The Burnt Toast Podcast

It's time for another community episode! This month, Virginia and Corinne are exploring how we feel about the word fat: Who gets to use it? What if you just don't want to use it? What is the power of reclaiming it? Thank you to everyone who contributed today. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. And don't forget to preorder! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. You can preorder 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. And! You can now preorder the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.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.CW: In this episode we do mention some specific weights and sizes. If numbers are triggering to you, you might want to skip this episode. BUTTERWhen Whales FlyGirlfriend Collective high waist compression leggingsPaloma braSuperfit HeroBOOKSOrder any of these from the Burnt Toast Bookshop for 10 percent off if you also preorder (or have already preordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)Fat! So? by Marilyn WannShrill by Lindy WestLittle Witch Hazel by Phoebe WahlOTHER LINKSTuesday’s newsletterSellTradePlusOur March mailbag episodeWho gets to call themselves fat? What if you just don't want to use the word fat? What if you just don’t want to be fat?I had a huge ribcagethat This American Life episodeMarielle ElizabethCatherine's TikTokthe good fattyThe Fat LipCREDITSThe 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 independent anti-diet journalism.VirginiaYou're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. CorinneAnd I'm Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus sized clothing. VirginiaSo you are all very lucky because you are getting two Corinne episodes this month. We had our regular March mailbag episode, and I asked her to join me for today's community episode. Thank you, Corinne!CorinneThanks for having me. The theme of today's episode is, “How do we feel about the word fat?”VirginiaThis is something we've been talking about because, as we're going to get into, there's stuff in the—well I was going to say news, but it doesn't exactly make the news. CorinneIt’s news for us. VirginiaIt’s news for us. It's not on the evening news. But there's a lot of stuff happening in fat activism circles right now, which got us thinking about this question again. Because it's an evergreen question, right? We've covered it on the newsletter before: Who gets to call themselves fat? What if you just don't want to use the word fat? What if you just don’t want to be fat? And it feels like time to get into these questions again.So, Corinne, tell us your story. When did you start using the word fat? And specifically, when did you reclaim the word fat for yourself? CorinneI have this core memory of reading a teen magazine with one of my friends in middle school. The magazine said something about, like, plus size models or something. And I remember just being like, “But what is plus size?” Like, I don't know what that means and I know that I’m on the edge. And I just remember my friend being like, “Oh my God, Corinne, you are not plus size.”VirginiaOh and she thought that was very reassuring. CorinneYeah, and I think also was genuinely like “you're not.” I was probably like a size 12 and plus size models are smaller than that.VirginiaYeah in modeling land, as we learned from the midsize queens, thats on the large size for many plus size models.CorinneYeah, I had a huge ribcage.The other childhood memory I have of fatness is I remember coming across the book Fat! So? VirginiaOh, by Marilyn Wann, right? CorinneYeah, in the public library. Like, I stumbled across it.VirginiaOh, what a great find for a kid! CorinneI know. I would love to know what librarian put it on a display shelf.VirginiaBless her or him or them.CorinneI found it and I remember being like, I really want to read this. I'm so interested, and also I don't want anyone to see me reading this and think that I'm fat. It felt very not allowed.VirginiaWere you fat at that point?CorinneI mean, I think it was probably around the same age, like I was probably like a size 12 or 14, but also like 12 years old, you know?VirginiaSo in that gray space where holding a book with the word fat on the cover, you would feel like you were announcing it. Like coming out.  CorinneYes, and suddenly people would notice that I was fat as if they hadn't been noticing the whole time. I think there is something about when you do sort of decide that you're going to embrace that word, you do have to admit that you are fat and people know you're fat. Like, there's this way in which if you don't talk about it, then no one notices. VirginiaIf you're not talking about it, even if they're noticing, maybe most people who are kind to you and in your life will not talk about it.CorinneAnd then I think around 2016, I really had a mind change around it. Honestly, I think it was really influenced by Shrill by Lindy West and also that This American Life episode. I think that was the first time that I was really seeing some of my experiences reflected back to me in media. And then I was fully just like, I'm fat. VirginiaThat's so powerful. Shrill was so powerful for so many people. The book and the show. That totally makes sense.CorinneWhat about you? VirginiaI don't have one moment like that, like finding Marilyn Wann or finding Lindy. And I think part of it is because my fatness came on quite gradually, if that makes sense. Like I was a thin kid, I had thin privilege. I got fatter my freshman year of college, but still wore straight sizes. Then did a lot of dieting and stuff in my 20s to stay in straight sizes. So my 30s were about giving up dieting and settling into my adult body, which has always intended itself to be a small fat body. So it was the process of stopping fighting that.But I think I struggled to claim it a little bit. Finding “small fat” was really helpful for me, because I didn't want to be claiming fat and implying that my experience was that of people who deal with more oppression than I do.The other piece of it that was more conscious was, that I really wanted to reclaim the word in our house around our kids. And by reclaim, I mean just claim it for them because they didn't have a negative association, you know? I wanted to give them a baseline of fat as a positive word. That helped me really lean into it.Particularly, I would say in the last five years or so, it's been really cool to see my kids use it in a very offhand whatever kind of way.  That is also why I put it in the book title. Preorder FAT TALK!And so, every interview I'm doing for the book now, I feel somewhat surprised, but also not, that one of the questions is always, “tell us, why do you use the word fat?” CorinneInteresting. VirginiaParticularly by straight size folks, I'm being asked it a lot. Like, “why do you say the word fat?” And, “do I have to say fat?” And, “can I say fat?” And, “what's the power of teaching kids to say fat?” It makes me realize how many people still are, like, nowhere with that reclaiming concept. CorinneJust in getting ready for this, I googled Fat! So? and was looking at some excerpts online and I was really struck by how relevant it seems. It seems like the same stuff we're talking about now in a lot of ways. And it came out in 1998. VirginiaOh, God. Thank you, Marilyn Wann. I don't think I realized it was quite that old. I thought it was like 2010s or something. CorinneYeah, I was really surprised. VirginiaIt must be very irritating to be in that first or second wave of fat activists who put all that work out and then there is all of us being like, “we've newly acquired this language,” and they're like, “yeah, it’s been there. Thanks. Thanks for that.” Yeah, we see the labor for sure.CorinneWell, on that note, we're gonna hear from a Burnt Toast community member named Valerie, just about the power of reclaiming that word. I am what's considered super fat, which is the terminology we use at the nolose fat liberation queer conference, where I really learned most of what I know about fat liberation. Even if someone can only see my face over Zoom, it's very clear that I am fat. And I have been fat since I was nine years old. I was very severely bullied in late elementary, middle, and high school for my weight. And though my parents never put me on a diet or made me feel bad directly about my body—and they are both in larger bodies—they dieted constantly in my youth, so I absorbed those messages anyway. It's important for me to use the term “fat” to destigmatize it, and emphasize it as a neutral term like height or hair color, as much as anything can be neutral. I find that when I lead a conversation by using the word fat, things go better. And using this language with children has been especially powerful as I use my standard script of, “oh, fat isn't a bad or good word. It's a neutral descriptive word. Someone can be thin or fat, tall or short, but any word can be used to hurt someone's feelings if you say it in a way that's intended to hurt them. But there shouldn't be anything bad or mean about saying that word fat.” I know I can't undo all of society's messaging, but I hope that at least being introduced to body neutral concepts by a fat adult can plant some positive seeds for the children in my life.VirginiaHearing Valerie's story is making me realize I don't want to talk about it, but I guess we have to talk about “The Whale” and the travesty that is Brendan Fraser’s Oscar and the makeup artist Oscar. Listening to Valerie talk about all this so beautifully, I'm just again, like, why did they think it was okay to tell this story without talking to, from what we can tell, any super fat people at all? It just was nowhere part of their work. Or even a moderately fat person, I don't feel like was consulted in the making.CorinneI have to admit I've been kind of avoiding hearing about “The Whale.” VirginiaVery valid. We will not use details here because I don't want to trigger anyone. It's so toxic. CorinneDid you watch it?VirginiaNo. I'm extremely grateful to Lindy West and Roxane Gay who really took that bullet for all of us. They both watched it. I felt like enough folks watched it and wrote beautiful critiques and I am reading their critiques and learning from them and do not need to put myself through it. But it was really a selfless act for them to do that, because it does not sound like a pleasant viewing experience at all. It's just maddening.I didn't watch the Oscars, either, because I go to bed early. But just seeing the clips afterwards and seeing just so much joy for him. And like, “Oh, he's always been this amazing, wonderful actor,” and his speech was full of fat jokes and weird references. Corinneoh god.VirginiaI'm sorry. I can't celebrate him. You cannot, as a dominant group, take a marginalized group’s story and decide you can do whatever you want with it. It's unacceptable. Even if you land on a few powerful moments. Even if you manage to come up with a few things that resonate as true for some people in that marginalized group. It’s still not okay. CorinneIt does feel like we're really at the point in culture where like taking on someone else's identity for entertainment purposes is not cool. VirginiaLike we could move past that.We don't need to keep ranting about “The Whale.” Valerie, thank you for sharing your experience. We need more of these stories. I also really like what Valerie says about how powerful it is to talk to kids about this and to explain that fat as a neutral, descriptive word with kids. Because I hear this a ton from parents. With fat parents, I think it's like, “I'm figuring out how I feel about the word but also what do I do with my kids?” And with straight-size parents, it's like this total deer-in-headlights moment, when their child uses the word fat. They're like, “I don't want to imply that fat is bad, but I also don't want them to hurt people's feelings. What do I do?”So let's hear from Bea, who had some great thoughts about that.I have kids in the loudly-saying-awkward-things phase. It's easy when it's about me.“Mama, Little Witch Hazel in the book looks like you. She's fat. She has hairy legs and long hair.”“Oh, wow. Yeah. And her nose sunburns like mine.”Not hard to treat the word “fat” as applied to me as if it's perfectly neutral. But when they talk about other people, if they say, “that person is in a wheelchair,” I can say, “Yep, isn't it cool? We all get around differently.”“That person's skin is brown.”“Yes, it's beautiful how many colors people are made in.”I want race and disability and body size to be things they can talk about, without shame. And without the idea that their small, white, able bodies are in any way better than others. But when they say that person's fat, it's hard to say. “Yep, it's great that bodies come in all different shapes and sizes.” Because of the “yep.” Because the person may not feel neutral about being called fat. My four year old recently, exuberantly told our neighbor that her legs were really big. And the neighbor just grinned. But I was at a loss for words other than quietly reminding the kid that every body is great and in our culture, we still don't comment on other people's bodies.CorinneBea is touching on the fact that while a lot of people have reclaimed the word fat, it still can be used as an insult and it's kind of hard to walk that line. Because even though we might feel one way about the word, we can't really predict how someone else may feel about it. VirginiaAlso, kids’ ways of commenting are so specific. I love that the four year old is like, “your legs are really big.” That is such a kid way to put it. I'm glad the neighbor was fine with it, it seems. But I totally get as a parent, you're like, I don't even know what to do with that. It is tricky. And you want to make space for people's boundaries around talking about their bodies are really important to respect. And I think you can totally do that while framing fat as a positive thing. CorinneEven the thing about saying “we don't comment on other people's bodies,” it's like, do kids really hear that? I feel like 50 percent of what kids say is just commenting on what other people are doing.VirginiaI don't think they necessarily will get it and perfectly execute it, but I think it seeps in over time. Like, I don't comment a lot on my kids bodies. Do you know what I mean? I model that. I give them the same boundary. You're then teaching them that their bodies are their own. Another way it comes up a lot with kids is like siblings hitting each other. That is a good moment to be like, “we don't touch other people's bodies in ways they don't like.”Corinne Wow. Yeah.Virginia“So please stop pushing your sister because she took the Calico Critter you want to use.” CorinneNot to be specific. VirginiaNot that that happens in my house nine times a week. But anyway, I think of comments around fatness, other people's fatness, in that same vein. You're not shaming the fatness. You're just helping them understand body autonomy. CorinneThere's just been a lot going on on the internet around this. There have been a lot of fat creators who have decided to pursue weight loss. There’s been the whole “Midsize Queens” thing. I did just see Marielle Elizabeth post that Ozempic is actively seeking plus size content creators to work with. So, prepare yourself for that. VirginiaI assume Marielle was like, “Get the fuck out of town.”CorinneI think she was posting it as like, “Heads up. This is coming.” Like, this is being pitched to creators. VirginiaOf course it is. Of course it is. I mean, it's really hard because people's individual choices around their bodies are their own business. And, when fat creators take this turn, it often comes with a really clear intention to distance themselves from fatness. And that is really harmful. I mean, that is what we saw with Catherine's TikTok, responding to the creator whose name I forget [Note from Corinne: Gabriella Lascano, Google at your own risk]. She was saying things like, “I've had it all wrong,” and you know, “They've lied to you to think that it's okay to be this size.” It was very, like, conspiracy theorist and super unsettling to see that turn. CorinneI think the other thing that makes it so complicated is the money part. I don't know, my choice whether or not to pursue weight loss might change a lot if someone was paying me to do it. VirginiaThat's a great point. Yeah, that's super murky. I mean, that's like the actress from “This Is Us.”CorinneOh, Chrissy Metz? VirginiaIt was in her contract that that character was going to lose weight. And of course, for that actor, that was a breakout role. Like, how do you not say yes to that part? Well, then you're signing on to this whole thing. The other thing is, just because someone is public and fat does not mean they are a fat liberationist or a fat activist of any kind, right? That is something that I think we as consumers of content need to be more discerning about. Like, if you're following someone for their great plus size fashion, I hope it's Marielle Elizabeth who is also wildly articulate and brilliant about talking about fat liberation. But there's a lot of fat fashion influencers who have been very visible, but who are not necessarily focusing on fat liberation. That's a complicated space. CorinneFor me, it just keeps coming back to the money thing. You're not seeing someone who's just making a neutral choice. You're seeing someone who is being paid to advertise something. Virginia100 percent.It's also true that any fat person is experiencing the bias of going into doctor's offices and having their weight weaponized against them and having weight loss prescribed without any second thought. So, this is Layla talking about this experience of doctors offices and how that can really trigger the spiral of “I can't be this size” and needing to distance from fatness.A few years ago, I went to the doctor for what I thought was a routine checkup. And as they do before every appointment, they asked me to step on the scale. And I was pretty shocked at the number that I saw, it was the most I had ever weighed in my life. I knew that my clothes had been fitting tighter, I knew that I had put on weight after having a baby, after moving three times in four years, after COVID. So I meet the doctor, and she asks, “ I understand you have some questions about your weight.” And I say, “I noticed my weight has been steadily increasing, I don't even know the right question to ask. Like, am I overweight? Or am I fat?” And she scanned her computer and she said, “Well, according to the BMI chart, your current weight puts you in the obesity category.”So, I wasn't just fat, I was obese. And it felt like my brain was shrinking away from the sides of my skull. I just felt this hot prickle of shame on my skin and in my stomach. And what I heard in that moment was, “you eat too much.” The whole experience made me feel very shameful. But it also really forced me to reconcile the bias I’d had against fat people and also made me wonder how, as a woman, I'm supposed to navigate what my doctor is telling me with what society wants from me, what I want for myself, and what I want to be able to model for my young daughter when it comes to having a positive body image. And so I really appreciated this question about who gets to call themselves fat, and really hope to learn more about how to understand and be an ally for people who are in fact, in larger bodiesVirginiaThis is a complicated one, right? And listening to this, I mostly just thinking, wow. If we had true weight inclusive health care where getting on the scale was not going to dictate your entire fucking medical appointment, Layla would probably have a completely different relationship with her body. And so would millions of other people. CorinneYeah, I found this one honestly relatable because the experience of going to the doctor's office as a person in a larger body is like you're trying so hard to prove yourself, like, prove that you're ‘the good fatty’ or whatever. To me it sounds like she's almost trying to end-run the doctor being like, “you need to lose weight.”VirginiaThat makes sense. And I know from interviewing doctors about this, that there's a weird chicken and egg thing where often the patients bring up weight loss because they assume the doctor wants them to be losing weight. Then the doctor is like, well, they asked about weight loss so I have to prescribe weight loss. It's a weird self-fulfilling prophecy being driven by bias on both sides, which is a very complicated dynamic. And I say this not to criticize the patient who brings that up. That's an understandable survival strategy in a very fraught encounter. But it definitely narrows the scope of the conversation. Who knows what else was going on with her health? She mentioned having had a baby, getting through COVID, moving a bunch, so tons of stress. Maybe weight gain is not the most important thing about what's going on with Layla’s health.CorinneYeah, and shame just doesn't help.VirginiaThis also shows why it's important, to whatever extent feels possible, to neutralize the concept of fatness. Because if we didn't have that knee jerk shame response, it also wouldn't matter so much when doctors bring it up in the way they do. Which is not to say it's on you not to experience bias, because you're experiencing bias. But if we could more clearly hold that, the way you would if someone made a racist statement. This is that person's problem. Not a problem with my body. Holding onto that is hard to do with this.CorinneOne of the reasons why we do reclaim the word fat is to also be able to acknowledge and center the experience of people who are experiencing more stigma. And now we're going to hear from Ann.For me, reclaiming fat has been part of the work I'm doing to prepare to be a parent in a few years. My mom has her own struggles with her weight, even getting bariatric surgery at one point and it made me really uncomfortable with who I was. For some things being midfat is annoying, like planes, restaurants, seats. For some things, it's frustrating. I'm starting to be sized out of in store Torrid and Lane Bryant, for example. But the biggest thing that frustrates me is buying furniture or tools. I needed to buy an 8’ ladder for my house. Every single one I looked at was rated for 250 pounds or under. I couldn't even find a ladder that would accommodate my weight. Or if I do find something weight rated for me, like folding chairs, it's super ugly or not as useful as the straight size. Some people don't even have to think about a chair breaking on you.CorinneHard relate. It's so hard to find shit like chairs.VirginiaYeah, I had a friend tell me recently that our dining chairs are not super comfortable for her to sit in and I was horrified. I'm really glad she told me. They have arms and I think they just cut in too much? So I do now have two armless ones that we can bring out when someone comes over. I really wanted to use this as an excuse to buy an entire new set of dining room chairs, but that felt somewhat excessive. Although, obviously, every seat at my table should be size inclusive.CorinneYou do have a good excuse now. It's an accessibility issue in your private dining room.VirginiaBut I do now have some better chairs. This is maddening. This is maddening that it is, in so many realms of life. CorinneAlso, just… a ladder? You know not everyone using ladder is 250 pounds or less. There's no way on earth!VirginiaAbsolutely not. That's really just so dangerous. Ladders freak me out just baseline. I'm really scared of ladders, so the idea that like they aren't making them sturdy enough is really upsetting.CorinneIt seems like the cut off is so often like 250 pounds. I'm just so curious how that became the number. VirginiaIt's probably some industrial technicality like that's the scale they have to test the stuff. CorinneLike it only goes up to 250? VirginiaLike it has nothing to do with any market research on who their customer is or what sizes people's bodies actually come in. They're like, this is the scale we have here in the factories. There's no thought in trying to be size inclusive or they would have found a way to both make a better ladder and rate it higher.CorinneOr maybe it's a liability thing. Like they're only responsible for if the ladder breaks for someone who weighs under that amount.VirginiaSo maybe that's an incentive to get it as low as possible, to be responsible for the least number of people falling off your ladder. Oh, god, that's so shitty. I think you're right.This one also reminded me that as we're talking about language, it is useful to make the distinction between midfat and midsize. This has tripped me up in the past. We now all know from midsize queens, that midsize is like, a size four with a large ribcage. Or technically it was supposed to be between straight and plus sizes, but it's being very misused and being used to distance from fatness very concretely. Whereas midfat is between small fat and super fat, right? CorinneThis is from The Fat Lip. Midfat is defined as 2x/3x, Sizes 20-24, Torrid 2-3.VirginiaGot it. Okay. And of course, that's super confusing because sizing is not standardized at retailers. There's so many brands where the 3x is like a 1x somewhere else. But just having the language is useful.CorinneOkay, next we're gonna hear from Krisanne who had an experience where she actually didn't use the word fat, but I think reclaiming the word is what enabled her to do this advocacy.So by the definitions of the fat community, I would be considered midfat. I've been small fat or midfat for most of my life. But at 52 years old, it's only been in the last couple of years that I've felt comfortable using the term “fat” as a neutral term to describe my body. I had a lot of things to unpack with that term always being derogatory, but now it's just a fact. So I'm trying to be very cognizant when I use it that people know that I'm being neutral, that it's really obvious. I'm just stating a fact about my body size and I'm not passing a judgment about myself.If I'm in a situation where I don't want to get into it, I don't want to open up a discussion about the term fat, I'll just say “larger body.” Like when I was trying out office chairs at the furniture showroom, I said to the sales guy that one thing I really appreciated about the chair I ended up buying was that it came in three different sizes, so I could get one that was actually designed to fit my larger body. I wanted him to know that I valued that aspect of the product and that that was part of why I was buying it. But I didn't need to get into the bigger discussion about the word fat. So large or larger would be those factual but not as loaded words that I will use if fat feels like it's too much in the context.One word I'm not a fan of is curvy, because first of all, it's euphemistic, but it's also inaccurate for me. I'm not curvy. I don't have an hourglass shape. I don't have large breasts. And it's also a word that emphasizes some sort of feminine “ideal” and it seems to be coded as fat but still stereotypically feminine, as if that's a thing that I'm supposed to aspire to.CorinneI liked this comment a lot. I could relate. And I think I've done the same thing myself. It's just that thing where you know someone else might be uncomfortable with the word fat, so you use “larger body” or something like that to describe the same thing. I also liked what Krisanne had to say about the word curvy and feeling like it wasn't a word that applied.VirginiaYes. You think curvy, you think hourglass shape. And as someone who's not an hourglass shape, I'm always like, what do I do with that? But who does have boobs, for the record. I don't know. It's just a weird. A weird term because it comes with this whole like set of definitions about which curves are good.CorinneIt feels like curvy is like you can still be like curvy and be sexy. There's something, like Krisanne says, feminine or something like that.VirginiaThere are so many terrible euphemisms. Fluffy is another one that drives me crazy. CorinneOh, my God! Fluffy is the one I was gonna bring up. I hate that one.VirginiaI admit, there was a point in my life where I thought it was cute. And I'm not okay with that.I also think that euphemisms are just so unhelpful, like you said when you were reading that teen magazine and not knowing what plus size meant. This is the other reason to reclaim fat and to use fat if you feel any identity with it, because: Let's just be clear about what we're fucking saying. And not dress it up. All right. So we're going to end with Lauren who shares a recent experience where being able to say “I'm fat” helped to concretely improve a medical experience.This one is just lovely. Lauren, yay you. I love that you did this advocacy. And I love that the physical therapist was so responsive.I'm looking for a physical therapist for a shoulder injury in addition to some other things. Filtering for my neighborhood, there were two insurance possibilities. One openly said that they'll help you with weight loss, which is a huge red flag. So I took a chance, on the strength of a very upfront Black Lives Matter policy, and filled out the intake form for the other physical therapist. This physical therapist called me a few days later to confirm my appointment and see if I wanted to be put on a waitlist to get in sooner. We talked about my complaints a bit: primary shoulder with secondary leg tendonitis. But she hadn't gone over my forms yet. We hung up.No more than 30 seconds later, she called me back having looked over my information on the intake form. There's a spot for anything you'd want them to know, so I wrote something to the effect of “I am fat, I believe in a weight neutral framework and will not accept weight loss as a treatment suggestion as my complaints are unrelated to my body size. I just request that if you're not comfortable working with a Health at Every Size philosophy that you let me know so I can continue researching PTs. But if you do, I'm looking forward to working with you.”So back to this physical therapist. Calling me back, she sounded so excited. “I just love how you advocated for yourself and you have absolutely contacted the right place. The local newspaper just did a three parts on a piece about how our medical system is overly focused on weight loss and the O-word epidemic and I cut out the article from the Sunday paper and hung it up because it's important to remind myself and also let other people know where my values are.” I'm all about building strength and balance in the body you have and helping you do the things that you want to do. For me, it was such a shot in the dark and such an incredible affirmation from a thin medical professional. I started with him this month and maybe it will be different experience once we get going though I kind of doubt it. Listening to you, Virginia, and Aubrey Gordon and Mikey and so many others, as well as finding community in the comment sections, the Facebook groups and cultivating my care team to be weight neutral has been such a life changing experience. Embracing the reality and cutting through the bullshit has led to some really positive relationships in my life. Thank you.CorinneI loved the physical therapists response. It made me really happyVirginiaThat she had the newspaper article cut out? Amazing. More of this. And I think this just really underscores why, even if you're in a context where you're not exactly using the word fat, like in the previous story, I think the act of reclaiming it is what enables you to then do that kind of advocacy.CorinneYesVirginiaThank you so much for everyone who sent in your voice memos. We really love hearing from you. It's so fun to have all your voices on the show. And I hope this discussion was helpful or if you are someone who's thinking about how to use this word, maybe this moved you a little bit forward towards feeling good about saying fat.ButterVirginiaWe are going to wrap up like we always do with butter. Corinne, what do you have for us?CorinneMy butter is a an essay that I just saw from the writer Carmen Maria Machado. She just published kind of a musing on the movie "The Whale," which we just talked about. The piece is called When Whales Fly. And I recommend it. It was just a really good read.VirginiaAnd again, I'm so grateful to everyone who was willing to interact with that movie in order to produce much better art. That's really the best possible outcome of that travesty. So thank you, Carmen, always for your beautiful work. My Butter is the leggings I keep talking about. If you're following me on Instagram, or read Tuesday’s newsletter, I'm sorry. You've already heard about this. But I just tried Girlfriend Collective for the first time. And, like, can you even call yourself into fat fashion if you haven't done Girlfriend Collective? I feel like I just got a punch on my card or something. It was important that I do this. I have the high waist compression leggings. And they are the only leggings I have had in a very long time that do not fall down.Now, I will tell you, when I said that on Instagram, I immediately heard from a bunch of people who said they fall down. Because that's how clothes work. Like, I can't guarantee this. I did hear from a lot of hourglass shaped people saying this. So maybe the fit model may be more of an apple, for lack of a better word, shape. So if that is your struggle—and it's not a struggle, our bodies are great. But if clothes that fit that shape is your struggle, then this might be a good brand for you. They're super comfortable, they do not fall down. They really hold their shape, no saggy knees, etc. The fabric is very thick. At first I was like, will these move with me? Like, it's dense. But I actually really like it and it's probably more athletic feeling. I don't think these are a dressy legging.CorinneLike a little shiny?VirginiaIt's a little shiny, but I don't mind it. I'm enjoying it. And I did get the Paloma bra to go with it. That's just one of their sports bras that I'm also really liking and this is my first time doing like a “set.”CorinneDid you get a cute color?VirginiaI got navy blue, but I might have wild iris on order. It hasn't come yet, so stay tuned because it's a really pretty periwinkle/purple. (Spoiler: It has arrived.)CorinneThat sounds amazing. VirginiaI'm not wearing them to be athletic in, I was wearing them to do my taxes last weekend and I was like, “Everything about this day is a dumpster fire but I do love my outfit.” So that was good. CorinneYeah, I recently started wearing a lot more leggings because of going to the gym. Like I started wearing to them to the gym and then I was like, “Wow these are so comfortable.”Virginiaand you're like why am I wearing real pants? CorinneI need to be wearing leggings all the time. VirginiaYeah, well you were doing actual athletic things in them with your weightlifting.CorinneI mean it went from that to everyday life.VirginiaI have different leggings I wear if I'm going to do one of my Lauren videos or go walk the dog in the woods. And these are my nice leggings. CorinneOh wow. Okay.VirginiaThese are my cute leggings.CorinneWow, fancy leggings. I mean, they do wear out.VirginiaFor a long time I was on the Universal Standard bandwagon of leggings and those leggings don't fall down either. They're very high waisted ones. CorinneOkay WHICH ones though? Because they have like 10 different leggings. VirginiaMaybe I have next to naked?CorinneIs it like a matte?VirginiaIt's matte and it’s much thinner. It's much thinner than the Girlfriend Collective. And my criticism of them is that they pill in the thighs. CorinneOh, yes. Are they black?VirginiaI have black and navy and I have like a seafoam color.CorinneYes, that's the next to naked. VirginiaOkay. Super comfortable.CorinneThose ones do pill.VirginiaAnd there's not really any compression. And I didn't know that I liked compression. I want to be clear, I'm not saying compression like makes me look thinner. I still look fat. I just like it. It feels more…CorinneA sensory thing?VirginiaIt's a nice sensory experience.CorinneYes, like being wrapped in a little cocoon.VirginiaTotally. I like it and I know Mia O'Malley was talking about this and how it helped her feel more supported, like her belly and her back. I mean, it's mild. It's not like you're wearing a back brace. It's just like, I feel like my posture is a little better in them. Anyway have you tried Girlfriend Collective?CorinneI feel like I tried them a long time ago and I remember thinking they fell down.VirginiaDon't trust me on anything, guys.CorinneThe leggings I like now are Superfit Hero.VirginiaThey are next on my list. CorinneI actually think they are similar. But they have a pocket which I really like. VirginiaThat's an upgrade.CorinneAnd it's the athletic-y material. They don't have a waistband and then I like these ones from Universal Standard that are more cottony and have a waistband. I do wear them to the gym but I also would wear them to run errands or whatever. But it's not an athletic material, It feels more just like a stretchy pants.VirginiaThis is good intel. Alright people, this was a great conversation about fatness and also an unexpected deep dive into leggings science.Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast!CorinneIf you'd like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and leave us a rating or review. These really help folks find the show.

