Podcast Transcript

Episode 39: “What’s Happening in Health Class?”: Preventing Eating Disorders in the School Setting with Lauren Dorman, RD

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley. And you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Sam: Welcome back to another episode of All Bodies. All Foods., I’m your host, Sam, and I’m here with my co-host Ashley. When we think about the things that can trigger on an eating disorder, what immediately comes to mind maybe the media, bullying, the diet industry. Well, these are all risk factors, of course. But what if I told you there might be another trigger hiding in plain sight, a trigger that most children will experience at some point inside their classrooms. A recent study estimated that 14% of youth who were admitted for medical treatment for anorexia said there was one thing that triggered on their eating disorder: it was health class. So, what exactly is happening in your child’s school that could potentially trigger on an eating disorder, one of the deadliest psychiatric conditions in the DSM-5 and how can teachers and their curricula better support the mental and physical wellbeing of their students? Well, we wanted to find out and that’s why we invited Lauren Dorman to the show. Lauren Dorman is a speaker, registered dietitian and an expert in nutrition and emotional wellbeing. She is the owner of Don’t Diet Dietitian and founder of Students Don’t Diet, providing professional development and workshops to school districts on nutrition and emotional health. Lauren empowers children and adults to discover their self-worth, find confidence from within and create a healthy relationship with food, body, and mind. Lauren believes that everyone deserves to be educated by a registered dietitian, an expert in food and nutrition who can translate science into practical solutions for those who want to improve their nutrition and their health. Welcome to the show, Lauren!

Lauren: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

Sam: I would love to learn more about you. I’m so fascinated with the work that you’re doing in schools. You’re going into these schools and you’re basically showing teachers and administrators how they can do things differently. I truly believe most teachers have good intentions. They want students to feel well, to be well, to thrive and something’s going wrong in school, and I love the fact that you’re helping with this. But what got you interested in this field, you know, particularly students who are struggling with food, body image, and self-esteem.

Lauren: Sure. So, I’ll start when I was 11 years old. I loved reading the nutrition magazines and the teen magazines, and I just was really focused on how to make people feel good. And actually at 11, I knew that I wanted to be a nutritionist. I didn’t know what a registered dietitian exactly did. But I knew that was my calling, to make people healthy. And I liked reading all the articles by dieticians. So, I’m very lucky and blessed that I knew at a young age that’s where my career path would bring me. And then what happened was once I became a registered dietitian and worked with more and more children, I started to pick up on some information as you get experienced in your career, on what kind of education they’re getting, whether it is from school or whether it is from social media. And I worked as an outpatient dietician for many years but there was this calling for me in the schools. I said if I don’t know who’s doing this work. So, I’m going to leave my job of 20 years and I’m going to take on this mission along with my private practice, seeing children and adults. So, I did, a year ago, I left my job. I was doing some things on the side in the beginning. And then I said I need to get into the schools because these children are so confused with a lot of conflicting information and we’re living in a diet culture soup, which we’ll talk about moving forward. And that’s where the teachers and the administrators come in. And even parents where well intended messages and language can definitely harm on a level that the parent or administrator, teacher would never really understand how could that harm. But we are going to get into why it can shortly. So, um yeah, that’s pretty much my mission and it’s a wonderful thing.

Sam: I can’t wait to dig in. Yeah, this is amazing stuff. I think this episode can really help teachers and parents really, you know, anyone who is involved in the school setting. I have so many questions!

Ashley: I was just going to say Lauren, oh, goodness, season one or two, Sam and I did an episode on I think it was, um, wasn’t it a school system in West Virginia, Sam, that was like requiring…

Sam: Yes, education on eating disorders and self-harm.

Ashley: Yes! And I’m just thinking like people are more and more aware of the need for better support and, and I think one of the things we discussed was like, well, where are they getting their education from? How, you know, who’s actually consulting for this to occur? Because we wouldn’t want it to be harmful either or any of those confusing messages for the kiddos. But I just think that this is an incredible mission. I’m so thankful for that.

Lauren: Thank you. You know, DARE, right? So, when I like to envision myself years from now and if it doesn’t happen, it’s fine. But I’m like, I want to be the eating disorder that DARE is for drugs, right? I want it to be like, say no to dieting and say no to the harmful messages. And even these children could even start to teach their parents some things because it’s a generational system of beliefs and the parents could awaken and become aware, get their feet a little bit wet about some of these messages and how they can harm. So, the kids teach sometimes the parents some of this work.

