Being Fat Is Not A Moral Failure. Here’s How To Teach Your Kids That.

Growing up in the ’90s, Jessica Sprengle could name all the big fad diets of the day: Weight Watchers, Atkins, the South Beach diet, SlimFast ― you name it, her parents and other family members had tried it.

Offhand comments about bodies, both hers and their own, were often made in her house, and weight gain rarely went unnoticed.

“I can distinctly remember one of my grandmothers asking me, at maybe 9 or 10, if I could believe ‘how fat [she’d] gotten,’” Sprengle told HuffPost. “Though it was never explicitly stated that my body was a problem or that I should do something to change my body, I internalized the message that being OK with my body was not an option and that I should always be working toward losing weight or pushing toward thinness.”

All of this left Sprengle with the distinct impression that there was a moral component to weight gain: Fat was bad, and thin was very, very good. She internalized the notion that the health consequences that came with excessive weight gain ― high blood pressure, diabetes and other health issues ― were a direct result of a fat person’s moral failure to take care of themselves and stay thin.

Given the fixation on dieting in her house ― and how pronounced and pervasive fat shaming is in our culture ― it was almost inevitable that Sprengle would fall into disordered eating.

“Though I don’t believe my eating disorder developed exclusively because of my family’s penchant for dieting, I know that it played a role, just as genetics, neurobiology and trauma did,” she said.

Now, as a licensed professional therapist specializing in treating eating disorders, Sprengle is quick to correct the idea that being fat is a kind of moral failing.

“I tell my clients that our culture is intensely fatphobic and very invested in their prejudice against those in fat bodies,” she said. “Negative characteristics are often incorrectly attributed to people in fat bodies ― slovenliness, uncleanliness, low intelligence ― due exclusively to their size versus based in any real, true evidence.”

As Sprengle’s own story shows, negative conceptions about bodies ― unhealthy body standards, endless yo-yo dieting ― are often passed down from one generation to another.

As a parent, how do you effectively get across…