Today Virginia is chatting with Chrissy King. Chrissy's new book, The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism and Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy and Build Collective Freedom is out this week. It’s an incredible mix of memoir and cultural analysis and an exploration of the intersection of racism and diet culture. And remember, if you order it from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off if you also preorder (or have already preordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. And don't forget to preorder! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. You can preorder 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. And! You can now preorder the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.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 LINKSFollow Chrissy on Instagram, Tiktok, and TwitterWe are recording your April  Mailbag episode soon. Send us all your questions here. Wondering how we pick which Qs to answer? The mailbag episodes are for hot takes, funny anecdotes, clothing recs, or random facts you want to know about us. You can ask something more complicated, just know that anything that requires research and reporting gets put in a different “future Ask Virginia/essay ideas” pile. 3 amazing Black dietitians to follow: Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez and Jessica WilsonThe Body Is Not an ApologyFearing the Black Bodythe AAP guidelinesChrissy's pottery TikToksSouper CubesCREDITSThe 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 independent anti-diet journalism.Episode 85 TranscriptChrissyMy name is Chrissy King, I'm originally from the Midwest. I'm from Wisconsin and I've been in Brooklyn for the past three years. I worked a corporate job for a very long time and then became a fitness professional, worked in the fitness industry. During the course of that, I started writing, and talking, about the need for more diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism work in the wellness industry. And talking a lot about my own body image journey, which has led me to the work that I'm doing now. So, now I'm primarily a writer, I'm an educator, and I still do a lot of my work within the wellness industry.VirginiaAnd we are here to celebrate your new book, The Body Liberation Project, which I just got to read. The book is so smart and thoughtful. I loved how you weave your personal story together with all the larger issues that you're grappling with. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write this and how you decided to use your personal story in the larger context?ChrissyThank you for the kind words about the book. I'm so excited for it. I went to college for social welfare and justice, so social justice and issues around race and white supremacy have always been at the core of whatever work I was doing in whatever capacity. When I got into fitness, I saw that so many of those issues were unaddressed in the fitness industry. Especially prior to George Floyd—I always say that's the mark at which people in the wellness industry started talking about these issues.VirginiaTo folks outside of this world, those two issues—George Floyd and the fitness industry—feel so disconnected. I wonder if you could connect the dots a little more there and talk about why that particular event? ChrissyI think about George Floyd and that moment in history, that moment in time, a lot. Because prior to George Floyd, I was reading articles about anti-racism and DEI and the need for that in wellness. I was talking about the impact of racism on the health of black folks in particular, and why in the wellness industry—where the goal is to help people be well—we have to be talking about all these other issues, right? Prior to George Floyd, people just weren't as interested in the conversation. They didn't understand the importance of talking about these issues as they related to wellness. I mean, some people did. But generally speaking, the larger population in the wellness and fitness industry did not see why that was necessary and didn't even really want to address it. When George Floyd happened, it was a very interesting turning point. I still don't know, when I think through it, what was so different about that event in time. Because George Floyd was just one of many situations that have occurred over the years. So I don't know if it was because it was also in the height of the pandemic and people were largely at home and less distracted by life. Obviously, the video went viral and was shown all over the globe, actually. So I don't know why that situation changed things. But I felt like people in the wellness space were like, “OH, racism is a real issue that's affecting people, that is also having an impact on people's health. And it's something that we should be talking about,” in ways that people just weren't interested in having the conversations before. In a lot of ways it was a good thing because it opened up a lot of discussion. Now we're nearly three years after that and I don't know how much of an impact it had in actual practice. It was a weird time because it was like, wow, I'm glad that people are really willing to have this conversation now. And on the flip side, like, this is really disheartening that we had to have something of this extent happen for people to start acknowledging that it was important.Virginia It should not have taken that for people to reckon with this. And there was a lot of very performative awareness. I remember at the time watching folks like you and Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez and Jessica Wilson. You all were inundated with interview requests, article requests. Like, “please talk to us about this.” I just remember thinking, This is not the way. This is not a fair ask of these women who had been doing this work for so long, who should be honored for that, and are now being asked, in this time of grief, to be saving us all. There was a weird energy, I just want to name that.ChrissyIt was a weird energy. Because, on one hand, I'm like, great! I'm happy people are willing to have these conversations. But there was a lot of collective grief and trauma, right? You're right. It was like, I'm being inundated with all of these requests and very much a sense of urgency from people, right? Like, “we need this right now.”Virginia“Right now. We have to have this conversation that is 200 years overdue.”ChrissyIt's so strange. But prior to that, I was doing a lot of this work because no one was having those conversations. Thinking about my own journey with body image, I struggled with body image and yo-yo dieting since I was 10 or 11 years old. I've always been really obsessed about my weight. Growing up in the Midwest and going to a school where I was the only like Black girl in my class—there were only two other black kids in the school, my brother and sister—I always felt like I was trying to reach the standards of beauty that I couldn't actually reach. One of the ways that I could aspire to be what I thought was beautiful is I could be thinner, I could be smaller.When I was working with clients as a trainer, most of the clients I worked with were women. And I would say every single client I had was struggling with body image issues and were coming to the gym with a desire to lose weight, with the belief that that would fix their issues with their body. And I did the same thing and what I realized through weight loss is that I still had the same body image issues I started with—and in a lot of ways they were worse. It wasn't the weight that was the problem. It was the system, the standards of beauty that have been created that we are trying to aspire to. White supremacy, actually. That's the culprit. Our bodies are not the problem. That's what inspired me to write this book. Because, unfortunately, so many of us are spending so many years of our lives, focused on shrinking and obsessing about our weight. I think that all of us have very specific magic to do in the world and it doesn't have anything to do with what we look like. The sooner we can work to repair that relationship with our bodies, I think the easier it is for us to live lives that feel nourishing and full, that aren't focused on trying to be smaller.VirginiaYes! So you come from a social justice background in terms of your college and early work, and then there's kind of a pivot into fitness, which you talk about in the book. When you were studying social justice and in that place, were you connecting the dots between that and fitness culture?ChrissyNo, I was definitely not connecting any dots back then. Especially when I was in college, I was very much in diet culture as a participant, right? I was making no connections to the similarities and the ways in that which white supremacy wreaks havoc in all areas, basically, in very similar ways. It wasn't until I had been a trainer for a few years. I had been competing in powerlifting. I was the leanest I've ever been, I was the strongest I’ve ever been. And I had this moment, I call it my rock bottom moment. I just realized I was still so so miserable in my body. All the things I thought [getting lean was] gonna fix, that didn't change any of it. It actually made it worse in a lot of ways.And it was then when I really started to think about body image and think about why I was struggling so much. I started to explore my relationship with body image and I read The Body Is Not an Apology. That book was transformational for me in a lot of ways. And that's when I first started thinking about the intersection or the connections between social justice and body image and that so many of the same themes apply in the same way. Then I started to think back to when I was younger, when I was 9 or 10, and looking at pictures of people that were touted as the most beautiful people in the world. They were thin and blond and blue eyed, and they didn't look anything like me. And starting to realize that's a big piece of why I was struggling, because I was trying to reach these standards of beauty and I didn't see myself represented in them. That's when I started to really put things together in my mind. And then I read Fearing the Black Body by Dr. Sabrina Strings, and I started to understand the origin of fatphobia going back to slavery, its very roots are in racism and white supremacy. That's when I started making the connections between social justice and fatphobia, body image, the fitness industry, the wellness industry in general.VirginiaI'm thinking about this in the context of the news about the AAP guidelines and who's championing those guidelines. So many of the people who are saying, “No, this is what we need to do, we need to be prescribing diets and surgery and drugs for kids,” would identify themselves as liberal, as progressive, as social justice-oriented, would have posted something about George Floyd, and are not connecting the dots between, “oh, I think racism is bad,” and “Actually, I am perpetuating it in this work.”ChrissyIt's one of the things that I think is so important about doing the work of anti-racism, really like taking the time to really understand it and sit with how it really shows up in our lives. Because what you're saying is true. It's the same people who are maybe championing these things would be the same people to say like racism is bad or post a black square or talk about George Floyd but not understanding the way that white supremacy is seeping into every area of our lives and how it's really informing our decisions in ways that are inherently racist, right? That's the difficult work, to not just read the books and take the courses, but to really sit with and understand how it's informing all the decisions that we're making.VirginiaA problem you tackle very head on in the book is the way white feminism in particular, as an arm of white supremacy, has erased the original intentions and the original advocates for the body positivity movement. This is so important. And yet, body positivity, the way it is currently portrayed on social media, still remains this important entry point for lots of folks. So I'm just wondering if you can talk a little about why staying in that entry point isn't taking the work far enough?ChrissyUnfortunately, as body positivity has become more mainstream and more commercialized, it has definitely been co-opted by thinner bodies, straight size even, a lot of white women. It has definitely centered people that weren't supposed to be centered in the movement and in a lot of ways erased the creators of the movement, and that's very harmful.And: I think body positivity is still a good point of entry for people to start thinking about their bodies differently. It offers people a way to even just consider that there's other options to think about their bodies and diet culture. So it still serves its purpose in a lot of ways. And, there's also still problems with that. I think both things can be true. Unfortunately, as it's become more commercialized, it has also been hyper focused on this idea of “self love” as the answer, right? It’s a lot of affirmations about loving your body. When you look under the hashtag on Instagram, you see, a lot of people showing rolls or dimples or stretch marks and saying, but I still love myself. And it's like, that's great. I'm happy for you. I also want to be clear that although the movement was created and founded by fat, Black and brown women, it does not mean—in my opinion, at least—other people can't participate. But I think it's really important to be mindful that the focus should be on the most marginalized identities among us, right? And I think that what also happens with the body positivity spaces, people conflate having body image issues on a personal level—most of us do have personal body image issues, right? But not liking your stretch marks or not liking jiggle on your thighs is very different than living in a body that is systemically oppressed.I think that people fail to realize that distinction, sometimes, when we start having this conversation about the problems within this space. And it's like, no, we're not saying everybody can't participate. We're saying, though, it's really important to understand that distinction. And to make sure you're not taking up too much space in something that wasn't created for someone like you to be at the center of the movement.VirginiaIt's a balance I struggle with in my own work, obviously, as a fat creator, but also a white woman. This balance between working on your personal issues and understanding the larger narrative, I think, is a really tricky one to find because people's pain is real. And it's worth dealing with, of course. And, the work can’t end there.So another thing I really admire about your book is that you're giving readers lots of tools. There are journal questions, you're sharing your own story. There are lots of ways to do the work while reading Chrissy’s book. And you make it so clear that this isn't the endpoint, that you're going to keep going. And you give tools for thinking about, acknowledging the harm you've caused, and reckoning with all of that in such important ways. ChrissyTo your point, we are all getting it wrong, no matter who we are. And I think that's such an important piece to acknowledge. Because, for me, the goal is not that we always get it right, because that's not possible. The goal is that when we get it wrong, we can acknowledge the harm that we may have caused and work to be better going forward. That is the work.VirginiaThat was a very white lady way for me to put it, like, “I'm trying to get it right.” That’s the perfectionism and that bullshit coming up. So, yes!ChrissyI just brought that back because I think we all do that, though, in some way, right? When white folks get it wrong, sometimes it can feel like “But I tried to do the right thing!” And it's like, “No, no, keep trying do the right thing,” and recognize that this work is messy. You're going to get it wrong and more important than getting it wrong is how do you rectify and do better going forward. Getting it wrong is literally part of the process. So when I talk in the book about personal liberation and collective liberation, it's like, I do believe that we have to work initially on our personal liberation, because when you're in the depths of diet culture and self hate and body shame, it's not possible for you to help anyone. You barely can keep yourself afloat. As you start to work through these things, you free up that energy, then you start to say, okay, how are we working to collectively dismantle systems, collectively dismantle oppression, so that people, all identities and all backgrounds can also feel freedom in their bodies and feel freedom and to exist in the world? Because we recognize that we are all interconnected. And truly, none of us are free unless all of us are free. And then that goes to the point of always working towards dismantling white supremacy in our lives, because at the core, white supremacy is at the root of all the issues.I think with white supremacy, it's really important to remember that although some of us are affected more than others by white supremacy, of course, ultimately all of us are affected by it. And so when the most marginalized among us are free, we are all free here to exist.VirginiaI've personally found it helpful, as I was doing the work on my own stuff, to understand that larger context. That is a motivation that speaks to me, when sometimes just doing it for yourself isn't enough. Does that make sense? If I’m causing harm to others, then of course I need to get my shit in order in a way that maybe I couldn't give myself permission to just get my shit in order for myself. Which is something I can unpack with my therapist later. ChrissyWriting this book was also therapeutic for me in ways that I didn't even expect. It's like, when you're a child and you're having these experiences, you feel othered. And you don't have this larger understanding or context. So the ways that the world works, or how white supremacy works and operates, it feels very much like something is wrong with me personally, when you're having that experience. And now, being older and wiser and having done a lot of this work, I can understand that there was never something wrong with me, there's something wrong with the system, right?VirginiaWith your friend’s dad making the horrible comments.ChrissyLike, that had nothing to do with me. He was the problem not me, right? VirginiaHe was definitely the problem.ChrissyBut when you're 8 or 9, you're like, oh, no, something's wrong with being Black. You can't really understand how to process that as a child. Now I can look back and be like, okay, I was never the problem. And I also think that that's why it's so helpful to do this work for ourselves in terms of body image and body liberation because we can realize that.And that's one of the things, too. Going back to body positivity, sometimes it makes it feel like you just have to learn to love yourself, right? And when we look at it as an individual problem, the onus is on us as a person. Like, I am personally failing to be able to love my body. I am personally failing to feel comfortable in my skin. And when we can look at the bigger picture and say, Oh, no, there's this all these systems in place that are really the problem. It's not a personal issue.That's the problem with not being able to see that the systems are the problem. Whether it's about our bodies or whether it's about economics or whether it's about the criminal justice system, it puts the onus on the individual. The individual is the problem, when in actuality, when we look at it, it's the systems that are creating the problems that we are experiencing. It's not a personal failing. So learning these things really helped me to release a lot of the trauma that I had around circumstances growing up and socialization in general. And in the book, I even talk about how in hindsight, I feel like I'm still processing 2020. A lot happened that year, right? But one of the things I will say about 2020 is I made the most money I've ever made professionally in my life during that time. I felt like people were throwing money at trying to fix racism.VirginiaOh yes.ChrissyI think that, unfortunately, it was a lot of performative allyship and performative activism happening. And a lot of knee-jerk reactions with people realizing, “Oh, we have to do something. Let's just get this person in here. Let's ask this person to do this training, let's donate money!” And I talked about this in the book: People I didn't even know were just sending me Venmos. I think that people just were scrambling. The harmful part about that, too, is when you approach something as a white person saying I need to unlearn racism or white supremacy, and then you just go into overdrive, what happens is you burn out really quickly, you know? Because it is uncomfortable to to start doing that work.I think people were really excited and then burned out really fast. And, you know, we’re talking about anti-racism. It's not warm and fuzzy and it's not self-improvement work, right? It can be really jarring in a lot of ways. I think people got really excited about doing the work and they burned out really quickly. And also realizing that when we're talking about doing the work on a day to day, it takes real action and it takes making difficult decisions. It takes having hard conversations. And I think that people, some people, unfortunately weren't really ready to commit to what it takes to dismantle something like white supremacy.VirginiaI mean, it's diet culture all over again, right? They wanted the crash diet approach to ending racism.ChrissyYes, exactly! VirginiaThey wanted to jump in there and sweat it out for 30 days.ChrissyAnd then be like, “Okay, we did it!”VirginiaWe can’t actually boot camp this one.ChrissyYes. That's the best analogy I've heard. It was like a crash diet. Yes, exactly.VirginiaI mean, it kind of makes sense the wellness industry in particular responded that way since that's the model, right? ChrissyThat's kind of how it operates.VirginiaAnother chapter I wanted to talk about is the chapter on grief and mourning our bodies. This was just really beautifully written. Why do you think making space for this mourning process is so important? And and how does that contribute to the larger goal of body liberation for all?ChrissyThank you. I really love that chapter, too. I think it's so important because when you break up with diet culture and you're leaning into body liberation and repairing your relationship with your body image, the one thing I think we don't talk about enough is that we live in a world in which thin privilege exists. People do treat you differently based in the way your body looks. That's just the truth. When I had been used to living in a thinner body for a long time, I grew accustomed to people responding to me based on the way I looked, right? I grew accustomed to people complimenting me on my looks or asking me what type of workouts I did, or asking me all these questions that gave me the external validation that I was seeking. So when you inevitably decide to reckon with diet culture and you decide to, for me anyways, I decided to stop obsessively counting my macros. I decided to stop working out every day of the week or multiple hours. And naturally, what happens is your body changes, and that's just the truth. That means that people respond to your body differently. That's when the rubber meets the road. You have to really be like, Okay, where am I deriving my worth from? And I think it's also easy to look back at old pictures of yourself and be like, Oh, I loved when I looked like that.VirginiaAnd you forget that you were actually hungry or you were actually hurting your body. ChrissyYes, I was starving! Right.VirginiaYes, we forget those details.ChrissyIt's so important, when you have those moments, to maybe remember where was I mentally, emotionally, physically, what space was I in, and then I just remember, I was in a terrible, terrible place, right? None of that was really worth it. But I do think it's important to give your self the time and the space to grieve that. And also, on top of that, other people will even comment that your body is changing. So it's like, besides you trying to grieve it yourself, then you have this impact of like, what other people may be commenting. I think it's just important to acknowledge that, it’s not the case for everyone. But for some of us, we will feel like we lost something in some way, or we changed in ways that maybe we weren't anticipating. When we're talking about breaking up with diet culture, the benefits are always more than what you lose, but there is a sense of loss sometimes. And I just think it's important to be honest about that.VirginiaWhen we're naming it in this larger context, too, it's important to be honest that you're losing privilege, that you're losing power, that you're gaining other things. It's better, but also, like, you had this privilegeChrissyAnd now you don't have it. That's why it's also so important for all of us as we're going through our own journey to really hold ourselves with compassion. And I say this again, especially for people with more marginalized identities, when you feel like maybe being thin is one of the only privileges that you have it feels even harder to let go of that, right? When you're feeling like that's the one place where I feel like I have some power or some proximity to privilege or proximity to whiteness. And now I'm supposed to let go of that, too. I think that's why it’s like holding so much compassion and kindness and grace for ourselves for all of the emotions, because it's very nuanced. And there's lots of layers to it.VirginiaI also really loved—on a slightly lighter note, I guess, from mourning—the chapter on love and dating and body liberation was just fantastic. ChrissyYes, so I got married very young. I got married when I was 22. And we were together until I was 33. We went to high school together. So we already knew each other from high school. We started dating right after high school. So I was basically with this person from like 19 to 33. So that was pretty much you know, my entire formative years were spent with the same person. So then when we divorced, I was like, “Oh, no now I have to date.” And so I think it's already scary dating when you haven't literally dated pretty much as an adult ever. I just haven't dated at all. VirginiaWhen the last date was prom. ChrissyRight, I haven't had a first date since prom. So that's a long time. So that's already scary.VirginiaCompletely relate, I've been with my partner