Are You Accidentally Teaching Your Daughter to Hate Her Body? - 236
Have you ever stopped to think about what your daughter is learning by watching you in the mirror? Trust me, it’s not just about what you say. From those offhand remarks about your body to how you handle a piece of cake at a party, your everyday actions are shaping her beliefs in ways you might not even realize.
We are starting a conversation that may challenge everything you thought you knew about raising a daughter in a world obsessed with perfection. I share my own journey of raising two daughters, and realizing what I was teaching them through my struggles with body image and self-worth.
Our daughters are constantly observing us, and that silent curriculum we’re creating has more influence than any lecture we could give them about confidence or self-love. I’m inviting you to reflect on what you’re modeling for your daughters. It’s all about being aware and intentional in the way we treat ourselves and speak about our bodies.
Conclusion:
Most of us don’t realize how much influence we have on our daughters’ self-image. Our actions speak louder than any words we can say. By focusing on modeling self-love, body positivity, and healthy habits, you can reshape the narrative for the next generation.
Start showing up as the confident, loving role model you want your daughter to see, and together, you’ll build a future filled with self-worth and strength.
In This Episode:
00:00 Introducing the mirror and model series
04:50 My college eating disorder story and 80-pound weight gain
07:35 Why daughters mirror their mothers, especially during the teen years
10:00 Flaws with the ‘beauty hurts but you gotta do it’ message
14:12 Raising daughters at different parenting stages
18:18 What your daughter sees: dressing, food talk, & mirror reactions
21:02 Preview of upcoming episodes in the series
Listen to This Episode on Your Favourite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple
Follow and listen on Spotify
Subscribe and watch on YouTube
Connect with Carrie Lupoli:
Other Related Episodes:
Looking for additional tips for a sustainable, healthy lifestyle? Check out these episodes:
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: Take a mirror and like look at yourself and be like, if I was a commercial, what would I be advertising? Because my daughter is watching me. If you want your daughter to grow up loving her body, you have to stop hating yours because the truth is you can't teach what you don't believe. She doesn't need another lecture about confidence.
[00:00:18] Carrie Lupoli: She needs to watch you live it. This is the first episode in a powerful four park series called The Mirror and the Model where we're gonna unpack how daughters learn about food, body image, confidence, and self-worth by watching us. And today we're starting with that mirror the reflection of our beliefs that they absorb, whether we realize it or not.
[00:00:39] Carrie Lupoli: And this one might sting, but it could change everything. I'm Kerry Oli nutritionist, award-winning behavior specialist, and. Unapologetic disruptor of diet culture. If you've spent decades dieting and still don't have the results you want, it's not your fault. You've just never been shown how to fuel your body with love [00:01:00] and science.
[00:01:01] Carrie Lupoli: This podcast is where all that changes and we rewrite the rules where food becomes simple. Freedom is possible and real lasting results. Finally begin. Let's dive in. Well, hey everyone. If you want your daughter to grow up loving her body, you're gonna have to stop hating yours first. This is called The Mirror and the Model.
[00:01:24] Carrie Lupoli: We are doing a four-part podcast series for every mom Raising a daughter in a world obsessed with. Thinness perfection performance. I'm Kerry Lale and for over two decades I have been on a mission to disrupt the way we think about our bodies, our health, ourselves, our lives. I have worked with thousands of women and I am also raising two daughters of my own.
[00:01:50] Carrie Lupoli: I have my girl mom mug here for this series, and so I'm gonna take it with me as we dig in because the one thing I know for sure. As I have learned now [00:02:00] having a 19 and 20-year-old, our girls aren't learning who to be from what we tell them. They're learning from what we model. It's true. There is a curriculum that you are teaching your daughter.
[00:02:13] Carrie Lupoli: I was an educator for more than 20 years. I wrote curriculum, a lot of it over the course of my career. And lemme tell you, the curriculum that we are teaching, our daughters are not written in a textbook. It's all about how we talk to ourselves, how we look at our body in front of the mirror. You know, like that sigh when you, you put on clothes and you look at yourself in the mirror and the jeans are too tight and that sigh ugh.
[00:02:44] Carrie Lupoli: That feeling of frustration, that salad that you order when you really wanted the pasta. The way you say like, uh, okay, I was so bad this weekend. I gotta get myself back on track. Or when there's birthday cake at a party and [00:03:00] you want the cake, but you don't think you should, and you're like, Ugh, I shouldn't.
[00:03:08] Carrie Lupoli: All right. All right. I, I'm cheating, but it's okay. You think she doesn't notice, but she does. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and I would literally, I can picture myself squeezing the back of my legs while looking at myself in the mirror, imagining what they would look like if they were smaller because then, then I would be happy, then I would be confident.