Ashley: Yeah!

Lauren: Like eating is a behavior and nutrition is a science and food behaviors are very complex and I don’t think our culture understands that messaging either. That behavior is what this is all about. It’s not about, you know, just an easy thing that like, oh everyone should just eat healthy, and you know, eat perfectly. This is not, it’s not, that’s the message thing in that the world that the culture portrays because it’s a prophet.

Ashley: So, question for you to kind of follow up on that. So, in one of your articles, you mentioned that the rate of eating disorders between children aged 8 to 12, which seems very young to me, but you mentioned that has been solidly increasing. And I’m curious if you can give us an idea as to what is going on there? Why are we seeing that increase in that age group?

Lauren: Yeah. So, unfortunately, the research is showing that the age is, is younger and younger. And let’s think about COVID. Let’s go back to COVID, which I can’t believe was almost four years ago. So, let’s think about this like a perfect storm developing, right? Where, you know, there was this crisis and there was this kind of isolation and loneliness and the pandemic kind of played out that way, right? So, the National Eating Disorder Association actually saw an increase of 70% in their phone calls in 2021. So that was definitely part of an article that I had researched on the increase in the young age and, you know, children are spending more time on their social devices, right? So, average about 5 to 7 hours a day and sometimes coping with food or manipulating food was a way of control during that time or a way to feel a different way or to not feel certain emotions. So, these children might have found some comfort in a restrict or a binge, there’s different, you know, different disordered eating behaviors that occurred during the pandemic for these children. And perhaps parents were involved with some of their language around the food during that time and their stress and overwhelm, you know, so that’s where I believe it really stems from is COVID. And if COVID didn’t happen even, I still think that social media messages and confusing messages to young children would have had an impact as well.

Sam: That all makes a lot of sense. And I also remember, I mean, you talk about the things maybe parents were saying, or older siblings might be saying in the house. Everyone was so afraid of weight gain during that time. What were they calling it, like the COVID 15? And there was so much talk about that and so much…

Lauren: Or maybe the COVID 19?

Sam: Yeah, maybe, but either way there, there was a lot of talk about this fear around that COVID is going to make to gain weight during this period of time and there was just a lot of just and anxiety around that. So, you have to, I mean, of course, children likely are picking up on that language.

Lauren: And then they were like lonely, and they were, you know, not really prioritizing nutrition that much, maybe throughout the day as they would have if their schedules were regular.

Sam: Sure. And also, you didn’t really know what you were going to get in the store either. I mean, some of the shelves were empty, there was food insecurity and that a lot of factors that could impact someone’s relationship with food.

Lauren: At that point, it’s like, thank goodness whatever food we get, we get. Not to be, you know, but on a realistic level of nutrition and nourishment, it really doesn’t matter whether the foods were processed or, you know, just not as nutrient dense. It still gave the person energy throughout the day to survive during that time.

Ashley: Do you know Lauren, has there been in the last few months, have we seen, and you might not have this research, but have we seen a decline then in that age or has it just kind of remained same?

Lauren: I think it remains about the same now and, you know, recovering from an eating disorder is a whole another topic. So that could be that, you know, it’s not easy but it’s possible but the thoughts and the behaviors and, you know, I think it is about the same. I’m not sure if you know, there’s new cases that were the same as I would hope that the new cases in 2023 and 2024 was lower than 2020, 2021 but I’m not sure.

Sam: Interesting. So, I’m really curious about what’s happening in schools’ health class. There was that study, 14% of youth who were getting medical treatment for anorexia said that health class triggered on their eating disorder. Lauren, what is happening in our schools that is damaging a child’s relationship with food in their body, what’s going on?

Lauren: So, there’s a couple of different lessons that are taught in health class. So, we can go, we can kind of go through this now. So, the first one could be food morality, right? So, we could be categorizing food as good, bad, healthy, or unhealthy. So, if a child feels that they were taught a lesson on good or bad, they’re going to now feel good or bad about themselves and their inner worth and their relationship with that food because they were taught that and that’s not true. Like you’re not good because you’re eating grapes and nuts and bad because you’re eating ice cream and chips.

Sam: But that means health teachers are teaching?

