Today, I’m speaking with Zoë Bisbing - mother of three and licensed psychotherapist at Body Positive Therapy NYC, and creator of Body Positive Home. Zoë works with families of youth struggling with eating disorders, and works to raise awareness about prevention, early detection, and immediate intervention. Zoë is also the host of The Full Bloom Podcast.
Today we’re talking about how to build a Body-Positive Home, and how we can build buffering skills right into the foundation of the homes and schools we nurture our children in.
Find out more about Zoë’s work here.
Follow her work on Instagram here.
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Here’s the transcript in full:
Zoë Bisbing: I do think that if you're like, “Yeah, I totally want to build a body positive home, show me how”, I think you're actually embarking on some micro-activism. Because if you can commit to building a body positive home, you're going to potentially raise a body positive kid who's going to maybe then go out into the world and make the world a more body positive place.
INTRO
Laura Thomas: Hey, and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast where we talk about food, bodies and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas. I'm an anti-diet registered nutritionist, and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? Newsletter.
Today I'm talking to Zoë Bisbing. Zoë, who uses she/her pronouns, is a licensed psychotherapist, mother of three and creator of Body Positive Home, a learning and healing hub for humans who want to nurture a more embodied and inclusive next generation. Zoë directs a group therapy practice in New York City, where she and her team treat folks across the age, gender and disordered eating spectrum. A certified family based treatment practitioner, Zoë's work with families of youth struggling with eating disorders fuels her passion to raise awareness about prevention, early detection, and immediate intervention for eating disorders. Today, we're going to be talking about how to build a body positive home, and this is Zoë’s idea of how we can build buffering skills right into the foundations of the homes and schools that we nurture our children in.
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Well, thank you for that lovely review. And I guess the question is, what are you waiting for? You can sign up today at laurathomas.substack.com or find the link in your show notes. It's £5 a month or £50 for the year. And if you can't stretch that right now just email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk with the word ‘Snacks’ in the subject line and we will hook you up with a comp subscription, no questions asked and no need to explain yourself. Alright team, here's Zoë
MAIN EPISODE
Zoë Bisbing: I am Zoe Bisbing. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a licensed psychotherapist here in New York City. I run a group therapy practice, that's sort of, I guess my day job, a practice called Body Positive Therapy NYC. And I have a group of really wonderful clinicians that work there with me and we, we treat folks across the age and gender spectrum struggling with all kinds of disordered eating, eating disorders.
And I do specialise in working with children and adolescents and their families with eating disorders, which actually is sort of how I got into my other.
Laura Thomas: Your side hustle!
Zoë Bisbing: My side hustle, yeah. My side hustle / baby / passion project, which is now called Body Positive Home, once was the Full Bloom Project, but it's sort of evolved into Body Positive Home.
That work, I guess you could call it, I'd be curious to hear what you call it, but I think of it as advocacy, education and most importantly, prevention. It's my best attempt at disordered eating prevention, body image disturbance prevention, eating disorder prevention as far as we can, cos of course we can't entirely prevent eating disorders, but all of the work, my social media presence and speaking and all of it, it, it comes from a deep concern that I have for all of us.
Laura Thomas: Just as you were speaking there, I would add activism into the mix, and this may be foreshadowing a little bit, but definitely there's, there's a thread of activism there and body politics, which I know we're gonna come back to in a minute. We're gonna get into what we need to run a body positive home in just a second. But I would love it if you could tell me…why do we need this? Like, you kind of alluded to it a little bit there, but maybe ground that in a bit more context for us.
Zoë Bisbing: As a human being that lives in this world, but most importantly, as someone who's worked, uh, in a variety of treatment centres, working with people with like full blown eating disorders, I have been blown away by how eating disorder treatment, right, interventions….
How we help people relearn how to essentially claim a healthier relationship with food and body. That a lot of the interventions don't look a lot like the way, like the culture we grow up in. So it's almost like, even though there is a difference between someone that struggles with disordered eating versus a full-blown eating disorder. There's a difference between having kind of body discontent versus like body dysmorphia. There's a difference. But I was struck when I started my career on like eating disorders, in inpatient treatment units, outpatient treatment programmes. How the way we treat eating disorders is to essentially help people become unafraid of eating, and not just eating, but like eating robustly, right? Like that's sort of what treatment looks like. Robust meals, multiple components at meals, multiple times a day, right? It's like the opposite of the diet messages that we get in our culture. And so I think prevention is, I think we're all, we all need recovery because we all have grown up in this very disturbed culture where I think it's fair to say our culture has a disorder of its own in terms of bodies that are valued and devalued, and foods that are bad and good in all of this that we all know, right?
Laura Thomas: Yeah.
