5 positive health messages to share with your teens

We all want our kids to grow up with healthy habits, but that’s not always easy. HFG founding editor Nikki Bezzant shares positive ways to build a healthy attitude.

Those of us who grew up in the 70s, 80s and 90s did so immersed in a culture of dieting. And if you’re anything like me, you can probably recall messages you absorbed back then about your body and being healthy.

Nutritionist Claire Turnbull says those messages stay with us and can be hard to disconnect from when we’re parenting.

“Even in our 40s and 50s it can be hard to break the relationship that we’ve had with food and our bodies, based on what we got from our parents … when dieting was very, very normal and encouraged, and commenting on your body was completely acceptable. And those conversations from our childhood are still very much ingrained in us,” she explains.

Our inherited attitude and behaviour, combined with the lifetime of messages we’ve absorbed from the media about health, can make it tricky to know what to focus on when modelling and communicating to our teens. And we don’t want to get it wrong. We’ve put together some thought starters on positive messages to express in order to help build healthy attitudes.

1 Food is not good or bad

This can be a hard one to unpick, but the idea of food as neutral — in other words, having no moral value — is a valuable one. Accepting this means we can feel in control of food, rather than the other way around. Claire explains:

“For most people, particularly women, food carries all sorts of different meanings. You eat certain foods and you should feel good; other foods make you feel bad. It means that food has so much power over us and gets to control how we think and feel about ourselves.”

If we can help our teens understand that — in the context of a healthy life and a healthy diet — all foods are available and acceptable, they won’t associate food with feelings of guilt, shame or punishment.

What to say…

When talking about food and eating, avoid describing food as good, bad, naughty, sinful or indulgent. Don’t talk about any foods as banned or forbidden. Gently discourage restricted eating, dieting or avoiding food groups such as carbs, dairy or gluten (it’ll help if you model this behaviour, too).

2 Move your body whenever you can

We know that exercise benefits almost every aspect of our overall health, from our mental health and mood to our joints and muscles as we age.

So give your teens a gift: encourage them to become habitual exercisers. That doesn’t have to mean regimented workouts; building joyful movement into every day — whether it’s walking, swimming, dancing or throwing a ball around — can set the foundation for a life of being active. Set an example by moving yourself — there’s no downside here — and encourage incidental exercise like walking to the shops or to and from school and going for a stroll as a family. If your teen does a sport, encourage them through school and beyond.

There’s evidence that participation in sport drops off in the later years of high school and again after teens leave. Keeping an eye on their academic workload and finding ways to support sport and exercise will have benefits down the track.

What to say…

When you’re talking about exercise, it’s important not to link it with appearance or weight. Talk about moving your body and how it makes you feel; how it boosts mood and gives you energy.

3 Sleep is super important

It’s a hard sell for teens who like to stay up late, but knowing the value of quality sleep and getting into good sleep habits is a life hack worth learning young.

“If we don’t sleep well, we don’t function well during the day”, says sleep expert Dr Alex Bartle.

“Without good sleep there’s a higher incidence of heart attack, strokes, insulin resistance, diabetes, accidents and being depressed; our memory is poor and our overall functioning is generally not as good.”

Sleep experts say teens need 8-10 hours of sleep a night, but most are probably only getting 6-7. That has effects on how they feel, how they do at school and their mental health. An Australian study found sleep problems during childhood and adolescence could be predictive of depression later in life.

Bartle recommends having a regular bedtime, avoiding screens for at least an hour before bed (in one study, teens who did this gained an extra 21 minutes sleep a night and an hour and 45 minutes over the school week), and sleeping in a room that’s dark and relatively cool — 18°C is ideal. Avoiding stimulants like sports drinks and soft drinks containing caffeine later in the day is also useful.

It can also be valuable to share techniques for dealing with stress, another sleep killer for adults and teens alike. Mindful breathing, journaling and being active during the day are great ways to quiet what Bartle calls a ‘buzzy brain’ and help get us off to sleep.

What to say…

Conversations about sleep can feel like nagging. Teens’ hormones mean they’re often not tired until late, so ‘go to sleep’ messages at night might not hit home. Try introducing the topic at other times. If the subject of being tired comes up, take the opportunity to talk about the benefits of sleep. Modelling, especially around screen time, will help too.

4 Eat mindfully

Tuning into our body’s natural signals of hunger and fullness is a great focus to learn when we’re young. A way to do that is to eat mindfully — to slow down, avoid distraction and listen to our body. It also means we can tune into the pleasure we get from food. This helps us disengage from thoughts of restricting or dieting. One way to encourage mindful eating is by having regular family meals together. Even better, try cooking together too. It’s not always possible in busy households with different schedules, but even having a once-a-week sit-down dinner together can be a valuable experience where everyone can reconnect and the focus is on enjoyment, not just re-fuelling.

What to say…

Teens might think the idea of a family dinner is lame. Appeal to their sense of obligation if all else fails, and ask them to do it for you. They may begrudgingly agree, and surprise themselves to find that hanging with the family can actually be fun.

5 Treat social media with caution

The world of social media can be toxic, especially when it comes to teenage mental health. There is building evidence that exposure to social media is negatively affecting our kids.

Several studies have found links between social media use and negative mental health in teens, including higher levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, body image dissatisfaction and sleep disturbances.

Continual exposure to the highlights of others’ lives can contribute to feelings of inadequacy and FOMO (fear of missing out) and there’s a danger of constant comparison with often altered or unrealistic images of faces and bodies.

Dietitian Amy Judd warns about this unprecedented pressure on young minds and their body image:

“Historically you really had to seek out that sort of stuff. Whereas now with the algorithm, you can have your feed completely saturated in fat-phobic or even pro-anorexia or pro-dieting information. It’s almost like propaganda. You are going through your day and you are constantly being bombarded with the message that actually this body is unacceptable.”

It’s worth fostering a healthy attitude to social media — understanding that it’s not real life, having healthy chunks of time away from it, and emphasising the importance of face-to-face communication.

What to say…

Social media is a part of almost every teen’s life. So have lots of conversations about the positives — it can promote connection, community and spread knowledge — while also acknowledging the negatives. Have regular check-ins about what they’re seeing, who they’re following, what messages they’re picking up — so you can talk about those, too.