Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Self-Worth, Weight Management, and You

In addition to working as a dietitian and teaching dancEx classes, I also teach parenting classes. For many people, it's a stretch either way. Participants in my parenting classes often wonder (aloud) if I'm qualified to teach them. Clients and students with whom I interact as a dietitian or dancEx instructor are sometimes surprised to learn I teach parenting classes.

In fact, there's a surprising amount of overlap. Parents are typically the most influential individuals in a child's life, and that influence extends to every element of weight management--body pride, eating habits, stress management, hydration, sleep, exercise, and so on. If parents do a good job, children grow up believing they are worthy of self-care, and develop the skills they need to connect with their feelings and meet their needs, coach themselves through challenges, and generally maintain a healthy relationship with their body.

Unfortunately, parents don't always learn these skills as children themselves. One of the areas where people really seem to struggle is in the area of self-worth, which is described by child psychologist Stephen Bavolek, PhD, as being made up of two components: Self-esteem, or the belief that one is lovable, and self-concept, the belief that one is capable. 

What I've observed is this: When we're children, we look to our parents to answer those all-important questions about our self-worth: Am I lovable? Am I capable? If parents have the skills to do so, they teach their children they are noticed and loved, simply for being the unique individual that they are. They also teach their children they are capable and appreciated for the things they do.

But what happens when parents don't have this skill? For many of us who struggle with weight management, a chunk of that struggle is directly related to poor self-worth. What seems to further complicate matters is this truth: As children, we need our parents to help us develop self-worth. However, as adults, our self-worth is up to us.

It's a simple observation, but it's rife with consequences. For instance, because there's a distinct break between childhood and adulthood, it's easy for people to intuit that since there's an endpoint to what parents can do, there must be an endpoint in adulthood, too--that is, a time and place when self-worth is "done." And that's simply not true...not if we want to continue to grow and develop as human beings.

So, the question becomes: How are you doing with parenting yourself in this area? Do you appreciate yourself for the unique person you are? Do you love yourself, not for the things you do, but for the individual you are? Do you recognize and appreciate the things you do for yourself and others, or do you minimize them? Perhaps most importantly, where and how can you make a positive change to better support your self-worth? When you are confident that you are lovable and capable, it'll spill over into every relationship--including your relationship with your body.

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