Zoë Bisbing: But when you go into an eating disorder treatment centre, you start to get these, you know, these messages that you'd think would be helping us get back to where we once were. But a lot of us were never there.
Laura Thomas: We never had that baseline in the first place.
Zoë Bisbing: Yeah. We never had that baseline. And it's not necessarily one person's fault. Like I'm mindful that my mom is present over here. She's getting ready to go, but…
Laura Thomas: Hi, Zoe's mom!
Zoë Bisbing: Yeah, you got a shout out, mom. She's, she's a product of a very toxic culture. It's not her fault that she suffered at the hands of terrible messages about what women are supposed to look like or what she should eat or what she shouldn't eat. And then how does that not trickle into the next generation and, you know, and so on and so on.
And so I think that prevention and making “eating disorder prevention” more accessible and more like just every day, right? I think eating disorder prevention, as you know, it's sort of siloed in like academia. There's like research that shows us…this kind of talk is helpful, this kind of language is unhelpful. This kind of feeding dynamics are helpful for prevention, but nobody is really talking about it in a way that makes it accessible and makes you feel like, oh, I could actually build a preventative environment for the kids that are either in my home or in my school. And so that's the thinking behind a body, positive home.
It's really taking elements of all of these different disciplines, right? It's, it's pediatric feeding, responsive feeding, it's health at every size, or maybe more importantly, weight neutral health care. And there is a social justice piece to it, which is maybe when you, when you use the word activism, and I do think that if you are like, “yeah, I totally wanna build a body positive home, show me how” I think you are actually embarking on some micro activism. Because if you can commit to building a body positive home, you are gonna potentially raise a body positive kid who's gonna maybe then go out into the world and make the world a more body positive place.
And I think we can talk about that term body positive. I actually, I liked that you wanted to go there, but that's sort of the thinking.
Laura Thomas: So what Zoe's talking about here is that I, I kind of wanted to probe a little bit around why you decided, or why you landed on the term body positive. It's been a conversation lately, that sort of terminology. So yeah, in 2021, Lizzo said that the movement has been co-opted by all bodies and has become about celebrating medium and small girls and people who occasionally get rolls. And just to be clear, I don't think that that's what you're doing, Zoë, but I wondered how you get the piece around fat politics across in your work. Like where does that show up for you? Is that sort of a core value for you, as it were? You're nodding, nodding, nodding.
Zoë Bisbing: I am. Well, I just loved the question because any time that I speak – and I speak a lot to parents or school professionals, kids’ librarians, teens, like this type of population. And one of my first slides when I introduce what body positivity is, I always say body positivity as a movement, as a social movement, it's not created for or by people that look like me. I always say that because it wasn't, you know? I enjoy a lot of unearned privileges as like, you know, a white cis woman who…I guess I live in, probably like a mid, mid-sized body. It's not for me. I struggle a lot with it and I had a really amazing conversation about this with Da’Shaun Harrison who has said, you know, body positivity is benevolent anti fatness. I think I named the podcast episode that, and we had…I mean, it was one of my favorite conversations because I, I do think Da’Shaun was able to communicate the problem from a different perspective. I think Da’shaun's point is that so many people get left out, which is true, I think what you are bringing up and what Lizzo is saying is, it's not for all bodies and it's certainly not for, I had a four pack, now I have a two pack and a little cellulite, it's not for you. And I do think that at the core we are centering the most marginalised bodies. That's how I think about it. I think about body positivity as a value system. So if I'm body positive, it's not: I'm body positive, I accept my ass that's now fatter than it once was. Like, that's not how I think about it.
Laura Thomas: That's not it.
Zoë Bisbing: No, I mean if that's what you thought, I'm glad you're accepting your fatter ass now. But like, what I think about it is, I believe in my values that all bodies, including the most marginalised bodies, the fattest bodies, the most disabled bodies, whatever language feels right to you, right?
That, your body is a good body and it deserves Respect, love, dignity, equity, all of these things. And that you, whoever you are, you deserve a positive regard and relationship to your body whether or not you can ever achieve that. Because I don't want people to confuse body positivity for, let's say, positive body image, which I talk a lot about the difference, but I'm aware that in using the term body positivity, I'm probably losing some people who might say, oh, there's just another white relatively thin person using this term. But I do think that my goal, and I talked to Da’Shaun about this, my goal is to bring people in who might see the term body positivity and say, yeah, I want, I want that.
Laura Thomas: It's an accessible terminology. And I think what you're sort of alluding to is Trojan horsing it, where you get people in under the auspices of body positivity and then you can kind of gently bring them along with that more political aspect of this work.
As much as I wish for radical fat acceptance for everyone. And that is always the goal that I have in mind. And radical acceptance for all bodies, not just fat bodies. I also acknowledge that we live in a deeply fatphobic culture and that it's gonna take time to change that narrative.
