Diet Culture: Its Unseen Effects in Schools and How Children Can Rise Above It [Part 1]

Hey mama, ever felt disheartened seeing your child encounter diet culture outside of your safe home environment? Well, it's time to arm them with critical thinking skills to navigate this tricky landscape. We're about to set out on an exploration of diet culture in schools, understanding its layers, and sharing our thoughts on how to lift this shame together.

When was the last time you thought about the Presidential Fitness Test? Many of us might remember it as a harmless school ritual, but could it be a subtle harbinger of diet culture? This episode exposes the damaging impact of diet culture in our education system, specifically through the lens of such health campaigns. We share personal experiences of how such initiatives could potentially fuel eating disorders, body shaming, and undue comparisons, manifesting not just in schools but also doctors' offices, social media, and other forms of media.

We also turn our spotlight on the unseen effects of diet culture on anti-bullying campaigns, curriculum, and statewide testing. The episode also discusses the pressures children might face when they're food policed at school, and how food shaming can lead to anxiety in children. Parents, we'll be sharing some tips and resources to support your children in navigating these issues. Buckle up for an enlightening journey that tackles the diet culture in our children's schools. Tune in and let's start lifting the shame together.

Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy freedom with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and lift the shame together. Hey, mama, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad that you're here and appreciate you hanging out with me as we delve into another topic of conversation, focusing around how we can shift out of these generational legacies of diet culture in our families and in our homes.

Speaker 1: 0:54

And today we are starting a new little mini series here on diet culture in our kids' schools, and this is a really broad topic, and so today's episode is going to look more at a bird's eye view of the topic, and I'm hoping over the next few weeks that we can dive deeper into some different areas and concerning things that can show up when it comes to how our kids may encounter diet culture in their schools, and I just want to start off by acknowledging that this is a very layered and complex topic and this can be really hard, especially as a parent, when you are being super proactive about challenging diet culture norms and standards and stigmas and making an effort to really help support your child to build a positive relationship with food and their bodies, and you're trying to make your home that safe space only for your child to encounter diet culture in its various forms and, may I say, sneaky and subtle forms in school. It can feel really disheartening and I just want to encourage you today. Like all forms of diet culture, there are many layers and this is a systemic issue, as you'll see. As we kind of talk through some of these things today, you will see the layers where diet culture is lurking in the school systems and while it may feel disheartening to hear some of this, I also hope that you will feel encouraged and empowered to just support your own child and also to learn how to advocate for your child in your own school system, if you have the capacity to do so, in whatever season you might find yourself in. I know when we look at the system at large, it can feel like what difference does it make? What difference do I make for my child when they are going to encounter this outside of the walls of my own home? And this is where I think it can be so encouraging to just be reminded of the importance of the work that you're doing and the way that you're showing up for your child and the way that you're holding space for them and supporting them and modeling. All of these things play a huge role in how your child will navigate these really tricky situations.

Speaker 1: 3:00

And we just want to remember that we can't keep our kids in a bubble. The goal is not to protect them from all the various forms of diet culture that they may encounter. That's just not realistic. And although we are working to dismantle it in our families and in our homes so that this no longer becomes part of our family's legacy, it's just not realistic to think that our kids won't still encounter it outside of our homes and outside of our families. While it may no longer define your family, your child will still face it in some forms or others. And while it may be nice to keep our kids in a bubble and in some ways I wish that we could.

Speaker 1: 3:40

We want to think more broadly in terms of how can we support our kids both in the short term but also in the long term. How can we help them be able to call out diet culture or weight stigma or fat phobia, and how can we help them develop those critical thinking skills that they'll need to recognize when messages are countering what they know to be true for themselves. And this is where I think we have an opportunity to come alongside them and support them through their school journey or that might look like for you and ultimately, through the guidance and through the support that we can give them. This can be instrumental in helping them become impervious to the diet culture system that they may encounter in school and beyond. So this is something that I'm hoping we can talk through together over the next few weeks, and I have some notes written down in terms of topics and questions that I've received from you. But if there are specific things that I'm talking through and you're like, oh yes, I want to hear more about that, or things that you'd like more resources about, please connect with me. You can always reach me at hello at crystalcargiscom, or reply to any of the weekly emails that are going out.