[00:03:31] Carrie Lupoli: And I remember one day when I was doing that, 'cause I did it like every day, and my daughter walked in and she saw me, she saw me, and it wasn't like. I was like embarrassed with what I was doing. I just stopped. I was like, you know, like obviously I'm not gonna do that in front of my daughter. But then there were some subtle things that I was doing that I didn't even realize were super powerful because maybe I stopped when I was squeezing the fat in the back of my legs, but I wasn't when I [00:04:00] was looking at myself in the mirror from a thousand different viewpoints and like scrunching my face and like, ugh.
[00:04:06] Carrie Lupoli: You know, like when your daughter does your makeup together, right? You guys do your makeup together? It's like the little things that we are doing that are subconscious. She's noticing, we teach our girls how to feel about themselves, not by what we say what, not by what we say, but it's by how we live. And when I thought about this series, I, I, I can't even believe I've never done a series about this before.
[00:04:29] Carrie Lupoli: With everything that I talk about and how my whole passion was about changing my family tree when my girls were five and six years old and they started talking about calories and pizza because I didn't eat the pizza on Family Friday, pizza night. I got salad with dressing on the side thinking that because I ordered from the pizza place, it was fine.
[00:04:49] Carrie Lupoli: I, I was an educator. I did not talk about losing weight. I did not talk about dieting. I did ta not talk about calories. How did they start talking about that? [00:05:00] Because I realized in that moment I believed, I believed in the fact that my body was. Valuable based on what it looked like. And I believed in calories and in calories out.
[00:05:14] Carrie Lupoli: And I believe that if I ate too many calories, I would get fat and therefore have no value. I mean, it, it came to me. I remember when I was in college, I was, uh, a college cheerleader, and when my season ended, my senior year, I went to my college job and they ordered pizza and I couldn't eat it. I could not eat the pizza.
[00:05:35] Carrie Lupoli: There was some like. It was like a physical reaction and I, uh, called my mom, and my mom did not know what to say. She was like, yeah, you shouldn't eat the pizza. And I don't remember if that was her exact words, but I remember getting off that call like, uh, I, I am all alone in this and feeling very, very lost.
[00:05:58] Carrie Lupoli: But I also [00:06:00] know that, um. I am not alone in that. And as I have told my story for a very long time now, I have learned that so many of us have had similar experiences. Maybe not exactly the same, but all of you can remember a time where you were, uh, really face to face with the dis disordered thinking and beliefs about your body and food.
[00:06:23] Carrie Lupoli: I didn't think I was doing that to my kids. I really didn't, but I had never truly overcome. The issues that I felt about my body. And then when I got pregnant, I had gained about 80 pounds with my daughter, grace. And I really struggled to, uh, feel like I had the balance in, in being able to be a mom, uh, a professional, and be on a diet.
[00:06:49] Carrie Lupoli: Like I didn't, I had no energy to work out. I was drinking six cups of coffee at least a day. I would take a pot with me in my car when I would go to work. I thought I was being like, super, um, I was like, [00:07:00] look, I'm saving money and not buying coffee out. Uh, so there were so many things that were going on in my world and I look back on it now.
[00:07:07] Carrie Lupoli: I'm like, no wonder my kids started talking about calories. Because I could not teach what I did not believe, and there was no part of me that believed anything other than the fact that my value was in what I looked like. I, I, I know this because there's a time in my life I was a spokesperson for Mattel Fisher-Price, and I was going actually around the world talking to parents about behaviors, and I'm helping them with discipline and, and home systems and things like that.
[00:07:33] Carrie Lupoli: I would be in different hotel rooms all around the world and in Asia especially, there's a scale in every bathroom, and I would weigh myself before getting on a stage or going out and doing a talk or doing a media event, and it would literally ruin my whole day. It was, I was, I was doing some of the coolest work ever.
[00:07:50] Carrie Lupoli: I felt like I was impacting lives and helping parents, but yet that number dictated my belief in myself. So how is it that I could have [00:08:00] a belief in myself like that and teach my kids something, anything different? Because our daughters, as I learned the very hard way, they're mirroring us, but we're a model for them especially, especially especially when they are in their teenage years, and that's when it really gets important because we can't model you.
[00:08:20] Carrie Lupoli: You really truly can't fake it. You can't fake confidence. You can't fake peace. You can't fake freedom. You can't. You just, you can't, if you don't believe it, if you don't have it, you cannot teach it. Uh, one of my coaches once said to me, you can't transfer what you don't have. You can only transfer what you have.
