Love the Skin You’re In
“CREATING HEALTHY BODY IMAGES”
Complete 7 of the following 18 activities including the 2 that have .
1. Read and complete the exercises in the Knowledge of Eating Disorders curriculum. Report back to
the group.
2. Read and complete the exercises in the Enhancing Self-Esteem curriculum. Report back to the
group.
3. Read and complete the curriculum for inter/intrapersonal communication skills in a counseling
relationship. Report back to the group.
4. Be An Activist - Take Action. Write letters to stores/designers/editors/stations that do not reflect a
balanced and accurate portrayal of women.
5. Find a character in a movie or in a book that appears to suffer from low self-esteem. Discuss why
you feel this character has a poor self image. Come up with 2-3 suggestions on how this character
could improve and strengthen his/her self-esteem.
6. Create a STOP AND THINK card with your troop members. A STOP AND THINK card
reminds people to stop and think of the consequences of their actions. One side of the card should
say “STOP AND THINK,” while the other side provides strong reasons for the person to stop
his/her negative actions/behavior.
7. Create a GAME OF LIFE that addresses the problems someone with low-esteem might face, or
someone who uses alcohol, cigarettes and/ or drugs.
8. Don’t Fall for the Thin Ideal. Society often sets body-image goals for young women that aren’t
realistic. Discuss the issue in a group, and then role-play some examples. Do a skit, draw a picture
or put together a collage.
9. Keep a journal. Use it to write what you like about yourself and what qualities you wish to change.
10. Make a "Celebrate Me” Scrapbook that celebrates you and the wonderful person you are. Include
pictures of yourself at different ages, writings you enjoy, mementos of things you have done and
places you have been, cards you have received, etc.
11. Review a pyramid of fast- food menus and pick items that are healthy.
12. Expose the media. Review magazines, TV and movies and challenge the views shown in media.
13. Write a song, a poem or skit that focuses on peer pressure and share it with your troop
members or your community.
14. Create a short story with two different endings. Make it a story where the main character does not deal with peer pressure successfully, and then write a second ending describing a different way the main character dealt with peer pressure. Discuss how the two endings differ. Can you think of any other ways to solve the main character’s problems with peer pressure?
15. Role Playing. Two people role-play a situation where someone is being bullied, and two others observe. At the end of the role playing, the observers will provide ideas on what worked and give suggestions for other ways to deal with this situation.
16. Assertiveness training. With a group of 4 people, discuss the meaning of assertiveness. How is being assertive a better alternative to getting involved in a fight? In your group, come up with scenarios that adolescents may experience when confronted by a bully.
17. * Go out in the field. Visit an agency or community resource that provides services to those who have problems with self-esteem or substance use. Talk to a professional, gather information and write a report on what you learned. Or, bring in the experts. Choose one of the experts from the attached list, or find your own.
Leaders Guide
Information for Activity 1
Knowledge of Eating Disorders
GOAL: The information will increase the girls’ knowledge of self and others through the study of eating disorders
RESOURCES AND MATERIALS NEEDED:
Eating disorders curriculum, pencils and/or pens
EXERCISE:
Ask the girls to read the information in the Eating Disorders curriculum, and take the true and false quiz.
*See attached information and quiz
Objective: The girls will identify the characteristics and psychology of eating disorders.
A. EATING DISORDERS
Eating disorders can cause a health crisis and/or a family crisis, and, at the same time can be symptomatic of emotional or family problems.
ANOREXIA NERVOSA
Anorexia Nervosa is a serious life-threatening disorder of deliberate self-starvation with wide ranging physical and psychiatric components. The term, anorexia nervosa, is a misnomer as it means lack of appetite due to nerves. In actuality, the reverse is true. The person is obsessed with the idea of eating food, but because of emotional problems, that person denies her/his hunger and does not eat, and/or binges, then vomits or takes laxatives.
