#88: Building Diet Culture Resilience & Preventing Eating Disorders in Teens with Oona Hanson

The Full Plate Podcast with Abbie Attwood, MS

Oona Hanson joins us today to talk about the prevalence of disordered eating in our teenage years. Whether you are raising a teen or not, we were all teens ourselves once, and this episode explores all the different risk factors and red flags for body shame and restrictive eating in that very vulnerable season of life.

Some of the topics we chat about include...

• Risk factors for EDs in teens
• Anti-fat phrases we need to retire from our vocabulary
• Why being an athlete means having a higher likelyhood of developing an eating disorder
• How coaches can support their teenage athletes
• What parents can do to cultivate a safe home environment with food and body
• Raising kids with resilience to handle inevitable diet culture exposure
• Rupture and repair when you've said something harful about food or bodies
• Body changes in puberty and disordered eating
• What to look for and heal in yourself to help prevent eating disorders in your children
• Whether children should be weighed at doctor's visits
• How to speak with pediatricians about weight stigma
• The role of social media in disordered eating and body dysmorphia
• Red flags that your teen may be struggling

Oona Hanson has been an educator for over twenty-five years. After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton University, Oona taught English and coached in Massachusetts at Groton School and The Winsor School and in Los Angeles at Harvard-Westlake School. Oona earned a Master’s Degree in Educational Psychology from California State University Northridge and a Master’s Degree in English from Middlebury College.

Through her writing, workshops, and private consultations, Oona supports families in raising kids who have a healthy relationship with food and their body. She runs Parenting Without Diet Culture, where she shares curated resources, and Common Sense Camp, a program to help parents teach their kids essential life skills.. As a Family Mentor at Equip, Oona works with parents and guardians whose child is in treatment for an eating disorder.

Oona’s work has been featured in various publications, including People, USA Today, US News & World Report, Today, CNN, PopSugar, Grown & Flown, Your Teen, and Maria Shriver’s “Sunday Paper.” In addition, she has appeared on multiple podcasts and television programs, including Good Morning America and Good Day LA.

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Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

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