BE REAL’s MISSION
We’re spreading the best body image and eating disorder prevention resources everywhere, so young people can grow up with a healthy relationship to food and their body.
BE REAL is a nonprofit that links people in local communities with opportunities to change a culture that isn’t working for any one’s body image today.Â
BE REAL’s MISSION
To spread the best body image and eating disorder prevention resources everywhere, so today’s young people can grow up with a healthy relationship to food and their body.
Denise Hamburger is the founder and executive director of BE REAL, a registered nonprofit organization.
BE REAL has been recently featured on:
The Burnt Toast Podcast with Virginia Sole-Smith, Sunny Side Up Nutrition Podcast with Anna Lutz and Elizabeth Davenport and What the Family Studies? OFSHEEA Podcast. In September 2025, BE REAL’s BodyKind high school body image curriculum had an article on its efficacy from a 2024 Randomized Control Trial published in the Body Image: An International Journal of Research. BodyKind is proven to increase students’ body appreciation and self-compassion. Students also reported increases in empathy for other students’ experiences.
Be Real creates free, tested body image and weight-neutral nutrition curriculum for students in middle school, high school and college.
BE REAL’s BodyKinD
BodyKind is proven body image intervention for today’s high school students. Our 2024 Randomized Control Trial found that students gained body appreciation and self-compassion from the BodyKind lessons. They also gained compassion for another’s experience with the lessons’ body stories.Â
Let’s Eat!
Let’s Eat is a 3-part, weight neutral nutrition lesson for middle and high school students. Let’s Eat teaches a new paradigm called Tuned-In Eating, that empowers young people to become the experts on their own eating patterns, likes and dislikes, and what works for them. In addition to preventing body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, Let’s Eat is relevant across cultures, economic status and neurodiversity.Â
Be Real’s programs are trusted resources in the following places:
We give evidence-based presentations on how to create body confident spaces to the adults in young people’s lives.
We have been given Body Confident Schools workshops to adults for over a decade. We have reached over 10,000 teachers, educators, wellness professionals, and parents with our presentations and workshops. We speak at conferences, conventions, professional development for teachers, and schools. We have over 150 Be Real Ambassadors who use our templated resources in their local areas to help young people everywhere with their body image and eating.Â
BE REAL has presented Body Confident Schools presentations at:
