When your own family is the first place you learn to hate your body

Many people can name the moment. Not the first time they felt uncomfortable in their body — that tends to be too early and too vague to pin down — but the first time someone they loved made it clear that their body was a problem.

It is rarely dramatic. A nickname that everyone thought was affectionate. An aunt’s hand on your stomach at Christmas. Are you sure you need seconds? A mother who started you on her diet when you were nine, because she was on it and it seemed kinder than letting you get “like her”. A father who went quiet when you came down in a swimming costume. A grandmother who told you, with real warmth, that you had such a pretty face.

Strangers can be cruel about your body and you can, with effort, decide they are wrong. It is much harder to dismiss the people who taught you what was true about everything else.

Why the family version lasts

Home is where you learn what is normal. The comments you heard there did not arrive as opinions; they arrived as facts about the world, delivered by the people whose approval you most needed and whose judgement you had no reason yet to doubt. They came mixed with love, too — often in the same sentence — which is exactly what makes them so hard to put down. You cannot throw away the criticism without feeling that you are throwing away the care it came wrapped in.

The research on this is consistent. In a study of 356 American teenage girls considered at risk of weight-related problems, 45 per cent said their mothers had encouraged them to diet and 58 per cent reported being teased about their weight by family members. That family teasing was strongly associated with higher weight, body dissatisfaction, unhealthy and extreme weight-control behaviours and binge eating. A separate study found that when parents talked to their teenagers about weight, those teenagers were more likely to diet, use unhealthy weight-control methods and binge eat; when parents talked instead about eating well, without mentioning size, those risks were lower. And a study that followed young people for fifteen years found that weight teasing in adolescence predicted higher weight and unhealthy eating well into adulthood — and whether the teasing came from family or from peers made a difference, in different ways for men and for women.

These are associations, and families are not the only influence on anyone. But the direction is clear, and it is the opposite of the one most of those comments intended. They were meant to help. They tended to do the reverse.

It was probably handed down

This is not a piece about blaming your mother. It is quite possible that the woman who put you on a diet at nine was put on one herself, by someone who had been put on one before her. Many of the people who commented on your body were living inside the same belief about their own, and passing it on was, in their minds, a way of protecting you from something they had suffered.

Understanding that can soften things. It does not oblige you to excuse them, to forgive them on a timetable, or to pretend it didn’t matter. You can hold two things at once: that they were doing what they had been taught, and that what they taught you was wrong.

Where it shows up now

The lesson rarely stays in childhood. It resurfaces as the automatic scan of a room for who is the biggest person in it. As the inability to eat comfortably in front of your parents, even at forty. As the flinch when an aunt looks you up and down at a wedding. As the inner commentary that sounds suspiciously like a particular relative, word for word.

For some people it becomes something more serious: years of restricting and bingeing, or exercise that feels like a punishment rather than a pleasure. If that is you, please talk to your doctor, and look for an eating disorder charity in your country. Eating disorders are treatable, and they are not a matter of willpower in either direction.

What you can do with it

Say what happened, at least to yourself. Not as an accusation, but as a record. “When I was a child, my weight was discussed constantly, and I learned to be ashamed of my body at home.” There is a real relief in stating it plainly after years of treating it as normal.

Decide what is and isn’t up for discussion now. You are an adult at your family’s table, not a child being assessed. You are entitled to say, calmly and once: “I don’t talk about my weight any more. Let’s talk about something else.” If it continues, you are entitled to leave the room, or the meal. It will feel harsher than it is. A boundary is not a rejection, though it is harder to hold with family than with anyone else, because the patterns there are decades old — and love should not require you to become smaller, at any age.

Have a line ready for the regulars. Most families have a small number of recurring comments. Deciding your response in advance — “I’m happy as I am, thanks,” “Please don’t comment on my food,” or simply a change of subject delivered without apology — means you are not improvising under pressure in front of the people who can still make you feel eleven years old.

Get help if you need it. A good therapist can help you separate the voice you grew up with from your own. That work is slow and unglamorous, and it is some of the most worthwhile you will ever do.

Where it can stop

If there are children in your life, you may now be the older generation at someone else’s table. That is where the chain can break: in what you do not say about their bodies, or about your own. There is more on answering relatives who comment on a daughter’s weight, and on supporting a child who is being bullied about theirs.

You did not choose the first lessons you were taught about your body. You do get to choose which of them you keep. That is not a small freedom. For many of us, it is the first time the choice has been ours at all.

Sources

• Neumark-Sztainer D, Bauer KW, Friend S, et al. Family weight talk and dieting: how much do they matter for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors in adolescent girls? Journal of Adolescent Health, 2010.
• Berge JM, MacLehose R, Loth KA, et al. Parent conversations about healthful eating and weight: associations with adolescent disordered eating behaviors. JAMA Pediatrics, 2013.
• Puhl RM, Wall MM, Chen C, et al. Experiences of weight teasing in adolescence and weight-related outcomes in adulthood: a 15-year longitudinal study. Preventive Medicine, 2017.