since high school as well. ChrissyOkay. So you get it!VirginiaYeah. Yeah. Yeah.ChrissySo just imagine next week, you have to start dating. You don't want to think about it, right? And I'm heterosexual so I date men and it's even scarier. And then I'm in a different body than I was. It's one thing to be comfortable in your own body—of course, I feel great myself. But then, I realize I live in a world in which fatphobia exists. People have feelings about bodies that are the same as mine and it can be really triggering. I think that it really made my body image issues bubble to the surface in a way that I wasn't expecting because I feel so comfortable with myself. Suddenly I'm like, Oh, what if someone thinks this? Or what if they think that? Thank goodness for therapists, right?Ultimately, for me, what it comes down to is: This is the body that I reside in. And I am not interested in someone who has an issue with it. More importantly, I am not interested in someone who is with me because of the way I look. Because as we know, bodies change, and they are always going to be changing. This is the iteration of the body I have today, next year might be different. I don't want to be tied romantically to someone who is with me because of the way I look. Because bodies change. That is one thing that I can guarantee will happen. Remembering that for me, my looks are the least interesting thing about me. That's my personal belief system. The right person will understand and align with my values. And if they don't, then then they're not the right person. I'm not even saying that's an easy practice, because it's not, but it's the reality. When it comes to dating and love and relationships, I am not willing to bend my boundaries on that at all. Because I will just end up miserable and I'm not willing to do that. I'm so at peace with myself, and I'm so at peace with who I am that I would not allow anybody in my life that is not going to allow me to maintain that same level of peace and self love and, like really cherishing the person that I am.VirginiaI love that. To know that that is not a place you're ever going to compromise again feels like such a gift of doing this work.ChrissyYeah. Dating is just hard. VirginiaI mean, I can imagine having that as the bottom line feels like it narrows the pool a little bit. ChrissyIt does.VirginiaBecause a lot of folks, especially when you date straight men, are not going to share that bottom line. And the whole app culture that we're in now is so counter to that.ChrissyOh my gosh, yes. It definitely narrows the pool. But I saw this really great commentary, and it's something I've really embraced in my life. This person explained it’s like having multiple streams of joy, right? Like dating and relationships is one stream, but there are so many streams of joy. I've created and always continue to cultivate a life that feels really full and joyous. And if I meet a person who understands my boundaries, and fits into that and can add more joy, then awesome. But if not, I have so many streams of joy that I feel so nourished by on a day to day basis. I'm just working to create and cultivate more of that in my life.VirginiaOh, my gosh, I could not love that more. Thank you for sharing that. ButterVirginiaWell, speaking of joy, Chrissy, I would love to know what Butter you have for us today!ChrissyOh my gosh. So, speaking of things cultivating joy, I wanted to cultivate more creative joy in my life. So I started taking pottery classes and I'm loving it. VirginiaI’ve seen your TikToks! Yes, tell us about this. It looks so fun.ChrissyIt's so fun, I'm not good yet. I've only been to four classes, but I love it. It's been just so much fun like to work with clay and to have this thing where you're going week after week and just trying to improve your skills a little bit better. It's been so fun. And I ended up taking a class that was for people of color, and it ended up being all women and it's been so fun. It's just been such a fun class. And I'm like super enjoying it. I'm going tonight. So it's something that I want to keep going and speaking of TikTok, I'm now following all these people that are really good. And I'm watching their videos and just imagining how much of a master I'm going to be in the future and it's been so great. I'm loving it so much.VirginiaThat sounds like the greatest use of TikTok I could imagine, to follow potters and watch their talents. That's incredible. And I love the idea of regular class and cultivating that community space. So powerful. That's really really cool. My Butter this week is a little more mundane, but it is giving me a lot of joy. I have just gotten on the Souper Cubes trend.ChrissyOkay, you have to tell me more.VirginiaThese have been very popular on like food Instagram for a while and I was very suspicious of them. They look like giant ice cube trays. Each cube holds two cups of something. So it's like four big cubes. And it's about size of an ice cube tray. And the idea is like when you're making soups, or pasta sauce, which I make a lot, or chicken stock, you can freeze them in these individual cubes. It is reducing this hassle I didn't realize was such a hassle in my life. Because normally especially in the winter, once a week, I make a big batch of pasta sauce and I often make stock. Like if we roasted chicken, I'll make a stock. And I'm always like scrounging around for containers that will survive in the freezer. You know, you're using the old deli containers, but the lids are all snapped. Or I tried to freeze things in ziplock bags, and then the bag burst. It's just a hassle. It's not a trauma. There are worse problems in the world. But it becomes this annoyance and I want my cooking routine to be more pleasure based than that. So I finally was like, you know what, I'm gonna buy some of these and see if there's great as everyone says. And they're better, which is a little annoying, because it’s a very trendy Instagram item that I normally would not want to get behind. But it's great having a dedicated thing for freezing stuff so then you're not using up your good tupperware. You know, it's annoying when your good Tupperware is in freezer for a month. This is something I did not realize how much brain space I had devoted to until I solved this problem. I was like, wow, this was actually really stressing me out. So having the dedicated containers and then when you want to use what's in them, you can just pop them out because the silicone is stretchy. There are two cup blocks of pasta sauce. And you can just defrost it right in a bowl or just defrost it right in the pan and you're good to go. It's very clever. So I feel like it's a very like pro-capitalism recommendation, but sometimes they have some good ideas. And this was one of them.I guess also my recommendation is that the things that cause mild annoyance, but like on a weekly basis, it is actually worth taking a minute to solve for yourself because now that doesn't stress me out anymore. And that's nice.ChrissyI don't cook much, but if I did, you would have sold me because that does sound awesome. It sounds like exactly what you need.VirginiaIt’s a really good problem solver. ChrissyI don't always love an Instagram ad, but sometimes they're right.VirginiaI mean the algorithm is freaky that way.So, Souper Cubes, for anyone who wants to join that Instagram bandwagon with me. Of course, not sponsored! Have spent my own dollars on them. Chrissy, thank you so much for being here. Tell listeners where we can follow you and what can we do to support your work?ChrissyAwesome. Thank you for having me. This was such a great conversation. You can follow me on Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter. It's all the same: @IamChrissyKing. My website is Chrissyking.com.And of course, you can support me by ordering the book. It is out now and it's available anywhere books are sold.VirginiaAmazing. Congratulations again. And thank you for doing this. Thank you. Awesome.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. Once again, if you'd like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.

It's our March Ask Us Anything episode! We're covering anti-diet puberty books, clothing size chart confusion, our style icons, and a mom who thinks her 13-year-old needs to chew her food more. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon.If you are not a paid subscriber, you'll only get the first chunk. To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to go paid. Also, don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.(Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctosr, or any kind of health care providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSSellTradePlusUnlikely Hikersthe Unlikely Hikers Merrell collabBody Liberation Hiking Clubplus size backpacksCelebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!): The Ultimate Puberty Book for GirlsThe Body Is Not an ApologyA Body Image Workbook for Every Body: A Guide for Deconstructing Diet Culture and Learning How to Respect, Nourish, and Care for Your Whole SelfThe Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens: A Non-Diet, Body Positive Approach to Building a Healthy Relationship with FoodLove Your Body: Your Body Can Do Amazing Things...No Weigh!: A Teen's Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom. It’s Perfectly NormalSex is a Funny WordUniversal Standard has some petite pantsBig Bud Press has petitesJeans Science seriesthe complaints of the mid-size queensLydia Okello Matty Matheson Julie from Rudy JudeMarquimodeDacy’s course.Emma StraubAmintou Sow is it the ultra processed foods?Muna and Broad pattern for underwearmistaken for pregnant All That BreathesCREDITSThe 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 independent anti-diet journalism.VirginiaYou’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.CorinneAnd I’m Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus sized clothing.VirginiaIt is time for your March Ask Us Anything episode! I feel like we should call these mailbag episodes? Ask Us Anything is so clunky. We should workshop that. If someone has a better name, let us now. But! It is time for us to answer your questions. We have a very good mix of questions. We’re going to do some parenting questions, some clothing questions, and then the miscellaneous smorgasbord kind of questions.CorinneThe miscellaneous ones are always my favorite.VirginiaAgreed. CorinneAnd this is also a paywalled episode! That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It’s just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Click here to join us!VirginiaCorinne, what is new with you? It’s very windy at your house today, right?CorinneYes. Spring into Mexico means horrible wind. We’re having 75 mile an hour winds. VirginiaThis sounds terrifying. CorinneIf you don’t live somewhere where wind is a thing you don’t realize how bad it is. But it’s so bad. It just makes everyone in a bad mood.VirginiaIs it dangerous? Like, can you drive?CorinneThey do issue like high wind warnings, but I think it’s more for huge trucks.VirginiaStuff blowing around. CorinneYeah, your roof blowing away. My other exciting thing is that this weekend, I went on an Unlikely Hikers hike. VirginiaOh, so fun. And how was it? CorinneIt was fun. It was really cool. VirginiaThat’s awesome. I have been coveting the Unlikely Hikers Merrell collab. CorinneYeah, some people were wearing those and they were very cute.VirginiaMy last Body Liberation Hiking Club hike, there were two if not three people wearing the boots and I was like, “Well, this is now all I can think about.”CorinneNow you need them. They’re very cute.VirginiaAnd I just bought new hiking boots three months ago. So I missed the window. Cor folks who don’t know what Unlikely Hikers is, can you explain what that is and where they are and stuff?CorinneIt’s run by this person named Jenny Bruso. Jenny travels around and does hikes in different areas. They also have worked with the brand Gregory to make plus size backpacks. And yeah, the Merrell boots. There are also starting to be some Unlikely Hikers chapters, so that’s cool. I’m hoping that maybe there will be one in Albuquerque!VirginiaYou can also start a Body Liberation Hiking Club. Because Alexa—Hi, Alexa!—launched that here in the Hudson Valley. And now we have chapters popping up all around, so we’ll link to that Instagram if people want to look for one. And I think they’re very in sync with Unlikely Hikers. I don’t think it’s like a Jets and Sharks rivalry situation or anything. CorinneYeah, I’m sure it’s not.VirginiaWe are all for more people hiking in awesome ways. CorinneWhat’s new with you?VirginiaWhat’s new with me is I have a child home sick. So, there’s nothing new with me. There is always a child home sick this time of year. So we may get some interruptions in this podcast recording, we’ll see. We’ve deployed her third parent the iPad to take care of things.CorinneHonestly, it would make me feel better if a child interrupted rather than my dog.VirginiaYou may just hear some faint coughing. I promise, she sounds like a Victorian waif but she’s totally fine. It’s just a cold. So, we’re going to start with parenting questions! CorinneQ: Anti-diet puberty books! At the recommendation of our doctor and the internet, we purchased the book The Care and Keeping of You Volume One for our eight year old girl. What a load of shit! So much diet talk/am I too big questions? How is this five stars on Amazon? Why are we telling children to talk to their doctors if they need to diet, to track the food they eat? I returned it. No need to have that book at our house when they are already given similar messaging out in the world. What puberty/sex ed for preteen book recommendations do you have?VirginiaSo, this is a spoiler for chapter 12 of my book, which is all about how anti-fat bias manifests in conversations around puberty. So get excited for that! Quick preorder shameless plug, make sure you’ve got Fat Talk coming! (Here’s how to get a signed copy, here’s the UK edition, and here’s the audiobook.)But obviously, Fat Talk is not a book you will hand to your child. I do not explain puberty in any detail, but I talk about the messaging and I have a little bit on The Care and Keeping of You because that book is a wild ride. It has gone through many editions and I will say the newer editions are better. You may have purchased an older edition, but there are definitely still diet culture vibes throughout. The books that you need instead—and I’m pulling from the resource section of Fat Talk, so this will all be listed there, too:Sonya Renee Taylor, of course: Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!): The Ultimate Puberty Book for Girls. Now, there is one footnote to this. Sonya Renee Taylor is amazing. We have discussed our love for her. I have no criticisms of her. But the first edition of this book did have some food stuff in the nutrition section that folks objected to. I’ve had my nine year old read the book and I was like, “let me know if you have questions about the food stuff.” It just gets a little good food, bad food, but overall the book is phenomenal. I mean, not surprisingly, it’s very grounded in the The Body Is Not an Apology ethos. So that is a really fantastic one and the one we have in my house. A Body Image Workbook for Every Body: A Guide for Deconstructing Diet Culture and Learning How to Respect, Nourish, and Care for Your Whole Self by Rachel Sellers and Mimi Cole is a nice one (though weirdly only available on Amazon).More specific to foodstuff, which I know you’re asking for like puberty, sex ed, but I think it kind of relates, The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens: A Non-Diet, Body Positive Approach to Building a Healthy Relationship with Food by Elyse Resch is very good.For younger 8-9 year olds, Love Your Body: Your Body Can Do Amazing Things... by Jessica Sanders and Carol Rossetti is a big picture book with amazing body diverse illustrations and lots of really great messaging about how your body will be changing and how to celebrate the changes and all of that. That one’s really good. Last one, for more of a take on body image and food issues is No Weigh!: A Teen's Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom. Did you ever read The Care and Keeping of You? Was that a puberty book you encountered? CorinneNo, I’ve never read it or heard of it. The book that my mom gave me was called It’s Perfectly Normal. Have you seen that? VirginiaOh, yeah. We have that one, too.CorinneI haven’t revisited it but I thought it was pretty good. It’s from the nineties, but…VirginiaIt’s been updated, as well. We have that one. One critique of that one is it’s very gender normative.CorinneThat makes sense. VirginiaI think a lot of puberty books are pretty gender binary.CorinneIt does have a lot of like other diversity, though. I remember there being fat people and people in wheelchairs.VirginiaYes, it is good on that. I mean, in general, I feel like puberty books are often very good on racial diversity, disability diversity, and less good on gender and body size diversity. CorinneThat makes sense. VirginiaThere’s room in this market is what I’m saying.CorinneYeah. I wonder if there are books out there that address the gender stuff, specifically.VirginiaSex is a Funny Word by Corey Silverberg is a really great one for introducing a lot of the sex ed topics. It talks about masturbation in a really positive way and it definitely talks about sex and gender and gender identity. All of that stuff is really well done. What’s tricky about this topic is that people will say puberty books and it’s like, do you just want something to explain how you get your period, or…? It’s a huge topic. So the other thing I would say is don’t expect any one book to answer everything. Expect to have to keep diving into it. But that gives you a few to to get into and yeah, The Care and Keeping of You. I think we can retire that one. That would be my vote.CorinneAlright, I’m going to read the next question. My daughter is 13 and until she was 10, I was fully immersed in diet culture. I’ve since done a 180 and I’m trying so hard to not regulate what my kids eat, and just offer them options and let them choose. I try to have things I know they like available and I try to talk about food neutrally. Often though, it seems like my daughter is eating to the point of a stomachache several times a week, at least. I wonder if part of that is she often takes very big bites and doesn’t chew them much. Is she getting overly hungry? Does she need a reminder to take smaller bites? These are things I want to bring up with her. There could be something else going on, of course, and there’s so many factors that go into a stomachache, but I don’t know how to have a conversation about it or if I even should, without potentially shaming her or questioning her autonomy. I have been sort of hoping it would just work itself out? Like maybe she would start recognizing it and adjust something. But it seems like feeling sick so often isn’t great. How would you approach this?VirginiaOkay, so we both read this question and we have a lot of empathy for both you and your daughter. This sounds like you are doing some really hard work to transition out of old mindsets and patterns. You describe it as “I’ve done a 180,” but I think it takes longer for the whole relationship to make that 180. You might really be like 110 or 150 or something. And that’s totally fine. This is just progress. There are a lot of different moving parts that you’re trying to shift.CorinneYou’re still doing the 180.VirginiaYou are turning and we’re very here for the turning. But yeah, this is a question that kind of left us with a lot of follow-up questions. CorinneYou don’t say how you know that she has a stomach ache, so I’m curious if she’s telling you that or if it’s something else you’re observing.VirginiaWhere I land on this is: I think at 13 you don’t need to be as involved in the minutiae of how your child eats. If we go back to the Division of Responsibility ethos—which in some ways is not helpful at this point because it sounds like it’s probably not what you were doing when she was younger and by 13, she’s almost aged out of the model. But the theory is that parents are in charge of what food gets offered and when it gets offered, and kids are in charge of what and how much they eat. And I would include under that umbrella, what size bites they take.Once you’re out of helping a toddler learn the oral motor skills of chewing, you can maybe offer some gentle reminders about table manners. Like I sometimes say things like, “we actually use a fork to eat that spaghetti, not our hands” or “we don’t put feet on the table,” is the thing I’ve had to say recently. But even that, kids really learn that stuff by us modeling more than they learn it by us slapping their feet off the table. I don’t think you being overly involved in the mechanics of how she’s eating is going to be helpful here. CorinneI was just thinking how I would feel if I knew that my parent was asking someone if I needed to take smaller bites. It feels like a lot of scrutiny. And I wonder if maybe your kid is picking up on that, too? I would be curious what the 13 year old would say, if you ask them about it. Like, “Why do you think your stomach is hurting?” VirginiaThat’s a really good point. Because we want body autonomy here. She understands her body better than you ever could. What does she think is going on? As you say, stomachs can hurt for a million different reasons. This could be anxiety. This could be completely unrelated to what she’s eating. I do think there is strong diet culture messaging that anytime you have a physical symptom, but particularly a GI symptom, to immediately start looking at how and what you’re eating. I’m getting stomach aches, so I have to give up dairy or gluten. And that’s not usually very productive. Often it can make GI symptoms worse.I’m also wondering if what you’re observing in terms of taking very big bites—do you mean she’s eating a lot in one sitting? If that is what we’re talking about, remember you don’t decide what a lot is for her. She decides how much she needs to eat. And usually when people are eating what looks like a lot, it’s because they weren’t eating enough at some other point and there’s underlying restriction. This may be a diet-y thing or not. For a lot of 13 year olds, the schedule is so packed during the day at school they barely eat lunch, they don’t have time for snacks. And then they come home and inhale half your kitchen because they’re starving. Because she is growing. She is at an age where she needs massive amounts of calories to fuel puberty.And I take bigger bites when I’m really hungry, you know? Like, “I gotta get the food in.” And you don’t need to demonize that. You need to look at, is there a way for her to get fed earlier in the day? Or at more regular intervals?CorinneAlso, if for the first 10 years of her life, the message was to eat less, she’s probably still recovering from that.VirginiaI think this may be a sign that the repair work is still ongoing. Parents tell me when they start to shift from a diet culture mindset to a more neutral attitude towards food they see kids eating a lot, a lot, a lot of the foods that were off limits in the past. This makes sense because the kids don’t trust it yet. She may feel like there are certain foods she needs to eat a lot of because she’s not sure how long you’re going to stick with this.I know it has been three years of you doing this work, but we don’t get to pick other people’s timelines on this stuff. That, combined with maybe being more hungry than usual because of a growth spurt or whatever. I think there’s probably a lot going on here. I think it’s probably more useful to ask your daughter what she needs, how can you make food accessible and safe and fun for her? And what other support does she need? What else is she dealing with? God, you couldn’t pay me to be 13 again, so hard. CorinneAgreed. It sounds like this person is really trying to do the right thing and probably just struggling with some internal stuff.VirginiaYeah. And it makes sense. This stuff is very triggering. You also were ingrained in this pattern of “there’s a problem, look to food to control.” And so that takes some time to stop automatically looking to food to control. But my guess is what you’re seeing in her eating may not be why she’s having stomach aches.CorinneYeah. And I think what we’re also saying is, don’t have a conversation about bite size.  