[00:08:39] Carrie Lupoli: And that's why this series is so important to me because it has to start with ourselves. I was interviewed by the Today Show a few years ago by Jed up Bush Hager. And it was about this very topic, and she had said to me that her mom purposely did not ever talk about weight and dieting and her body, but when she was eight years old, she wrote in her journal that she wanted to [00:09:00] lose six pounds.
[00:09:00] Carrie Lupoli: And she said, how did that happen? How did that happen? Because I don't remember my mom ever talking about that stuff. And one of the things I said to her was. And she quoted me on this later, the loudest voice wins. And if your voice as a parent is not the loudest one, then society will be the loudest one, their friends, the the things that come across to them.
[00:09:25] Carrie Lupoli: And your silence will be louder than anything else because you can't hide. Even in silence, your belief systems, the way that you act around food, the way that you act in your body. So many women start a diet because they're frustrated with their body. Let's be honest, that's all of us. We all started. A new nutritional approach, not because we're like, you know, I just so appreciate what my body has done for me, that I wanna love on it so [00:10:00] much that I'm gonna nurture it and fuel it.
[00:10:03] Carrie Lupoli: No, every single one of us starts a diet because we are frustrated with how we look, how we feel, how we are showing up. We start a new relationship with ourselves out of frustration. And, and think about relationships. You can never start a relationship that's going to be strong when it's root, when it's based from frustration, and that's what our daughters are seeing.
[00:10:29] Carrie Lupoli: I, I, I, I remember like one of the things my mom used to say to me, and this was around, I remember it was around my hair because my hair Oh, was such. A nightmare for me. And I, and I really, I've talked a lot. I, I've, I've been on podcasts about curly hair. I mean, you know, I grew up in a generation where this was not okay, and my mom didn't know how to deal with it.
[00:10:53] Carrie Lupoli: And I remember we were straightening it and she was brushing it, and it was just so painful. And she looked at me and she said, [00:11:00] honey, beauty hurts, but you gotta do it. And like, and she, oh, I mean, I love, love, love, like my mom is the best, but she learned this kind of stuff and this belief from her mom. And my mom would never go out without makeup or any of these things.
[00:11:17] Carrie Lupoli: These little tiny things are like drips in a cup and these little drips in a cup start to add up over time. And they fill our, our lives, these beliefs and, and truly you cannot believe you cannot. You cannot, uh, transfer what you don't have, right? You cannot teach what you don't know. And if you do e especially about a topic like this, it becomes disingenuous when it's not truly a part of who you authentically are.
[00:11:46] Carrie Lupoli: And when your daughter comes home and she says, oh, I feel like my belly is, is is big, or Am I gaining weight? And these are all questions. My daughter, my daughters both have come home and asked me about, uh, they, they. I mean, at [00:12:00] 19 and 20 years old, they're in a way better place than I was at 19 and 20 years old.
[00:12:04] Carrie Lupoli: I mean, I had eating disorder at that age, but it is because we have literally shared, uh, an open. Questions about our bodies and health and all of that, and I haven't gotten it right. I certainly have not gotten it right because when I actually first started learning the approach that I teach, I didn't take it in a place of belief systems.
[00:12:25] Carrie Lupoli: And what I truly believed I took it in is I found a solution of how to fuel my body and not count calories and still eat carbs and get that lean strong body I always wanted. I thought I found the holy grail and while yes, I still teach this approach to clients around blood sugar stabilization. Here's where it gets so interesting.
[00:12:43] Carrie Lupoli: I was finally modeling for my kids, healthy living, healthy food, balancing my blood sugar, going to the gym. I was stronger and leaner in my, you know, late thirties, early forties, and I had been in my whole life. But I became obsessed about my [00:13:00] body in a whole nother way because I, I, I, I reached, I exceeded these goals that I never thought were possible for me or for my body.
[00:13:08] Carrie Lupoli: Now I'm modeling a whole nother thing. So like this whole piece around modeling, it's not even if you are just showing up in the gym and you are like, I'm living a healthy lifestyle. You've gotta go a layer deep. We've gotta go deeper into what do we want and why do we want it? If we are really focused on a number, on a scale and, and like if we would freak out if we gained five pounds going to the gym and eating in a way that like serves your body.
[00:13:35] Carrie Lupoli: Is not actually helping your daughter because of the why behind it. So today as we start talking, we're really gonna dig into the idea of what, like take a mirror and like look at yourself and be like, if I was a commercial, what would I be advertising? If I was a commercial, what would I be advertising?
[00:13:57] Carrie Lupoli: Because my daughter is watching me. [00:14:00] Like she's binge watching any of those shows that they love. And if at the commercial break she's watching you, what is it that she's buying into? It's a scary thought, but as somebody that has gone through that whole girl mom phase and I'm still there, I know that I did things that weren't.