Speaker 1: 4:50

I would love to just know what you're saying on your side of the world and where you see diet culture showing up in your kids' schools. What worries you and where are you needing more support so that you can feel confident in how you're showing up for your own child? So I'm hoping we can walk through this together. I'm hoping I can also bring on some different guests and experts who can share more resources to help us as we learn to navigate just the minefield that the school system at large can be because of how deep rooted diet culture is. So for today's episode, I just want to talk through some ways in which you might encounter diet culture in your child's school and then briefly talk through ways that you can support your child or begin to navigate this with them. And again, I understand that we are going to be touching this more broadly today because there are a lot of nuances here and a lot more areas that we can definitely do a deeper dive. But I just wanted to do an overview and again, if there's any topics that I'm touching on, please connect with me. I would love to hear what's resonating with you so that I can bring you some more resources. That would be helpful for your journey.

Speaker 1: 6:00

But first let's talk about how diet culture is showing up in our kids' schools, and I look at this kind of from a top down approach. I think sometimes the way we're encountering it is very individualistic. We're seeing things come up in the classroom or certain assignments where you might hear our kids talk about something that another child told them, or a teacher or aide, someone no-transcript. I don't think we necessarily take the time to step back and understand where this may be coming from, and I also just want to acknowledge our teachers and our educators and how amazing you are and I want to stress that this is not about blaming or shaming teachers whatsoever so I hope you can hear that in this conversation as we just explore some of these topics. Our teachers in our educational systems are very much overworked and underpaid and have so much on their plates, and many teachers are being given curriculum that's coming from a state or county level and gives them little wiggle room in terms of what they can do with this material. The other thing is that there's just not any education about eating disorders for our teachers, and this is also something that I think is problematic and that we don't understand the ripple effects of certain assignments or approaches to nutrition or health curriculum, how this may impact children, especially children who are more susceptible to eating disorders, and so we cannot blame individuals here. This is very much a systemic issue, and this is why I wanted to just take a brief look at the top and where this might be trickling down from when it comes to classrooms and curriculums and the general approach to nutrition and health information in our schools.

Speaker 1: 7:54

So, starting on this level, I wanted to just talk about campaigns, and a lot of the stems from political campaigns that trickle down into the education system, oftentimes with good intent. However, there is also the potential for a lot of misinformation, and we can't negate the impact of diet culture in our education system and how education is approached, especially in the United States, which is where I live. So I want to give you an example about this, starting with the presidential fitness test, which many of you may remember, especially if you grew up in the United States, and this was something that actually started in the 1950s, and it very much did stem from a political agenda and a political campaign which, you can imagine, has a lot of stigma already attached to it because it has more to do with performance and achievement, especially of the American population, versus what are healthy habits that we're supporting our kids and developing. And the reason this one in particular sticks out to me is definitely for a personal reason, and this is something that I remember doing in fifth grade, and I know that eating disorders develop as a result of many different factors that come together to create the perfect storm, and I definitely can recognize the role that this particular incident played in my eating disorder development, and I just remember it being one of the first times where I was very aware of my body compared to other people and really internalizing this narrative and belief that my body was wrong. And that is because the presidential fitness test that we were all required to take was very much about categories and very much about achieving certain measurements and fitness requirements, and I don't believe that this was part of the presidential fitness test, but I remember that my school actually measured our height and weight and calculated our BMI as part of this physical examination, and that was rough for me as a child who already was feeling uncomfortable about the changes that were happening in my body in this pre-adolescent phase, and it also really caused me to measure my worth based on performance and body size, and just the tests in itself really highlights those aspects that how we look and how we perform are the most important things about us.

Speaker 1: 10:28

It's such a damaging message and it's also a very prominent form of education when it comes to health in schools today, and this was something that seeded this deep belief in myself that my body was wrong because it didn't measure up. It felt like my BMI was like a test score or something and like the categories that they put us in. I remember all the other kids were talking about it and comparing results and it just felt like there was this hierarchy already forming around whose body types were desirable and whose weren't, and there was just so much shame attached to it. I'll never forget it, how they weighed us in front of all the other kids, and it really was traumatic in a lot of ways and was seared in my memory and was a trigger for early dieting measures that I began seeking out. And this is something that's a common thread that we see among children, where it's this early belief that there's something wrong with your body, your body is not good or your body is not measuring up or your body is not like the other kids' bodies that you see at school, and so you look for external resources or things to help you change that.

