Today Virginia is chatting with Kyle Ganson, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work who studies eating disorders in boys and young men. This is an episode a lot of you have been asking for—we don’t talk enough about boys and how they struggle with all of these issues.

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Content Warning: We talk about specific disordered eating behaviors and eating disorder symptoms in this episode. If any of that is going to be tricky for you, feel free to skip.

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Chapter Nine of Fat Talk

Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors

Jessica Wilson on Burnt Toast

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Episode 99

Kyle

I’ve long had this experience of being in clinical spaces with women with eating disorders and just wondering, like: Where are all the guys? What’s going on here? This is not what I hear when I talk to other males about their bodies or how they feel about themselves or their eating practices. It didn’t really align with what I was hearing with my friend groups or people I would speak to. That led me towards the path of researching eating disorders among the male population.

Virginia

So we met when I interviewed you for Chapter Nine of Fat Talk about your research on dads and their role in eating disorder treatment. I have to say: That chapter really did require me to put aside a lot of my own biases and preconceived notions and to realize I had been assuming that eating disorders were an exclusively female or gender-nonconforming experience. Which is very incorrect.

Let’s talk about that a little bit. Why do you think we are so quick to assume that these are issues that men and boys just don’t struggle with?

Kyle

It’s such a great question and you’re certainly not alone with those preconceived notions of how we think about eating disorders. I think if people who are listening also have that thought or are surprised by that, I think that’s totally okay and totally normal.

I think there’s a couple of different factors here. One of them is certainly just media and how we’ve described people with eating disorders in popular culture has often been mostly women, mostly affluent females, white females, young females, adolescents, young adults. So that’s number one. And secondly, I think another piece of it is research and clinical spaces, which obviously do reflect a bit of the culture but also reflect what we see in the culture.

Consider the diagnostic criteria for anorexia: Up until very recently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual actually required amenorrhea, which is loss of periods, in order to be diagnosed with anorexia. So, a male prior to 2013 actually could not be diagnosed with anorexia because they technically don’t lose their period. So, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle that we often overlook and don’t think about.

Males are just less likely to complain about their bodies, talk about their bodies, get support around body image and food, just because the spaces where we treat people are not so much focused on the male experience. And again, that’s changed a bit more recently. But it’s still a hard process to get males in the door.

And last is socialization. It goes back to culture of course, too, but females are often more socialized to talk about feelings and food and body. Whereas males—and I think we could talk about gender as being a lot more diverse than that—but males are a lot more focused on the performance of their bodies. When you watch a sporting event, you always see statistics about males bodies, like how big they are, how strong they are, how fast they can run. Whereas females are much more criticized based on their physical appearance as far as aesthetic purposes.

I think that kind of differentiation also allows males to fall into this different bucket where they may not be perceived as having a problem because that male is just exercising to become faster in their sport or stronger in their sport or to be able to lift this amount of weight or have the six pack abs. I think that’s a little bit different than the female experience

Virginia

That feels like a really important reframe. So, you’re saying women and girls are subjected to these aesthetic standards about bodies. Men have maybe less of the aesthetic focus and more of the output, the what can your body do? What can you lift, all of that? But that is allowing us to ignore that that can also be a driver of disorders.

Kyle

Totally, absolutely. I think that’s a big part of it. And not to say that males don’t experience aesthetic pressures! I think you’ve probably seen more of that recently, especially since the advent of social media. And obviously, males have been sexualized in popular culture, as well, of course.

But I do think that generally it’s a lot more based on how male bodies can perform. That does drive some of the behaviors that they engage in, like excessive exercising or use of performance enhancers, which, again, obviously has an aesthetic approach to it. There are aesthetic purposes and aesthetic repercussions, I’d say, but there is also a lot of driving for performative aspects of their bodies.

Virginia

I’m just thinking how often we normalize men’s relationship with exercise because we’re like, “Oh, they just really care about their running time.” That allows us to ignore the fact that there might be something disordered about caring that much about your running time or your triathlon performance or whatever it is. We’ll be like, “Oh, but it’s not about body image so it’s not the same thing.”

