Stacy Campbell, LIMHP, LPC

Like Mother Like Daughter, by Debra Waterhouse, is a book I read many years ago in college, but have found that a lot of the material is still very relevant to my clients today.

This book is about recognizing and stopping the generational cycle of dieting and poor body image from mother to daughter. An increasing number of my clients are older woman who have been in the “diet trap” for 20 plus years and are finally sick of the struggle. A lot of my younger clients discharge unsuccessfully only to come back later in life with the same or similar struggles they were having before. Many of my clients shift from restricting eating patterns and/or excessive exercise, to binging and purging and later to just binging. Although the majority of these issues have causes linked to other mental health disorders like depression and anxiety, many have environmental factors as well. The clients were told all their lives they will be fat if they do not diet or eat right or many were simply told they were fat and ugly. If it was not a family member it may have been something or someone a part of society that made them feel badly about their body. As the mother or father you may believe you are helping your child and most of the time the intentions are good. More often the results of negative statements about an individuals weight is not positive, but negative. It often is the case where the parents had environmental factors as well to believe this negative statements as truth and are passing down what was told to them. This is the generational cycle of eating disorders that will continue until someone decides to stop it and that has to begin with the individual making those changes in their own lives.

Some major points of the book are acknowledging the lies from society about size and health versus the truths of biology. Stopping the cycle of dieting by looking at ways of becoming comfortable with your own healthy weight and what is healthy. The book also gives examples of how to improve the future of your children and how to encourage daughters in the direction of having healthier body images.  What I love most are the facts given about body fat percentages at different stages of life for the woman and other interesting facts like that in order to assist the client in finding some of myths they believed about weight and body fat in order to make progress in more positive thoughts about their body. I also love the positive examples of communication in regards to body image because very rarely do we see this, especially in adults. To demonstrate to your daughter how to appropriately love herself by showing how you love yourself is so important.

“I firmly believe that we must first respect our bodies before we will treat them well with food, movement and all else that makes us feel good. Trying to change your body is not respecting it. Respect and take care of your body first, and the change will follow – or – maybe you’ll decide that you don’t want to change it at all. Improving your body image isn’t about changing your body, it’s about accepting it and taking care of it.” – Debra Waterhouse, Like Mother Like Daughter, p. 107

There are so many positives to this book I definitely recommend it for a good beginning place in stopping the diet cycle from generation to generation. Even if you do not have a diagnosable eating disorder but still struggle with “diet trap” and do not want the same for your daughters then I would still recommend this book for you. Daughters as well can definitely benefit from this book because most daughters will someday become mothers.