Speaker 1: 11:36

And that is where dieting often swoops in. It's like here's a prescriptive way that you can follow or way of eating that you can follow, or exercise regime, and this will help you get to ex-weight. And there was just so much chaos and confusion already at such an early age for me around food and my body and exercise. Compulsive exercise did become a big part of my eating disorder and I have no doubt that it stemmed from that presidential fitness test, or at least that was a big part of it. Just understanding that, hey, I don't know if my body is measuring up, I don't know if my body is good enough, I don't know if my body is fit enough, and what does that mean for me. So this is a very damaging test and there have been a lot of changes and things over the years and I might have to do a deep dive episode into all the different nuances and origins of this test.

Speaker 1: 12:25

But the history of it is very interesting and it is interesting to see the political campaign that influenced this test and the implementation of it in our schools on a national level, and just how this affected children. I mean, statistics show us that 40% of elementary school age girls have already tried to diet as a form of losing weight, and this is something that affects our sons and our daughters and it shows us the concerns that can surface at such a young age around their bodies, and it's very interesting this is something again taking a step back, to look at the bird's eye view of diet culture in schools and how this is showing up for our kids. Another thing to just reiterate is that diet culture is not just showing up in our kids' schools, and that's not the only way in which they'll encounter diet culture. It's also showing up in doctors' offices and friends' homes and family members and in different media forms social media, I mean. There's so many ways that diet culture is out there and it's also being perpetuated in our school systems, and what I want us to see is the different ways that our kids encounter diet culture and the narrative that this is seeding in their brain, and these are the common themes promoted by diet culture agenda, and these are things to be aware of as you're filtering through some of this material for yourself, because, again, it can be very sneaky and very subtle and we want to be perceptive and aware.

Speaker 1: 13:55

What is the underlying message that is being communicated here? And the common themes, again, that I hear and recognize, not just for myself, but in experience and work experience and seeing this with other families this common theme of your body is wrong, your body cannot be trusted and you need to try to change your body and any type of way that that message is packaged and it often is packaged in a way that is very subtle or even very enticing but when our kids are getting these messages in subtle ways, this is what can stay in them and can be internalized and can cause them to look for outside ways of navigating the world, like dieting and we know that dieting is the most important predictor of new eating disorders, especially in kids and adolescents. So we want to be just more aware of what are the underlying messages that are children are potentially encountering in these campaigns at school, or whether it's health curriculum or whatever it is an assignment that they're getting. Is this somehow tying back to one of these damaging messages that is causing them to believe that their body is somehow wrong or that they can't trust their body or that they need to do something to try to change their body as a result of feeling like their body is wrong. So a lot again to unpack here, and I'm starting to go on a little bit of a tangent, but I just wanted to again start at this top level, where there are campaigns, often influenced by many national committees, many type of political campaigns that are influencing how we're approaching education and health in the school systems.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Another one that you may be more familiar with is this obesity prevention campaign that has widely been circulated on a national level here in the United States too, and this has been a damaging one as well. While there may have been some good intention behind it, it's incredibly fatphobic, it stigmatizes children in larger bodies, it stigmatizes weight, and it focuses more on weight versus supporting our children of all body sizes and learning to develop healthier habits that can be engaged in for a lifetime, like making sure you're getting enough sleep, making sure you're drinking enough water, like weight neutral strategies or weight neutral ways for promoting health, and this is something that is hugely missing from this campaign that has been running in the recent past decade. The other thing to note is because it is weight based and approaching more a child's weight than anything else. It's not evidence based, and we understand that the BMI system is not an evidence based tool for measuring a child's health or wellness, and so we're actually seeing evidence that many of the strategies that were utilized in this prevention program actually have been causing more harm than good, and this is where I just really struggle as a professional on this side of things is we are seeing such a drastic rise in eating disorders, and particularly new eating disorders in children, especially post pandemic. We're seeing worsening in our children's mental health. We are seeing more incidences of hospitalization for eating disorders and inquiries about treatment centers for eating disorders in children, and so it's clear that these strategies have not worked. In fact, it's causing more harm than good, and I'm not saying that that's the only issue. There are so many other issues that have happened, but we have to step back and look at the way that we're approaching health in our schools and understand that this is not helping our kids become healthier, and we want it to be about their overall health, not just about their weight, and this is something that is really missing from many of these nationwide campaigns that are trickling down into the states and counties and into our individual schools.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Another thing, too, is that there have been anti-bullying measures on a nationwide level that are being implemented in schools, which I hugely applaud. The efforts that are happening here, especially on social media use. Rising among our children, just a lot of bullying and the detrimental effects of that, and there's a lot to look for and a lot that schools are doing to help counter that. But something that's missing from many anti-bullying campaigns is weight stigma and weight bullying. Oftentimes kids are being bullied because of their body size, and this is something that I think we're also missing on a nationwide level when it comes to campaigns and policies that are being integrated into our school systems. So this now trickles down into the state levels and again into the counties, and there are certain metrics that schools have to follow or reach or curriculums that schools are mandated to follow in order to get funding, and this is something that I learned recently and was interested to find out more about.