Kyle

Same thing with eating behaviors. I think we often overlook binge eating among males. I’ve heard this a lot in my prior clinical practice or even just in social and family relationship conversations. Like, “oh, he can sit down and eat a whole pint of ice cream and it’s no big deal.” That actually might be a bingeing behavior for that young male but because we socialize it as like, “He’s a male. He’s got a fast metabolism because he’s growing. He’s a teenager,” it becomes very okay for that behavior to happen and we just overlook it.

Whereas, again, not to generalize, but if a female was doing the same behavior, there is probably a lot more emotion attached to that. That would be perceived as problematic, right? Like, “you can’t do that. You can’t eat that much. That’s not okay.” And I’m using quotation marks here—it’s not what I actually believe. But that would be framed in a very different way.

I think that opens doors for males to engage in behaviors without much support and it does lead to this idea of males not even knowing they have a problem. They might engage in that behavior every night or a couple of times a week. In some of the qualitative interviews that we’ve seen, they don’t even know they have a problem. They’re like, “I just thought this is what I did.” And that’s a big problem.

Virginia

No one ever investigates the underlying stuff. What is the restriction that led to eating the pint of ice cream? No one is peeling back those layers for them in the same way.

Your research has looked at some of the the behaviors that boys tend to engage in and so many of these things are just the vernacular of modern diet culture concepts, like cheat meals, bulking and cutting, intermittent fasting. What have you learned about how boys engage in this stuff? I’m also curious how we start to differentiate between what’s the culture and what’s the disorder—when maybe it’s a little bit all one and the same.

Kyle

The last part of that question is the never ending conundrum of what we’re trying to figure out. These behaviors that I’ve focused on have been very common in the popular culture for a while now, like cheat meals, bulking, cutting, intermittent fasting. For those of those listeners who don’t know, I’ll explain each of those as I go through them.

Cheat meals are essentially a deviation from a typical dietary practice, generally more restrictive in some senses, where you might not allow yourself to eat like an entire pizza in one sitting or two or three Big Macs in one sitting. That is what the cheat meal is, it allows you a single meal, where you can “cheat” based on your restrictive diet.

Now, in the muscle building community, cheat meals have actually become a catalyst for muscular growth and caloric overconsumption, again, to boost one’s ability to build muscle. I think that even goes for popular culture figures, like The Rock has often posted on Instagram his cheat meals, like what he eats. Social media has obviously been a huge driver of cheat meals. You can search #cheatmeals and see people’s images of what they’re eating.

Virginia

Guys, don’t search it. It’s not worth it. But yes, it’s all over TikTok.

Kyle

We actually asked people their engagement, like what did they do? How much did they eat? Things of that nature. And what we found was actually 60 percent of boys and young men, aged 16 to 30 said they engaged in at least one cheat meal in the past year. That was pretty high across the sample. It was 54 percent or so for girls and young women and about 50 percent for transgender and gender expansive people. So it’s pretty common for people to engage in at least one cheat meal.

And generally the foods that people are engaging in were sweet foods, calorically dense foods. We found that the people who engage in cheat meals were much more likely to experience eating disorder attitude and behaviors, in particular binge eating. So you can likely imagine that experience of a cheat meal is a binge eating episode where they might feel a loss of control. They might experience guilt as as consequence of engaging in the behavior. And then, of course, there’s oftentimes compensatory behaviors attached to that, as well. Participants reported engaging in compensatory behaviors, like purging. So it’s definitely wrapped up in that experience of eating disorder pathology.

Virginia

It’s so interesting because the concept of the cheat meal or the the rhetoric around it is very much like you’re giving yourself permission to enjoy these foods that you have restricted the rest of the week. Now you get to have them with no consequences. And it just goes to show how much the bias is all baked in. You can’t actually escape the consequences. Because if you weren’t restricting the whole week beforehand, you wouldn’t need the cheat meal, right? You wouldn’t need to frame it as this day of sin or whatever.