Lauren: Most are because that’s part of the curriculum. And there’s also the calorie tracking in some schools that students have to monitor their calories. Now, I have permission from one of my colleagues, she said it’s okay that I discussed this right now. She wrote a post on Instagram that her seventh grader came home from school with a homework assignment to count her calories. And this assignment was offered in the name of health education and what she had, she had a response to the school that my child came home with this assignment to count calories, her fat and her sugar over the course of the week. And she reported that the teacher also made a comment in the class that some of the class looked healthy and it’s good to have a metabolism that burns calories faster. And she had written, you know, a couple of different guidelines of, you know, you can’t tell how healthy a person is by looking at them and that we should be teaching body diversity. And that calorie counting, or any other forms of counting are not helpful ways to conceptualize health. And this is really important right here, fear, guilt, and stress for these kids who’s growing bodies actually require plenty of energy and plenty of a variety of food and that micromanaging is not a way of introducing healthy habits. So, vulnerability of adolescent teenagers to body image issues and eating disorders is not debatable. And, you know, she goes on to say that she’s a certified intuitive eating counselor and that her work is doing all of this and that she can’t believe that in 1995 she was given that same assignment and we’re still seeing this today, you know, 20, 30 years later. In 2023 we should know better, this kind of assignment is doing more harm than good.

Sam: Wow. You know, there are a lot of parents who might be listening and even teachers who might be listening and they might not realize that engaging in that assignment, tracking calories just doing that assignment can be the start of an eating disorder.

Lauren: Yeah, or disordered eating behavior, not necessarily like a diagnosis but also just something that for the rest of their lives, they’re going to be hyper focused on calories and that’s not health. There is so much more to health and calories is actually what we need energy. So, we should actually be making calories a great thing, an amazing thing to nourish our brain and all of our organs and how we move through this world and our body and not making it a negative thing. We need fat. It’s really important to absorb our vitamins. I mean there’s all different ways that which we will get to that teachers can shift to that can definitely promote such beautiful health in these children’s lives. So, we talked about categorizing, we talked about calorie tracking. How about sugar, like demonizing sugar and saying it will cause diabetes and it will cause heart disease and kind of relating that sugar or that type of food to now getting a disease. That is brought up in health class as well.

Sam: Wow.

Lauren: And then also really body sizes like labeling body sizes. If we’re talking about like the BMI or we’re talking about overweight or obese. So, we want to make sure that we’re not labeling body sizes in health classes. I wish all schools like what I just said right now, like knew and even parents, knew about these things that could do some harm and could cause behaviors around food that are harmful.

Sam: You know, I think there are so many listeners out there that might be thinking what’s really the problem with labeling a food as healthy or unhealthy. And I do so much education with families about this because I don’t think they realize or they’re surprised to learn that when we start demonizing certain foods, it creates this mindset of scarcity and contributes to disordered eating like binge eating episodes when you feel like you can’t have something, or you feel like something is so bad. That’s the very thing you end up being drawn to in sort of like a disordered eating way. And I think parents need more education on that. Do you have that experience? I know Lauren, you’re like nodding.

Lauren: Oh, yeah. I mean, actually what I tell everybody, children and adults I work with in schools. What does the word healthy even mean? Let’s start with that. Does healthy mean free of a disease or an illness that if you look up the word healthy? Why do we have the word healthy in front of food? Think about diet culture. We never had the word healthy in front of food, probably 100, 200, 300 years ago. So healthy is healthy behavior is healthy habits. We’re going to talk about stress management and coping and sleep and water and yes, eating nutrition throughout the day and getting some nutritious stuff into your diet, meaning a way of eating. So, it’s kind of interesting for parents to say, oh, healthy is just free of disease or illness. It shouldn’t be in front of a food, but we have a lot of marketing and a lot of manipulating out there. And as you said before, Sam, like when you make that food, when you actually tell children, why don’t you have grapes instead of the cookie or why don’t you have carrots instead of whatever that child then doesn’t really want to taste the other foods. It makes them like the less nutrient foods better. And I’m not saying there’s not more nutrient foods and less nutrient foods in this world, right? But categorizing as healthy and unhealthy doesn’t motivate or create change for a child. If you’re looking for them to really meet a behavior and eat more nourishing and feel better and get that variety in. If you keep telling a child to eat healthy, it usually backfires.

Sam: It’s not the way. I can’t wait for you to teach us the way to do it. Then I want the teachers like, well, tell us what to do.

Lauren: I’m getting there. I’m excited for that.