And I was having a conversation recently with a couple of colleagues about how anti-fatness just feels so pervasive and more acceptable right now than it has at any other point in time. So, you know, I think that it needs all of us doing this work, whether it's kind of under the, the more gentle auspices of body positivity as well as radical fat acceptance.
So I will take it, and I also think what you're, what you were saying just before this is this piece around, you know, I think what the work that you're doing is not this sort of personal project where we want our individual children to feel amazing about their bodies at all times, but to teach them the inherent worth of all bodies so that they go out into the world not replicating these systems of harm, and calling out harm when they see it.
Zoë Bisbing: Totally. You said it perfectly. I mean, the reality is…I do think there is this maybe unintended consequence of a body positive boomerang, if you will. Like, if you can commit to trying to change the way you see bodies, right? See fatness, on behalf of others, right? The reality is this boomerang, it does come back to you and it does ultimately benefit your own personal body image. It does. The nuance is if it's all about you and your own body image, you know, then I don't know if it's entirely body positive, right? I don't know that it's about your role as a citizen. Right? And you know what? I also know, having sat for now years with people who just struggle so much with their own body loathing, self-loathing, that if where you are at in this journey is you just need to work on yourself and you don't have much to offer the world, you know, or, your neighbour, that's okay too.
Like there has to be space for everyone. So I do like the Trojan horse idea, you know, and I wanna bring as many people in as possible, and I also want them right away to know there's a difference between body positivity and body image, and that this is about biases and, and yeah, human rights, social justice. I'm not hiding that, but yeah, I think the language is deliberate.
Laura Thomas: Yeah. And I will link back to that podcast that you did with Da’Shaun Harrison, cos I think that that was a really good kind of exploration of some of the, the potential limitations of the word body positivity and kind of just unpacking that a little bit more. But I guess what I'm hearing you say is, we do this work particularly as parents in the same way that we talk about bodies from the perspective of racism or ableism. It's a social justice piece that we need to weave through our parenting on sort of all different levels.
But one of the things that I really appreciate about your work, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, is how practical and accessible you make body positive parenting. And you talk about this concept of a body positive home. What exactly is that? And I'd love to hear what you think are the foundations or the building blocks. I'm not sure which metaphor we're using! What are some of the foundations or building blocks, and then maybe we can talk about some of those more practical tools and scripts and things that you use.
Zoë Bisbing: There's a kind of theoretical way to think about building a body positive home. I think there is a way to just hold the idea in your head, right? I think you're saying what you appreciate is the practical application of it, and that's what I'm sort of obsessed with, I guess.
Like how do you make these ideas really practical? And so, I do think that if you are doing your own, you know, if you're a parent and you are saying, yeah, I'm really working on expanding my definition of health and beauty and, human worth, like, in a way, if all you're doing is doing the thinking, right, and ex and maybe reading about fat positivity, reading about health at every size, like, that is one of the building blocks, right? I do think the learning and unlearning that a grownup can do, right. There are a lot of amazing books out there now. I think if you're gonna read…and I think this dovetails with building a body positive library for your home, right.
Can you include Aubrey Gordon's work? Can you include Virgie Tovar's work? Can you include Da’Shaun Harrison's work for your adult consumption? Right? Like, so that becomes a building block, both in terms of your own learning and unlearning, but also the visual you start to create in your home.
So a lot of advice that I've heard from people is, oh, you, you know, you need to hang fat art or have images of diverse bodies. And I do think that functionally can be hard for people, you know, to like figure out where do I get that art? And like, will that go with my couch? Or you know, so I think that, again, that can be a kind of a framework, like how do I bring images into my home?
And I think parenting makes this so accessible because children's books… increasingly we see so many more opportunities to bring in…whether it's a children's book that is overtly about all bodies like Tyler Feder’s Bodies Are Cool, which is like the best book I've ever read. O r Vashti Harrison's Big.
7 Body Affirming Books for Kids
Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr • Sep 6, 2022
I am forever getting asked which books I recommend for teaching kids about ‘body image’. ‘Body image’ isn’t really a term I use except when I don’t have time to go into why I don’t like it. ‘Body image’ infers how we feel about our bodies and our experiences of being a body are shaped primarily by how they look, and that in turn is usually distilled dow…
Read full story →
Body Affirming Books for Older Kids
Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr • Oct 11, 2022
Last month I shared a round-up of books for younger kids that were body affirming, touching on topics of around body diversity, like race, disability and body shape/size, as well as body boundaries and consent. As promised - here’s a part two with some books for older kids. Bookmark this now so you can find it closer to Christmas!
Read full story →
There are ways to bring in…I did a Reel recently where I just found all this body positive wallpaper.