Kyle

It goes into a lot of things you’ve written about and talked about. Like, just allowing yourself to eat the foods that you want to eat alleviates you from this idea of having to engage in a “cheat meal” in order to eat the pizza. Allow yourself to eat the food that you want to eat, right? And hopefully avoid some of these problems that might be associated with it.

Virginia

Let’s talk about bulking and cutting. Those are terms I hear and barely know what they are.

Kyle

Bulking and cutting are also very common in the muscle building community. Generally, it’s a similar sort of dietary practice where you oscillate between a bulking phase, which is generally a period of time where you consume more calories than you need and it’s coupled with muscle building exercise. So generally, people are weight training in this time and the point of it is to bulk up, to increase your muscle mass. And then that switches to what would be called the cutting phase, which is basically the opposite. It’s a caloric restriction and that then allows you to reduce the body fat you might have gained during the bulking phase without losing too much of the muscle mass that you’ve gained.

Virginia

It just sounds like so much to keep track of and manipulate and to constantly be objectifying your body in that way. I’m just feeling sad for people.

Kyle

It does include a lot obsessiveness around food and only allowing yourself to eat at particular places, kind of interfering with social activities, things of that nature. There are lots of problems attached to it for sure. We found that 50 percent of boys and young men reported engaging in at least one bulk and cut cycle in the past 12 months. So again, a pretty high percentage of them are manipulating their body in some capacity through bulking and cutting phases. And again, not surprisingly, we looked at different associated factors with bulking and cutting, and not surprisingly, eating disorder psychopathology, attitudes, and behaviors were associated with it.

Virginia

Let’s quickly talk about muscle dysmorphia, because that might be a newer term for my audience. Can you define that and talk to us specifically about how it shows up for boys?

Kyle

Muscle dysmorphia has previously been known as reverse anorexia, which might be the most easy way to understand it, even though it’s maybe not the best characterization. It’s the pathological pursuit of muscularity. The “reverse anorexia” part comes in because people with anorexia usually see themselves as larger than they actually are whereas people with muscle dysmorphia actually see themselves as smaller than they actually are. So, someone with muscle dysmorphia is actually usually quite large, quite strong, quite lean, quite cut, but they see themselves as being too small.

It’s actually a specifier of body dysmorphic disorder. So it’s not really an eating disorder, per se, though it has a lot of eating disorder qualities to it, of course. The body image component, and a lot of dietary practices and pathological behaviors aimed at increasing musculature and strength.

Virginia

What do we understand about treatment for it?

Kyle

That’s a great question. There is just a very, very, very small amount of literature on clinical samples of muscle dysmorphia. It’s actually a huge problem in the research community and the clinical community that we just don’t actually know what the best way to treat people with muscle dysmorphia is because we just don’t have a lot of clinical data on them. Most of the studies on muscle dysmorphia are gym goers or bodybuilders—again, not surprising those people would be at be at most risk for muscle dysmorphia.

The study that I did, we did look at muscle dysmorphia. It’s one of the first real studies to look at an epidemiology sample like a community sample of young people and ask how does muscle dysmorphia present among that group. Again, not clinical muscle dysmorphia, but the symptomology, which would be like that drive for muscularity, appearance intolerance as it relates to one’s muscles, and then also functional impairment. So, how does their behaviors, their body image in relation to their muscle building, interfere with their ability to go to work and socialize and things of that nature? Even our data, it’s actually still lacking because it doesn’t really get at what actually works as far as treating this population.

Virginia

And I’m sure to there are probably some comorbidities with anorexia or with other eating disorders, right? You’re trying to suss out what you’re treating and in some ways all these different labels can be problematic in the pursuit of actually helping people and seeing them for where they are.