Ashley: I just want to say with the, you mentioned the words, fear, guilt, and stress earlier. And like, I’m just thinking, well, first of all, when you were describing some of the things that you are working to combat in health classes, literally my blood was boiling that some of this stuff is still being put out there for our children. And like I cannot believe that in 2023, 2024 a child had to bring home the assignment to calorie count for an entire week like that is truly blowing my mind. And I’m thinking about like going back to what you all just said about the foods. Like if a child, if you gave them the choice between the less nutrient food and the more nutrient food or said that they should eat the carrot sticks over the, you know, Milky Way or whatever and they go to the Milky Way. I cannot imagine that they will not internalize the messaging then they are bad because that’s the unhealthy, that’s the bad food. And so, then they’re going to continue to sit with like, well, I’m just not good enough. I just can’t, why can’t I make the choice to eat the carrot, the healthy food, the good food? Why can’t I make that choice? Why do I always want the Milky Way instead? And, and that just creates like, I’m just thinking for a young person who is really trying to navigate the world and like figure out their space and their timing that’s got to create such confusing and hard messages internally for them.

Lauren: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’ve had parents that, you know, said kitchens closed, they put the junk food so called junk food, which I tell them junk is a junk drawer. It’s not food. I actually did a presentation for women a couple weeks ago and I said what do you think junk food is? And they all said, and then I kind of, I actually brought things from my junk food drawer, and I dumped it into the middle, and it went really well because it really made them visually see, oh, so I can have a variety and I can feel good about it. If a food doesn’t make you feel physically good, you know, stomachaches or, you know, heartburn or, you know, if you’re allergic to it, of course, you should avoid it. But otherwise like food should bring us joy and make us really satisfied. That’s part of our mental and our physical health and that guilt and shame, Ashley, that you were talking about that, that child is feeling actually does more harm than eating the less nutrient food. But that child eating the food in a way that is where we’re going to get too mindful and just enjoying it and not feeling that like heaviness in their heart of that anxiety of feeling bad about themselves and kind of even rushing it down maybe, or eating it in a quick way because they’re like, I’m bad, I’m bad and that’s not health, you know, health is mindfully eating variety of foods.

Ashley: Right. Like what, what does stress, shame and guilt like pervasive stress, shame, and guilt, what did that do to our bodies? It is so unhelpful for the positive functioning of our bodies. I’m thankful for the work that you do because I can see that this starts very young and not only in like in the family system, right? But like these are external voices as well and when our students hear external voices saying stuff too, I mean, then it sometimes gets more solidified in their brains, if that makes sense.

Lauren: It does. You know, stress and social connections have a lot more to do with our long-term longevity than nutrition and food does. And so social connections are actually the most important. But what if we prioritize like our social connections and our sleep and our hydration and our coping mechanisms and our emotions and our thoughts and our feelings. Yes, we’re going to eat a variety of food because we’re going to feel better when we have that nutritious food. But we need some non-nutritious food in there or else we are going to feel very out of control around those really joyful yummy foods. We need to have them regularly and they’re not going to cause harm, they’re not going to cause ill health.

Sam: It also makes me think of, you know, when we talk about these emotions, guilt, anxiety, fear from eating a quote unquote bad food. I really believe it goes so much deeper than, well, I feel bad about myself, but in addition, it sort of paves the way for more disordered behaviors. It’s like I ate this, I’m bad now maybe I won’t eat or maybe I, you know, maybe I’ll over exercise to undo what I just ate. So, it’s sort of like, yes, this affects self-esteem and that’s really damaging to a child and those emotions and those types of behaviors just sort of fuel more disordered behaviors.

Lauren: You know, I did about a month ago, a girl scout talk, there were seven girls there between the ages 11 and 12 and every girl raised their hand when I said, do you have thoughts sometimes that you’re not good enough or that certain foods are bad? And everybody said, yeah. And I want to change that and I’m happy that they had me for that one hour to teach them about what health is and what you know, how to make a snack plate with a variety and not to feel bad. It was really wonderful to teach them and I’m getting more involved in the girl scouts as well moving forward. So, I’m excited about that because these girls, you know, from age fifth grade on need that support. But yeah, the thoughts and the guilt and the shame, parents need to be more aware of that and they need to be asking certain questions to their children. Like what are you feeling, or do you feel sad? Do you feel bad? Like I don’t think there, you know, some are but some aren’t asking the right questions and teachers and administrator all that.