Have a conversation! Not about bite size.VirginiaYeah. Let her chew food on her own terms. CorinneAlright. I’m going to read the next one.Our family has always aimed to be pretty neutral about food and not demonizing different food groups. Sugar has never been a forbidden food or one you have to earn. But I recently found out that my eight year old has a secret candy stash saved from birthdays, parties and holidays. Should I be concerned? When I saw it with him, I said, “it is totally fun to have a secret candy stash and you don’t have to hide eating candy from us.” My kid is not strong in expressing internal experience so we don’t usually end up having those kinds of deep conversations everyone likes to post about. AKA I have no sense of what is driving the stash and he’s not able to tell me. Should I worry?VirginiaFirst, I just want to relate because I also have a child who doesn’t love deep conversations. So I know exactly what you’re feeling. People will be like, “I had this amazing breakthrough moment with my child.” And I’m like I could say all that same things, and I would just get not much back. So yep, some kids are not talkers and we will meet them where they are. I love her response. It’s totally fine to have a secret candy sash and you don’t have to hide candy. I love it, I think it’s great.CorinneI know, that is such a nice response.VirginiaI think if your house is as food neutral/food positive as you’re describing, this is probably your eight year old just discovering that he can keep stuff in his room. And that’s cool. I had a flashlight under my bed so I could read under the covers at the same age. And for sure I read The Baby-Sitters Club books at that age where Claudia Kishi had candy in her room and it just seemed cool to do it. Maybe this is candy he doesn’t want to share with a sibling, or it’s really fun to eat a treat in your room sometimes.CorinneEven if the kid isn’t getting the message from you that sugar is bad, they’re probably getting it somewhere else. VirginiaFair point. Fair point. CorinneBut it sounds like you’re handling it really perfectly.VirginiaIt definitely doesn’t sound like anything you have to rush in on. Let it play out. See what happens. If you’re noticing other food hoarding or scarcity mindset signs around food, then it’s worth investigating a little more thoroughly. Whatever is in his secret candy stash, I would also make sure you have that out in the kitchen in a way that he has very free access to. Make sure that it’s not accidentally off limit. And I don’t even mean you consciously did it. But do you tend to keep the candy on a high shelf in your kitchen? Is that just where it fits? And then you’re like, “oh, wait, that might be perceived as restriction to my kid,” you know?CorinneYou could probably also just say, like, “Do you want to eat some candy together?”VirginiaOh, nice. CorinneDo you have a secret candy stash? My mom, I think, had a secret chocolate stash.VirginiaI do personally. I really like Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. We buy them all the time to bake cookies with and the kids will snack on them, but I pretty much always have an extra bag in the top shelf of the fridge where they can’t reach so that I can ensure thatI have the chocolate I need. That’s not a restriction thing. I’ll buy two bags. It’s just it’s a meeting-my-own-needs kind of thing.CorinneBut maybe this kid sees someone in their life having their own private food stash and wants one for themselves.VirginiaI feel like this was also the age where I was obsessed with wanting a mini fridge in my bedroom. CorinneThats so funny, that was totally not on my radar.VirginiaI feel like it was like one of those like TGI Friday sitcoms, like Full House or something. Some cool teenage girl character had a pink fridge in her room and I was like, I want to have a fridge with snacks. It’s like, no you don’t. What are you going to do with that?CorinneMake a mess.VirginiaYou’re just trying to feel independent.CorinneIt seems like the age where you start wanting to like have independent stuff like keeping a secret diary or something.VirginiaIt feels like he’s exploring this idea and just continuing to make sure that these are not foods that he actually can’t access at other times. If you’re concerned about mice or bugs or something, maybe you give him a plastic container that he keeps his secret stash in in his room. That would be my concern.CorinneThat’s a legitimate concern. VirginiaAlright, we’re going to do some clothing questions now.Before transitioning to plus sizes, I mostly shopped in the petite section. Now that I’m in a larger body all the stuff that fits in the bust and waist is so long. I worry about the end of the crop top trend because a 2x cropped sweater is actually the right normal length sweater for me if I cuff up the sleeves, of course. Any suggestions for petite plus folks, either for places that offer petite plus or how to communicate this need to the market? I mean, I feel this. There’s very little petite plus crossover.CorinneI had two thoughts about this. My first one is, sorry, but get a sewing machine or a tailor. It does suck, but also you can shorten stuff somewhat easily. VirginiaThat’s fair. CorinneI’ve seen Tiktok sewing tutorials where you can sew the bottom of a sweatshirt so that like the cuff is still there. Anyways, there’s cool things you can do.VirginiaOkay, but now you have a new hobby.CorinneOr you can have a tailor! You can either have a sewing machine or a tailor, choose one. Sorry, I know that’s an obnoxious answer. The petite plus size stuff that I know about is Universal Standard has some petite pants, at least.1 They have shorter inseam jeans.VirginiaYes and their short inseam is like, quite short. I’m 5’5.” If I get their 27-inch inseam it fits me like a Capri pant.CorinneOh really!?Virginia I’m also proportionately shorter torso/longer legs, so my 5’5” might be different.CorinneI’m the same height but I’m long torso/short leg and the 27 inch is perfect on me. And I think the 27 is the regular length.VirginiaYeah, it is the regular length.CorinneBut they also have petite and tall, I think. I know also Big Bud Press has petites now. I haven’t tried them and I think that their petite is more like a regular, but you could check it out. And the other one that I know about is Talbots! I don’t shop there, but I’ve heard that they have plus size petites.VirginiaAlright, that’s a good one to check out for work basics and what have you. I do hear this frequently from readers. There’s a plus section, a petite section, and a tall section. God forbid you’re tall and plus or petite and plus, they don’t overlap. I think it totally goes back to all of the Fit Model issues that I reported out in the Jeans Science series. This is a failure of retail that they cannot offer as many customized sizing options as we need.CorinneI also think you will find that like certain brands, like Universal Standard, their fit model is just a bit shorter or something. So, shop around.2 VirginiaOkay. This is another sizing issue.Why are XL and 1XL two different sizes? And why are they so inconsistent across brands?And I will footnote that and say: Why are XXL And 1X And 2x three different sizes, and which one is XXL? Is it 1x? Or is it 2x?CorinneWell, the answer is neither. Sorry. VirginiaThat makes no sense. CorinneThe answer is just, no.VirginiaNo clothes for you. That is the answer.CorinneBad.So the answer is, XL is straight size and 1X is plus size and they use different fit patterns.VirginiaDifferent fit models, yes.CorinneAnd it just kind of depends on your body which one works better for you. 1x usually will have like, bigger arms. VirginiaAnd a bigger bust. CorinneYeah. And XXL is going to be more in the straight size model.VirginiaXXL is what J Crew is throwing on as their plus size.CorinneThat’s not plus size, sorry J.Crew.VirginiaI think J.Crew knows it’s not. But then they also have 2x and 3x. They don’t do 1x. They do XXL In place of 1x. CorinneYeah, that’s when it gets confusing because people just do their own thing.VirginiaSome brands’ XXL is more like the 2x.CorinneGood luck. Good luck! Good luck out there. Check the size chart and buy a measuring tape.VirginiaWe’re tough love today. We’re like, “guys, its fucked.” It’s fucked, I don’t know what to tell you.CorinneI mean! It is. I feel like we talk about this all the time. Then some brand starts making stuff and a 5x is a size 18. VirginiaCorrect. Let us be clear that all of these XL, 1XL, XXL questions are the complaints of the mid-size queens. CorinneNo. I mean, it’s really annoying. But I think when we get into the problem where 5x is a size 18 is when brands go from straight size to plus size without realizing it’s different. VirginiaThey’re doing a very bad job. Acknowledging that capitalism and advertising suck—I like this question, starting off strong!I hate that half of the ads I see online are for retailers that don’t carry clothes that fit my body. I spend a decent amount of time just opening the shops for ads I see on Instagram, going to their size chart and checking to see if their bust measurements go up to or higher than my own. And if not, marking the ad irrelevant. I almost wish I could give it my bust measurement and have its fancy algorithm do the filtering. Is there a way to tell these ad services to only show size inclusive retailers?This person is doing a lot of labor for no benefit.CorinneI’m like, “Well, now that you’ve said it, I’m sure it’s coming.” I never freaking open those ads anymore because they never do.VirginiaI mean one tell is: Don’t open an ad that has a skinny person as the model. I mean unless you’re skinny. CorinneBut do you actually ever stop getting them?VirginiaNo, you never stop getting them, but if they’re not promising me plus size and using a fat person to do it, I know where we’re going. I already have my dysfunctional relationships with J.Crew and Madewell and Anthropologie. I have my straight size brands that I still go back to despite the years of torment. I don’t need to add Marine Layer or whatever the fuck Instagram brand.I say this as someone who has just spent a lot of money on Andie Swim and missed the return window, and is real pissed. Real pissed. Anyone who has a super long torso who needs Andie Swim, talk to me.CorinneOh my god, it’s so funny because that you say that because all the Andie Swim stuff is too short for me. I have the longest torso known to mankind. VirginiaWell, it did not work for me. Also, I accidentally ordered the long torso size which is a real choice, as a short torso person.CorinneI’m so jealous of all the short torso people.VirginiaI mean, I don’t know that it’s easier, Corinne. I am out many hundreds of dollars of Andie swimwear.CorinneI know somewhere you can sell it.VirginiaI  was going to say, it’ll  be coming to selltradeplus very soon. CorinneThe ads that always get me are when I see a thin person wearing something like insanely oversized. VirginiaOh, god. And then you’re like…CorinneOh, I wonder…VirginiaWould it fit me? And how would it fit me?CorinneAnd half the time, no. It’s still too small.VirginiaAbsolutely. Yeah, the Instagram ads are terrible. Yeah, capitalism and advertising suck. I think this person answered their own question. We empathize with you.CorinneJust wait, I’m sure there will someday be a box you can click for your chest measurement. VirginiaThat honestly is kind of ingenious, I think.CorinneAdvertise the right size to me. I know. VirginiaFilter my ads by size. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it at all.CorinneI’d definitely be buying more stuff.VirginiaClearly, I already buy too much so maybe I don’t want it, but…CorinneIt would be taking all the work out of it. VirginiaCould I return less? That would be cool. I would love to return less. Since we started on resale, I’m going to ask the next question, which is:Corinne, any hot tips for getting started in resale?CorinneMy tip for selling stuff on Instagram is take good pictures. I feel like this is the thing that people really struggle with. Because you just want to take a picture of your wrinkled jeans that you just tried on and realized don’t fit anymore. But no one wants you buy those.VirginiaLike I just want to take a picture of this bag full of Andie Swimwear. CorinneAll folded up. VirginiaStuffed into the plastic sleeves. CorinneLike you took them off and they’re just still on the floor. VirginiaI can’t sell them that way? Okay.CorinneTake a good picture. It really helps. Either a flat lay or hanging it up. Natural daylight so you can see the color and if it has any stains or rips or whatever. VirginiaGood tips. CorinneAnd also provide measurements! Because as we just discussed, sizing is a load of shit.VirginiaOkay, the last clothing question is”I love both your personal styles. Would you mind sharing your styles / slash evolution? And do you have style icons?CorinneOne thing that has changed for me in the past couple of years is I no longer like wearing dresses. I don’t know why, but I don’t. VirginiaValid.CorinneAnd I’m always very inspired by clothes that feel functional, like have pockets or protect you from the elements or allow you to move and breathe and have inner organs.VirginiaThose are great qualities in clothes. CorinneI have so many style icons it’s hard to list them all, but I really like Lydia Okello and Matty Matheson. Do you know who that is? He’s a restaurant person. He recently started like a clothing line. He has very cool style, kind of like workwear-y stuff. I haven’t tried his clothes but I’m I’m always meaning to. This is kind of a basic one, but I really like Julie from Rudy Jude. I feel like she always looks cool. VirginiaWell sure, with the fisherman sweaters and the jeans. That is very your aesthetic.CorinneIf anyone finds those jeans in my size, let me know.One person I’ve really been liking recently on Instagram is @Marquimode. They’re a person in a bigger body and they do really cute little dances while they get dressed. Not my style, but just appreciate the whole attitude.VirginiaYou like the vibe.CorinneGeorgia O’Keefe.VirginiaAlso is very on brand for you. I feel like you’re someone with very clear style. I’m interested that you feel like it has changed.CorinneLiterally just yesterday I was like, I need to do Dacy’s course.VirginiaWell, I think we all could benefit from Dacy’s program. But I do feel like you have a very clear aesthetic. CorinneWell, thank you.VirginiaI mostly see your style on Instagram, maybe you’re curating.CorinneYes, it’s not the plain black sweater that I’m wearing right now.VirginiaI’m wearing an oversized grey sweatshirt dress that’s actually just pajamas. So thats my style today. Corinne I feel like you have a very distinctive style, as well.VirginiaThank you, I will credit Dacy for that. Working with her over the last year or so has really helped. She really helped me realize that as a kid and a teenager I really loved bright colors and kind of crazy clothes. Definitely Claudia Kishi vibes. And then once I became an adult, I sort of put it away. And then once I moved into a bigger body, even more put it away for a while. And some of that was even less about the size, although there was also like, “oh, now I have to learn how to shop for this body.” But also, I don’t know, like early motherhood. I just lost some of my mojo for it. I wasn’t going to do like heels and uncomfortable things like I did before kids. But I didn’t know what to replace it with for a long time. So there were a few dark years there of just being like, how do people wear clothes? What do we do? CorinneThat totally makes sense. VirginiaI feel like when I first started working with her, I was like, I have four Gap tee shirts and I wear them every day. CorinneThat’s so sad. VirginiaWe can improve your quality of life. Whatever. They’re still good tee shirts. CorinneNothing wrong with a tee shirt!VirginiaSo my style now is fairly tailored but with bright pops of color. I want to be someone who does the really brightly colored maxi dress and I almost always end up feeling like that’s too big of a moment. I like a smaller moment. I don’t mean that about size, I just mean I don’t want to be head-to-toe crazy colors. I like a balance of the neutrals and the crazy color. Style icons? I would say Emma Straub. She is not afraid of a crazy colorful moment and I love her so much for it. I am a recovering Audrey Hepburn person. My teenage years my aesthetic was definitely Audrey Hepburn. I feel like that fucked me up a lot.CorinneSo funny. I feel like that’s so different from the colorful stuff.VirginiaNot so much “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” I don’t know if you ever saw “Two for the Road.” “Two for the Road” is this really wonderful Audrey Hepburn Albert Finney movie. They take these road trips across Europe at different points in their marriage. So you see them falling in love, and then you see them hating each other. It’s amazing 60’s fashion the whole time. There’s like a lot of really great big oversized sunglasses and sequined mini dresses and much more color.I still kind of love that fashion. I love an oversized sunglasses moment. But that’s a real narrow ideal to hang your hat on. I had to unpack and separate the style from the body. But yeah, she was a really early formative influence. This is fun. I’m trying to think who else I love lately. My sister-in-law, Sara, who nobody here knows but she has really amazing style, is definitely one of my major influences.CorinneAnother big one for me for a long time, although I feel like I no longer see her but was Amintou Sow from Call Your Girlfriend.VirginiaLet’s do some miscellaneous questions.CorinneWhat do you make of people who think people are fat because of the food we eat, that big food is partnered with big pharma to keep us sick and medicated? I have a hard time processing this argument because I think there is some truth there. But I’m not sure. I also know at this point saying “just eat unprocessed foods” is a diet. But is it worth advocating for a better food system that makes it easier to get whole foods?VirginiaSo, yes. It is worth advocating for a better food system, not because it’s going to make us thin, but because our current food system is a travesty of human rights violations and taking a major toll on the environment. Those are both issues we should care about and work on improving.The giant failing of food activism is that they jumped on o*esity prevention or reduction instead of just being like, how about we care about human rights? CorinneRight. VirginiaHow about we care about the planet? Sure, let’s work on this stuff. Let’s not talk about that it’s making people fat. CorinneThey were like, “How can we get people to care about this? Oh, fat phobia.”VirginiaRight. “Let’s borrow some of that.”I think there likely is some connection between the way, on population levels, body sizes have increased in the last 40 years and the way that food supplies have changed. There probably is some relationship. However, it is not the entire explanation for those changes. Another explanation that we don’t talk about often enough, is that the last 40 years have also been the war on obesity and diet culture on steroids and people trying to lose weight constantly over and over and over. If you’re going to say that it’s what we’re eating, we have to at least give equal weight, if not more weight, to the fact that we also restrict and do crazy things with food. CorinneIt could also be how we’re eating or how we’re not eating.VirginiaExactly. Like, is it the ultra processed foods? Or is it everybody on Noom? Is it Weight Watchers? It’s not just that we have more processed foods, we also have this entire mindset towards food that’s very dysfunctional, thanks to the diet industry and public health initiatives. So whenever people are like, but what’s changed? I’m like, well, the diet industry has changed. It has gotten a lot more powerful. So that’s a big one. And it is just not productive to talk about this on an individual level at all. Because individually, why you eat fast food or ultra processed food is like, it’s your own damn choice, right? We have body autonomy. People can feed themselves how they want to feed themselves. There are all these larger, systemic reasons why people might gravitate more towards ultra processed foods that just making us feel bad about it doesn’t fix. And we know intentional weight loss doesn’t work. So it’s kind of a pointless conversation. Thats my rant. Did I miss anything?CorinneNo, I think that was really good rant. The answer is capitalism.VirginiaThe answer is capitalism. And advertising sucks. And, yeah, care about human rights and environmental issues. These are good things to care about. CorinneWhether people are fat or not. VirginiaAlright, I will read the next one.I am a thin young millennial woman and I teach sewing garment classes for adults. My students are primarily Boomer women of varying sizes. When making garments for themselves, there are usually fatphobic comments made about their bodies. How do I shift away from or actively discouraged body shaming and fat talk while not discounting their lived experiences that I don’t share. It’s also worth noting, I teach in sewing stores owned by Boomer women who share these beliefs, so I can’t exactly put up body positive neutral posters or something, as much as I’d like to. I don’t think these women have ever encountered the anti-fatphobic, body neutral/positive movements. I’d love responses to ‘I can’t make or wear that because x’ or ‘I need to lose weight.’CorinneOkay, I’m excited to talk about this because I feel like I have an answer. I have this answer because last weekend I went on that Unlikely Hikers hike and at the beginning Jenny just set a boundary that was we’re not going to talk negatively about our bodies. VirginiaThat’s so perfect. CorinneI feel like that is the perfect thing for you to do. Just start each class by saying, “here are the ground rules. One of my rules is we don’t talk negatively about our bodies.” I feel like that could really just set the tone and give them your perspective on it. You don’t have to be mean about it, but I think it’s so easy to set a boundary and let people know where you stand.VirginiaI absolutely love that. And I also think that the whole beauty of sewing garments is that you can make things custom to people’s bodies. So maybe rather than attacking their comments head on, just infusing more discussion of that into your class. Like, this is so great that any body can wear this.I remember my sister-in-law, Sara, telling me she had a jumpsuit made for her by a tailor one time. She was like, “I never thought I could wear a jumpsuit and it turns out it absolutely can. I just needed it adjusted to my body type.” And like, how liberating and powerful that was.So I feel like what you’re doing is so great because it’s actually giving these folks the opportunity to realize that they don’t need to be limited by “oh can’t wear X.” This is the this is the answer to petite plus from the earlier question. This is what will save you. And there are so many fat positive sewing communities out there. So if you’re not already following those folks, I bet a bunch of them will chime in in the comments because many listeners that are part of that. You’re really immersing yourself in that world and then you can bring some of that back into your classes with the Boomers.CorinneYeah, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this, but a few weeks ago, I sewed myself some underwear using a Muna and Broad pattern, and it’s amazing. I recommend it. Definitely follow them.VirginiaNumber one, we now need a whole other episode to discuss that. CorinneI can’t believe it hasn’t come up. Virginia It’s the next thing you’re writing about for Burnt Toast. We need to know everything. Alright, last question.CorinneI would love to hear your thoughts on being mistaken for pregnant or not pregnant.VirginiaBecause I have been both many, many times.CorinneMistaken for not pregnant? VirginiaWhen I was pregnant, I never looked pregnant enough.CorinneOh, I get it. I get it. Oh, that’s funny. VirginiaI was mistaken for pregnant constantly until I got pregnant and then people are always like, “really, you’re pregnant?” Because I was just fat and I didn’t look really pregnant. But here’s what I will say about mistaken for pregnant: It doesn’t happen to me anymore. Because now I’m just fat. It happens if you’re straight sized and carry your weight in your middle.CorinneOh, that’s so funny because I was like, I think there’s maybe one time when I was on public transportation and someone stood up for me. And I was like, do they think I’m pregnant? But that has never happened to me.VirginiaNo, it happens to apple shaped—I hate that term—but apple shaped, straight size women. Mid-sized queens, not to call this person a mid-size queen. This is the plight of the abnormally large ribcage.CorinneOh my god, so funny.VirginiaLook, and I want to be clear: It stressed me out a lot because it did happen to me quite a lot at a point in my life when I thought I was going to be dealing with infertility. That was not super fun. And it’s just invasive. It’s so invasive when someone comments on your body. And people have very weird and awkward reactions about it. It’s like a whole thing! I can link to things I’ve written about this issue. Anyone that it has happened to, has very strong feelings about it for a variety of reasons. But the bottom line is, you should react in whatever way you want to react. And if it makes the other person uncomfortable, then good. Because they said something invasive about your body. And that’s on them to sort out. So, I would often just say, “No, I’m not pregnant. I’m just fat,” and just leave it at that.CorinneWhat a nightmare.VirginiaBut then they’ll say, “No, you’re not fat!” And I’d be like, Yeah, I am. Its okay. Thats all it is. It’s just one of those super awkward things, but it can be really painful. Like if you’re dealing with infertility or...CorinneYeah, I would definitely not like to be asked that.VirginiaNo, it’s terrible. It’s terrible. And it’s equally terrible to be pregnant and be excited about it and have people say, like, “Oh, you don’t look pregnant,” like you feel really erased. So it’s a miserable one.CorinneJust a reminder, to all the listeners who don’t need to hear this, let’s never do this.VirginiaDon’t talk about people’s bodies. Always a good rule.ButterVirginiaShould we do butter?CorinneYeah. What’s your butter?VirginiaMy butter is I just rewatched “Thelma and Louise.” And it not only holds up, but it is better than I remember it being when I was 10 or whatever I was when I saw it. Have you ever seen it?CorinneYes. Yeah, I have seen it. And it is good.VirginiaGeena Davis and Susan Sarandon. They’re on a weekend away from her abusive husband and then they end up shooting a guy in a parking lot because he tries to rape Geena Davis, and then they go on the lam. There are many car chases and there are many terrible men and there’s Brad Pitt just like, not even trying to act, just like fell onto that movie set. But he’s there, young Brad Pitt.And talk about style icons! There’s some really great road trip style. Like 80s/90s/early 90s hair and jeans and whatnot. And I just cried so many times. It’s this beautiful story that totally centers their friendship and her escaping this terrible marriage and then when they drive off the cliff at the end. They kiss and drive off the cliff at the end it’s like it’s a really good—I was going to say comfort watch and then I was like, it’s pretty violent and does end in a blaze of glory. CorinneNostalgia watch, maybe?VirginiaIt’s a great watch. I watched it while doing a puzzle called Jane Austen’s Book Club and I think I reached peak Virginia that evening. I was the most me I’ve ever been.CorinneI mean, sounds amazing.VirginiaWhat about you?CorinneI want to recommend this documentary called “All That Breathes.” Have you watched it? VirginiaNo. CorinneIt’s a documentary about these brothers who lives in India and are trying to confront the fact that these birds called kites that live in Delhi are like falling out of the sky. So they create a kite rescue hospital. It’s just very beautiful. VirginiaIt sounds really moving. CorinneYeah, it’s cool. Kind of a slow, quiet movie. You probably need to pick the right day to watch it, but it’s good.VirginiaThanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast!CorinneIf you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free to your podcast player and leave us a rating or review. These really help folks find the show.---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon.They also have tops, it turns out!Some other brands that have Plus Petites: Lane Bryant, Catherines, Land’s End.