[00:14:25] Carrie Lupoli: I definitely would go. If I could go back, I would do differently, but I also know I can't go back, so there's no guilt. It's just data, and I'm using some of the data to be able to help you, to be able to support you through your journey. Now, if you are a mom that's already raised their kids, don't think that this is like a series that's not gonna be beneficial for you because it is never too late.
[00:14:41] Carrie Lupoli: See, I learned in my early, early on as a parent, I went to a parenting class, and this was so helpful to me. I learned that from zero to two, our job as parents is to basically keep your kids safe. And I know as a, an adoptive mom, my youngest daughter is adopted, and when she stayed at a foster home for a while and literally their job was to keep her safe.[00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Carrie Lupoli: And then from two to 12 we are their teacher and we are teaching them the different skill sets, beliefs, mindsets, all of that. And it is so important. Again, we can't teach what we don't believe, but we can at zero two to 12, we can fake it a little bit more. We can, we can kind of do, as I say, not as I do kind of thing, but once our kids hit 12 ish, 13.
[00:15:28] Carrie Lupoli: They're not, they don't wanna listen to us anymore. We become the model. And from 13 to about 16 ish, we are now their model. They're not listening to what we're saying as much as they are watching what we are doing. And it's those little nuanced behaviors that are subconscious that come out because of our ingrained belief systems that end up becoming very, very loud.
[00:15:52] Carrie Lupoli: If we aren't aware of them, I say this all the time, self-consciousness is a disease, but self-awareness is health. If we can become more self-aware [00:16:00] of why we do what we do, what our triggers are, and looking at our behaviors as a result of our beliefs, just that alone is gonna help us show up differently, and that self-awareness is going to immensely increase our capacity.
[00:16:19] Carrie Lupoli: To impact our children in a way that we want to just by being more self-aware. And then from 17 to about 21, we are their coach. And that's the stage that I'm in right now. I'm coaching my kids as they are learning how to navigate life on their own. They will call me. When my daughter's boyfriend broke up with her, it was maybe 15 times a day, but I'm coaching her through things when they're in school and they're kind of, we always had this, this philosophy in our house.
[00:16:47] Carrie Lupoli: Ask up, ask up. Ask up. Asking your friends that are at the same level of life that you are with the same types of experiences is only going to get you more misinformation. You [00:17:00] ask up. So, uh, that was one of our big phrases that we had growing up. And so, uh, during that time where I was the model, they wouldn't ask me.
[00:17:09] Carrie Lupoli: They might ask their older cousin, they might talk to their aunt, but the, the goal was Ask up. But by the time I became their coach, once they were about 17, it was amazing how they would come. They would, they would ask up to other people, but they would also really come to me. And so that like. That that matters a lot because coaching is different than teaching.
[00:17:32] Carrie Lupoli: And think about it, it's like breadcrumbs. You're still modeling for them and they will call you out if you are coaching them to do something that you do not do or believe yourself. And then this is, this is such a pivotal time because after 21 you become their mentor. But if you have lost credibility before that.
[00:17:52] Carrie Lupoli: You know, think about like in a professional setting, a mentor of yours is somebody you deeply respect that you know has been there, that has walked the walk, and [00:18:00] is a model of who you would like to be. And so if you are not that person, being a mentor to your kids once they're over 21 is so much harder, but it is not impossible.
[00:18:11] Carrie Lupoli: I have a woman who's a client. She was 70 and her daughter sent me a note and she said, thank you so much for all that you have done to help my mom change her mindset and her belief systems about herself and her body. It's impacting me in such a powerful way she's literally teaching me, and, and so I know it's never too late.
[00:18:30] Carrie Lupoli: Regardless of what stage of parenting you're in, but it's impossible if you don't take that first step to look in the mirror and decide, what am I reflecting on? What am I reflecting on to my daughters? And let's be honest, to our sons. So I'm gonna ask you a few things to think about as we kind of wrap up this first episode.
[00:18:52] Carrie Lupoli: And then, uh, I'll tell you about some of the next episodes that are gonna be coming up. So I want you to ask yourself what you're modeling right now. What does your daughter [00:19:00] see when she watches you get dressed in the morning, talk about food, talk about other women's bodies, react to your reflection in the mirror.
[00:19:08] Carrie Lupoli: I need you to know that she is watching and this is not about being perfect. That is not the goal. I was not perfect at all when I was raising my kids. And in fact, when I screwed up, when I would say things that I know were, because my self-awareness was RI rising, was not modeling what I wanted them to be able to reflect, I would tell them, I would say to them, listen, what I said did not actually translate to me as healthy.