Speaker 1: 18:58

But a lot of school curriculum is actually written at a state or county level, so oftentimes teachers are being handed curriculum that maybe there's not a lot of flexibility with. It's given to them to teach and to implement in the schools and sometimes there's not a lot of wiggle room beyond what you're provided. And this is where I see, in both content that is integrated in schools and curriculum that is being taught, where we're seeing diet culture sneak in in very subtle ways. I have certainly seen this with my own kiddos I'm sure you have seen this in different ways where kids are reading books and I'm reading them with them and recognize that there's odd things in there that are very shaming and it's very subtle towards kids, bodies or food choices. This is something that I've seen pop up in books with my younger kids in particular, and these are books that you would think are totally benign and innocent, and this is why I say diet culture is so sneaky in the different ways that it shows up.

Speaker 1: 20:00

But I was reading a book with my son recently the Frog and Toad series and there was a whole section about frog and toad baking cookies but then basically trying to get rid of them because they didn't have any willpower to stop eating them and I was like what? Like I didn't even know, like it was challenging for me to even understand how to explain this to my son, who is very intuitive with his own body and eats and enjoys cookies and doesn't feel any shame or stigma around them. And here is the story about two characters who do feel shame around eating cookies and feel like they can't stop eating them and are trying to get rid of them because they're going to eat too many, and that was really disturbing. And this is just a small sample of what we are seeing in content and curriculum that's being integrated in our schools. I have also seen this in my daughter's statewide testing that is done in their schools, and this was during the pandemic and so she was doing some online testing and they actually had us, as parents, facilitate the test at home. So she's doing this test and I'm helping and just kind of looking over her shoulder and supporting her and helping her read through some of the long texts and, sure enough, some of the math problems, word problems we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Okay, if you ate this many calories during the day, how much would you have to jump rope? If you know that jump rope being burns this amount of calories? How long would you have to jump rope in order to burn off all the calories for what you've eaten? And, like, my jaw just literally felt like it dropped to the floor, like what? What are we talking about this when we're teaching math in math curriculum? It was so infuriating to me and also very challenging to try to focus on the task at hand when it's so laced with diet culture. It's like we're not even focusing on what we're trying to help our kids learn here when they're being bombarded with all these different messages.

Speaker 1: 22:01

And again, going back to what I was saying about the narrative, what is the narrative that our kids are learning and internalizing from these subtle messages and how it's showing up and that math problem talking about eating something and now having to burn it off is seeding this idea that you can't trust your body. And this is something that my daughter really at the time didn't quite grasp or understand and it wasn't affecting her in the way that I was imagining it to, and so we didn't get into any type of lengthy discussion at that point. She was just like I just want to finish this test and get it done, but I was really struggling with how blatant diet culture seemed to show up on a statewide math test. And again, this is not our teachers doing Like our teachers are doing so much and such an amazing job trying to help our kiddos to the best of their abilities. These are tests that were written at the state level and so it does make it more challenging to try to figure out.