Today Virginia is chatting with Debra Benfield, RDN. Debra has helped hundreds of women heal their relationship with food eating in their bodies over her 35-year career as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist specializing in the prevention and treatment of disordered eating, and brings her passion, expertise, and lived experience to the intersection of pro-aging and body liberation work. Deb’s work is rooted in helping clients recognize internalized ageism and end it, dismantle internalized diet culture and fatphobia, nourish their bodies to support vitality and aging and develop a respectful partnership with their bodies. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. And don't forget to preorder! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. You can preorder 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. And! You can now preorder the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.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 LINKSFollow Deb @agingbodyliberation (Facebook)Deb's small group coaching that focuses on aging with vitality and body liberationgrappling with feelings about our aging bodiesThe Truth About Grandparentsthat Emma Thompson conversationAshton Applewhite's TED talkAgeism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End ItBreaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs about Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live How Not to Drown in a Glass of WaterCREDITSThe 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 independent anti-diet journalism.Episode 81 TranscriptDebSo, I turned 60 four years ago. And when that happened, I got curious about what the research was saying about aging and how to make choices to support myself. And I was hit very hard with things that I shouldn’t be surprised by, but I was surprised to see, like how loud and obnoxious the diet and wellness industry messages were in that entire pro-aging culture, not to mention the thin bodies. Since all that happened and my frustration with it, I’ve headed in a direction to provide and create something that I was looking for myself.VirginiaYou reached out to me about having this conversation after I’d written a little bit about grappling with feelings about our aging bodies. As I said in that piece, I’ll be 42 this year. So I’m fairly new to thinking about ageism in anything other than the abstract, but it is clearly time I start learning about it. So I’m eager to be doing this work. and I’m eager to talk with you about how it intersects with anti-fat bias. I think we should start with the ageism piece. What is ageism? How does it show up in the world? DebAgeism is having a preconceived notion or storyline or a prejudiced view of another person or your own self based on age or perception of age. The way it shows up in the world is complicated in that we have so many myths about aging. I have two grandchildren, one and three, that I read stories to and—you probably hear this all the time—you just want to edit, edit, edit. The stories about the old characters are just all atrocious. The parallels with the anti-fat bias are compelling and we can talk about that, but the myths about old people being unhappy and grumpy and rigid and having a closed mindset and not being interested in new things, or sex, or pleasure and being depressed and certainly being less capable and having a poor memory.VirginiaOn the many list of possible stereotypes, I think you’ve named the greatest hits.DebWhen it comes to how we see our bodies, I think we’ve all internalized that without question and hold anxiety for what our bodies and our experiences will be like as we age. I have many people that as I start to talk to them say, “Well, I’ve been thinking about this since I was 25,” or “I started thinking about Botox when I was in my 20s,” and “It’s happening earlier than I expected.” I think that’s more true now. I have a very wise, dear friend who is now talking to her teenagers about how they see aging, because it’s going to happen to everybody if we’re lucky.VirginiaExactly. It is the goal, to get to age. But I think you’re right. We render people invisible as they get older, especially women and other marginalized folks. And we know that in workplaces, ageism becomes a factor at age 35, for women, that’s when it starts. The pressure to start fighting your aging is happening well before you’re actually aging. DebIt feels really messed up. VirginiaSince you mentioned reading books to your grandchildren? Do you have the book The Truth About Grandparents? Is that in your collection?DebNo! I need to get that one. VirginiaIt’s by Elina Ellis and it is just a marvelous book. It’s like, “the truth about grandparents is they don’t like to have fun,” and the illustrations are the grandparents being silly and adventurous. “They don’t like to dance,” and they’re dancing, and they don’t care about romance and they’re kissing. It’s just a beautiful, positive depiction of how wonderful grandparents are. What I really love is the grandmother is fat. She’s just fat and doing yoga and doing all these great things.DebThank you for telling me about that. VirginiaNow let’s get into how you see ageism paralleling anti-fat bias. And if you think there are differences.DebOne of the things that I think is just—I grab my head every time it happens—is when I hear anti-aging activists talk about the phenomenon of ageism. Almost every single one says “this is the last unchallenged prejudice.” And that is because they aren’t as aware about the reality that anti-fat bias is also, and maybe more so. VirginiaI do think we in general need to get away from this whole “last bias” because I mean, there’s also ableism. There’s a little bit of hubris in the idea that you’ve identified the one last bias. DebAnd ableism is so mixed into this, too. Thank you so much for saying that because it’s definitely in there.The other thing I think is true is that we have medicalized both and created huge industry about addressing those naturally occurring phenomena. Biodiversity and aging are both normal and natural and they have become the object of industry, including medicine and pharmaceuticals. The more I read about anti-aging to familiarize myself with the bullshit, the more I see it’s just all the same mess that I’m accustomed to seeing with the anti-fat bias. There is an American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine.VirginiaWow. And how are they preventing aging? DebWell, they’re doing all the research. They’re doing all the research on dieting and also pharmaceuticals. And lots of stuff about our brains. VirginiaI just love that no one at that association has thought about the impossibility of that name for the group. Like anti-aging medicine. We literally can’t stop dying. DebYeah, well maybe you need to check them out because they are there to sell you on the fact that perhaps they can.VirginiaIt’s real. DebI’m also curious about the spectrum. We talk a lot about the spectrum of fatness and it’s the same when you talk to people about age. They have young-old, middle-old, and old. I’m not kidding! The same thing. I mean, I’m actually young-old, as a 64 year old. They start talking about being elderly when you’re 55.VirginiaElderly, but still young old.DebSenior—I mean, all the words. VirginiaWell, and again, it’s going to vary so much on your context, right? Like, what is elderly in Hollywood vs what is elderly in Michigan?Deb Yeah, or with pregnancy.VirginiaAnd what’s elderly for women is different than for men.DebSo true. And people have such strong reactions. I am not a fan of the word senior. But I am cool with elderhood. I’m way cool with being an elder. I’m cool with being old. I’m cool with that.VirginiaWhat is it about senior you don’t like?DebIt feels condescending. It feels like it just doesn’t apply. I mean, it’s nice if I’m getting a discount at the movie theater. Senior discount.VirginiaYeah. Take that discount. I agree, “elder” sounds wise. DebBut elderly…VirginiaThat’s more frail, fragile. There are different implications. That’s so interesting. I haven’t thought a lot about these words. DebAnd they’re probably different for different people.VirginiaI really bristle when you see a waiter in a restaurant talk to an older person and say, “Come along, young lady.” That is so condescending to me. DebElder speak.VirginiaIt’s a way of talking to elders and infantilizing them, right? DebI’ve had the experience already and it is not pleasant.VirginiaWhat did you say? Is there anything to say in the moment?DebI was shocked, since I’m a young old. No, it was like, damn, this just happened. She just called me sweetie. I mean, I knew what she was doing. And when I’ve told the story to my friends, they are like, “Oh, she was just being nice.”VirginiaLike gaslighting. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”Deb And when it comes to your experience in medicine, that’s another parallel. You are not considered a whole person after a certain age. There are many, many stories of not being looked at, not being spoken to, somebody looking at the other person with you. Or looking at your age first, and assuming that your age that is the issue. Like Ashton Applewhite, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her work, highly recommend her TED talk, she’s amazing. She talks about going into the doctor with a 64 year old body saying like, my knee hurts. And immediately the doctor talks about her age and she’s like, “but the other knee is the same age.”VirginiaI have two 64 year old knees. DebWhy is one fine?VirginiaI remember a conversation with my step-grandmother when she was probably 82 or 83, somewhere around there. For some reason, we were having like a family-wide discussion about how we felt about our ages, and we asked her, how do you feel about it? And she said, “It seems to be my primary characteristic now. It’s what I’m constantly reduced to.” And that was a real moment for me. It made me realize how much I was reducing her to her age. I thought of her as this frail old lady that we had to help in and out of the house, and take care of, because she was having mobility challenges. That was a moment for me to reckon with like, right, everyone in this room has reduced to your age in a way that’s really problematic.DebSo much loss. VirginiaI don’t know, I hope we did better after that, but we probably didn’t do enough.DebThe hope is that this movement that is starting to happen and is going to shift and change things for people, especially women as they approach this 50+ menopausal, postmenopausal reality. That’s my hope is that this conversation is going to get loud.VirginiaAs you’re talking to folks about their own experiences of aging and trying to shift to a pro-aging movement and a pro-aging conversation, how do you think about individual choices about things like Botox? Because I want to hold space for the fact that there are workplaces or contexts where a lot of this feels necessary as a survival strategy. And yet, we need to examine these choices and how we’re being complicit in perpetuating the bias. DebI think as a feminist, this has been an entire lifetime of curiosity about what I feel about augmentations and procedures and cosmetics and so many things. I try just to let women do what they need to do. I don’t know what else to do other than let women have their autonomy and make their choices. VirginiaIf we believe in body liberation, we have to believe in body liberation. DebIt’s not my first thought. I have to get to that, sometimes. I have to talk myself into that place.VirginiaYes, that makes sense.DebI can make some judgments real quick.VirginiaYes. I’m good at that, but I would like to be less good at it.DebYou do you. I understand it just like I understand people who want to be thin. This world makes it very hard to have a body—an aging body, a larger body. But my go-to is Sonya Renee Taylor’s work, that’s where I go. And understanding that the default body is real. It doesn’t feel safe or like you have any power or like you belong if you are in any way other than the default. To try to remember that and have compassion for people still wanting to pass as thin, pass as young, pass as whatever they need to pass to feel safer and like they have some power in their lives.VirginiaIt seems like there is still value in naming it for ourselves. Naming that I’m dying my gray hair because of X, Y, and Z reasons, even if you’re not making a different choice, even if it doesn’t feel safe to make a different choice, even if this is the choice you just really want to make. Like understanding the larger context feels really important. DebWomen who are talking about the going gray phenomenon, since COVID kind of accelerated that for a lot of people, talk a lot about how differently they’re treated. Same as when people lose weight, how differently they’re treated. It feels good to feel like you belong, it feels good to feel like you are relevant. And it can be frightening to feel like you’re no longer as relevant. So, it’s quite the process. And now we’re talking about why aging actually makes you more vulnerable to diet and wellness culture.VirginiaSay more about that.DebBecause of the fear of irrelevance, because of the fear of being frail, alone. For all of those stories that we carry about aging, all of the fear and anxiety that we carry about aging, it makes us feel somewhat protected from those things coming true if we hold onto thinness. Because every—and I mean every, please show me where I’m wrong—EVERY pro-aging account that I’ve been able to find holds up a thin, white, silver haired woman. Sometimes they’re brown or Black. Sometimes there is more diversity, but they’re thin. Really thin. And there’s something about bringing with that, that you’re still hip, you’re still relevant, you’re still vital, you’re still capable, that you’re at least thin. So there’s some interesting vulnerability that I think women as they age have, for falling into the trap.I talk to women all day and what they tell me is, I was doing well in my recovery or my intuitive eating. I was doing really well until the doctor said something or this health scare happened—breast cancer, something happened. And they start to associate losing weight, and sometimes they’re told losing weight will protect them from a recurrence or from an accelerated disease process. So there’s kind of a double whammy happening.VirginiaYeah, I’ve definitely heard from older women who’ve said something like, “Well, that’s fine when you’re under 50. But once you get over 50, the health issues mean that you have to eat this way. You have to follow these rules about eating.” They don’t feel included in conversations around intuitive eating or not dieting, because they believe that the health risks are more present for them.1 I think a lot of that has to do with the narrative they’re getting from doctors and health care providers about what aging means and and how weight needs to play into it.I’m also thinking about how when you’re talking about the pro-aging accounts featuring thin women, and I think fat folks experience ageism probably sooner in some ways. This sounds similar to the narrative I hear around moms feeling like they have to ‘get their body back’ because they can’t look like a fat mom. It’s like, you’ve given up some relevancy by becoming a mom, right? Even though you’ve obviously had sex to become a mom, you are somehow now not a sexual being, not desirable because you’re a mother. So you have to hold onto thinness because becoming a fat mom is like, sad. The mom bod thing is such a sad failure. The way we talk about mom jeans or mom hair, all of this is very ageist as well as very fatphobic at the same time.DebI haven’t thought about what happens when a woman becomes mom because it’s so true that there’s so much pressure. And that’s what I mean, same for as you age, there’s so much pressure to hold onto this identity, to be relevant and worthy based on thinness. VirginiaAnd sexually appealing. What you’re saying is that it is not impossible to age or be fat or be a mother and be worthy and sexually appealing and valuable. You’re saying these things are not mutually exclusive.DebNot at all. VirginiaOf course they aren’t. DebAnd I also just want to say, because I know there are there are folks that are not in the US, what I see in other countries is that there are. There’s much more biodiversity around the pro-aging conversation outside of this country. So I have seen it. I just haven’t seen it in the USA. And I don’t know what that’s about. What is that?VirginiaThe power of the dermatology lobby here? DebAnd Hollywood? VirginiaI mean, we’re in it deep. We’re in it deep for sure. DebWe’ve got things to learn. We’re adolescent in our learning.VirginiaAnother thing that you’ve hit on a little bit already is the reality that there is a lot of unchecked ageism in the fat activism community, and, as you mentioned, a lot of unchecked anti-fatness in the pro-aging community. What do you think this disconnect is about? DebI think that I have spoken to folks in the anti-fat bias community and have been well received. I have not been well received when I speak up the pro aging community.VirginiaOh, interesting. DebAnd I’m trying to figure out what that is there. I just think we have so much work to do around anti-fat bias. That’s my hunch: That anti-fat bias is just so deeply held and pushes up against the health conversation, the fear around the risk that I think is also so deeply biased. And people are seemingly not interested in looking at that more deeply. Whereas I think in the anti-fat bias community, I think they’re like, “Oh, yeah, thanks for letting me know.”VirginiaI’m glad to hear that’s been your experience. When we look at the way the body positivity conversation has centered young, thinner, white women, I do think there’s a celebration of youth that can be problematic in these spaces. Probably the number one question I get from readers is “How do I talk to my mother?” and the reader is a millennial and the mother is a Boomer. How do I get her to stop being so harmful about these issues?”So this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about: How do we have these intergenerational conversations and hold space for the harm that the Boomer mother has experienced, because that’s so many decades of anti-fat bias. But there also often is, coming from the millennials, a dismissiveness of that. And it’s coming from the fact that you’ve experienced harm from this person and the relationship is complicated. But it is also important to not just write off this generation, and think, “Well, they’re Boomers, they can’t get it,” you know? That “okay, Boomer” attitude is ageism and is really harmful. DebI have both experiences. I have mothers saying that they really want to help their daughters who are caught up in their own diet culture, their own way of feeding their grandchildren that they find problematic. I think it’s maybe less common, but I hear both mothers and daughters saying can I refer my my mom or my daughter? VirginiaSo that shows us —Not all Boomers, guys!DebWell, I’m a Boomer.VirginiaRight, right. DebI think a thread that we’ve started in these conversations is that this multigenerational conversation that needs to happen. And the frustration for me is that I got books to send. I got so many books to send, when it’s like, let me help you educate your daughter—like your upcoming book is on the list! But the other way, not so much. There’s this big need for this conversation. I do think grandparents feed a lot of kids, sometimes raise kids, sometimes do after school, kids on the weekends, and also make lots of comments around bodies. So it’s a very important conversation and the dismissiveness is not helping.VirginiaNo, it’s not fostering a dialogue. Deb It’s protective of the kid to include mom and grandparents and everybody at the table, literally. VirginiaI do think we should name the problem of white feminism showing up in these spaces. DebFor me, personally, as a kiddo that identified as a feminist like way back in the late 60s, early 70s, I was all in. And I noticed the white thinness. And I really noticed it, of course, the more I started doing this work. I felt like the body was being left out. I just felt like the body was being left out the conversation. So I think that’s carried through. Maybe the body is going to be included in the conversation now. I don’t know, in a different way with Roe v. Wade and body autonomy meaning so much right now, the body in general is a bigger part of the conversation again.VirginiaYeah, thanks for that, guys. DebCan’t believe it, but here we are. And that’s what I noticed is that it feels like it just got totally left out. VirginiaIn the charge for equal pay and women being able to build careers. That’s the version of white feminism we’re talking about—the lean in model, the girl boss model.DebWhich stayed really thin. And so power equals thinness. My clients talk a lot about feeling vulnerable when they feel soft. There’s a lot of vulnerability with feminine identity, with curves with flesh. That’s vulnerable, uncomfortable in the patriarchal world we live in.That’s what you get when you age. You get soft. You get soft and the push is to get in the grind and do your strength training and drop your carbs and get rid of the belly fat. That’s the conversation which is very much like post-mom, there’s a lot of parallel there.Virginia Absolutely. DebSo there’s a vulnerability that I think we need to keep talking about. I don’t know if it’s real or if it’s perceived, because of buying patriarchal stories.VirginiaIt feels very tied to what we were talking to before about relevancy and erasure and wanting to fight that.DebVery much.VirginiaAnd this is also just making me think about how much the conversation around menopause is not happening in the way it needs to. That’s another version of erasing older women’s experiences.DebYeah the a menopause conversation is really so simplified to what I just said: Do your strength training and really don’t eat carbs. It feels like it’s just those two issues over and over and over again. And that I challenge on the regular. It’s not nuanced. I personally am way postmenopausal, and I feel like it’s a powerful, exciting time of life.VirginiaThat’s awesome. DebA lot has dropped away that I feel like it was bubblegum on my shoe. Now there’s much more potential for me to have energy for other things. And I don’t hear people talking about that! It’s so fear-based. VirginiaWe’re not hearing about that. How do you feel like you have more energy? What’s changed? DebI think estrogen biologically orients us toward our family and caring for others. And the drop of that allows for you to shift your attention toward yourself in a way that our culture doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable with.I mean, you have to be willing to do that. It’s not going to fall in your lap. Because the culture is still going the other way. But I think it has huge potential for shifting your energy toward an exciting time. And, you know, Emma Thompson, I’m sure you saw that Emma Thompson conversation, which I adored, mostly.VirginiaSame.DebWhat if we stop wasting our time with that? I mean, it’s such a time suck, energy suck, life suck. We know that.VirginiaHere’s this opportunity, this stage of life, that can be something really exciting and different and new. And instead you’re buying into this narrative that’s like, how can you be exactly what you’ve always been? And how can you still be as small as possible? DebHow can you shrink and diminish your voice? How can you stay in line? And where I see people saying that, which is so frustrating to me, is the pro-aging folks. They’re all about like, “Women still want to feel sexy. Women still want to look a certain way.” So there’s still this emphasis on thinness.VirginiaThat’s not rejecting the premise. That’s not saying you can still be a sexual person who’s not thin. That’s just trying to hold on to this thing. That doesn’t feel pro-aging to me.DebRight but that’s what its called, if you look at the hashtag. VirginiaI’m just so grateful that you are pushing us and pushing this conversation because it just feels very maddening that you’re finding someone having the conversation and then realizing they’re having the same old conversation.DebAnd they’re not willing to engage. Very defensive. That’s where the white feminism parallel is—that fragility and defensiveness. Absolutely. “But I was just trying to do a good thing here.”VirginiaWell, to that, then, what can we be working for? What new conversations can we be pushing? How do we start to do this advocacy for a true pro-aging movement?DebThe potential for not buying into the loss of menopause. I mean, I don’t want to not acknowledge the loss. But there’s so much more. It feels like we’ve really focused in because there’s a lot to sell there. There are a lot of products and programs to sell, like same with addressing your hormone balance. Women are so many things and there’s potential for staying with your growth and your excitement and your dreams as a woman who is aging. I feel like that’s one of the most important things. That can look so many ways in so many kinds of bodies. Can we just please look at some diversity? That’s my number one issue. I want some diversity. Bring me some diversity in the bodies, all the things.VirginiaYeah, and as you’re saying that I’m realizing we’re talking a lot about menopause and we’re talking a lot about women and we need gender diversity here, too, right? We need examples of elder trans folks and elder non-binary folks. How are we seeing those body stories centered and celebrated here? That’s another piece. DebYes, that certainly needs to happen, too. VirginiaIt’s definitely an opportunity to do some reflection on where your aging biases show up and how it’s manifesting. And what comments and terms do we need to start challenging? I think that’s all really important work. I really appreciate you helping us start this conversation in Burnt Toast.DebCan I recommend a couple of books if people want to do that work?VirginiaPlease, yes! DebI’ve already mentioned Ashton Applewhite and her TED talk is a great starting place. Tracey Gendron has written a book called Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It which has zero fatphobia. Because I’m reading all of these with that lens intact—and I’ve thrown away a lot of books!VirginiaThis is a curated list.DebAnd Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs about Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live by Becca Levy. I don’t know if you’ve heard about her research, but she actually showed that your attitude around aging can alter your lifespan by seven and a half years. Her book and her research is mind blowingly important. It’s a bigger undertaking. So both of those books to me would be great places for people to go.ButterVirginiaWell in since we’ve gotten into recommendations, we can do butter which is our recommendation segment. Do you have any other recommendation you?DebI’m going to have a hard time limiting it! “Sort Of” on HBO is just—I love it so much. So tender, such a tender story line. I adored it. And Angie Cruz, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water.VirginiaOh, I have that in my to-read pile! I’m dying to get to it.DebI can’t stop. That’s how you know something’s so good. I feel like I am changed on a cellular level and I can’t get it out of my mind. Her voice is in my mind. Love, love that book. VirginiaWell, those are excellent recommendations.Related to books, my butter this week is in-person book clubs. If you’re in a place with your COVID caution that this is doable for you. I know it’s not for everyone. Zoom book clubs are also great, but I’m in two local book clubs at the moment and we had a meeting of one last week and I have a meeting of one tonight. And I’ve just been thinking about like how much this is something I’ve missed in the past few years is being able to have in depth conversations with folks about books that I love.The book club last week we read Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. I actually listened to the audiobook this time, which, talk about being changed on a cellular level. Listening to Kiese read that book is just—there’s an extra recommendation for you. If you haven’t done it, it’s a work of art. And the conversation my book club had was just so fulfilling and special.It’s a great way to connect with friends, to connect with new people. I’m just really feeling book clubs and the power of them right now. And I’m saying this not just because I’m an author with a book coming out that would be a great book club pick!I have another one that’s some local women, other mom friends—that’s the one I’m going to tonight. I’ve been excited all day because like we all get to leave our kids at home and come together and do this thing that we really love. It’s been really special. So, if you’re not in a book club, but you are a reader—I was sort of resistant to them for a while for reasons I can’t even remember because it’s just a wonderful opportunity for community DebCan I mention a book club story. I don’t know if you remember this, but when you wrote your first book, do you remember that you came to our book club virtually?VirginiaYes. That was like, pre-Zoom? I don’t know how we even did it?DebI don’t know, but you showed up. VirginiaThat was wonderful.DebI have a client who still says—we’re working on her eating—that when she’s having difficulty accessing hunger sensation, “I feel like Virginia’s baby.”VirginiaOh my gosh.DebI just wanted you to know that.VirginiaOh, wow. So Deb ran the Body Liberation Book Club. It was a great name for a book club and it was so much fun to come into. That was really cool. It’s just a great opportunity to connect with people. So, Deb, thank you so, so much! This has been a wonderful conversation. Please also tell listeners where they can follow you, what other stuff you have coming up that we should know about.DebOkay, my website is debrabenfield.com. Very straightforward and my socials are @agingbodyliberation (Facebook). I have a group coming up that I’ll do several times, but the next group is going to be the first week in April. That is small group coaching that focuses on aging with vitality and body liberation. We pull together how to navigate everything that we’ve been talking about today, how to dismantle your internalized ageism and diet culture myths and find your way toward your own healing process with practices to support them. And I’m in love with it.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much for being here! ---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. Just want to clarify that I understand health risks often are more present as we age, and don’t mean to downplay that. But intentional weight loss comes with a cost, isn’t sustainable, and rarely results in better health outcomes, at any age. 

