can really help you Connect to your actual authentic child Connect help you connect to your authentic self that you're not just going through the motions of some diet plan or app or something like that.
So I think they're, as awful, I don't want to put too rosy a glow on this, but as awful as eating disorder recovery is, I know so many families who are closer now than they were before the eating disorder, right? But what they had to go through and the skills they learned along the way about, Communicating with each other, with allowing the expression of feelings that maybe hadn't happened before and really being vulnerable with each other, but also parents being the leader, really taking care of their child in a time of great need, this can really bring a family even closer together, so if you're in this right now and it just feels like it's all conflict, know that it's not, it doesn't have to be this way forever and you can actually come out the side, come out the other side feeling a lot closer and healthier and happier as a family too.
So speaking of that family dynamics can get very interesting, I'm sure, with what you're doing. Do you ever find it's much more complicated if there's families where the child is going back and forth between two homes, or parents maybe have differing opinions about the need for treatment or help or your role.
I don't know how you navigate all that. It is one of the most common challenges, I would say. And even whether it's a family where the child is in treatment, or let's say it's a family that wants to do prevention work, right? And one parent is I want to make my home a safe haven. From diet culture and not have diet foods or diet talk or, whatever the, the diet, whatever it is, right?
That's not part of the family conversation. But maybe in the other household, it's very much with rigid rules about food and exercise and comments about bodies. That, again, is one of the, one of the reasons parents come to me is like, how do I communicate with my co parent? Even just around the sort of prevention piece.
I think what can be helped when there's a, when there's a clinical eating disorder and treatment is happening, I think this is really where the support of, a therapist to make sure everyone can, as much as possible get on the same page, because without that, it is, in my opinion, it is cruel to the child if the eating disorder isn't, right.
Is allowed to run free in one house and then then the other parent is like in charge of trying to like do damage control and get back on track. So having a therapist or a parent coach, work with a family to really. Really see this from the child's perspective and understanding how eating disorders how you recover from one, what are the factors that contribute to them.
I think once parents can really hear the, from their child and also to see the data of how this tends to go no parent wants their child to suffer. And I think that's where, because the early stages of eating disorder treatment can sometimes feel more painful than the eating disorder itself. Parents think, Oh, I'm making it worse.
I'm just going to let them pick their food or let them, let them do whatever the eating disorder wants them to do because I don't want to argue with my child. I don't want to make it worse. So that's where getting the support and education to know that actually if we can. If we can get this pretty aligned, if we can get everyone on the same page, the hard, the hardest part of recovery is going to go a lot faster.
We're going to get our kid to a good place. And then, once kids have that resilience and they're in a stronger place in recovery, it doesn't mean you have to be doing everything in lockstep, right? Kids are going to have to be resilient and know I need to eat what I need to eat, not what this parent is eating or what my friend is eating or what my date is eating, right?
That's one of the. We, stress testing recovery is an important part of relapse prevention. I don't think parents have to think I can never, I can never deviate from what the other parent is doing. I think there can be more flexibility later. But in that acute stage and early recovery, it is just so beneficial to the child for everyone to get on the same page.
Yeah, as you were talking about, like even prevention, I think one of the biggest hurdles I encounter is when people really just do not think that toxic diet culture messaging is that they think that absolutely is, gospel, right? They just are arguing like, no, there are these foods that you cannot eat, or there is a way to live life that's quote unquote healthy or the best and this and that, and they're just stuck in their.
Ways of thinking and it's, I don't know how you encounter those conversations with parents that are just so entrenched in the toxic diet culture messaging and the beliefs and just Won't let that go. I don't know if you have any suggestions for parents who are thinking like, there's no way I'm ever gonna let go of like certain food rules or allow certain foods in my house or anything like that.
Any thoughts? Yeah, it's really hard. And I think yeah, parents who are stuck in that way often aren't coming to me on the prevention side. They're coming once the child has an ED disorder. And I will say, even having a child with this life threatening illness, It can be hard to let go of some of these beliefs and rules, even though you can see that kind of thinking is hurting your child.
That's how powerful diet culture and fat phobia are. That even when your child has, like you said, an illness that has the second highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, that you might still be like, no, but I have to have this specific shake every day or like my sky is the sky is going to fall.
So compassion is really key. And I think some parents need to take baby steps okay, they'll allow like this new food into the house, like once a week or something like that. In general, I found for a lot of parents, it's easier to make. some bigger changes, right? Like the little incremental changes.
It's almost like you're scared the whole time. It's like ripping the band aid off, right? Is often less painful. So I've really, I have seen families do a 180 around food. I would say this is similar to what happened in my own family where We didn't want to have a restrictive approach to food in our house, but I had a lot of beliefs about like certain brands being like so called healthier I just had I had all those beliefs.
I didn't know there could be any downside to those that kind of thinking and some families do find it's like liberating let's try something really different for a while. The other thing I'll add one more thing, some families just aren't ready to make those big changes, but I think one thing that can help families start to Think about some of these things differently.