Ashley: So, how do we combat this? What are the five key areas that we want to bring to the schools, how do we want to teach them to shift and change these messages?

Lauren: Okay. So, the first thing is that we want to talk about nutrition misinformation, right? So, we want to do some social media literacy and start kind of digging at that. So, schools and also parents can start talking about the words that are red flags. So, if a child sees the word, you know, clean eating, cleanse, detox, fasting and any diet names like Noom, Paleo, Weight Watchers. If they see before and after pictures, if they see reset, anything to do with body size, like I said the before and after photos and something about cheat days or have you ever seen the 14 or 30 day reset or something like that? I believe that if our children could just get the education of almost like a cross, I actually want to devise a crossword puzzle or like a word search for the diet culture words and then kind of have some pictures. I haven’t done that yet, but I did have that that intention of making that, so that any time they’re on their phones and they see now they’re smart about, right? Like almost like saying no to drugs, right? Like saying no to those messages and those words. So that would be important because that’s teaching them how to navigate media and social media because honestly, health and wellness can feel really overwhelming to all of us. I mean, all these messages are so, you know, contraindicative and they’re just so conflicting, these conflicting messages all the time, like eat this, don’t eat this, this is what you should eat in a day, this is what you should do. It’s almost impossible for our parents and our children to understand what we even do. This is just way too complicated. So, I’m just not going to do anything and freeze up.

Sam: Exactly.

Ashley: I love the idea of the word search just so that they have like that on their brain. Oh Keto. Okay, stay away from this, right?

Lauren: And I’ll send that to you once I create that. And I think the all or nothing mentality and the perfect way of eating or a perfect way of health shifting them away from that and saying like these are like, what can we do now? What are healthy behaviors? Which is the next step. So, we want to teach them that. Nutrition misinformation. We also want to be aware that some of them are looking at thousands of images a day on their social media and these like beauty ideals really can get to their psyche and their programming. And that constant comparison can take a really big toll on their self-esteem. I even noticed some things with my daughter, not with body image, but with other things that she says to me, and I believe that it is from, you know, I didn’t grow up like that, seeing so many images of the beauty ideals. So, it’s happening and that can impact body dissatisfaction tremendously. So, then what we want to do is we want to talk in schools primarily about self-care behaviors. So healthy behaviors would include getting adequate sleep, would include managing and coping with stress, processing emotions. And I’m sure that you both know like the coregulation of parents, like parents need to learn how to validate their child’s feelings and even, I mean, teachers probably do but I’m, you know, just to learn that you can feel what you feel and let’s talk about it and let’s process this and that’s so much healthier than suppressing that feeling because some of these children will use food because their feelings are suppressed.

Sam: Exactly.

Lauren: And when you get the feelings out, the food isn’t used to cope whether it’s restricting or whatever they decide to do. So that’s important. Also incorporating movement that they enjoy, not movement that they don’t enjoy because then we wouldn’t want to have a negative relationship with exercise or movement. And what if we actually asked students, this is another one of my creative ideas. I was thinking of creating a form of like tracking habits and tracking behaviors so that they could see well, what behaviors do I need to work on? Do I need to work on less screen time? Do I need to work on getting to bed earlier? Do I need to work on movement? Do I need to work on my coping? Maybe like journaling their emotions and, and kind of talking out with their parents? Do they need to actually work on eating breakfast because some kids don’t eat breakfast. Like not skipping meals or eating enough throughout the day? Having adequate fiber and water and yes, adding some fruits and vegetables to get that variety in. So that and oh, also social time, right? Want to make sure they have that fun social time. So, habit tracking versus calorie tracking, but in a way that’s really compassionate and mindful and just makes them feel really good about themselves, not in a way that, you know, is demonizing anything. So that would actually be a great handout for health teachers. They’re like, well, what do we do now if we’re not teaching these, you know, components of health, like how do we teach this? So, I think I’m actually going to create that in the next few months. And then we want to talk about weight stigma and bullying. Because we’re swimming in that diet culture soup and we have this social devaluing, right, of the larger body sizes that really is almost, like, I don’t know how the schools, if they’re very strict on the bullying and the body sizes, I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know if you guys know anything about?

Sam: I mean, I imagine that teachers and administrators probably don’t really even know when it’s happening, you know, I mean, kids get bullied on social media, you know, in their DMs or they can even read comments on pictures of other people and see other people get bullied and it’s sort of like, well, I look like that person. Does that mean people think that about me, I just feel like bullying happens directly and indirectly all the time.