It's our February Ask Us Anything episode! We're covering body autonomy for kids, 90s makeup icons, body feelings, and the dreaded business casual. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon.If you are not a paid subscriber, you'll only get the first chunk. To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to go paid.Also, don't forget to preorder Virginia's new book! Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture comes out April 25, 2023 from Henry Holt. Preorder your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books.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 LINKSClaire Lernerhow much we love breakfastUniversal Standard Ponte Pant11 HonoreElizabeth SuzannNooworksDraper James dressesStitch FixThe KitMindful ClosetYou Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful GirlfriendComfort Foodan awesome cookbookGlennon Doyle Indigo Girls episodeSonya Renee Taylor episodeBogs snow bootsCREDITSThe 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 independent anti-diet journalism.Episode 82 TranscriptVirginiaLast month, people were like, “tell us your favorite breakfast!” This month, people are like, “can we dive down deep in this rabbit hole?” We’ve got some very rich conversations to get into today. Do you want to read the first one? CorinneI do. Okay:My 4-year-old stepdaughter goes to a wonderful preschool that teaches her phrases like “I get to do what feels good in my body,” presumably in contexts like deciding how much to eat and which physical activities to participate in. However, at home, she deploys these phrases in basically every situation where we tell her no. “No you can’t put muffins in the hot oven,” is met with “it’s my body, I can choose.” When, “I know you want to wear your red dress, but it’s in the wash” set her off on a “but I get to do what feels good in my body” tirade, I tried explaining that getting to decide what feels good in one’s body is only for certain situations. But I totally failed at clarifying this to her satisfaction. Any advice?Signed, Associate Justice of the Preschool Supreme Court. VirginiaI love this kid so much. I’m also raising two of these kids. I just feel you because I have had this thrown back at me over toothbrushing. And oh my god, hair brushing! Don’t get me started on the nightmare that is hair brushing in my house.So I don’t know that I have really good advice because I feel like this is maybe just part of raising someone with body autonomy. Four is an age where they are going to push back. They’re going to start making these arguments. You kind of have to just roll with it, because it’s all part of them getting this autonomy.Obviously, I get that you didn’t want her to put the muffins in the hot oven and that you cannot take a wet dress out of a washing machine to be worn. These lines also get used over things like car seats or shots, where we have to do this for health and safety.But often, when my kids throw this at me, I try to take a moment and think, “How can I give them a little more control over the situation?” Sometimes I am trying too hard to control something. Is it the end of the world if they go to school with tangled hair? Probably not.It comes up a lot with seasonally appropriate dressing. This morning, I suggested that 27 degrees was a morning to wear a hat and mittens and maybe even legwarmers over your leggings to the bus stop. And one of my children felt strongly it was not that weather. But then we got out to the bus stop, she was very cold and very unhappy about it. While it was, of course, not the most fun little journey we went on, I was like well, body autonomy means you get to decide if you’re cold but it also means you can learn from the experience of being cold at the bus stop. Sometimes just giving up and letting them get it wrong can be really helpful. Because maybe they will make a different choice or maybe they will just be cold a lot of the time but that’s okay.What are your thoughts about this?CorinneIt just comes down to how much you want to argue, I guess? VirginiaWell, and there’s no winning an argument with a preschooler. CorinneOr how much time or energy you have to put into having a discussion about it. VirginiaI do think with something like the hot oven, or shots at the doctor, seatbelts—you can have a conversation where you say, “When your health and safety is at stake, grownups who love you make decisions about your body. You are in control of your body, but you’re also a kid and we take care of you. If you’re going to do something that’s dangerous, we have to stop you. But we will always look for as many opportunities for you to have control in that situation.”With the muffins in the hot oven, could she—even if you’re the one putting the tray in the oven—could she open and close the door for you? Can she preheat the oven and turn the light on and watch the timer and have some other ownership about the experience? With shots at the doctor’s office, they can pick which arm it goes in. They can pick if they want to sit on your lap or not. Claire Lerner, who is a child psychologist I really love, always talks about how you give them two great choices. So you have to do X, but under the umbrella of This Is Happening, you can choose a couple of things.” And I think that can can definitely help.Otherwise, just be really proud! You’re doing a great job and your kid is going to be awesome at life. This is the price we pay for encouraging them to be in charge of their own bodies. CorinneIt does seem like the benefit of teaching them about that probably outweighs the really annoying moments. Hopefully, in the long run. VirginiaI would love teeth brushing and hairbrushing to be less sources of strife in my life.I can read the next one:I noticed that when I see myself in a mirror outside my own home, in a public restroom or whatever, I look way fatter than I did at home—sometimes only 20 minutes earlier. Does this ever happen to you? And what do you think is going on? It can feel so upsetting to leave home feeling pretty okay with myself only to be floored by disappointment.CorinneI feel like sometimes at home, you’re more comfortable, and you have your mirror setup and you’re used to how you look. And then sometimes, if you’re out in public and you see your reflection, it’s like a weird angle that you don’t usually see or like, the wind is blowing.VirginiaYeah, you’re used to how you look in mirrors at home and mirrors out in the world—CorinneIt’s like a candid photo or something. You can’t control your angles. I can’t say this happens to me, but I can understand why it would be disturbing.VirginiaIt used to happen to me when I was in a more fraught relationship with my body, so I can relate to it. I can remember being in my 20s, living in New York, feeling good about my little outfit to go to my magazine job in the apartment, and then passing my reflection in the Starbucks window and being like, oh my god, this is not what I thought I was walking out of the house like.It’s something to take seriously because it does indicate that you are body checking more than is probably good for you or at least in a way that sounds distressing. So it’s definitely something, if you’re working with a therapist or you have people in your life who you know are good for talking through these kinds of things, definitely get support. It’s something to examine, I think.CorinneWould it be more helpful to try to avoid mirrors, avoid reflections, or to try to just accept that no matter how your reflection looks, you’re still yourself and who cares?VirginiaWell, you may have to do some avoiding while you work on getting to the accepting, right? It’s probably not an either or. When we all first were getting used to Zoom—and sometimes still—hiding your Zoom face felt important because staring at your zoom face all day long was just a whole new level of scrutiny. We did not evolve as humans to see our own faces. CorinneRight. And it’s hard to look away sometimes. I always just turn off my face on Zoom, because otherwise I will just stare at it. VirginiaYeah, I’m staring at myself right now because I haven’t done that. I mean, I’m looking at you, too. I go back and forth constantly. So I definitely think there’s some merit to minimizing opportunities for this.Maybe it’s also just taking a moment to notice that you’re doing that and that you don’t have to stay in that place. You don’t have to judge yourself for having that reaction. You can just be like, Oh, there I go again. When I see myself in a new mirror, I feel weird. Here we are. Then it’s a little more detached. It’s a little more like, fair enough. That’s how I respond, but I don’t have to let this define my day or whatever.CorinneAnd I think we’ve talked about this before, but it could be another moment of like, “Well, I have a lot of other great qualities. Might be looking fat and weird, but I’m still cool.”VirginiaRight. Looking the way you looked in your home mirror is not a requirement for the rest of your day. You don’t have to maintain that specific slice of how you look 24 hours a day. That’s not realistic. CorinneAnd you have other great qualities that aren’t reflected in the mirror. What are some easy coping mechanisms/self care? I have two littles and finding myself only able to use food to soothe when I’m feeling big feelings. I recovered from an eating disorder 10 years ago, but this pattern has come back in the afternoons when we’re all having a snack and I’m hungry and also just done being on for the day.VirginiaSo I want to just throw in the disclaimer that we are not eating disorder professionals. If you are concerned that this is feeling very reminiscent of eating disorder behaviors, definitely talk to a professional who can help you work that out.But what I will say is, I don’t think that using food to soothe at the end of a hard day with small children is at all a thing to feel bad about. It sounds like a pretty reasonable response to long days. CorinneAnd you also said you’re hungry. VirginiaRight, feeding yourself because you’re hungry and also tired and cranky. All good. CorinneI read this and I was like, “I think you need to be having a snack sooner!” It sounds like you’re getting to like a bad point. VirginiaRight. And did you eat lunch? Did you hear Corinne and me last month, talking about how much we love breakfast?CorinneAre you eating a huge breakfast?VirginiaWhich you don’t have to, if that’s not your thing. But I hear this from so many moms in particular, that it’s easy to not feed yourself enough during the day when you’re taking care of kids because you’re so busy with all of their demands.Dan is the worst at this! Dan’s breakfast every morning is whatever the kids have leftover. He’s eating scraps of Eggo waffles and then it’s like, why is he grumpy?CorinneDan! You deserve better.VirginiaAbsolutely. If your lunch was the crusts of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I am not surprised that at four o’clock you are starving and eating a lot of food. CorinneIt could also be the sort of like binge/restrict thing. Maybe if you’re feeling a little out of control, it’s because you’re like past the point of needing to eat, right? Like you waited too long and now it’s a desperate situation. VirginiaYou’re also soothing big feelings. And again, I just want to say, that’s valid. Food is a helpful tool for soothing big feelings. We can’t sit in big feelings all the time. Sometimes we need a little break and for something to feel good while we’re also feeling sad and annoyed with our children.If you feel like this is absolutely your only strategy for dealing with big feelings, that’s where like, you deserve more tools. This doesn’t have to be your only tool. You deserve support, you deserve conversations with people who love you who can hear how you’re feeling, you deserve a therapist. You deserve just other options. You deserve someone to take care of your kids so that you can get a break—whether that’s a partner or childcare or something.So I think, don’t worry so much about the food piece. Definitely eat when you’re hungry, probably eat earlier in the day and see how that helps. But like, if you’re struggling being a parent of two small children, you are not alone and you really deserve support on that.In terms of your question about what are some other easy coping mechanisms? I’m just trying to think what I do when I’m really done with a long day with my kids, and a lot of it is texting friends. I actually have multiple groups: my local mom friends, my far away mom friends, whoever I feel like I can most dump how obnoxious the day has been. Talking to my partner. Finding a way to get outside often really helps. Like, it’s so annoying that that’s true. But even if it’s like, I leave the kids inside and I go stand out in the garden for a few minutes. That really helps me.Putting your children on screen time is very helpful. My kids get their screen time in the hour before dinner on weekdays.CorinneThat’s so smart.VirginiaThey’re terrible at that hour. They are their least likable selves. And I adore my children, but we’re just all our worst selves. We’re hungry. We’re grumpy. The day has been long, you know? So they get their screen time and I put on music I want to hear or a podcast while I’m cooking dinner and just having that separation and feeling like zero guilt about it is a really good strategy. CorinneI definitely also thought, go outside. Sometimes taking a shower can be a quick mood change. VirginiaYes. Lock the bathroom door.CorinneMaybe my strategies aren’t super kid-friendly. VirginiaNo, no, it’s fine. You are allowed to lock the door against your children when you are going to shower or pee.This next question is semi-related, so I thought we could segue into it. This person writes:What are your thoughts on food rewards? If I’m having a hard day or achieve something big or small, my impulse is to buy myself a croissant from the fancy bakery about it. I worry sometimes that I’m setting myself up to only let myself get croissants when I’m experiencing heightened emotion of one kind or another, and that it is maybe bad to use food in this way and could become restrictive pretty fast if I’m not careful. But on the other hand, the fancy bakery is expensive and I’m a broke grad student, so it feels less likely that my view of croissants as a reward is only being impacted by diet culture. Any advice you guys have for negotiating this would be appreciated.CorinneI feel like it’s fine to use food as like a reward. It’s fine to have other types of rewards, too. If you want to do a little science experiment, see like how you feel. Do something else for a reward or just buy yourself a croissant for no reason and see if you’re feeling bad or weird about that. VirginiaYeah, that would be good data to collect. I also am like, a croissant sounds like a great thing to do when you need a reward!CorinneEspecially a kind of low budget. I definitely use going out or special lunch as a treat. VirginiaYeah, or like I baked cookies yesterday because I was in the middle of a hard story but also my kids had a snow day. And yeah, that’s using food as a reward. But also food is reward, right? CorinneHave you ever trained a dog?VirginiaThis is a feature, not a bug and it’s how we’re made. So I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it.I think what’s wrong with it is the way diet culture, demonizes it and tells you to feel like if you have the croissant, and then you feel like you can’t eat the next meal, or you have to somehow compensate with exercise. That’s the part I’m worried about. Not the croissant. Does it set up that restrictive pattern for you where you feel like you have to atone for having rewarded yourself? You deserve the reward, and then you deserve your next meal. You don’t have to do anything different with your life in response to that. CorinneIt sounds like they’re worried about only eating croissants when they have big feelings. VirginiaSo that’s certainly a reason to try just having croissants. Even if springing for the fancy bakery ones is not an option, maybe the frozen ones from the grocery store. Is there a budget croissant that could be your go to everyday croissant? And then you save the fancy ones? Because budget-wise, I get it. I’ve heard really good things about the Trader Joe’s chocolate filled croissants. CorinneOh yes, I’ve had those. You leave them out overnight to proof.VirginiaThey’re pretty magical. Maybe you could have some delightful croissant routine that’s just how you start Mondays or whatever. And see how that feels. CorinneOkay, this is a long one:I’m 38 and hair and makeup is getting weird for me. I noticed a pattern that when I’m in a season of feeling uncomfortable in my body, I highlight my naturally dark brown hair and really spend time on my makeup. When I’m feeling good in my body, I feel fine going au naturel. I’m trying to work this out. Over the years, makeup has become fun, creative artistry for me, but the genesis of it was me feeling ugly and out of place in the sixth grade and studying Kevyn Aucoin books to learn to make myself beautiful. And the hair—it feels like blonde highlights are somehow abandoning my true dark haired self. I guess I’m trying to figure out what it looks like to have a beauty routine for me somewhere in the middle. Diet culture Skipper is beauty culture, and I don’t want to feel like I have to morph into some version of a real housewife to feel okay about myself. There’s also another pressure to be as natural as possible and that the only way to be a true feminist is to reject all of it. That’s not me either! So I guess the question is, how do you find the middle? VirginiaOkay, so first, I have to know if the Kevyn Aucoin reference flashed to you back to ninth grade the way it did for me. CorinneI have no idea who Kevyn Aucoin is.VirginiaI need you to Google him immediately. We need to address this.CorinneKevyn Aucoin, photographer and author. In the 90’s he was wholly responsible for the quote sculpted look of many celebrities and top models, including Whitney Houston, Cher, Madonna, blah, blah, blah…He authored several industry defining books with makeup techniques, including facial contouring, which was relatively unknown.VirginiaAre you seeing the book covers? I want you to see the book cover.CorinneOh, the cover does look familiar to me now that I’m seeing it. VirginiaI mean, he very much transformed people. The book is all before and afters. This was before it was normal for makeup to give you new skin. Do you know what I mean? Like, he launched this whole idea that makeup should give you this like new baby skin.CorinneIt looks very Kardashian. VirginiaYes. He was like the early developer of that aesthetic. I mean, I’m not a makeup historian. I worked in a bookstore when his book was a bestseller, so I used to flip through it all the time and study the faces because there are just these mind blowing transformations. And I think it really fucked us up, so here we are. CorinneAre you now or have you ever been into makeup? VirginiaNo. I was fascinated by him in the same way I was fascinated by makeup stories in women’s magazines as a teenager. I would sort of study like how they did it, but I never really got into executing it myself.I have a really close friend who’s an incredible makeup artist and I see the artistry of it. Like it really is art. And also, it is in many cases—not necessarily the way she does it, but like in many cases—it is about transforming your face into this white, super thin, super contoured ideal that’s extremely racist and problematic. So there’s a lot of layers to make up. And I think enjoying the fun, creative artistry side of it is great but knowing that it starts in this kind of dark place for you is tricky. CorinneUsing it as a tool when you’re not feeling good about yourself. VirginiaYeah, and I think this is very common. I mean, I don’t do it with makeup, but I do it with my hair for sure. If you are aware of your general appearance not fitting into some set of standards and that standard will never be achievable to you, you do kind of look for like, well, what can I? You know, like, “where can I fit in?” can sometimes be a compensation strategy that is understandable and also complicated.So I can relate to a little bit of what she’s talking about. I’ve had phases in my life where it felt hard. I mean, I’ve never been a big makeup person, but I do also notice when I wear it, after a couple of weeks of wearing it regularly, I feel weird about how my face looks without it. And so then I don’t wear it for a while to get re-used to myself. I even noticed this with glasses. Now that I wear glasses all the time, when I do occasionally wear contacts I’m like, “who is she? What is my face doing?”CorinneThat’s really funny.VirginiaBecause I think glasses can be a little bit of a mask, as well. So I think you’re you’re noticing a lot of really useful things. We are all programmed to crave beauty in certain ways, because of toxic systems. And also, you are allowed to do with your face what you want. CorinneCan you distinguish between stuff that you’re doing because it makes you feel good and stuff that you’re doing because you feel bad about yourself? Or is that one and the same? VirginiaThat’s an interesting question. Is there stuff where you’re like, “this I could never leave the house without.” Like, “I can never leave the house without concealer.” That feels like something to examine, versus it is fun to put on pink lipstick CorinnePutting stuff on your face also can feel good. Are you enjoying the smells or the sense experience? Versus being like, “my face is puffy, I need to roll it with this stick!” VirginiaWhat is your narrative when you are making up your face? Are you in critical mode dissecting all your flaws? Or are you enjoying the process of going from A to B? That’s an interesting question to explore. I would say, if you haven’t already read The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino, it’s an incredible Substack. She basically does for the beauty industry what we do for diet culture and really interrogates a lot of this. I think her work may give you more touch points for where you want to go with exploring this.Man, Kevyn Aucoin.CorinneThanks for introducing me. I’ll be spending the next 10 years trying to contour my face. VirginiaOh, Lord. Let’s see.I’m starting a new job soon. It will be my first in-office job in over 10 years. I’ve long gotten rid of anything I used to wear to an office and had been living in yoga pants and sweats. Even if I still had my old clothes, my body is different. And in my 40s I’m solidly in plus size now. Usually 18/20 or 1x/2x. I’m relieved to see a lot of my old standbys: Banana Republic, J. Crew, Ann Taylor, Boden, etc, offering clothes in my current size and that’s where I’ll start. But I’m wondering if I’m sleeping on any newer brands! Would love any recommendations for office clothing. The dress code is my least favorite: business casual. So the mostly male staff can just live in khakis and polos every day like it’s a uniform, but for women, I think it’s challenging. It’s not jeans or yoga pants (sob) and it’s not full on dress pants and button up shirts. And I personally don’t want anything see through, cropped, lowcut or the like and there’s a lot of that around.Okay, well, so neither of us dress for an office. CorinneBut I have! And I do hate business casual. VirginiaYes. You’ve talked about your hatred of business casual. It is a terrible dress code.CorinneThe brand that popped into my mind right away was Universal Standard. Also, Eileen Fisher. Sorry, not sponsored.VirginiaWe’re so repetitive. Every episode! Yeah, but they are both great for size inclusive quality pieces. They kind of hit that dress code level that you’re looking for. The Universal Standard Ponte Pant. I mean, they are awesome. I own three pairs because there was a good sale. Let’s see, though. What other brands is she sleeping on? CorinneI would say on the lower budget side, like Target? We both have great stuff from Target. Old Navy. And then I feel like also you could also go in a super expensive direction, right? You could look at like 11 Honore which is very high end plus sized stuff.1Virginia I’ve never bought anything from them.CorinneOh my gosh, it’s very fancy. There are so many like smaller brands now. There’s Elizabeth Suzann… VirginiaA brand that I got a good dress and a good turtleneck from was The Kit. CorinneI’ve never even heard of that. VirginiaDacy of Mindful Closet turned me on to them. I will say I am wearing the 2x/3x so their size inclusivity is not awesome. And their return policy was annoying. I ended up paying too much for these items because I missed the return window on returning the other sizes. But they have really cool fabrics and really cool patterns, just unusual. I have this great striped turtleneck from them that I love with my ponte pants.So that’s a fun one. If you like bold prints, maybe Nooworks? They do a shirt dress that could definitely work, depending on like the vibe of your office. CorinneYeah. What about something like Stitch Fix? VirginiaOh, that’s a great idea. Doing Stitch Fix will introduce you to more new brands. They have some house brands that I think you don’t really get at these other places. Plus they rotate in other stuff. And similarly, I would say searching your size on Nordstrom or Zappos, or—this is another Dacy tip—Dillards. It can be surprisingly better than you expect it to be because all of those sites carry a huge mix of brands. So you’ll just find some different stuff as opposed to the same old, same old. Dacy has found me some really great stuff from all three of those places. And I would not have put in that work myself because they are kind of exhausting to search, but there’s good stuff. Draper James dresses, that’s another good one.All right, fun. Report back!CorinneLet us know what you ended up wearing.I am someone with a skinny body and I am not infrequently asked questions along the lines of “how do you stay so thin?” This is normally asked from people in larger bodies than me. Do you have any recommendations on how to answer in a way that challenges the anti-fatness inherent in this question? How can I be a good ally in this situation? I’m normally a bit taken aback and having a sentence or two to fall back on would be great. My own perspective is that I  live a lot like everyone else and genetics predispose me to have this body. I mean, the fact that my mom and sister can exchange clothes with me means something right? I’ve never actively tried anything for this frame but that answer does not feel right in the moment.VirginiaI mean, what I want you to say, but it’s probably not socially appropriate all the time is, “would you ask a fat person how do they stay so fat?” Like, call out the fatphobia of the question. Because it is a gross question. And what it is saying is, you have this ideal body the rest of us can’t achieve and you must inherently know something about achieving thinness that you need to tell us. And what we actually understand about weight is that it is mostly genetics—you’re exactly right. This is not something you did through lifestyle or sheer will or cleverness, so expecting you to have secrets is just steeped in diet culture, steeped in bias. And if there’s a way you can call that out, do it. CorinneI just also hate this question because what if the answer is, “I’m ill.”VirginiaIt’s an awful question. The flip side of it is you are saying you don’t diet and you just have these genetics. But there are lots of people who are in thin bodies who are not supposed to be in thin bodies.CorinneOr like, I have like digestive issues. VirginiaI’m depressed. Or, I’m getting divorced. Thanks for asking. CorinneYour instinct that this is a rude, weird question is spot on. VirginiaI wonder if it’s worth just setting a boundary and saying, “I don’t think that’s helpful to talk about,” or something like, “oh, bodies are the least interesting thing to talk about. Let’s talk about something else,” could be useful language in certain moments when it’s someone where you can’t really get into it.CorinneI think it’s also a situation where you could be like, “Why do you ask?” or try to turn it around, like let’s take a moment of reflection here on whether that’s an appropriate thing to say to a person. VirginiaI’m thinking of your strategy of “Oh, that’s so interesting.” That’s so interesting. An interesting question. You want to know how I stay so thin? That seems really important to you. Why is thinness so important to you?CorinneI also thought that the answer that the person sort of gave in the question was pretty good. “I’ve never tried anything,” right? “I think it’s just genetic. I share clothes with my mom and sister.” VirginiaMaybe a kinder way, depending on who’s asking, would be something like, “well, bodies come in all shapes and sizes and I really don’t know.” The other thing is you really don’t know why you have this body. None of us really know why we have the bodies we have. Isn’t it amazing how we all come in different shapes and sizes? That’s the answer I would give to a kid, I think. Maybe also an adult I liked, I guess, who is still crossing a line. It’s also valid to just be like, “I don’t want to talk about my body.”Corinne“I don’t find that question helpful.”VirginiaAlright, another clothing one.I’d love to hear you talk about dressing up for special occasions, especially when there’s photography involved bringing up body feelings, like family weddings, holiday parties, etc. The pressure around looking fancy and spending money on something new and being perceived beyond the day to day level.CorinneYeah, this is definitely bringing up the feelings. Where I’ve landed on this is that it’s just so much more important to me to be comfortable. I’m not going to wear anything, that I feel even slightly uncomfortable in. And if there’s a tiny twitch in the back of my mind that’s like, are these pants riding up? Or like, is this shirt too tight? I’m just not going to wear it. I’m going to find something else. VirginiaSame. I love prioritizing your comfort above all. That is really liberating. I think it’s useful to consider, are the feelings your feelings are the feelings of the people you’re going to be seeing? A friend of mine texted me recently because she was on her way to a family event and she had decided to wear something that she was comfortable and felt good in, but she was like, “What are the odds my mom says something about what I’m wearing?” And like, “and then how do I respond?” So if you’re worrying about someone else’s response to your body, that is such a them problem. That is not a you problem. I think the whole concept of dress codes has really indoctrinated us to believe that like the way we present our bodies in certain occasions is somehow a sign of respect or it’s offensive if you show up wearing the wrong thing. There’s still a part of me that can’t wear jeans to go see a Broadway play because I just hear my British grandmother being appalled. Like, I get it. But also those roles can be taken to such an extreme and you just don’t owe anyone else in the room your body. CorinneYeah. Definitely true. I was curious about the part where it says “especially when photography is involved,” and I know you’ve had some photographs taken.Virginia Yes. Doing author’s photos.CorinneDid you feel pressure to look fancy? VirginiaI mean, for sure. Not wedding fancy, but for sure. I mean, that’s a whole other thing, because it’s also a professional thing and it’s marketing and—oh boy. Yeah. Work with Dacy at Mindful Closet if you can. She’s a lifesaver. She makes the process really fun and helps you.CorinneDid she help you specifically with outfits for photos?VirginiaFor the author shoot, yes.CorinneShe’ll help people for special events?VirginiaShe has a special program where she kind of walks you through your whole closet and helps you figure out your personal style and that was like a super helpful experience. But for the author photoshoot or for the book tour, I’m hiring her more on like a one-off. Like, okay, let’s work on outfits just for this. It’s obviously privileged that I can afford to do that. Dacy is worth every penny, but it is a privilege to be able to hire someone to help like that. But I also recognize that this is where my lingering body stuff shows up, is in my feelings about what I’m going to wear to a thing. And having someone help me through that and who could really talk to me about what would feel good for me to wear and what did I not want, both comfort and aesthetics, it just took so much pressure off. It made me love everything that I wore in a way that if I had picked it out solely in my own little brain, there would have been so much more second guessing.CorinneInteresting. I went through this a little bit last summer with a big wedding I was going to and what I did was I bought and returned a shitload of stuff and took photos and just tried to decide based on how I felt and then how I thought the photos looked. And also, like, texted a lot of friends. If you don’t have the means to work with someone, I think there’s also a lot you can get out of just doing it yourself. Dacy also has super helpful TikToks.VirginiaI love the idea of putting together a little panel or a person or two where you’re like, you are going to help me through this process.The last tip I’ll give for this one is: If you have something you already own that you love, you can wear it to another event. I bought a dress that I absolutely loved for my sister’s wedding in 2021 from Tanya Taylor, which is very high end, but it was my sister’s wedding so I’m allowed to buy a fancy dress. And I love this dress! It fits me great. I had it tailored, it’s just perfect. And when we had a wedding to go to last summer, part of my brain immediately was like, “Oh, I need to dress for that wedding.” And then I was like, “What am I doing? I have an amazing dress that I spent a lot of money on that fits me great!” So I am going to wear that same dress to every wedding until my body changes or it falls apart. If you have an option, it does not matter that it got worn to one event. Even if there are some of the same people, it doesn’t matter. You can wear the same thing. I loved when Kate Baer went on her book tour and wore the same blazer to every book event. I think we need more of that energy. This is now your iconic look.CorinneI’m gonna ask this one.I’m curious about navigating anti-diet culture and fat acceptance with a partner. In this case, he’s male, I’m female, he still subscribes to a baseline of healthy eating and exercise so it is quite triggering for me. I’m in a small to medium fat body and in recovery from atypical anorexia and exercise disorder. I’ve been invested in anti-diet and fat acceptance for about six years now, but my husband, though encouraging of my mental stability and happiness, still eats less than me and has some generalized rules about when to eat and what to eat. For example, if you have pizza one night, you can’t have pasta the next night, and he does some form of exercise, stationary cycling, yoga, walks most days, I’m in the process of separating from the web of exercise that has plagued me for the last 20+ years. What that looks like for me is canceling all or most forms of regular exercise, even neighborhood walks, and letting the space settle before decide what if anything I would like to do in that arena. Basically, I’m just asking what your experience of navigating all this has been like, while being with a partner who has been with you before through and after the shift from diet obsessed to ditching diet mentality. What did / does this look like for you?And any tips you can share on keeping on with figuring out your way of doing things while they keep doing their thing?VirginiaOh, this is such a good question. First, I just want to say congratulations on being in recovery and doing this really, really hard work. And I love that you are giving yourself space from exercise and taking care of yourself. That’s