Kyle

Right. And you can imagine, male just aren’t socialized to talk about their bodies, to seek mental health treatment, period. And then think about a male in a bodybuilding gym who’s totally ripped and people are coming up to him and being like, “Hey, man, what’s your secret? You’re doing all the right things.” Like maybe they’re competing in bodybuilding and they’re winning or having that feedback loop that just keeps telling them they’re doing the right thing. It is going to be very hard to convince that person to go to treatment to get help for it, right?

Virginia

We love to reinforce people’s eating disorders, that seems universal across gender as something that just shows up. But that does make it so difficult. And I’m sure, too, there are ways in which it feels safer to exist in the world in that body. This starts to tie into issues of privilege, access. All of that probably comes into play as well.

Kyle

Masculinity is hugely intertwined with muscularity. You can imagine that a male who wants to portray a certain level of masculinity and certain level of strength, a sort of dominance over other males and over females, would likely want to strive for that bigger, stronger body. There has been some research that has shown that people with muscle dysmorphia or even symptoms of muscle dysmorphia have had experiences of violence and victimization themselves or childhood adverse experiences. So, lots of trauma can be wrapped up in that, not to mention poly substance use and suicidality and all that kind of stuff. It’s definitely clinically a really complex issue that has multiple layers to it.

Virginia

When we’re talking about men here, is your research looking mostly at straight men? At a mix of straight and gay? How does that all come into play?

Kyle

The study that I led, which is called the Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors, was about 2700 young people across all 13 provinces and territories in Canada. It’s also very demographically diverse. We actually have a lot of marginalized, racialized participants. There’s a large sample in the study of sexual and gender minorities. So we look at transgender and gender expansive people as well as gay, lesbian, queer, questioning, and other young people. Generally, when I’m speaking about boys and men, I’m speaking about cisgender boys and men. When I’m talking about girls and women, I’m generally speaking about cisgender girls and women. Referencing transgender or gender expansive people, that includes people who identify as not cisgender in some capacity and definitely includes a large sample of sexual minority young people as well.

Virginia

So do we see eating disorders among gay and queer boys and men playing out differently than straight boys and men?

Kyle

Yeah, certainly. Males who want to be more attractive to other males are certainly trying to achieve a body that’s going to do that. And similarly, for males who are attracted to females and want females to be attracted to them, they’re going to engage in certain behaviors. Same thing with the trans group, as well. People are going to engage in behaviors to align their body to be right. So, for example, a trans man might engage in a lot more body building and muscle building activities, where a trans female might engage in more thinness-oriented behaviors in order to potentially suppress sex characteristics and also to achieve that thin ideal which is more common among the female population.

Virginia

And then, too, there is the question of if someone is trying to feel safe in their body, then we need gender affirming care for that person. We don’t want the disordered behaviors, of course, but it’s understandable to be trying to transition your body into the body that feels right for you.

Kyle

It’s multi-layered, right? That’s where the policy pieces and healthcare systems become really important. People are engaging in eating disorder behaviors for a reason. They’re not just doing it for fun.

Virginia

Great point.

Kyle

They’re engaging in it for mental health reasons, of course, especially for those marginalized groups as they’ve experienced minority stressors and discrimination, marginalization. They’re actually trying to manipulate their body in a way to make it feel and align more with the gender they are. If we can actually provide appropriate, evidence-based treatments in the healthcare system, that would probably do a lot of good.

Virginia

I had Jessica Wilson on the podcast a few weeks ago. She’s a Black dietitian and body liberation activist and has a book about black women’s relationships with eating disorders. She challenges the idea that we even would label the behaviors as a disorder when someone is just trying to find safety in a marginalized body. I think about that all the time now.

Kyle

If we think about all disorders, they’re all ways of coping, a lot of times are about emotion regulation, about trauma. If people don’t have the resources to deal with their trauma or deal with their emotions, for various reasons—it could be internal resources, external resources, or just the social community they live in—they’re going to find ways to survive, right? It’s about survival.