Laura Thomas: Oh, I missed that. That's so cute. We need to link to that.
Zoë Bisbing: You know, I'm thinking like, if you're really bold, you can bring those images on a wall in your kid's bathroom of all the diverse bodies at the beach.
But something that I'm thinking of is, I don't know that, like, my husband's gonna want a bold print, so maybe I'll get a swatch and frame it and put that up. So this is where you start to see if bringing in body diversity is a complete, necessary building block of, what I like to say, scaffolding a body positive home, then you can be so creative with how you're gonna do that.
And I'm just riffing, you know, a few ideas, but that's definitely a very important place to start. And then there's other rooms that we can venture into too.
Laura Thomas: Okay so you are literally thinking about how you design a home that you know, that has representation of all different bodies. I guess what you're getting at is this idea of just normalising body diversity just by having it out as art and wallpaper and literally the books that you have on your shelf, like making it a part of the fabric of your home.
Zoë Bisbing: Exactly. I mean, I'm thinking about a couple years ago when my daughter was maybe one and a half, I put..you know this brand Summersalt? The swimsuits. They started to do these very bold campaigns. I since have learned that, like actual fat activists were actually disappointed that the sizing wasn't inclusive enough. So I hold that, I hold that, and that catalogue came in my mail and I saw on the cover was I think…I don't remember if it was the cover or what, but there were so many different body types. It felt like the real life version of Bodies Are Cool. And I put it in her, in her play box with all of her objects because this is an example, right?
If I am intentionally thinking, I want her to just, as part of her boring little walk from one end of the room to the other, for her to just have this option to pick it up and look at all the different bodies. It's almost like you start thinking and seeing everything differently and you think, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna comment on this when we read this book, or, oh, I'm gonna put that in the, the baby bin. Or, oh, look at that wallpaper. I'm totally going…got that extra bedroom or that little wall in the closet. I'm gonna put that fun wallpaper on it. And then…anyway, so this is like almost a mindset that then begets practical application.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, I love that. I'm wondering if we could explore the bedroom, cos I feel like there could be a lot of stuff in there. And one thing that I'm immediately thinking of is, and I forget what you call this, so you're gonna have to remind me, but do you have like a little hack where you have a bin for clothes that no longer fit? Talk us through that. What is it that you call that?
Zoë Bisbing: It's called the Not Working for My Body Anymore Bag. This is literally like if you have a bag sitting in your bag collection, like a tote bag, a Target bag, whatever. Just take it and write: “Not Working for My Body Anymore” on it. And to put this in your closet and your kids' closets. I think the label is important because you are saying it's a normal practice to notice if your clothing does not work for your body anymore, and put it in this bag because we will donate it.
There are accessibility issues. Not everybody can afford to get new clothing. Not everybody can find their sizes. Like I wanna appreciate that. And also, this bag should be in everybody's closet because it sends a message both to yourself and your kid: bodies change. There's nothing wrong with that. If your clothing stops working for you, it's okay. You know where it goes.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, there's a process in place to, to support you with, through that rather than ut being a point of judgment or shame or criticism, or, which is…I, I remember getting messages about when I outgrew my clothes, which – hello, I was a child's growing. Like, of course I'm gonna outgrow my clothes. But that felt wrapped up in a lot of shame, like it was my body's fault for not fitting the clothes rather than vice versa. So I, I love this, and especially with kids, you know, who at least every year, if not more often, we have to swap out sizes and, you know, just normalising that process, that bodies grow and they change.
Zoë Bisbing: What this does, right, like creating a little system in place, like you said, a process, it also leaves space for, like, sensory challenges, and that's a whole other issue. A lot of toddlers just experience that, but a lot of neurodivergent folks just have sensory differences, and so it normalizes that too.
And it's not just like, if I get too tall for my clothes, but also if my body becomes wider and the clothing no longer, like, buttons, that's okay. That's almost…could be a neutral noticing. And same with like, I, I can't tolerate the seam in this, like, so I think…
Laura Thomas: Or the fabric, or…
Zoë Bisbing: The fabric or whatever, you know. So again, whether the kid, even…like, I have one in my kids' closet, they never even put anything in there. They barely put stuff in their laundry bin, you know? But, but it's there. And so, I wanna connect one dot, especially with young children, there's an Eric Carle book called, um, A House for Hermit Crab.
There's no overt message in there about all bodies being good bodies, nothing like that. But again, once you become, I think when you've trained your brain to think this way…
Laura Thomas: You tune in.
Zoë Bisbing: You tune in. The story begins where the hermit crab realizes, he says, “Oh! Time to move, my house is too small for me.” And so, without judgment, he steps out of his shell and he goes on a journey and he finds a bigger shell, without judgment. He just sizes up. And then he goes on his journey and he actually finds ways to make his home home, right?