The symptoms of anorexia include:
• 25% loss of normal body weight
• Lack of menstrual periods
• Hyperactivity
• Distorted body image
• Food binges followed by fasting, vomiting, or using laxatives
• Excessive constipation
• Depression
• Loss of hair
• Growth of fine body hair
• Intolerance to cold temperatures
• Low pulse rate
- Addendum #1 - Handout: When Eating - or not
- Addendum #2 - Handout: Characteristics of Anorexia
BULIMIA
Bulimia is recurrent episodes of binge eating, followed by self-induced vomiting or purging by laxatives and diuretics. It literally means ox hunger because oxen eat more than they can digest, so they store the excess to be regurgitated and digested later. Humans rid the body of the excess.
Symptoms of bulimia include:
• Inconspicuous binge eating
• Menstrual irregularities
• Swollen glands
• Frequent significant weight fluctuations due to alternating binge and fasts
• Fear of inability to stop eating voluntarily
- Addendum #3 - Handout Characteristics of Bulimia
People who are susceptible to anorexia and bulimia are usually young people in their adolescence or young adulthood. Either illness can be the aftermath of a diet. Eating disorders mainly affect white females from middle and upper class families. The parents are usually conscientious, educated, well-meaning people who are high achievers themselves. In many cases, one of the parents is overly concerned about eating patterns and is likely to be a perfectionist. Recovery is very difficult. Some are able to achieve it and others are not.
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OBESITY
A compulsive over-eater may eat in response to emotional, rather than physical, hunger cues. He or she may eat to soothe feelings of anxiety, tension and anger. Fear of new situations may cause eating binges.
- Addendum #4 - Handout: Mind Games For The Over-Eater
Some overweight teens may try to mask their developing sexuality with their fat and may go on binges when they are starting to show progress on a diet because change is so frightening. Rebellion against a weight conscious parent can figure into compulsive eating, too, as the teen fights the parent with his or her body.
While food can act as a tranquilizer of sorts, (a throwback to the old days when children got a cookie for being a good girl or boy or to stop crying), and while it can be a way of expressing anger and rebellion, using eating in this way can cause a host of problems. It can inhibit communication with others because the over-eater doesn't express feelings to others directly. It can reinforce poor self-image as one struggles as a fat person in a thin world, seeing themselves as unattractive at a time in life when physical attractiveness is important. Over-eating can be unhealthy as the beginning of a lifetime of yo-yoing between dieting and bingeing.
B. COUNSELING/REFERRAL INTERVENTIONS
Anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive over-eating are often treated as addictions. A student with an eating disorder should be referred to a specialist.
- Addendum #5 - Handout Partial Listing of Physical Problems Brought About By Eating Disorders
- Addendum #6 - Handout: Typical Inpatient Treatment
Treatment for anorexia patients, especially, may include a period of hospitalization in conjunction with individual and family therapy. Since anorexia is often a sign of underlying family problems, treatment for the whole family is often seen as a necessity.
- Addendum #7 - Handout Eating Disorder Quiz
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Addendum #1
When Eating - or Not
Anorexia and Bulimia: Every weight-conscious girl should be alert to warning signs of these harrowing ailments and learn how to slim down sanely (and for keeps).
"Whenever I lost weight because I was upset or anxious, I made a conscious decision to preserve the loss.”- Nicole, 35, anorectic currently in therapy.
For her first diet, Nicole used pills - amphetamines - prescribed by her family doctor, and succeeded in slimming down from about 150 pounds to a trim 120. She stayed that way until her first marriage floundered. During the divorce, her weight plummeted to a mere 95 pounds. Alarmed, Nicole sought medical help; she was having trouble eating and vomited occasionally. The doctor said she had viral hepatitis and treated her for it. Eventually, Nicole started to gain.
A few years later, she remarried, and soon afterward her weight crept up past 130. She began to diet, again using pills, and lost over 40 pounds. Once more, she managed to gain, and for a few years her weight remained stable, between 110 and 115. "Then my boss started talking about promoting me to a management position," Nicole recalls. "I'd never thought of such a job and felt extremely unsure of myself." She began to lose again - this time dieting her way down to a truly frightening 67 pounds. At that point, she was having trouble walking and couldn't make herself eat. She was hospitalized and, finally, her problem was diagnosed as anorexia nervosa.