Ashley:  I agree. Very overt. It can be very secretive.

Lauren: So, there could be this weight based, you know, teasing and this bullying and saying very mean things about body sizes and maybe even relating it to like someone being lazy or lacking willpower and that’s completely false. Actually, what happens is once someone feels that stigma, it contributes to negative behaviors, like it contributes to social isolation, and it contributes to decreased physical activity and increased weight gain, avoidance of health care services even, you know, they don’t want to talk to their doctor. And so, there’s these additional barriers that occur to actually creating healthy habits because of the stigma and the bullying. So, if we have these body positive lessons or body neutral lessons in school, then we could increase their self-esteem and they would be more likely to create or engage in that self-care behaviors that we spoke about before. So, like friending your body and not making your body an enemy creates change and creates habit change. And like society teaches us to devalue and to criticize and to dislike and that is never going to create someone feeling well.

Ashley: And also in adolescence when you desperately like when you just desperately want to fit in..

Lauren: I mean, feeling safe too, like feeling safe and fitting in.

Ashley: Yeah, there was an episode of Sesame Street and I don’t know when it was created, but Big Bird joins the Big Bird Cool Club or whatever, the Good Bird Club, that’s what it was. And he goes to his first meeting with the Good Bird Club and they say, oh, your feet are too big. You can’t join the Good Bird Club. So, he wishes on a star and gets his feet smaller by the end of this and, and it keeps going by the end of this Big Bird who we all know who Big Bird is from Sesame Street. He is this tiny, little like he shrunk his entire body, he shrunk everything about him and he feels awful and he’s like I don’t want to be a part of this Good Bird Club if I don’t even feel good about who I am and I’ve had to change everything I am.

Sam: I want to give him a hug.

Ashley: I know. It’s like a beautiful episode and the whole time, like his friends, Abby and Elmo are like saying Big Bird don’t change who you are. We love you for exactly who you are, you know. And so that, that he, he ends up turning back into like exactly who Big Bird is and deciding that he doesn’t need to join that group of people or the Good Birds Club. But like that and bring that up to say like that is, is that not what our adolescents are experiencing though? I mean, they desperately want to fit in to the group.

Lauren: Comparing body sizes even comparing what people, what they’re eating, comparing their, comparing just beauty thing, you know, there. Yes, of course, It’s all about fitting in but teaching, you know, there’s so much to be taught through therapy and everything like being your authentic self and those that like you will find you, your group will be there.

Sam: Find your Elmos to cheer you on.

Ashley: But I think when you are talking about, you know, weight stigma like even teaching like body neutrality, body diversity, like all bodies are good bodies and bodies look different.

Lauren: Like have a big poster in every single school in the United States, have a huge poster with all different size bodies and saying beautiful or even like in the bathrooms. I think someone did something like that. I don’t know if it was body sizes. Somebody did like posters in a bathroom that like with more like self-esteem, confidence.

Sam: Renfrew did a campaign on that. It was Eating Disorders Awareness Week. We had stickers, we put on mirrors in colleges and schools.

Lauren: That’s amazing. I just wish for a world like that where, you know, the beauty standards and everybody was just, you know, comfortable with one another and just took care of themselves to make themselves feel good. And that’s obviously my mission that, you know, to help these young children. And then the other two were body image resilience which is making sure that that child really, um well, to teach students about body respect and all of the things that our bodies can do for us and that it’s less important what they look like, but it’s more important what they do for us. And there I actually have a homework sheet on that, that I’ve done with my clients and I’ve done with some schools and some girls and then the other one was mindful eating. Because if health teachers started to teach about hunger fullness, satisfaction, tuning into their listening to their body because the body holds a lot of wisdom. I don’t think many health teachers are taught about that body, mind, connection. And I think that should be the new future that they’re teaching because there’s a lot that students can learn. You can even, they could even do an activity in class and how can we mindfully eat this, these foods in front of us. And let’s taste the flavors and the texture and smell the food and, you know, gain awareness of that eating experience and really even think about where the food comes from. Don’t just, you know, scarf it down and take time.

Sam: Every school needs an RD. Am I right?

Lauren: Well, my mission is really to be the dietitian to start with the New Jersey schools because I’m able to get there in person. And then if you know, as needed for anywhere to be a consultant, for trainings on online.

Ashley: You need to take this all the way to the top, Lauren Can we start in Washington?