[00:19:37] Carrie Lupoli: We've used a phrase being the healthiest version of ourselves over and over and over and over again. And what does the healthiest version of ourselves do, say, think and believe. And so I would often say that was not representative of the healthiest version of me, and we would actually have a conversation about it.
[00:19:51] Carrie Lupoli: I know one time, at one time, my daughter said she was so stressed out about always having to have protein at every single meal. And I did that to her and I was like, [00:20:00] whoa, thank you. Thank you for that. Let's talk about that. So it's not about being perfect, it's about being aware and reflective and having the conversation.
[00:20:10] Carrie Lupoli: So you could be the loudest voice in the room. So that goal is awareness, intentionality, inviting her, your daughter, into the healing that you're doing because you gotta do two things at once. Now you gotta raise and you gotta heal. You don't have time to heal and put the raising off to the side. It's gonna be a both and.
[00:20:33] Carrie Lupoli: So imagine saying something to your daughter like, you know what, I realize I've been really hard on my body and I am working on that. I want to model something different for you. Just that alone would go so far. It's not a weakness. That is generational strength. That is what I mean when I say we want to change our family tree because we all want better for our daughters than what we had growing up.
[00:20:55] Carrie Lupoli: But we often think about it as, as money. Like, think about it. I want it [00:21:00] for my kids better than I had, and it's like I never got to Disney, so I wanna take my kids to Disney. It's not about Disney, it's about understanding who you are, that each of us have a purpose on this earth. In order to serve this purpose, we have to be the healthiest version of ourselves, that they grow up confident and strong and self-aware as independent adults.
[00:21:18] Carrie Lupoli: In fact, if you just give them money, if you just give them the finances, they're, they're likely not going to get there. We gotta go through that productive struggle and you can help them do that, but it's never too late to change what you're modeling. And so this is just the beginning, this four part series, the Mirror in the Model.
[00:21:37] Carrie Lupoli: Is is four parts, because this is not a quick fix. I could do a 40 part series. Right. Let's, this is legacy work though, so we're gonna take some time to go through each of this stuff. Uh, episode after episode. And the next one I'm gonna talk about how we dismantle the lies our daughters are being fed about food, about their bodies, about their worth, and how we can really start teaching them truth.
[00:21:58] Carrie Lupoli: In a world full of toxic [00:22:00] messages. And then in episode three, I actually have the whole, uh, scope and sequence Right now here it's gonna be called Grace Unfiltered. My daughter, grace was talking about calories at age six, and she bought herself a tiara because she knew her value at age 16. Talk about a full circle moment because then 18 months later she was wearing that very same tiara when she took her bow on center stage as Bell and Beauty and the Beast.
[00:22:23] Carrie Lupoli: And if you know that show at all, there is a song called A Change in Me, and that was really powerful for me to watch her on stage singing that song. And so I'm interviewing Grace. Episode three, so we can talk about all of those experiences and how she's, how she's, uh, handling, being the mom of a nutrition coach and behavior specialist, and what our relationship is like now.
[00:22:45] Carrie Lupoli: And then in episode four, we are going to talk about raising that next generation of purpose driven women and raising a daughter who knows her worth. Lives on purpose and stays rooted in her true identity regardless of what the world tells her. So I'm excited [00:23:00] about this series and we're going to dig in deep.
[00:23:04] Carrie Lupoli: And really look at who we are, what we want, and why we want it. But before we leave, I wanna be able to show you, uh, a little example of how I used to show up and an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to these little messages. This was me. I would never pose in front of a picture unless I felt like the scale that day told me I was worthy.
[00:23:23] Carrie Lupoli: So if you look at pictures of me, most of the time my hair is straight because I always felt like my curly hair was a problem and that I couldn't like embrace my natural. Self and beauty. And um, you'll see I was standing, I was always behind them. And, uh, very often, uh, it was because I didn't feel confident and I would hide behind my kids.
[00:23:43] Carrie Lupoli: So I'm just leaving you with this little bit of a visual to think about. I had no idea that I was doing that. It was very unconscious behavior. And now that I look at back at it now, I think, holy heck, no wonder they were talking about calories when they were young. [00:24:00] I also wanna leave you with the hope and the knowledge that, oh, when we do the work on ourselves, it, it, it pays off tenfold because we literally change our family tree and benefit everybody else around us.
[00:24:14] Carrie Lupoli: We become impactful, we become insightful, we become intentional, and we become truly that person that I believe God has made each of us to be. And we can tap into our true potential. Can't wait for the next episode.