Nicole put on some weight in the hospital and started psychotherapy. "A lot of the trouble stemmed from my childhood," she explains. "I was a middle child and never developed my own identity. I also set unrealistically high standards for my appearance and performance at work and school."
She applied the same rigid standards to weight control. "I'd eat normally on weekends and diet during the week," Nicole says. "By Friday, my weight had to be back down to where it had been the previous Friday, and if it was even lower, then by the next Friday it had to be at that new low point. And whenever I lost weight because I was upset or anxious, I made a conscious decision to preserve the loss". Learning that she's anorectic has helped some, but Nicole still hasn't gotten her compulsive dieting under control. "At least now I'm maintaining instead of losing," she sighs. Nicole is thirty-five years old. She weighs seventy-four pounds.
"I'd think, 'Oh, I'm nervous ', and go ahead because there was always that savior-the purge.”
- Catherine, 34, recovered bulimic
Catherine's problem was different, but equally serious. At thirty-four, this successful, slim, attractive advertising executive, married and the mother of two, would seem to have it all. But for a terrifying eight months, while in the grip of an eating disorder known as bulimia, life was "out of focus" like taking the lens of a camera and turning it so everything is blurred, she says of her uncontrollable urge to binge on huge quantities of food and then purge by vomiting it all up.
"One day, as I was trying to get my body in shape, I had what seemed to be the perfect solution," says Catherine, describing her discovery that she could avoid the consequences of overeating by vomiting. "I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, how fabulous. Why didn't I know about this before?' "
What started as a means of dealing with an occasional splurge soon became a daily habit, however. "At first, I'd just binge on Saturday nights," Catherine explains. "Then it was three or four times a week, then every day, then twice a day. I never made a conscious decision to eat; the habit became automatic. I'd think, 'Oh, I'm nervous' and go ahead because there was always that savior, the purge. Then I couldn't stop vomiting and realized that something had taken control of me. This went on for about seven months."
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Addendum #1
"Luckily, I was scared enough to get help when I couldn't stop vomiting and realized that something had taken control of me. Now, after more than a year of therapy," she exults, "I've been let out of prison."
Nicole and Catherine are victims of what doctors believe to be an epidemic of eating disorders -dieting gone berserk until it becomes self-destructive. Incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia is rising alarmingly, not only in the United States, but also in England and elsewhere in Europe. It's now believed that one in every two hundred young women suffers to some extent from anorectic behavior and that as many as 30 percent have flirted dangerously with bulimia. Although the majority of those afflicted with eating disorders are young - in their teens or early twenties - Nicole and Catherine, both in their thirties, are testament to the fact that more mature women are not immune. "We hear from many people in their twenties, thirties, and forties who have had problems since their teens," says Leah A. Melick of the National Anorexic Aid Society, Inc.
While anorexia has been a medically recognized entity for over a century, bulimia has more recently come into its own as a full-fledged eating disorder. There's some scientific controversy about whether bulimia is a condition related to but distinct from anorexia. About half of all anorectics have episodes of bulimia.
Bizarre as these eating disorders may seem, they're merely exaggerated versions of our national preoccupation with weight control. In a world of unsuccessful and frustrated dieters, anorectics and bulimics are, in a weird way, heroines and heroes of success stories. Although these disorders are predominately attributed to females, males also suffer from both anorexia and bulimia. Despite the enormous physical and emotional costs, their victims do manage to achieve the bodies the rest of us so enviously crave. Although both ailments are definitely individual responses to unique personal and
family difficulties, the enormous societal pressures that affect us all can't be discounted. So to put eating disorders in perspective, let's look first at current attitudes toward body size and weight control.
Dieting: Our National Pastime