Is that idea of the forbidden fruit, right? That the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest, and if we restrict food, because in our culture, binging is scarier than restricting just because of Our beliefs about food bodies. So for parents who are like really trying to double down on restriction with a kid with an eating disorder, one thing that can be effective is to think about the fact that restriction is actually more likely to lead, can lead to binging can lead to kids sneaking food, hiding food, binging on food, and then also purging behaviors and things like that.
And so helping kids feel a little bit more neutral or more habituated to foods, having that availability. It's going to help them have a healthier relationship with that food. And that's often where I've been able to meet that's not unpacking someone's Deep seated fears about foods and weight, but it's coming at it from like a more practical perspective and I've seen parents like the light bulb goes on oh yeah, if I restrict these foods that my kid might actually want to eat them more.
They're not always going to be in my Home when they go to a friend's house or a birthday party or go off to college or living independently They're going to have access to these foods Do I want them like at a party spending all their time at the snack table or do I want them? Enjoying the party with their friends and yeah, they can have a snack.
It's not a big deal So framing it that way I found to be helpful for a lot of parents
Sounds like there's just a lot of education that happens and so I think that's and, and we're getting to time here and just real quick before we end a couple of things. I just wanted to know if parents ask are there maybe just a few things that parents can be mindful of maybe not to say to their child while they're going through recovery?
Yeah, I think a big one, and I think this came up in your conversation with Harriet Brown recently, where people will try to reassure a child recovering from anorexia, like low weight anorexia, and say things like, don't worry, you're not going to get fat, or we won't let you get fat.
This was said to my child by the director of an inpatient hospital. Program for eating disorders. So it's you don't have to just be like the random person on the street to make this mistake. Even the so called experts and leaders in the field of eating disorder treatment make this mistake too.
And it's coming from a good place. It's well meaning. Yeah, but we don't want to double down on what the eating disorder is afraid of. And so that, even going back to your prior question about these foods if we're afraid of the foods, and the weight gain that the eating disorder is afraid of.
We're leaving our child alone with their eating disorder, right? We're not being their protector and their supporter. We're unintentionally siding with the eating disorder, which is like the enemy to their life and well being. Really trying to reorient ourselves to be on the side of our child's. Full or robust recovery and not straddling the fence like, okay, I want you to do a few of these eating disorder behaviors.
Like people aren't, you aren't thinking of it that way, but that's the unintended effect. Okay. So yeah not talking about not doubling down on anti fatness or fat phobia. I also think it's really helpful not to categorize foods as healthy or unhealthy and really, I don't think it's helpful to categorize foods in any form.
So there's a lot of advice out there oh, don't say good or bad or healthy or unhealthy, say like fun food and fuel food or sometimes food and anytime food. And I don't find those kinds of binary categories help, like kids are smart. They know that all these binary categories are eventually are just good and bad, right?
And an eating disorder loves to take black and white thinking and take it to the volume level 11, right? And we don't, again, we don't want to be reinforcing the diet culture or the eating disorders ideas of good and bad food. Instead of calling broccoli, a green vegetable, or instead of calling, pizza carbs, right?
Just calling pizza and broccoli is just broccoli and ice cream is just ice cream, which can feel so strange because we've been told to think of foods in these categories. But that's one simple thing, whether your child has an eating disorder or not Just starting to change the way you talk about foods is going to start to affect the way you think about foods and behave around those foods in ways that are going to be really beneficial for your child to have a healthy relationship with all food.
Yeah, said. Thank you. I'm sure people are going to want to find you, so how can they find you? How can they maybe work with you? Yeah. So my website is Oona Hanson. com. I always say when in doubt, it's an O. And there's a contact form there. You can get directly to me that way. In terms of social media, I'm mostly on Instagram still where I'm Oona underscore Hanson.
If you go to Oona Hanson on Instagram, it's a baby. So if you go to the, if you find a baby that's not me, keep looking. And then I write a newsletter on Substack called Parenting Without Diet Culture. And I try to really offer practical tips and scripts and resources for parents who want to learn about these things.
Whether your child is, you just, maybe they're still a toddler or maybe they're a teen, maybe they're actually grown and but you're still want to learn about this stuff. There's something there for everyone. Thank you so very much for all this great information. I appreciate it so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for listening today. Behind the Bite podcast is created by me, Dr. Cristina Castagnini, as part of the Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network. And produced by the Tweaky Tales. I love hearing from my listeners. So if you like the show, please like rate and subscribe to it on whatever platform you're on.
And for anyone who wants to understand their relationship with food better, or who might be wondering if they have an eating disorder, I have a free nine week e course at my website. Just go to www. behindthebitepodcast. com to get your free e course today. Please note this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered.
It is given with the understanding that neither host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, clinical, or other professional information. If you want or need a professional, you should find one to work with who can address your individual needs and situation. Thank you.