Virginia

And when we make it all about body image, we ignore all of those other factors that are at play. It feels like in the conversation around men and boys, we’re really just starting to scratch the surface on on all of those factors.

Kyle

People are multi-dimensional, right? There are gay men, there are straight men, there are Black men, there are white men. There are all of these different intersections and identities. We often talk about these things in generalizations when in reality, there are lots of layers and teasing out of details that we can’t even get at with data because it’s so granular and unique among certain populations.

Oftentimes the boys and men who are furthest from that ideal, like the marginalized groups, the groups that perceive themselves to be less masculine based on hegemonic masculinity, those are the males that are most impacted.

Like, it’s generally not the males who are aligning with the masculine and muscular ideal. It’s the males who aren’t, right? It’s maybe males who are in larger bodies or the males who are maybe more emotional than other males. Generally, those males are actually having a lot more distress as it relates to their body or how they present to engage in the world.

Virginia

Ghat feels really important to name.

Now, of course, I’m thinking about all the parents and caregivers listening who are thinking about their sons and are freaking out, understandably. What should parents be looking for? How do you recommend parents start to engage with their sons on this topic?

Kyle

Something that I recommend for parents is this idea of respectful curiosity. It can be really quick to judge behaviors, it can be very quick to jump to conclusions about what certain behaviors mean or don’t mean. I think it’s this idea of respectful curiosity. It’s about asking questions, it’s about being present.

Especially when we talk about boys and young men, they’re not really going to sit down across the table from you and tell that you how they feel about their body. That’s probably the last thing they’re going to do. I would say most of them probably aren’t going to do that.

But what they might do is they might talk to you as you’re engaging in the activity with them or showing some curiosity about what they’re doing. I often say, join them. Like, join them in the process as much as you can. Maybe that means going to the gym with them. If that’s something you want to do or feel inclined to do. Noticing, like, “Oh, I’m seeing that you’re, using this whey protein supplement. Where did you learn about that? Tell me about it. I didn’t know that was a thing.” It’s not about accusing. It’s not about “Don’t do that.” It’s just about, like, “Hey, where did you learn about that? What does it do for you? How does it make you feel after you work out? Who told you about it? Where do you buy it?” Those types of things can be really, really important.

Again, it’s not about accusing them. It’s just about gathering information and data. And then with that data, you can make decisions about what to do next.

Virginia

I get the concept of joining them. On the other hand, some of these kids are going to be engaging with this stuff in dangerous ways. A common story that comes out in my reporting is the kid who says, “I wanted to lose weight. And my mother gave me a diet and we went on the diet together.”

So how are we joining them without reinforcing what’s dangerous about it? How do we join them and then recognize when it’s something else?

Kyle

That’s a great point. I think when I’m saying “join them,” I’m coming from the stance of a parent who may not have any real insight or knowledge of their engagement in some of these behaviors. Like, they may just not really know. I think that’s where I’m talking about joining them.

You can imagine, a lot of parents, like fathers for example, are coaches of sports teams or are helping the kid train because they see that their kid is a really good athlete and might be able to get a scholarship and that might make college a better possibility. There’s obviously lots of dreams about professional sports and all that stuff. So yeah, you can imagine that that would become a lot more complicated. In that stance, I think I don’t even know what the answer to that. It kind of just muddies the waters of being able to recognize what’s safe and not safe and what’s helpful and what’s not helpful.

I think ultimately it is up to parents to hopefully be able to recognize some of the other symptoms that might be arising, which would be some of that like obsessiveness around one’s dietary practices or exercise routine. You might notice drops in educational performance or socializing becomes a lot less important or they’re not doing as much of it or they’ve lost some friends. Maybe they’re just generally seeming more depressed or low or their sleep has been kind of messed up or they are spending time on social media more. There are other ancillary symptoms that might be occurring which might be raising some flags around more serious mental health issues which I think parents should hopefully be thinking about as they potentially are joining them in more maladaptive or promoting some of the behaviors that they might be engaging in. Does that make sense?