He finds adornments like sea anemone. He finds snails that can help him clean. To me, there's just like the reverberation. It's like, whoa. Yes. If you feel like your body's a good body, You have clothing that fits you and you're not carrying around all this like loathing and shame. You actually clean yourself. You take care of yourself. You know what I mean? It becomes much more accessible.
And then at the end, he has to move again cos he needs a bigger shell without any judgment. And then he finds another hermit crab who says, “Well, I'll take that shell,” you know? And so I think that, you can even read that book to your kid and say, oh, it's just like us, just like our clothing when it doesn't fit anymore. We just need a bigger home. We need a bigger shell. You know, like to just simply make those little connections. I think that, again, that starts to feel like more of the fabric in your home.
Laura Thomas: It goes both ways, doesn't it? That you can notice these themes in, you know, these body positive themes in books, books, in these, these, body accepting themes, these body liberatory themes in books. But you also see the flip side of that, right? And I think, and I know that sometimes my instinct is like, I do not want this book in my house. We need to get rid of this. I need to, like tear pages out or like...
Zoë Bisbing: Burn it!
Laura Thomas: Yeah! Don't get me wrong, there are books that we absolutely need to do that to. There's some horrifically fat phobic books, but there are also some books where I think we can use that as a point we can use that as a point of conversation and start to open up, yeah, a dialogue with our kids. I wonder if you could speak to that point a little bit?
Zoë Bisbing: Oh, I agree. I mean, I do think there are some books that..I'm with you, like just…
Laura Thomas: Like it might be one line in an otherwise fine book.
Zoë Bisbing: Yeah. and I do think that right, sometimes it's okay to just skip, but I, I do think that those are teachable moments to just look at and be like, Ooh, I don't, I don't know about that. What do you think about that? Or like, why do you think they made this character…put him in this body? Like, have you ever noticed that the villain’s always in a bigger body? What, what do you think about that?
Laura Thomas: Yeah.
Zoë Bisbing: And I say teachable moments, but I don't think we get anywhere by, like, explicitly, like, schooling our kids in this. I mean, I've tried, ooh, it does not work. But to just be like, what do you think about that?
Laura Thomas: Yeah.
Zoë Bisbing: Or I might say, I don't really like that. Like, do you have an opinion on that? They might not even know what you're talking about, but again, if you just keep modelling critical thinking. That's is…you're building critical thinking skills and I think that's the benefit of stumbling across fucked up shit. you know?
Laura Thomas: It becomes like a, a learning opportunity or like a…not even learning opportunity, like you're saying like a, an opportunity to think critically and challenge and push back and, yeah, so that, you know, when kids go out into the wider world, they are able to use their voice and articulate when they see something that feels icky or feels uncomfortable that they can name that and that you normalise that practice.
Zoë Bisbing: And that you literally modelled it, right? That you modelled what it looks like to see something that most people aren't registering, but you are. And if you are the one person in that kid's life that's registering it, maybe it's not enough, but it's better than nothing.
So I've been talking about these Not Working for My Body Anymore. Bags. And I write it with a big sharpie. And recently I had a pile of clothes on the bed. And my husband said, “What are you doing with this? Is this laundry? Or is this for your Not Working for My Body Anymore Bag?
And he said it like…I didn't even know that he knew, like, what I was up to with these bags. Like, cos I was just sort of putting them in closets. But I think that…you think about that moment, right, where he's very casually saying, is this laundry or is this, You're Not Working for My Body Anymore Bag.
And if a kid is in earshot, he's just hearing a regular day, a parent saying to another parent, is this laundry or is this like just not working for your body anymore? Is. And that's a very potent little seed, you know? And so I just wanted to share that because I think it, it speaks to this, this process, this sort of never ending process of creating those…whatever, fabric, foundations, scaffolding.
Laura Thomas: Yeah. Because I think we often talk a lot about like these big, these, like, sensationalised moments where, you know, it's your mother-in-law saying something really fatphobic, and then, oh shit, we're scrambling in our brains to come up with the perfect, like one-liner zinger to throw back at at her. But what I'm sort of taking from what you're saying is that I think that that stuff is, is important and we should talk about it, but also just having these things normalised all around us all the time.
Whereas I think those conversations where, you know, if we explode at our mother-in-law, it kind of makes it, like, a big thing. At my toddler, well, preschoolers preschool, they had a presentation from the chef, and the chef was going around being like, “Oh, and now we have cake twice a week!” and was like making this big deal.
And I was like, okay, but you realise what you're doing here is making cake a big fucking deal. And it's a similar sort of thing, right, where we're making these things a big fucking deal sometimes, the more we talk about it. But what I'm hearing you say is if we talk about these things just throughout the fabric of our daily lives, it just becomes part of our daily lives.
