Sarah caught up with Dr. Libby, the internationally acclaimed nutritional biochemist, author & speaker.
Talking about the body standards that young women face online, Dr. Libby explained how the younger generation 'seek approval' differently than the older generation.
Dr. Libby believes that a part of that teaches the younger generation to value things other than 'physical appearance'.
"I think part of it is certainly for young people, it's teaching them to value things other than that, which is easier said than done, but it's commenting on the traits that you perceive in them that have nothing to do with their appearance."
"So it's commenting on their kindness or their cleverness or their understanding or their creativity or their excitement. It's commenting on the traits that you see in them that you appreciate rather than, 'You're so gorgeous, you're so pretty, you're that' type of thing. And I think to you know, particularly when they're very young, curating as best we can as to what they're exposed to.
During one of her focus groups with women ages 18-25, she found out that the two top stresses were body image and social media. When she shares this information with the older audiences, they don't usually understand why.
"When I share that with older audiences that they don't understand, I actually can feel the judgment actually upon younger people. They don't understand how social media can be a stress."
The younger generation uses social media to gain approval whereas the older generation has always seeked it from near-dear ones.
"So the likes and the comments in their unconscious are representative of their self-worth and who they are as a person. Whereas for older people, that's not the case with social media. They they do that to themselves in other ways. It's partly why I wanted to change the conversation around stress for everyone, but particularly for women, because the more we can become aware of the stress we create for ourselves, because of how we think, because of the seeking of approval, when we perceive disapproval, it leads us into a very uncomfortable place on the inside, that can lead us to make lousy food choice to get to not value ourselves".
Dr. Libby then proceeds to explain using her own personal example.
"When I was growing up, I probably cared about what ten people thought of me, my parents, my best friend, my German teacher," Dr. Libby said.
"But they were real people and they kind of deserved to be in my heart. Whereas now people care about what thousands of people think of them. And most of them they've never met. And so it's I think part of it is helping young people to identify that and to help them curate the people they allow into their hearts to, you know, they want to be meaningful and you want them to be people who know your essence, not just not judge you on the outside.
Dr. Libby talked about her new program Shake Off Sugar, a 6-week program designed to recover peoples energy and vitality, enhance the quality of your life, and help shift your alliance with sugar. For more information go to www.drlibby.com
Watch the highlight above and listen to the full interview below.