Lauren: I would love to go all over. I mean, I definitely would have to hire more people. But let’s start with little by little. And yeah, you know, I have this vision that like a lot of students are going to learn so much from just an hour presentation that will take them to their future. Like I remember this one boy after my presentation, he’s, I believe he was about 15 and he said, like, wow, you’re really inspiring. Like this is really great, you know, and it’s just like they’ve never received some of these messages and it’s this whole new outlook and approach to health, wellness, nutrition, emotions, it’s a whole new way for them. And it was really nice to get that, you know, to get like really great feedback that will last him for a long time.

Sam: High praise from a teenager for sure.

Lauren: Yeah, it was. He’s like, that was so inspirational. It was so nice. Yeah, I’m like, well, that’s why I left my job, that’s why I’m here.

Sam: Yes! Lauren, you have a really cool resource called the Nutrition and Mental Health Myths vs. Fact sheet that people can download. I was just curious, like, what do you think one of the biggest myths is that we have to help students challenge?

Lauren: Sure. So actually I did my own study when I was at a health fair in May with 68 high school students. So, this is pretty interesting, and I wanted to see what the biggest myths were. So, I challenged them, and I said, what do you believe is true on this myth side? So, I’m going to let you guys know that the top five. Number one was do not eat late at night. So, I would say to them. So, would you not drink water at night? Would you not go to the bathroom at night? Would you not put a sweatshirt on or a blanket if you were cold or take your sweatshirt off or blanket if you were hot? These are all basic needs for our body survival. But you think not to eat late at night because why? And then they, I kind of, you know, did some motivational interviewing with them and they’re like, oh yeah, like that makes sense. Like if I eat dinner at five or if I had sports at six and now I’m home at eight or nine, then yeah, I should be eating late at night. My body needs energy and fuel. So that was great. And then avoid certain foods was the second one which that we would, we learned today and then the third one was eat clean and organic. The fourth was skinny equals healthy.

Ashley: Oh, yeah.

Sam: Yeah.

Lauren: That’s completely false. And the overweight category and, and I believe 97 studies was proven to be the healthiest I don’t know if you guys knew that.

Sam: Yes, I remember hearing about that study.

Lauren: There was a lot of controversy around it, but it is the truth. And then the fifth one is eat low carbs, which I think if teachers and administrators and parents could talk about the importance of eating enough and eating adequate carbs, that our children would feel better, better energy, less anxiety because carbs really are the fueling of our body and then low calories is best, no desserts allowed, intense exercise regimen is needed and then tied for last was intermittent fasting or skip breakfast.

Sam: Oh gosh.

Lauren: So, I love this sheet and I think all schools should have it. I’ll read you all the facts but I just said eat adequate carbohydrates, practice mindful eating, add more fiber, eat within one or two hours after waking up, make sure you get something fueling in the morning, honor hunger and fullness cues, eat consistently throughout the day, make satisfying meal and snack choices, stop checking the scale and focus on body respect and how you feel, incorporate fun, joyful movements and all foods fit.

Ashley: Yes.

Sam: Love it. Where can our audience get that?

Lauren: Sure. So, they could go to my website www.laurendoormanrd.com. And then there is a school section that has, you can click on the link that says click here for schools and it says, I believe it says, click here for your myth fact sheet. And another important thing is throughout my website., there’s a lot of podcasts that would be helpful for parents and schools.

Sam: That’s great. I’m so happy you have resources available for our students, parents, teachers and they can go right to your website and find them.  

Lauren: Some great things on the school link and then also on the child link that I think that would be great for the audience. The Intuitive Eating Book for Teens, that’s a really great one. And then the Body Image Book for Boys or Girls by Charlotte Marquis and Body Happy Kids by Molly Forbes.

Ashley: OK. We will link those to this episode.

Lauren: Perfect, that would be really helpful start for those who want to learn more.

Ashley: Awesome Lauren. And are you on social media other than your website?

Lauren: Yes. @don’t_diet_dietician.

Ashley: @don’t_diet_dietician everyone. You heard it first here. Thank you so much, Lauren. Thank you so much for being our guest today and to our audience and our listeners, thank you again for joining us. We hope that this has been inspiring and helpful. I mean, you have given us so many like very explicit tips to start engaging with and some tools to start using. So, thank you so much Lauren.

Lauren: You are so welcome.

Ashely: We enjoyed having you with us.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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