amazing. I have a thing I want your husband to read. It is a piece that ran on Autostraddle. Do you know what I’m talking about? CorinneThe piece is called You Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful Girlfriend and the author is Heather Hogan.VirginiaI mean. Heather. Chef’s kiss! All of this. It’s perfection. So I want you to share this piece with your husband because Heather articulates so perfectly the ways in which one partner can harm another partner over this issue. Like the ways in which your husband may not realize or be reckoning with his own fat bias, his own stuff, and like how it’s showing up in your relationship and how unfair that is for you.Heather talks so well about how loving a person is something we do regardless of what’s happening with their body. If you can’t stand with your partner through body changes, how are you going to stand with them through real crises? Like health issues or job loss, depression, etc, you know? And it’s just a perfect piece for summing up what I want your husband to be doing for you, which it sounds like maybe he’s not quite there. And I don’t want to shame him for that. But you are doing this really hard work and it is valid to say to your partner, I need you to do some work, too.CorinneI don’t even know where we’re start. I feel like my experience is generally that it’s really hard to get people on board if they’re not. It’s not always possible to convince someone.VirginiaYeah, and it sounds like he’s got his own stuff, right? He’s got a lot of rules about what he eats. He’s pretty religious about his exercise habits.CorinneHave you had that conversation with him? Does he know that it’s actively upsetting for you?VirginiaHow much have you communicated this with him? And what responses are you getting? But I do think just generally being able to radically communicate where you are with this, what you need, and not feel bad about stating those needs. That kind of honesty is the only way through it, I think. Even if it may lead to some really hard conversations because he’s in a very different place than it sounds like you are. CorinneYeah. Do you have other places that you recommend that people start if they’re trying to get a partner on board?VirginiaThe fact that you have a diagnosis and you’re in recovery, it just says to me that this is so serious and he should be on board with your recovery. So maybe it’s a question of like, “I really appreciate how much you support this in the big picture, but in our day-to-day lives, there are ways that your behavior creates something I have to deal with.”If I knew that some daily routine of mine was causing harm to my partner, I would want to know, so I could assess whether I needed to maintain that routine. And most likely, if I love this partner and I’m supporting their recovery, I do not need to maintain that routine. But if that’s hard for me to give up, then that suggests that some stuff I have to look at because I would argue that your partner’s mental health is more important than you not eating pizza and pasta two nights in a row! It sounds like a tricky one.We’re sending you a lot of love. And I hope that this leads to some good conversations for you guys. CorinneOkay, I’m gonna read the last question.I miss Comfort Food so much and the awesome camaraderie that Amy and Virginia have. Will Amy be a guest on Burnt Toast anytime soon? So I’m trying not to take this one personally. VirginiaUm, I think Corinne and I have awesome camaraderie, you guys.CorinneI mean, I also like Amy/Virginia camaraderie.VirginiaThis was such a funny question to me. It’s one of those things where I forget that people don’t know that Amy and I talk every day. Y’all aren’t in those conversations. CorinnePeople just miss being in on your conversations.VirginiaI’m texting with her right now. What do you need to know? And she’s often in the comments! I mean, in last month’s Ask Us Anything, she was an accidental guest star with the tequila story.I don’t have her scheduled for an episode, I will get her scheduled for an episode. She has an awesome cookbook coming out in the fall, so I’ll definitely have her on so we can hear all about that. Amy, if you’re listening, we will sort that out. But Amy is pretty busy running the world, guys. CorinneShe has a really good Tiktok. VirginiaShe has an amazing Tiktok, she has an amazing Instagram, she has an amazing blog. She is just killing it at all of the stuff she is doing. I am so super proud of her. ButterVirginiaShould we do butter?CorinneYeah, let’s do butter.VirginiaWhat do you have?CorinneLet me start with a question. Do you know who Glennon Doyle is?VirginiaI mean, yes?CorinneOkay. Well I didn’t. Like, I’ve heard about her, but I was just like, she’s probably not for me.VirginiaI haven’t been a super regular listener of her podcast, but I have gotten pulled in when there’s been different guests, like her Indigo Girls episode. I was in tears.CorinneNow I’m going to interrupt you because my recommendation is her podcast. But specifically—and like I literally have only listened to three episodes—but someone recommended to me the episode where she has Sonya Renee Taylor on.Virginia I have that one downloaded! [Post-recording note from Viginia: And then I listened and was equally blown away and wrote this.]CorinneIt’s so good. I started listening and was like, “Whoa, backup, I need some background info.” And so I guess what happened—and I don’t know if you’re all up to date on this—is she has recently been diagnosed with anorexia. VirginiaYes. CorinneSo that’s the background. The Sonya Renee Taylor episode is amazing. And then they also just put out one that’s an update on her treatment and what’s happening. It’s also just really good. Everyone else already knows this, why am I talking about it?! She just has a really interesting way of talking about it. Specifically in the recent like recovery episode update, there was a part where she talks about going through her closet and realizing that basically all her clothes have been policing her body size because they’re tiny jeans and stuff that there’s not really room to expand in. That really blew my mind and has me thinking a lot about stuff. So anyways, I recommend Glennon Doyle that everyone already knows about. VirginiaI mean, she is brilliant. And I really give her a ton of credit for this new arc in this podcast now. Because I think it’s a conversation that like—God, it’s so hard to talk about your own recovery and just her willingness to be vulnerable. And it helps put into context some stuff she’s done in the past. Like, I think she’s just like doing a lot of reckoning with all of this in a way that’s super important. And yeah, the Sonya Renee Taylor episode, I literally have it downloaded to listen to while I’m cooking dinner and ignoring my children tonight.CorinneGood luck.VirginiaAnd if you’re an Indigo Girls fan, her interview with the Indigo Girls, you will sob throughout. Amy and Emily just talking about addiction and friendship and life and it’s just like the most beautiful conversation.Alright, my butter is my new snow boots. They are Bogs snow boots. This is a classic mom thing where you buy your kids the really nice thing and then you don’t buy yourself the nice thing. So I have bought the Bogs snow boots for my children for several years. They are a pricey brand of snow boot, but I have two girls. So whatever I buy the older one, we get multiple winters out of these things. And they are such well made snow boots. You can pull them on really easily. They’re totally waterproof and they’re comfy. They’re just great. I’m now telling every parent listening to this podcast something they already know about Bogs. But my butter is that I bought myself some after many seasons of just wearing the same crappy snow boots that weren’t comfortable and had laces. I hate shoes with laces. I don’t have time in my life for laces. And now I’m just the happiest when I’m taking the dog out or going out to the school bus in the morning. They’re gonna be great in the garden! I got olive green ones because they felt spring garden-y me, too. So I think I’ll be wearing them in like the muddy early spring garden days. CorinneThey’re very cute. VirginiaYep, they’re cute. They have like a flowery pattern. Some of the patterns are not great. You have to you have to vet carefully, but I like the pair I got. (I also got the shorter height, which is better for wide calves.)CorinneAre they comfortable for walking?VirginiaI haven’t taken them on a hike or a walk walk. They’re definitely comfortable walking around my yard. They feel like kind of memory foam-ish inside. You know what I mean? There’ll be fine for running errands. I just don’t know if you would want to hike in them. They’re great, though. So if you’ve been buying your kids something really nice, and it also comes in your size and would be useful to you, get it for yourself! Because you deserve that.Alright, Corinne, thank you so much. This was awesome. Just remind folks where they can find you.CorinneYou can find me on Instagram at @Selfiefay or at @selltradeplus.---The Burnt Toast podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at @v_solesmith. Our transcripts 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 MaxwellAnd Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and supporting independent anti-diet journalism! Note from Corinne: Apparently since the last time I checked the 11 Honore website, they have been acquired by Dia & Co and it looks very different! But Dia & Co is also a great place to look.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.It’s time for another community episode! As I said in our first community episode on anti-diet resolutions last month, this is a new format we’re experimenting with and I’m thinking of these as Friday Threads for your ears—a chance to hear each other’s stories and perspectives and learn from each other. This month, we’re tackling the new AAP guidelines for the treatment of pediatric ob*sity. This is a story I’ve been following for weeks now; I wrote about it for the NYT and then more extensively here on Burnt Toast, and have also been getting lots of media requests from other outlets. And it has been pretty fucking exhausting, to be honest—because it’s hard to be faced with this brick wall of anti-fatness from an organization we’re supposed to be able to trust, and because, as a semi public figure, it’s also a lot to then deal with the other brick wall of anti-fatness that comes from people on the internet when we talk about these issues. So I want to be clear: This episode is not interested in both sides. The conversation we’re having here today is intended to articulate the harm we are experiencing, as fat people, as parents, as humans concerned about the safety of other humans.I also want us to start brainstorming ways we can advocate for change, both on a broader scale, and in terms of our own interactions with healthcare providers. To that end, Corinne reached out to some expert voices we trust in fat advocacy and the eating disorder community, to give us some bird’s eye view perspective as well. Here’s Dr. Rachel Millner, an eating disorder therapist and fat activist, who previously visited the podcast to talk about the relationship between fatness and trauma. I really appreciate how Rachel roots the problem here in the wild power imbalance that exists between doctors and other medical authorities and fat patients: I think it's easy when we see a long document with lots of references and a list of authors who are physicians or in related fields to make the assumption that the document is complete and actually rooted in science. And that the document is including all of the available research and not just telling one side of the story. Unfortunately, with this document, they are only revealing some of the information and not all of it.One of the really obvious omissions is that they do not list in this document, the ways that the authors financially benefit from bariatric surgery, medications, and weight loss programs for children. They don't tell us. This document does not disclose the financial investment or benefit that these authors have.It also doesn't include all of the research. And a lot of the research they did include is really not adequate, not high quality research studies. I think there's probably a piece of them that know that a lot of people are not going to go through all of the references. But if you do go through the references, you see where they neglected to include so much important information. Corinne did a lot of work on the financial piece of this when we were first getting our arms around this story. Here’s a conversation we had about this back when my NYT piece first ran: Corinne: I looked into all of the authors of the paper and the main thing that stood out to me was everyone has a financial interest in weight loss surgery. Everyone works at or founded a clinic that does weight loss surgery. So, it's just very complicated. And that doesn’t count as something you have to declare.Virginia: Yeah, I think people don't understand that you can be an author on a paper saying that bariatric surgery is good and should be done more and you can make most of your livelihood as a surgeon who performs those surgeries. That is not seen as a conflict of interest, right? Because you are an expert in the field. And that feels really, really tricky.Corinne: You only have to change that a little bit to see the problem. Like, “I'm a plastic surgeon. I'm recommending everyone get plastic surgery.” That sounds like a conflict of interest.Virginia: Right, hammers find nails. And maybe it would be different if we had socialized healthcare and surgeons didn't make so much money from these procedures. If their financial gain was less concretely tied to their ability to sell their services, but doctors are selling consumer services, as well as saving lives or promoting health or whatever grander mission we ascribe to that profession. They are also in a consumer facing business and that is super complicating. And so in a perfect world, they are paid the same regardless of whether they perform the surgeries or don't perform the surgeries, which is sort of impossible to imagine. Or you would only have this research done by people who don't actively benefit directly from the things they're studying.Corinne: Right. And also, financials aside, if the point of the study is to determine whether or not kids should be having weight loss surgery, and you already believe that weight loss surgery is a good thing, you're coming into that very biased. It's not like we're just selecting 10 random people and asking them to consider the literature. These are all people that have already decided that weight loss surgery and weight loss drugs are a net good.I also appreciate that so many of the experts we reached out to were very willing and eager to name the potential for harm. Here’s Rachel again: I want to be clear that these recommendations will cause eating disorders. Usually I say things like contribute to eating disorders, because we know that eating disorders are complicated and there's probably a combination of factors that lead to the development of eating disorders. But I have no doubt that these guidelines will absolutely cause eating disorders.I've never met a fat adult who found a focus on their body size to be helpful. Not once. Every adult I've met who was a higher weight kid has named that focus on their body size, focus on weight loss, lead to shame, self hatred, a lifetime of dieting, a lifetime of harm, not ever feeling better, not ever, having more body satisfaction, not ever having more body trust, and the vast majority of time, not ever leading to a smaller body. So this idea that somehow supporting weight loss in kids is going to lead to them feeling better about themselves is just not accurate. It's just not true.And here’s Elizabeth Davenport, a dietitian who specializes in family feeding and eating disorder prevention, and the co-author of the SunnySide Up Nutrition blog and podcast: The Academy of Pediatrics guidelines are so awful that it's hard to even know where to start. So many kids are going to be harmed. Research shows that one of the biggest predictors developing an eating disorder is dieting, and these guidelines are telling physicians to tell kids in larger bodies to diet and to tell parents that that's what their kids need to do.I can't even count the number of clients I've seen in my career that have come into my office because a pediatrician made a comment about their weight. No child should be told that their body is wrong. And sadly, that's what the Academy of Pediatrics guidelines are doing: Telling kids their bodies are wrong.OK, we’ll hear more from the experts later, but now I want to get to your stories. As Elizabeth says, shameful comments from a healthcare provider can live rent-free in your head for decades, as Lia knows: It took me a really long time to realize that the damage done to my mental health in being ashamed of my weight and being afraid of going to doctors and feeling like I was failing at something because of my weight was much greater than any damage to my physical health that may have come from my weight. And this is obviously before doctors were told that they could prescribe weight loss surgery or weight loss drugs.I also really appreciated that my dear friend Amy Palanjian, who regular listeners know well from previous podcast episodes, reached out to talk about what these guidelines mean for her as an eating disorder survivor and as an influencer trying to make ethical content on Kid Food Instagram: It's taken me a while to even be able to acknowledge the guidelines because it's felt like a personal attack. I was a straight size kid on the edge of being in a larger body and wound up with a 15 year eating disorder because by the time I was 12, I was deemed too big, and also too slow, by adults around me. I don't remember my doctor being in that group, but I can't imagine how much worse it would have been had she been.I feel like my family, some of whom are in larger bodies, are being personally attacked now and targeted with this. I cannot understand how “experts” can lay out the research and explain how weight loss pursuits don't work, and then double down on it as the solution. I also don't understand how it can be offered as a solution if it's not actually accessible or affordable to the majority of the families.I worry about how this will potentially be monetized by influencers online.I worry about how much harder this will make feeding kids in general.And I don't know how to feel about all the other AAP guidelines I have long quoted as I feel like they are now not a very reliable source of information. I clearly have a lot of feelings about this.Amy isn’t the only parent wondering whether we can trust the AAP guidance in general now. I think the AAP has done a lot of good, but I think this is a fair question. Here are Ellen and Katie:  On top of all of the concerns and outrage that I have, that so many of us have, I find myself wondering how I'm supposed to still consider the AAP a voice of reason and trust.This isn't the first time I've questioned their guidance. For example, I think they recommend that you keep an infant in the room with its parents for up to a year, is what they recommend. With my son, we lasted eight weeks before we moved him into his nursery, and it saved my mental health.So I'm familiar with going against the grain when it comes to the AAP’s recommendations. But there's something about these recommendations that just absolutely reeks of profit seeking, of ignorance disguised as empathy, of seeming to care about our children, while actively refusing to acknowledge the mountains of evidence around eating disorders, and anti-fat bias, and all of the harm that those things can cause at any age.I think if we've learned anything, during the pandemic, we've learned about the precariousness of science in our culture, and the fragility of trusted medical voices. We don't need more medical institutions to be this out of touch with reality because it runs the risk of more people abandoning science, of ignoring actual sound recommendations that do exist. Parenting is hard enough.  It just makes me sad and my eyes are watering now just thinking about it all. I am sad for the little girl that I was, and the harmful impact that these guidelines would have had on me in a world that was already so critical, and so quick to want me to change my body. And I'm really sad for my own kids. Now as a mom, for whom I've done so much work on myself to be a better more supportive parent. And all the work that I've done just to support them differently than I was. And it feels like all that work I've done is for naught. If these external influences, including people with quote authority, are so contrary and loud.So my two kids are under four. And I have navigated a global pandemic, a formula shortage, infant and child pain reliever shortage, and more. And each event causes me to lose trust in these institutions that I thought were supposed to work for and with me as a parent and not against me, and I feel like now I'm adding the AAP to that list of institutions that have lost my trust.Lots of you have told us how these guidelines make taking your child to the doctor feel unsafe. Here are Kate and Sarah with their stories: As a parent of three children, two daughters and a son, I am increasingly concerned about taking my kids to the doctor in this environment.As an adult, I refuse to look at the weight when I’m at the doctor, I refuse to let them talk to me about my weight when I'm at the doctor. I have a history of eating disorders and exercise addiction and I can't have a scale in my house. So going to the doctor is a fraught experience for me.I hate that they weigh my children when they go to the doctor. And at my last appointment, I went to with my teenager and my 11 year old. My teenager wanted to meet with the doctor by herself to talk about her periods and stuff like that, she didn't want her little sister in the room. And afterwards, she was really kind of upset about the appointment. And she said that the doctor talked to her about her BMI. I was absolutely horrified. I'm now having to decide whether I talk to the doctor about it or if I switch doctors again. I am really nervous about taking my kids to the doctor right now. And I think that's really sad as a parent. When they were little it was a it was kind of a joyous experience getting into check in on how they're doing, how is their health, and now I look at it as kind of a hostile situation.I worry all the time that one of my daughter's earliest memories might be a doctor telling her that she is overweight, too big, too fat. From the very first well visits that I took her on as a baby, as an infant, we were told that she was abnormally large, too large, too big. I was asked, as her mother, what was I feeding her. I was told that my answers weren't sufficient. I saw in her medical charts that the doctors didn't necessarily believe me or my husband. We tried alternating who was taking her to see if we would get a different reaction out of the doctors. We went through three doctors, three pediatricians. And they referred us to multiple different specialists, nutritionists, endocrinologists, and we had many sleepless nights worrying, was there something wrong with our child? Our only child, our first child. Every specialist that we finally got in with laughed at us. Kindly, they said, “Why have you brought me a fat baby? There is nothing wrong with this child. I have other patients to see. Thank you so much for coming in.”The irony is that all this time, my daughter had a very serious rare condition that was being completely overlooked. She had a skin condition that was keeping her up nights. She eventually went on to develop asthma. And I believe that the doctors focusing so much on her weight caused them to completely disregard what I was telling them was a problem. The only recommendations the doctors were giving me were to take her to specialists to reconsider how much I was feeding her. I'm still getting over how traumatizing the experience was as a new mom who was suffering from postpartum anxiety. And here’s Oona Hanson, an amazing parent educator and eating disorder recovery advocate who I learn so much from: I can't stop thinking about the toll these medications and weight loss surgeries will have on children in terms of their GI system. Knowing the side effects of these interventions, all I can think about is the emotional and physical torment more kids will endure in ways that will have an immeasurable impact on their self image, their relationships, and their ability to learn. This cruelty disguised as health care is appalling. It's one example of the way prioritizing shrinking a child's body temporarily seems to matter more to this committee than the child's actual health and wellbeing.I'm also thinking about all the kids out there whose parents aren't listening to this podcast or reading this newsletter, who simply don't know to resist a doctor's recommendation, or who have doubts, but don't feel safe questioning the authority of a medical professional. These new guidelines will disproportionately harm the most vulnerable kids, kids of color, kids with fat parents, kids living in poverty, kids whose parents are immigrants, and so many other marginalized identities.What really boggles my mind is that the doctor's office already wasn't a safe place for kids in terms of attitudes toward bodies food and exercise. Comments from the doctor are already one of the most common eating disorder origin stories. This happened to my own kid, and it's happened to so many other families that I've worked with. These comments from the doctor aren't just part of the catalyst for the eating disorder. They help fuel the eating disorder and complicate recovery. These kids come back to the refrain again and again, “but the doctor said this is what I needed to do to be healthy.”For parents worrying about how to navigate these appointments, Rachel Millner has some good advice: You can say no on behalf of your child. I believe that children should also be asked and given the opportunity to consent to things that will happen to their body, but they are going to be powerless in this situation, they're going to feel pressure to say yes. And so parents and caregivers need to be able to step in and say no, you do not have any obligation to adhere to what's recommended in these guidelines. And remember that you’re actually making the “healthy” choice to push back like this. These guidelines aren’t about health, because intentional weight loss has never really been about health. Here’s Calvin’s story: I think for me, as someone who's, I don't know, medium fat person, large fat, specifically a Black man, living at the intersection of several marginalized, historically oppressed identities. And also someone who's dieted in the past and had several iterations of sizes over my adult life, and navigating my own relationship with my body, and diet culture and really, also engaging with the medical community pretty frequently as a disabled person— It's pretty triggering to see recommendations like bariatric surgery as young as 12 years old.It brought up for me a recent visit to a bariatric surgeon. I was contemplating the gastric balloon procedure, and have since decided that I don't want to do that. The doctor told me in the visit that I wasn't a good candidate for the balloon, because the ideal candidate is a woman who's going to get married who wants to lose maybe 30 pounds for the wedding. It was just all very toxic and triggering and it made me very upset.To think that children as young as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old now are going to potentially have to face medical professionals and people who they are trusting to give them sound advice, to engage with this type of dialogue. It's really upsetting.It’s upsetting because we’re letting capitalism and diet culture interrupt the trust that should be fundamental to a child’s relationship with their healthcare provider. And that’s both dangerous to kids and ignores so many larger issues.Here’s Anna Lutz, RD, the other half of Sunnyside Up Nutrition and a dietitian who specializes in family feeding and eating disorders in North Carolina: I think about what it does to a child to be told that there's something wrong with their body solely based on their weight and what that does to a parent to hear that they are failing as a parent, solely based on their child's weight.This interferes with the feeding relationship, because a parent would feel like they need to possibly restrict their child's eating.This interferes with the doctor patient relationship.This interferes with the doctor parent relationship.And all of this causes weight stigma, which we know has significant mental and emotional and physical repercussions. The guidelines recommend very intense restrictive food and exercise intervention. We know that diets don't work, they even say it in the paper that that doctor should expect weight regain. We know that that weight cycling, that losing weight and gaining weight, has significant health repercussions. And it sets up the child to go to the next recommendation, medications and bariatric surgery. These have severe side effects, but also sets up children to develop eating disorders.These guidelines once again focus on individuals, putting the blame on individuals and recommending interventions that will actually cause harm and make our children less healthy.And here’s Rachel again: These guidelines move kids away from getting to be kids. The side effects the focus on weight loss, going to appointments, getting the message that there's something wrong with them over and over again, is going to mean missing school, missing parties, missing time for playdates and connection.Part of what's so scary is that these documents they're using the guidelines are using language that makes you believe they are trying to decrease stigma. But you can't decrease stigma while suggesting stigmatizing interventions. It's just not possible.OK, I want to end with two recordings that really moved me. The first is from someone named Sarah who used to work for the AAP and has many thoughts about what these guidelines will do, and how they represent a huge departure both from where the AAP has been on this issue historically, and what the evidence shows kids actually need. I am a clinical social worker, although I'm not currently practicing, with a focus on public health and community based resources. I used to work for the AAP, both the National Organization of the AAP and then I was at the Illinois chapter of the AAP for a number of years. When I was at the Illinois chapter, I was actually the Senior Program Manager for child obesity prevention initiatives. This was back in 2012. What my responsibility was when I was there was trying to develop a programming and education for healthcare providers to provide more culturally competent and responsive care when talking with families who had kiddos who supposedly meet the overweight or obese definition.I've learned a lot in those 11 years since I was there, I would approach things wildly differently if I knew then what I know now. But that being said: Even what we were hoping to do 10 years ago was leading us in the complete opposite direction of what these current guidelines are now recommending, which is so incredibly frustrating because it feels like we are taking 20 steps backwards. And it's heartbreaking for a lot of reasons.These are not culturally responsive guidelines. They are really unrealistic guidelines. All of the data and the evidence that we presented when we were working on these programs 10 years ago, indicated that the BMI should not be the indicator or the benchmark that we are measuring people's health against.There needs to be systemic changes to access to food, access to safe outdoor spaces. Reliable basic income, affordable housing, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. But when you are looking and working with families who have all of these additional stressors in their life, and if you totally take out the cultural piece of it, working intensively with a nutritionist and a health care provider to help their kids maybe lose a pound or two is not a priority. And it's going to continue to create an unwillingness for families to continue to engage with their medical home or their primary care provider for any sort of issues, which is certainly not what we want to be doing. The healthcare infrastructure that we have right now is not set up to accommodate families who need extensive healthcare resources. My recommendation was for healthcare providers to shift the way that they are assessing and looking at a child's health because as we know weight is not the only indicator of health and I feel like this recommendation just shuts the door on that completely. Yeah, it's super heartbreaking. I can't imagine walking my two year old into a healthcare environment and having a doctor or a nurse tell me that my two year old needs intensive weight management. That's gross.So it is great to hear that there are folks in the trenches actively critiquing these guidelines and advocating for a different approach. If you are a healthcare provider working on this, I would love to hear from you and I would love to know how the Burnt Toast community can support your advocacy. And last, I want us to hear from Naomi, who has both been there and is now fighting hard for a better way: As a human being who grew up in a fat body and who started going to weight loss camps when I was 14, and when I think about the damage that five summers of weight loss camp between the ages of 14 and 22 did to me, and that I'm still unraveling at 40 years old. When I went to weight loss camp at 14, I was so excited about it. I knew that my life would be so different and better if I was thinner because I understood thin privilege, even though I didn't have a word for it. I understood that I would be treated better, that I would get more of what I want in this world, in a thinner body. I just wish that the adults in my life knew better, to give me the kind of support that I really needed, rather than try to help me change my body so that I would be protected from bullying.In my capacity as an educator and a curriculum writer, I'm working with the nonprofit organization The Body Positive to write curriculum for kindergarten through eighth graders, based on the five competencies of the Be Body Positive model.I'm in this amazing bubble, doing this work as I think about the possibilities that exist If if we're able to get this into the schools, to help kids stay connected to their wisdom, to help kids see and understand the messages that they get, where they come from, and why and how to resist them, to help kids to see and embrace and celebrate the diversity of humanity, and body size and race and disability in every way that we're different. Rather than to see it as something that's threatening or see it as something that's wrong. It's so amazing to get to work on this every day. hearing about the guidelines that came out. I just can't believe what a weird world it is that we live in where some people think this is truly the answer, to modify children's bodies, versus helping them live full beautiful, complex lives in an imperfect world. Naomi is right. It is such a weird world. But I’m glad to be fighting for the better way with all of you. Thank you to everyone who sent in recording—I’m sorry we couldn’t include every single one! And I hope you’ll keep talking and keep advocating about this.Thanks so much for listening today. ---The Burnt Toast podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at @v_solesmith. Our transcripts 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 MaxwellAnd Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and supporting independent anti-diet journalism! 