Speaker 1: 23:03

How can I advocate for better curriculum or curriculum that's not going to see these beliefs that eating cookies is wrong or that you can't trust or listen to your body, or you should feel shame for how you're eating or what you're eating, or feel like you have to work off whatever you just ate. It's really difficult when we're looking at the top down, the the state influences on the curriculum that our teachers are using and utilizing in the classrooms. However, we can be aware of it and I am going to get to some pointers and things that we can think about when it comes to the ways that we encounter this and navigate this, but definitely in curriculum it's there in both direct and indirect ways. There are also assignments that kids might get that really perpetuate diet culture or start seeding these beliefs about there being a hierarchy around food, like good foods versus bad foods, and these are subtle things that are showing up in health curricula more with the intention of just supporting our kids and being healthier, where we're telling them you should eat more of this or less of that, and those things we know are not actually helping our kids eat more variety or learn how to self-regulate or learn how to trust their bodies. Yet they're showing up in very sneaky ways and at very young ages, and I'm hearing stories from parents all over the country, particularly here in the US, who are talking about ways that this is showing up for their kids, and I understand as a parent.

Speaker 1: 24:31

It's very heartbreaking, it can be very disheartening and it can definitely bring out that mama bear. I know for me, and especially if you're a parent who is in recovery from an eating disorder or who has had a difficult relationship with food and you're like, not on my watch, I do not want my kids to encounter the same damaging things that I struggled with. You might find that you're more hypersensitive to some of these things that may come up and you might find yourself reacting and you might find anger rising up in your body and oftentimes that's connected to our own trauma around food and our bodies, especially if we encountered it in different ways in school growing up. And this is where I want us to be able to channel that anger and use it for good, and I know it can be hard to it can be really frustrating, and it takes everything in me sometimes to not just march in and say how can we figure this out, how can we change this? And I do think there's ways that we can collaborate and work with our teaching professionals to better support our kids because, again, a lot of this is coming from nationwide levels, from curriculum writers who are very entrenched in diet culture, and there are so much weight stigma and fat phobia at nationwide levels that's just trickling down into our educational systems, and so we can start to chip away at it in our little corners of the world, in our school districts, and start advocating for different ways for approaching health and nutrition and just food and bodies in our schools. So just another couple examples and then we will talk more about things that we can do as parents.

Speaker 1: 26:11

But food tracking assignments this is a big one that I'm seeing more on the high school level and definitely in college too, but where kids are being told to track what they eat, many of them are being encouraged to utilize some kind of tracking device, like my Fitness Pal or their Apple Watch, or utilize programs where they put in everything that they eat, which, by the way, are not accurate, and these are all things that again can see the belief that how they're eating or their bodies way of eating or their preferences are wrong and can't be trusted. Because tracking their food intake is usually just one part of the assignment. I know that there's usually a second part that entails now, how can you decrease your calories so that they're more in your range level, which, again, those metrics that try to estimate what somebody's calories need are not really accurate. And our bodies are not stagnant. Our needs are constantly changing, but this is really hard to explain and we definitely can't capture this in one nutrition assignment or food diary assignment, and so this is creating a lot of confusion for kids, and any type of quantifiable approach to food can be such a trigger for disordered eating.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Because now we're talking about measuring food and tracking and counting calories, and I know from so many moms that I've worked with that oftentimes this aspect of their eating disorder or their struggle with food in their body stemmed from one of these assignments where they learned essentially how to track calories. And now it's like I can't stop mentally thinking about how much I'm eating or what I'm eating, and all of these things take us away from our bodies innate wisdom of how and what to eat, away from our innate intuitive eating abilities, which makes food so much more chaotic. And so we want to be aware of any of those type of assignments that our kids might be getting. But again, this can be subtle. This might be for younger kids, where they're taught to sort foods into different categories, like what are better for you foods and what are sometimes foods, what are junk food? Any time we're attaching a label to food or categorizing it, we're creating a hierarchy. That's a subtle way of communicating to our kids that there are good versus bad foods.

Speaker 1: 28:28

And again, we understand from research that any time that food is categorized, it makes it more complicated for our kids, and our kids are actually less likely to eat the foods that we tell them are better for them or healthier for them. They're actually more likely to become adverse to eating those foods and the foods that we demonize, the foods that we say are off limits or that you should be eating less of, these things actually will become more glorified in their mind and they're more likely to want to seek out those foods. And that can create so much confusion, starting from young ages, and this is where we want to look at the nutrition and health curriculum that our kids might be exposed to and recognize where diet culture is showing up. Is it communicating this message that their body is wrong, that their body can't be trusted? Is it attaching any shame to food or how they're eating or their body's sizes? These are all things that we want to be aware of.