Zoë Bisbing: Like you embody your values.
Laura Thomas: Yes.
Zoë Bisbing: That's what it is, I mean, and it's not to say that I…I've, I've totally been that parent and that mom making like a big comment about something when it really bothers me or...I think there's probably a time and a place for all of it, right?
Like, I think there's like naturally occurring teachable moments. Then there are like proactive prep, you know, even when it comes to like confronting a mother-in-law. Like I think there's power in a family trying really hard to just live your values, talk about your values, so that when an outsider says something or a family member says something, your family ultimately has a sense. Like we, we do things differently. Like we, we see the injustice, we see the problem in that. I think this is very hard because everybody absorbs information differently.
You know, I have three different kids with three different sensibilities. I have one kid who's clearly absorbed a lot of what I've said in a way that I noticed that like he'll spontaneously make a little art that's very overtly celebrating all bodies. And I'm like, you're my dream! This is what I had in mind.
And then another kid who's like, “Shut up already! Like, call it junk food. I'm laughing at a fat joke. Leave me alone!” And I'm like, wow. Well, that might be a little bit cos I pushed too hard, you know, but, you know, I don't mean to pick on him because I think that ultimately they know that their family's values are inclusive and that doesn't mean they're, all of our kids are gonna emerge these like perfect little activists.
But, but I do also hear, even with that one that's, like kind of pushing back on my overt attempts, I've also noticed the way he thinks about injustice more broadly. And so I start to say, okay, like this is a long-term project with kids.
Laura Thomas: Yeah.
Zoë Bisbing: And the best we can do is just keep affirming them. And I think, again, these different rooms of our homes, they have a lot of power to do that.
Laura Thomas: And I also think about how confusing this must be for kids cos they're hearing a set of messages from you at home and, you know, we hope that they, that we have planted them deep down inside somewhere in that one day that's gonna blossom. Right?
Zoë Bisbing: Right.
Laura Thomas: And at the same time, they are getting these fatphobic messages from absolutely everywhere. These anti-fat messages. And not just anti-fatness, but all sorts of forms of prejudice are normalised in schools. And from their peers and their peers, parents, and, you know, not to like put a total downer on it, but we're asking kids to hold a really big cognitive dissonance there, and sometimes it's gonna fall down on the side that we don't want it to necessarily.
But I think again, with that kind of, um, having that infrastructure at home in place, that the balance tips towards not being a jerk towards fat people.
Zoë Bisbing: Yeah. No, but I think what you're…I appreciate what you're naming and I think I, I wanna, I wanna sit with that for a while because it's true. When you swim upstream as a parent, let's say you are really building a body positive home and I do think that's net positive for your kids and for the world, period. But I do think you're right that there's more…I mean, that's cognitive dissonance we want, right. We want them to have been told all food is good food so many times, and not just told it, but like seen it. Right. You know, seen the lack of moralising around food so that when they hear it and, and this has happened, that same kid who I was telling you about, my son who kind of pushes back, he came home once and he said, “This lunch monitor said salami's unhealthy. And she wouldn't let me take more.”
And so yes, I did write an email about that and ended up speaking to the school because she didn't know what she was talking about. She was just thinking she was sending a helpful lesson. Of course, it's a science teacher, and science teachers are always sort of filled with misinformation about nutrition, but…
Laura Thomas: It’s really worrying, isn't it? Given they're the science teacher, I don’t know!
Zoë Bisbing: I know, I know. And it's…you know, it's the language. If every kid is only allowed to take a certain amount of salami because there has to be enough for the group, sure. But he told me, he said, “She said it wasn't healthy and I knew you wouldn't like that.” And he's right. I didn't like that.
And so, I think that that's cool. You know, and Leslie, my friend, who she and I founded Full Bloom together, we talked to you, her daughter ultimately was like a little nine year old whistleblower in her school because they were weighing kids without parents consent.
Laura Thomas: Oh my God. I love that.
Zoë Bisbing: She told her mom, she said something didn't feel right about it. She's right and it was wrong.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, they weren’t getting consent!
Zoë Bisbing: No, I mean, there's just no safeguards in place. But that is incredible. You know, both of these kids, like, she's talking funny about salami, they're weighing people and that doesn't feel right. Well, I'm so glad that these kids know something's up because then they can tell a grownup and the grownup can help. But I think that's powerful. You know, just those little tweaks. Right.
Laura Thomas: Yeah. No, absolutely, because…i sounds like your son is, yeah. He's maybe pushing back on you, but it almost sounds like that's more to do with the fact that you're his mom and he's a kid…
Zoë Bisbing: It’s me!
