I founded our non-profit, Be Real USA in 2019, with our mission to provide the highest possible quality body image resources for schools. Everyone, everywhere has been seeing the negative mental health consequences of social media on young people today. Negative body image—called body dissatisfaction–has been a particularly bad outcome for those who use social media. At Be Real we help with the negative mental health outcomes young people suffer by doing two things: 1) talking to the adults in young people’s lives about how create body confident environments at school and at home, and 2) providing resources for schools to use in class with students. We do this all for FREE because we care about getting these resources out to the young people who need them.  

BodyKind High School Body Confidence Curriculum 

BE REAL’s BodyKind high school body confidence curriculum was tested with 2000 high school students in 3 rigorous research trials over 3 years. The latest study, a 2024 randomized control trial (2024 RCT), found that students who participated in the BodyKind program had statistically significant increases in “body appreciation” which helps youth: 

• Accept their own body, while rejecting appearance ideals 

• Have positive self-beliefs like self-efficacy, self-compassion and resilience 

• Be more attuned to their own needs  

• Be motivated to eat adaptively, move their body, and better take care of themselves 

• Have better self-esteem, flourishing, happiness and better general mental health 

Long term, girls showed significant increases in self-compassion and body satisfaction at 12-week follow-up. 68% of students reported greater compassion for fellow students’ body image concerns which is helpful to reduce appearance-based bullying. Because of these results, this curriculum is considered a scientific intervention.  

Teachers also had personal benefits from teaching BodyKind, in the 2024 RCT: 

• 78% of teachers said it challenged their own body beliefs and behaviors 

• 73% teachers said it improved the way they thought and felt about their own body 

• 100% teachers said they were likely to recommend the program to other teachers 

Let’s Eat Middle and High School Weight Neutral Nutrition Lessons: Launched April 1, 2025 

As adults, it has been hard over decades to figure out how and what to eat. Our own experiences with body dissatisfaction along with our society’s obsession with body size and weight loss has produced an adult population that can be painfully uncomfortable in our own skin. When we feel negatively about ourselves, of course, it negatively affects how we teach young people to eat and live happily in their own bodies. 

Recent studies have found school “healthy eating” education may actually be part of the mental health problem with a potential to “trigger eating disorders.” This includes much of what is currently found in school health textbooks on “healthy eating:” (1) talking about “good and bad” foods; (2) calorie counting); (3) using food logs; and (4) weighing students in school. All of these common, “healthy eating” discussions can harm young people’s body image.  

We teach Tuned-In Eating with expertise from: public health specialists, dietitians, eating disorder experts, medical doctors, and researchers. We give students the guidance they need to notice their body’s hunger and fullness cues to decide what and how much to eat. We teach young people to fuel themselves for their lives and enjoy their food by incorporating Tuned-In Eating skills with a gentle focus on nutrition. These research-based lessons are culturally-inclusive tools that are designed not only for students‘ physical health, but for their mental well-being. 

Ambassador Program 

BE REAL’s Ambassador program trains passionate people to give presentations and workshops on ‘how to create body confident environments’ to the adults in young people’s lives: their parents/caregivers and educators. Once trained, Ambassadors are able to deliver our evidence-based resources Body Confident Schools and Body Confident Kids. 

BE REAL has trained over 115 Ambassadors in the US, Canada, Ireland, China, Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico, and the UK. We’ve trained Ambassadors in the eating disorder nonprofit world at: the Alliance, AKEDA, Amy’s Gift, Carolina Resource Center for Eating Disorders, EDIN and the Minnesota State Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP), part of the MN Health Department. 

If you are interested in becoming an Ambassador, reach out to me at denise@berealusa.org.  

This microblog post was a featured post in #slowchathealth’s #microblogmonth event. You can search for all of the featured posts here. Please do follow each of the outstanding contributors on social media (including Denise Hamburger, Founder and Executive Director of Be Real USA , the author of this post) and consider writing a microblog post of your own to be shared with the global audience of slowchathealth.com

Pair this post with the following:

Rethinking the Way We Talk About Nutrition, Body Size, and Health by Drew Miller

Cookbooks Exploration by  Sarah Gietschier-Hartman

The Joy of Eating by Nadia Moya

Have you read the latest Book of the Month recommendation?