Speaker 1: 29:24

Lastly, I just wanted to touch on just how diet culture might show up in your child's individual classroom. So we talked about curriculum, we talked about campaigns that are coming from a nationwide level, and there's also things that your child may encounter in their classroom, at school, amongst friends, while eating, at the lunch table or in the cafeteria, and this one can be harder because, again, this is things that may be more difficult to advocate or change because it's happening around them, but this can include things like having their lunch box being policed, and this is something that has come up a lot. I've heard it from many parents people that are very close to me talk to me about how their kids are being told at school what order to eat their food in, or parents being told to please pack healthier snacks for their kids because the things that they're sending are not healthy enough. And this can be really challenging to navigate as a parent, and I will say, especially if you have a child who is an anxious eater, if you have a child who's more selective with food, if you have a neurodivergent child or you have a child with food sensitivities, this can be really challenging because you're likely sending things to school that you know your child will eat. I know for me this is again a more personal story, but last year we were having some issues with my son at school and he is definitely neurodivergent and learns differently, and the classroom setting is just a little more challenging for him in terms of sitting for certain lengths of time. He just needs more breaks and needs to move his body a lot more, and there was a discussion with some of his teachers about how food might be affecting his behavior.

Speaker 1: 31:07

And the other challenging aspect is that he is more selective with food. He has a lot of sensory sensitivities. He's sensitive to certain textures and just flavors and he needs simpler foods in order to eat. He's also more of an anxious eater. He's more likely to forego eating altogether to go play, and I understand these things about him and how this affects his mood and how this can affect him if he's not eating anything at all or if he's kind of going on a hunger strike because there's nothing familiar in his lunch and so he gets a lot of processed foods in his lunch, like anyone might open up his lunchbox and say, yikes, like there's not enough fruits or vegetables or things that are going to help him focus in school. But this is where we have to understand big picture here. Like I would rather my son go to school and eat something that he's comfortable with than not eat anything at all because he doesn't have anything familiar or it's not meeting the criteria of what the school is saying is healthy for him.

Speaker 1: 32:09

And I know that a lot of teachers are also under pressure too and that it's hard when you have a classroom full of kids and you don't have enough support or you don't have aids to support you with kids that have different learning needs, and so this can be a challenging area. However, when it comes to policing our kids school lunches, this can create a lot of anxiety and shame for kids, and this is something that I've heard from a lot of parents, where kids are coming home with lunchbox full, or they may not eat their cookie or their rice crispy treat because there was some shame attached to it, or they're getting notes from their teachers requesting to send different things, and this can be really challenging, especially without knowing a family's culture or a family's learning needs, or whether or not a family is dealing with food insecurity, or whether a family is dealing with mental or physical health conditions that are making it harder to grocery shop or pack lunches, and so they're reaching for what is easiest and most convenient. So there's a lot that can show up here and again. This is not faulting anybody, but just maybe lack of awareness and education around how children may be impacted when their lunchboxes are being policed or there's rules around what they have to eat, or like you have to eat your protein or your vegetable first and then you can have your dessert. Things like that can really mess with a kid's brain. They might also hear comments from peers, or peers saying, oh, I can't eat that, that has too much sugar in it, or I'm not allowed to eat that, or that's gross, why would you eat that? I mean just a general commentary around.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Children can be hard for a child to navigate, and it can also influence how they feel about food or how they're eating or what they're eating in school. So I know I've just talked through some examples. I know there are countless more and I would love to hear from you just where you see diet culture showing up in your child's schools, how this is resonating with you, or where you're concerned or finding yourself concerned when you're noticing diet culture showing up in your child's school setting. I know it can be tough and, in effort to break up these episodes a little bit and not make them too long, I think what I'm going to do is do part two on this next week. So we will pick up on what you can do when you are aware of diet culture in different ways showing up in your child's school setting, how to navigate it and what you might be able to do about it, because I know, again, this is a big topic and I want to be able to give you some resources and help you through this. But I hope this is just an introduction or overview into the ways that diet culture is showing up in schools, but I'm not going to leave you hanging, I promise.

Speaker 1: 34:47

So I hope you'll come back next week. We will pick up and talk about things that you can do, ways that you can support your child as you're encountering diet culture in these sneaky and subtle ways. So I can't wait to connect with you next week and continue the conversation and again, if you have any questions or things that I can support you with, please be sure to connect with me. I would love to hear from you. So we will pick up next week. Can't wait to talk then. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at CrystalCarGaze. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.