Virginia

It does make sense. I think what’s useful to tease out here is: You might be aware your son seems disconnected socially, and depressed. But because of our social conditioning, you might not connect that to he’s going to the gym a lot, he started using protein powder, we’re making him smoothies. So what you’re saying is, pay attention to the whole picture and know that just because he is a boy he is not immune to all this stuff. This could be the underlying thing causing some other distress that you would need to look at.

I also think, going even further back and thinking for parents of younger kids, how do you start building emotional vocabulary? Especially for boys when the world is going to steer them away from that.

Kyle

Labeling and helping them. I mean, I have young kids. “I noticed when you’re doing this, you look really mad,” right? That is very important to do.

I was talking about the performance aspect before. You know, a lot of males, again, not all males, but a lot of males are interested in sports. And as I said, you can’t watch a sporting event without hearing about someone’s speed or someone’s height and weight and all that stuff . Even just asking, “I noticed we’re watching this football game and they just keep talking about these guys bodies. What are you thinking when you hear that?” Those types of questions. Or, “When I hear that, I’m like why are they focusing so much on this guy’s body? Can’t they just watch what he does on the field?”

You might get a response like, “What are you talking about? Who cares?” But that is also information, right? Or they might be like, “No, that’s actually really important because he’s got this much speed and blah, blah,” and that just gives you more data, more information for you to understand.

Virginia

Yes, I am extremely sports illiterate, but I come from a football family and they do put the football players’ weights up on the TV screen. I am just realizing that now and wondering why on Earth?

Okay, just putting some puzzle pieces together about my own family.

I think it’s good to name that often when we present our kids with these opening moments, they don’t necessarily open right up and dive in deep with us. But you’re just continuing to make yourself available and show that you’re paying attention.

Kyle

For parents, recognizing that they are susceptible to promoting these behaviors just like culture promotes them as this is what a boy should do without really second guessing. Is that the right thing to be doing? Is that what I shouldn’t be doing? Is my son okay with this behavior? Are they happy here? Those types of questions, I think, are really important to reflect on.

Virginia

And it seems like there’s an opportunity to be learning this alongside your kid. Maybe as you’re trying to, yes, go to the gym with them, understand that world, understand who they’re following on TikTok, you can also be sharing what you’re learning about diet culture and anti-fat bias so that it’s a more robust discussion. It’s not just “Teach me your workout routine.” It’s also, “Let’s talk about why workout routines can be problematic.” There can be a way of engaging on multiple levels.

And it may, for a lot of parents, involve saying, “I’m trying to unlearn some stuff here. I think I’ve pushed you to be excellent at the sport or to fulfill my lacrosse dreams and that was not the right call. So let’s try a different way.”

Kyle

That unlearning piece is, I think, really important. Just as much as we probably talked about that for female caregivers or mothers as it relates to dieting and things of that nature, I think fathers and male caregivers need to do a very similar look in the mirror and reflect on what are the behaviors that I’m engaging in? How do I engage in exercise or eating that aligns with the sociocultural norms around muscularity and body ideals around men? How does that infiltrate and influence my young male, my son, or whoever it might be?

Virginia

Yes, we are waiting for dads to do this work, Kyle. We are waiting for them. I can tell you about 90 percent of the listening audience here is not a dad. But we’re welcoming them with open arms and we’re hoping that there will be more dads doing the work.

Kyle

Dads, fathers, male caregivers, they definitely need to do the work to be reflective on how they perpetuate these norms and how it ultimately hurts their sons.

Virginia

And daughters, too. It is harder because, as you and I’ve talked about so much, they don’t have scripts. This isn’t normative, but hopefully we are starting to shift in that direction and your research is a huge piece of that. So, thank you so much. This is so helpful.

Kyle

Of course.

Butter

Kyle

Can I share a few things?

Virginia

I love when people have a few things.