Laura Thomas: Yeah. But that, that message, even though to your face, he's still like, “Fuck you, mom.” At the same time, he's absorbing the messages and, and it's at least, at the very least, he's pausing and thinking a little bit more when he's getting those diet culture messages from the school whatever person.
Give us one or two more real quick bedroom hacks.
Zoë Bisbing: Okay, so when I think about the bedroom, I think about the closet. I will also say this is maybe not a hack…kind of, it's like a mindset. I think when I think about the bedroom, I think about sleep too. And one of the things that I think we completely forget about in our definition of healthy, right? It's like healthy eating is what comes to mind, but sleep is just, like, so important. And so I love Lisa Damour. She says, “Sleep is the glue that holds us together.” I think that is so true. I notice and talk about embody, like being embodied. When I am well rested, I am a different human being from when I'm not. When we use the word healthy, health with our kids, if we hear them using the word healthy, it doesn't matter what room you're in. I always like to insert, “Health is such a tricky word. Health is so tricky. Healthy’s such a tricky word,” like on repeat. Because when I think about the bedroom and I think about sleep, I think about, wow, we spend so much time thinking about healthy food, unhealthy food, but we're forgetting that this is a huge part of overall wellbeing and health too. So that's one.
But when I think about the bedroom and the closet, well, you tell me there's one more closet hack and then I think there's also like mirrors, cos mirrors are in closets too.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, so tell us one wardrobe hack and one, mirror hack because I think they're super interesting as well.
Zoë Bisbing: One of the, one of my favorite hacks, and I think this applies to people of honestly all genders, and it's a great hack to tell your teens and tweens about even if they, like, roll their eyes and they never use it. It's the hair elastic hack that is often only offered up to pregnant people.
Laura Thomas: Cos they’re the only people whose bodies are allowed to change! Right? Only with the caveat that it has to go back afterwards, right?
Zoë Bisbing: Exactly. Exactly. That it's only suitable for the…maybe you could get away with like postpartum a couple months, but then you can't use this hack anymore. No, this hack is like…I think like menopausal people run with it. Tweens, teens, puberty. Oh my gosh. And just like general life, this is a very important hack and…if you take a hair elastic and you thread it through the button loop, like the buttonhole, and then you make a little knot and then you pull it over to connect it to the button. You've literally created an extra, I mean, it could be as much as two inches for yourself, and sometimes that's all you need to just get you through that day or just till the next moment when you can get a pair of pants that actually fit you.
But again, when I, I say this is so useful to talk to teens and tweens and kids about…like, this is a hack by telling them, just put a couple in your bag. Like if ever your belly is like, oh, I can't take my pants, just like create a little space for yourself. Even if they don't use it, you're, you're telling them and yourself, it's okay. It's okay if my…and it cannot just be for pregnant people that this is okay. Like we all expand and swell and pudge and puff and like that's because we're human fucking beings. And
Laura Thomas: You have a really cool Reel, showing this hack as well, so I'll, I'll link to that because yeah, it's really helpful.
Tell us about, tell us some fun mirror things that you like to do as well.
Zoë Bisbing: So mirrors are tricky. I'll boil it down to a hack, but I think people know when they have, well, they don't always know, but a lot of people have a problematic relationship to the mirror,
Laura Thomas: Agreed, yeah.
Zoë Bisbing: Right? Like you, if you're looking at yourself a lot in the mirror, it might be a sign that you have some body image struggles going on. Like, if there's a lot of checking your body in a mirror, that is most likely maintaining negative thoughts and feelings you might be having about your body. So, you know, hacks are not therapy. A lot of people do need therapy around body image and Mirror Exposure Therapy is a type of therapy that we offer in my practice, and it's very powerful I think, for people.
But I've noticed that even if you don't struggle with acute body image disturbances, like, if you're like, yeah, I just wanna get better at even just tolerating, looking at myself in the mirror…With kids…look, mirrors with kids, especially like babies. I love mirrors and babies, I mean like learning about the sense, you know, that you're a person. Being able to see and study in the mirror. There's so many like psychological benefits that come from looking in mirrors. And then of course at a certain point, like, people get really fucked up about mirrors. So like what happens? Right?
But building descriptive language skills for kids, helps them with their emerging body image and also food acceptance skills, which I know you know that, like…but being able to look in the mirror in a playful way with your kid, whether it's like you're brushing your teeth or you know, you're getting changed and just sort of spontaneously say like, let's look for a specific shape. Like, can you find a triangle? Can you find a semicircle, can you find a lump, like something lumpy? Can you find something squishy? Like you can do this in so many different ways, but to really focus on descriptive language, form, colour, shape…
Laura Thomas: Mm. Texture.
Zoë Bisbing: Texture. Yeah. Because this is not the same thing as scrutinising your body. But to be able to look at your body – and this is a playful version to do almost preventatively with kids, but what this ultimately translates to as an adult is being able to look at, especially parts of your body that you really struggle with and use hopefully this language that you've been building because you're practicing with your kid to be able to notice the shapes and the line, the form, the function. This is the whole idea of like body neutralising, right? Being able to see what's actually there, not sort of what your mind interprets is there. But even if all your kid finds is the nose, oh, I found a triangle.
Well, that's right. This is sort of a triangle. It's like a triangle. Oh. It has a little, like a little slope or a bump. Like words that are not even nose or ear, because I think that it helps this other part of the brain be able to look in a different way.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, and I think…you know, I'm just thinking about bellies and roundness and, and just like the fullness of bellies and, and being able to name that in a neutral, non-judgemental way with our toddlers and our preschoolers and our younger kids like…how protective that could be if they bring that with them all the way through.
Oh, I feel like we could be talking about hacks all over the place. And maybe we need to get you back for part two so we can explore some of these, these other rooms. But…we end every conversation with my guests and I sharing their snack. So this is basically anything that you've been loving lately. It can be a book or a podcast, a show, a literal snack, anything you want. So Zoë, what have you been snacking on lately?
Zoë Bisbing: I don't know what it says about me, but the two things that are coming to mind, one is a show and one is an actual snack.
Laura Thomas: Go on. Go for it. Let's have them both.
Zoë Bisbing: The show is Chicago Med.
Laura Thomas: Oh, is this like a ER situation?
Zoë Bisbing: I think it's an ER situation and I can't even tell you why. I think I just love the actor Oliver Platt so much. He plays this like avuncular psychiatrist and…I can't even say I recommend the show and it was probably not worthwhile that I shared it, but I will say as, like, a very busy working parent. I am really relishing the laying on the couch watching this show and just sort of losing myself into the, like, drama of the doctors and, and all the different medical diagnoses and like there's a psychiatrist that always comes in and there's always some kind of psychiatric episode and I just like really enjoying that as like a pleasure.
Laura Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds…like I was gonna say like a guilty pleasure, but that's not what I mean…
Zoë Bisbing: I almost said it too!
Laura Thomas: It’s your like…
Zoë Bisbing: It's like my, it's my play food.
Laura Thomas: Yeah!
Zoë Bisbing: It's interesting cos I think about that if I…the snack that I'm really enjoying right now, it's like, it does, it has a similar feeling. It's like, it's just really satisfying and comforting. I've recently discovered Chobani yoghurt, like Chobani is a yoghurt.
Laura Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I know that brand. Mm-hmm.
Zoë Bisbing: With granola, peanuts and honey.
Laura Thomas: Peanuts are so underrated, man.
Zoë Bisbing: Peanuts and yoghurt! I mean, it was like a very random choice, but there's something about like the crunch, like the scratch, like there's something texturally going on there with the like, honey sweetness and the tartness of the yogurt. So that and Chicago Med is like how I'm closing my days and it's really restorative.
Laura Thomas: That sounds so good. Okay, so just to bring this episode like full circle to some of what we were talking about before…my snack, my thing that I’m very excited about is that, since starting preschool, my three-year-old is not napping. And is going to bed at eight o'clock at night, like consistently for a week, which has literally never happened in three whole years.
Zoë Bisbing: So you have a whole evening now.
Laura Thomas: Yeah, it feels like I have an eternity. Like he was going to bed at like 10, 11 o'clock every night because his previous childcare was letting him sleep way too long during the day
Zoë Bisbing: Oh gosh.
Laura Thomas: And it was a whole thing. I am enjoying having some rest and recuperation. And what is so interesting to me is that he was sleeping like 70 minutes during the day and then getting, I don't know, like eight hours at night, maybe a little bit less, but now he's getting more overall sleep than that broken sleep during the day. And it is just..it makes me really angry that our last childcare provider was not listening to us when we were asked to cut the nap.
But I will just add this caveat for anyone who's like, oh my God, my kid is not sleeping. Um, he does still wake up. Once a night. So, but I can take it cuz he falls back to sleep and it's fine. But yeah, it like the fact that we have an evening now is revolutionary.
All right, Zoe, can you let everybody know where they can find out more about you and your work?
Zoë Bisbing: Well, you can head to my new website. www.bodypositivehome.com. And my Instagram. That's where the action is right now. That's @MyBodyPositiveHome.
Laura Thomas: I will link to both of those in the show notes so everyone could come and find you and follow your work. And thank you so much for coming on. It was so fun to talk to you.
Zoë Bisbing: Same.
OUTRO
Laura Thomas: Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.
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Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening.
ICYMI this week: What (Gentle) TV Are You Watching?