Kyle

So, a couple books that I read recently that have been so good that it’s been hard to read new books are Cloud Cuckoo Land which is just like a phenomenal book. I would highly recommend it to any and all people. And then Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow which also was just phenomenal. I’m not even a video game person, but I love video games now.

Virginia

I know. I have a lot of video game people in my life and I’ve always been mystified and now I’m like, okay, I kind of get it. The section at the end, the chapter in the form of a video game? Mind blowing.

Kyle

Yeah, that book is just great.

Then, I can’t help it, I am a sports person. I’ll admit that. I’m a big hockey fan. So the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs is definitely brought me a lot of butter these days.

Then lastly, hiking with my kids. I have a three-and-a-half year old, so he thrives on being on the trails. And I have a 15 month old who likes to be in the backpack.

Virginia

Let me tell you, hike with the backpack, enjoy the backpack hiking, because it gets really hard. Mine are both out of the backpack stage and it’s like now I have to persuade you both to walk.

Kyle

Walk in the same direction.

Virginia

And not need 50 million breaks and we’ll never get anywhere. There’s a dark period of hiking with kids. It’s when they’re both between the ages of like three and seven and then it starts to get much better. Your mileage may vary. Of course, if you’re hiking with a three year old, you’re doing better than me.

Kyle

Yeah, he loves it, so that’s good. But I imagine that when the other one is out of the backpack and has an opinion about which direction we go.

Virginia

Someone always wants to sit down. Someone is always tired. I’m always informed about very tired legs. And we’ve walked 10 feet. We’re in the parking lot still.

Well, my Butter is kind of on theme with what we were talking about in terms of like joining your kids where they are and making space for conversations. I have two girls and so much of our time is us together. I’ve suddenly become aware of needing more one-on-one time with each of them. Particularly with my younger one because she goes to bed earlier. My older daughter and I tend to get a chunk of time together in the evenings—we are watching Gilmore Girls together right now.

But my younger one, I realized, wasn’t getting one-on-one time. Last weekend, I took her out and asked her what she wanted to do and she wanted to get cookies. So we went to our local coffee shop and got big chocolate chip cookies and just sat and chatted. And it was great. She told me all sorts of random facts about friends at school, drama, and just little things about her day that hadn’t come out and that she needed to let out. Then we went to the bookstore and got books, too. So we’re calling it our Cookie and Book Date. I recommend a cookie and book date or whatever your child’s favorite things are to give that connection opportunity, especially if you have multiple kids and you feel like, “have I actually looked directly at you in a while?”

Kyle

Definitely. It’s true. They go in cycles of who needs more attention?

Virginia

You just suddenly realize, “Oh, one child has needed a lot and the other child also needs..”

Kyle

That’s great. I like that a lot.

Virginia

And it was fun because I also love cookies and books, to be clear. It was great for me, too. It wasn’t just a kid thing that I would be pretending to enjoy. That’s a parenting achievement unlocked, when you like to do the same thing.

Kyle

Your next book is called “Cookie and Book Date.”

Virginia

The children’s book that my kids are so disappointed I don’t write.

Kyle

There you go!

Virginia

Awesome. Kyle, thank you so much for being here. This was fantastic. Tell us where we can follow you how we can support your work.

Kyle

I’m on Twitter and Instagram, so you certainly can follow me along there. I try to put easy ways to understand some of the research that I’ve been doing as infographics and visuals on those spaces. I’m really excited to continue to work on some of this data that I’ve collected over the last few years.

We have all this new data about how they engage in the health care system and so we’re really going to look at teasing out a bit about how we can understand how the behaviors are related to health and healthcare utilization. I often tell people, “Oh, if you’re concerned about your son, go to your health care provider and talk to them.” But I often say that and then also remember their health care provider might not have ever heard of a cheat meal before. So, I’m really dedicated to translating some of this stuff to the healthcare space so that people can actually go to their health care provider and be like my son is engaging in cheat meals and the healthcare provider can be like, okay I know what that is.

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