I'm teaching this class and it's kind of a joke, because you can do whatever you want. Like, you're here. I'm giving you a guideline to what I'm doing. This is how I'm rolling on the floor today, this is how it looks when I do it. It doesn't have to look the same when you do it.You're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.Today I'm chatting with Lauren Leavell! Lauren is a trainer and fitness instructor based in Philadelphia, and the creator of Leavell Up Fitness a body positive and weight-inclusive fitness network that makes working out accessible and fun.I am a big fan of Lauren's work. I have been doing her barre and strength training classes for the last few months. To be clear: I pay for her classes, I am delighted to support her work. This isn't sponsored content. I just really love Lauren's approach to exercise and movement. And I wanted her to come chat with us a bit about that philosophy and her experiences navigating fitness culture and finding such a new, and frankly revolutionary, way through it. So here's Lauren!Episode 80 TranscriptLaurenMy name is Lauren Leavell. I am a Black woman. I use she/her pronouns. And I'm located in the city of Philadelphia. I was born and raised in LA but moved to Philadelphia for love. And I am a fitness instructor.I consider myself a weight neutral fitness instructor, meaning the goals and the language that I use is not around weight loss and bodies and aesthetics. I really am not too worried about what people are doing when they're not with me, because they're only with me for pretty much 45 minutes every time they see me. And I really focus on joyful movement and connectedness to your body.VirginiaFor everyone listening: I am a Lauren super fan. I've been doing her barre classes for a few months now. So this is a big thrill for me to get to hang out with you for a little bit! I'm just going to fangirl for a moment and say I have done a lot of other barre classes and it is very hard to find—particularly with barre, but in every fitness arena—a class where there is not something I have to be like “I didn’t want to hear you say that.” To realize this is a safe space and there's none of that and it's just not part of what we're here to do is such a relief. I just really want to thank you for doing that.How did you get into this and what makes you determined to do it in this different way that you're doing it?LaurenYeah, you are so welcome! I tend to attract people who are just like me, obviously. You get this theme going with the people that you have come into my membership or into my social media, that they're interested in what I'm interested in. So it's become a really good group. I really appreciate the people who are in there.I started working out at 19—I just turned 31, so that's a little math problem there. I started for the reasons that a lot of 19-year-old women, in particular, start working out. And I was not an athletic child. I might have been. I came from a family, a long line of non-athletic people.VirginiaI relate to this deeply.LaurenIt was never a thing. Like, we weren't sports people. We weren't athletic people. My family, their forms of movement are cleaning and gardening. That's their jam. And that's real! Like, that is legitimate, but they just weren't into anything else. So the children were also not into anything else.But yeah, I started working out and I kind of fell in love with movement, separate from the unhealthy and disordered other things that I was doing. So those two things really never tainted each other. I was like, “Oh, I love going to the gym. Even though I'm doing all this other stuff that probably is very unhealthy for me, this still feels fun. I feel really connected to this.”When I started to recover and started to realize that I didn't want to live that way anymore, I never was one of those people who was like, I have to stop exercising. I was like, no, I actually still really, really, really enjoy this. And this is really something that I love. And I think that it can be done without the pressure and the standards and the goals that I was using on myself. There's got to be another way.So I started doing that and then I went to a barre class. It totally kicked my butt. And then I was like, what is barre? And I started digging and I was like, “Oh this doesn't look like me at all.” And I took that as a challenge. So I decided to get certified because I was like, there's gotta be people out here who want to take this class, who wouldn't feel comfortable if they didn't have an instructor who maybe didn't look like them? Or did not use that language—“toning” and “lengthening” and “shredding” and all the other things. I didn't want to do that.I was like, what if people just want to come here and have fun and get their butts kicked like I did? And so that's where it started. And then I got certified as a personal trainer, and I have a corrective exercise certification under that which really just was a little bit more in depth on how to help folks who are coming off of injuries or any other thing, which is really important to me to try to make things as accessible as possible in a group fitness class, which is kind of an oxymoron. But like we're doing, we're doing our best over here to make as many accommodations and I'm fully aware that not everyone is going to find something every class that clicks with them.VirginiaI'm interested in separating your love of moving your body from the diet culture/disordered piece of it. There are so many layers to that, right?I'm someone who also grew up very un-athletic, in a fairly un-athletic family, and just didn't think of myself as someone who enjoyed movement, period. So then I got into it in a really diet-y way. I've been on this process of, do I even like it? Can I like it now that I'm not doing it in this other context? I'm just so interested that you were able to hold onto what you did love about it and strip away the other stuff. I think that's a really tricky process for a lot of us. I'd love to hear a little more about what made you realize this part of it is good for me, even though this other stuff doesn't serve me. LaurenI do hear that all the time. I have a lot of folks who are in membership who are like, this is like my first try into into movement again after I set it down for a while, after I had an injury.VirginiaBecause that’s really necessary sometimes. Like, really necessary. LaurenOh, totally. I don't want to gloss over that as a step for many people. And I have many, many, many close friends for whom that was their step. They were just like, “peace, see you never, exercise!” For me, I don't know if it was the feel good endorphins, I don't know if it was a thing that made me feel super independent and super connected—I didn't feel like I grew up having a good communication with my body. I felt like everybody else's outside input and communication about my body was the narrative around my body. And when I was exercising, I felt like that didn't matter. Because they weren't the ones picking up the weights. They weren't the ones walking on the treadmill. They weren't the ones doing all those things. It was really a form of independence for me, and reconnection, which is what I try to stress to people when they're moving with me.I'm teaching this class and it's kind of a joke because you can do whatever you want. You're here, I'm giving you a guideline to what I'm doing. This is how I'm rolling on the floor today. This is how it looks when I do it. It doesn't have to look the same when you do it. Because I want people to feel 45 minutes of connectedness with their body or 45 minutes of trust in who they are.And I think that's really the thread that kept me in it: I feel like myself doing this and I feel independent, I feel strong. And I feel like I can make those decisions, which a lot of times in a lot of different areas of our life, we don't maybe feel like we can do that.So I think that that's what held me to this. I had to change. I changed the form of exercise that I was doing. I went from working out alone in a gym doing really, really intense workouts to doing barre. And barre is really intense, but it was in a group and it was somebody else was leading it. So I got to just do that and connect with my body and connect with those moves. But I changed the setting and changed the scene and it allowed me to evolve into a new space where I was like okay, yeah, I could do this, too.VirginiaI love the idea of movement as a means to achieving body independence. That's really powerful. It takes it out of the traditional framework so completely that you were able to find that. We should also say, just for folks listening: I always want to put out there that you don't have to find movement enjoyable. That's not a moral obligation. There's a lot of movement I don't find enjoyable. And there may be other paths to feeling independent and in control of your body. But it's awesome that movement can be one of those paths for people.LaurenAnd I acknowledge that there is just so much ableism and, honestly, every other -ism in fitness, that it's not for everybody. I know fitness and exercise can be really scary and really triggering things to talk about. And I'm here to stand in that space and be like, it’s okay. We could do other things. It can look different.VirginiaWell, that really comes through in how you talk about modifications. You present them as these morally neutral options. You always say something like, “maybe you're here, maybe you're here,” like you're showing us the different options. That's one of those things that I hadn't even realized other instructors I've worked with did differently until I heard you doing it. It's not “do you need to take it slower today?” or “can you challenge yourself to do the harder version?” and presenting the harder version as more advanced or as the ideal to shoot for. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you think about that piece of it.LaurenI think that I do still want to present a challenge in these options that I give to people because that's where you're going to explore your own comfort zone. It's never that you have to do it. I don't know what you find challenging. I don't know what you find comfortable. So here are three or four things that you could do. And you could find three out of four of them to be completely for you, and one of them to be like I'm never ever ever going to do this in my life, or vice versa. So you have that one thing that you connect with. There are things that have been told to me that are supposed to be either very easy or very difficult and I just don't feel that way about them in general. Maybe I'm able to do that pretty easily without a lot of practice. So when you feel that way, maybe there really isn't anything to separating these into difficult and easy. VirginiaRight, because that might look different for everyone.LaurenRight. Why can I do this and I've never done this before? It's clearly a very individual thing. So I think that allowing people to choose their own adventure is super important. Because when I'm like, '“I'm really sweating,” or “I'm feeling this here,” I may have an intention for you to feel moves in your arms. But some people will be like, “my ankles are feeling this.” And I'm like, “That’s not necessarily wrong! We are standing. You're standing and using your ankles, so it's not wrong to feel that way.”I think presenting options and allowing people the space to be like, if you've been doing it here, maybe you try doing it here. What would happen if you just did it here for two seconds and we'll see what happens. And they're like, No, I didn't like it. Okay, now go back to doing the other way.VirginiaI love the curiosity and the openness to exploration as opposed to feeling like you're a failure because you didn't do it in this one certain way. It's a really good reframing.LaurenYeah. It allows you to evolve day to day, which I think is the other thing that we don't often talk about. Just because you're able to do, I don't know, a handstand or a headstand today, doesn't mean—We're not doing those in my membership. Please don't think that we're doing those. But just because you're able to do that today, doesn't mean you're gonna be able to do that tomorrow. Just because you're able to forward fold and touch your toes today, doesn't mean you're gonna be able to do that tomorrow. There's so many things that come up day to day that change how you feel about movement that having those options is less judgmental than just being like, “Yesterday I did this. Why can’t I do it today?”VirginiaI've had a complicated relationship in my life with ab work because: diet culture, and I think abs are a place a lot of us have all of that come up.One upshot of that is that I just didn't do ab work for years and years. When I started to get out of my disordered relationship with exercise, that was one I really had to put down and walk away from. The downside of that was that my back got pretty messed up because I also had two children during that time and put my back and my core through quite a lot. And that's something that your classes have been really helpful to me and physical therapy. I've been, really this whole past year, on this kind of journey of trying to figure out how to reclaim core work in a non-diet way and I would just love to hear your thoughts about how you think about core work in particular, but also any other type of exercise that you see being really coopted by diet culture and framed as about aesthetics. How do we think about reclaiming these things? LaurenI think that you just told the story of reclaiming it, because you said, “I put it down and my back felt some type of way.”I think that there's so much in traditional training where they're like, “don't use these technical terms and don't overcomplicate your classes by telling them too much about what they're doing.” And actually, I want to tell them everything about they are what they're doing. They want you to use this flowery language and then people don't understand the importance of it.When I talk about core work, I want people to know that when you're feeling things in your core and when you're activating your core, you can help preserve your low back. I want them to know that when they're working their glutes, it's not about aesthetics, it's also about your low back. When you're working your lats, it's also about your low back. So, we have so many of these common aches and pains and things that really just go with lifestyle and aging and all of those things. We don't realize that if we took the aesthetic part out of these exercises and explained them to people as, “This is the thing that could help with your knee pain. It's not about growing the biggest booty, it's about those muscles actually firing and moving your body.”hat is my reframe, it's actually getting into it and being like, no, this is real. This can help your pelvic floor. We don't talk about pelvic floors a ton. Well, now they're getting popular, pelvic floors.VirginiaThey are having a moment. LaurenYeah, and it's good because there's so many different things going on down there! Again, very unique, very individual, but learning things that maybe you personally are doing while you're in a class, you're not going to learn that if I'm just telling you about your aesthetic “summer tummy.” You're not going to learn how to engage your core if we're just talking about how it looks. We're going to talk about how it feels and we're going to talk about why it feels that way. And we're going to talk about what we're hoping to get from it.So I think that education is how I'm reclaiming a lot of those co-opted things. Squats are what everybody is prescribed for growing their booty, which I would like to say is not universal. It's not going to be a universal thing that you're going to do squats and your glutes are going to grow. VirginiaIts like doing crunches doesn't give everyone a six pack. The myth of the six pack and visible abs period.LaurenYeah, squats to glutes ratio is definitely not my ministry. But we're still doing it. I'm not going to give up on doing a move because it's not producing the aesthetics that I've been promised. Because that's not why I'm doing the move. I'm doing the move to continue moving or to feel better through my low back, to feel stronger through my core, to be able to pick up heavier things.When I reframe things that way, it's definitely personal. So many of these reframes, so many of these cues come from things that I say to myself or I need to hear. And I try to communicate that to people. Taking deep breaths and learning how to relax your pelvic floor—why would I hide that from people? That's super valuable information.VirginiaWhat so often happens is, you pursue a really aggressive workout program, it doesn't give you the results you expect because as you said, squat to glute ratio is not the same for everybody. So you stop doing it because it's not giving you that body. And then you're missing out on the whole other world of what it could be.I would love there to be a way that isn't low back pain for people to get to this place sooner. You know what I mean? I would have loved if I'd figured this out before I had to go through all of that. But here we are! That's my journey. But this is why I think a lot about how do we change the conversation around movement with kids and with teenagers, you know? 19-year-old me and 19-year-old you needed a different message about all of this. Lauren19-year-old me was definitely not of as aware of the value of these things, but I think nerdiness saved me from a lot of a lot of the dangers and a lot of the silliness that comes with trendy fitness. I'm very much into Tiktok and someone posted yesterday like, “there are so many fitness trends going on.” It's like they're surprised, but these have been going on forever! They were just in magazines instead of on Tiktok. They're like, wow, it changes all the time. And I'm like, yeah, it changes all the time. So you’ve got to find something solid, you got to find something real that works for you in the moment and stick with it.If it's working for you, even if it's not an aesthetic change, if you're feeling it in your body, like you're feeling stronger or you're feeling more relaxed—I have a lot of people who have told me that they felt more relaxed after taking my class. And like, this is a very intense class where we're doing tiny, tiny pulses, but they feel more relaxed because they were able to connect and move through it. There's so many other valuable benefits to finding a movement practice that you enjoy.VirginiaWhat Tiktok fitness trend are you most annoyed by right now?LaurenI'm always really annoyed by super athletic people doing these combinations that are definitely Ninja Warrior style. Like, you should be on a show doing this and not framing it as normal. I am constantly amazed by human variations, I love to see people excel doing the things that they love and moving their bodies in that way and whatnot. And I'm like, please stop framing this as a thing that people should be doing at the gym because if I walked in on the first day and that is the image that I had in my head that I'm working towards, I'm literally going to break something, guaranteed. And I think that that is just super, super dangerous.I have, on the positive side, seen so many people breaking down movements more than maybe they would have in the past. And then someone asks a question and then they explain it. Even if the explanation is still not the nicest, I think slowly pulling these things apart and getting a little bit more in depth helps people learn that you're not going to walk in on day one and it's not going to look like that. I think that kind of trend, like they just did like a squat and then a flip. I'm 31 years old and I can tell you, I have no intention of ever doing a flip in my life. Like, it's just over for me. It's not on my list.VirginiaI really want to avoid traumatic brain injury.LaurenJust wouldn't be for me. You can have goals and you can have people that you look at, I follow people all the time where I'm just like, oh my gosh. One of my favorite people to follow who has been a lifelong athlete the other day posted an outtake of them falling. And I fall. I’ve fallen recently. But they posted this very, very, very real outtake of them falling and it showed how they abandoned the weights when they fell, it showed the way that they fell. And even the way that this person falls is proof of how long they've been doing this, the work that they do.VirginiaI mean, I'm 41 and I fell in my driveway last January and sprained my ankle and, again, was in physical therapy for months. I have now crossed over to the stage of life where falling is a very different thing than it is when you're a kid or even in your 20s and you're like whatever, I can just bounce and get right back up. Now falling is a whole lifestyle change I have to deal with.LaurenYou're like, “I'm gonna wait for my neighbors to come pick me up.” I've seen this, again on social media that someone was like, “if I fall, just know that I'm in the place in my life where even if it was very minor, I'm literally waiting for you to call EMS. Like, I'm not getting up off the ground. I'm not chancing anything right now.” That feels so real.But I also think that falling has become part of my teaching criteria. I recently have been on a kick about how to get off the floor and how I like people to practice getting off the floor at the end of class in a way that feels supportive for them or feels real for them. Because that's a real thing! You probably won't be planking just for shits and giggles when you're like hanging out. But you might be on the floor and you might need to get up. VirginiaThat's another thing that starts to shift as you get a little older. When I'm on the floor with my kids or whatever, and then I'm like, Oh, wait, getting up now is a—Laurena process. VirginiaI appreciate the notes, is what I'm saying. They're useful notes that I am taking on board. And again, it just is a way of reframing movement as this thing that supports your life, as this thing that supports you doing what you want to do and being in connection with your body. I mean, I'm sure the guy who does the flip also gets up and down off the floor very easily. And that's great. I can achieve the getting up off the floor easily without having to get to the place where I can do a flip. LaurenWe're here for the long time, not the good time of the single flip that I caught on camera before they took me to hospital. I think that being real with movement and actually applying it. Like you said that about about how do we move away from the aesthetics. Getting off the floor? Picking something up? I know that people in my membership, because they're like me, I know you move furniture. And I know you move furniture heavier than the weights that you lift in my class. How are you going to move this furniture in a way that you don't injure yourself?VirginiaYou mentioned gardening at the beginning. I'm a big gardener. And as I was recovering from all these injuries this year, I was like, “How am I going to move this bag of mulch around my yard? How am I going to move this heavy planter and not throw my back out?” That really helped me with the reframing process. I don't want to have to stop doing this hobby that I really love that involves a lot of wheelbarrows and schlepping of things. I don't want to have to do it in an annoying way where I'm always asking my husband to move the heavy thing for me. I want to just be able to move the thing. That's been a helpful piece of it, to connect it more to what do I actually want my body to be able to do right now.ButterLaurenYeah, what is buttering my toast right now? I'm really just leaning into coziness, so all things cozy are what is doing it for me. Also literal butter because ‘tis the season for cookies and baked goods, which goes under the cozy umbrella. So, this fuzzy sweater, actual butter, being warm, slightly hibernating is what's buttering my toast right now.VirginiaSlightly hibernating is perfect.Mine is a little specific, but it is having a friend who will both enable and talk you out of stress-related shopping. I manage a lot of my anxiety through retail therapy. I'm very much I'm very prone to the I can solve this problem with a purchase, which is sometimes true and 90 percent of the time not true.I just want to shout out to my friend Sara Petersen who received about 47 texts from me comparing multiple different pairs of sneakers and what sneakers did I need for this trip, and arch support versus aesthetics, the comfy sneakers versus the cute sneakers.LaurenThey’re never both.VirginiaThey’re never both! Why cant they be both? I really wanted to find the unicorn of sneakers that was both going to go with like every outfit I’m packing and have adequate arch support. And she finally said to me, “Virginia, you own one pair of very cute sneakers and you own one pair of your comfortable sneakers and you don't need to keep shopping.” And it was what I needed to hear, even though it was a tough love moment for her, but she was right. So thank you, Sara.LaurenLove that for you. Maybe that's the future of my entrepreneurship, creating shoes that are both aesthetically pleasing and have a wide enough toe box and arch support and don't have a neon thing on there. Like, why is it neon? VirginiaTotally. The test is, do they look cute with a dress? Even if you're not a dress person, I just feel like that's the cute test. And a lot of the comfortable ones were not passing that test for me. It was a whole rabbit hole I was down, but I'm out of it. I'm not buying new shoes. I'm standing strong. Feels good.Lauren, thank you again. This was fantastic. Why don't you tell listeners where we can follow you and how can we support your work?LaurenAbsolutely. I can be followed at Lauren Leavell Fitness on Instagram and on Tiktok it’s Lauren Leavell fit. Or you can join my membership. It's month-to-month, you get four classes live and you get all the recordings and you get a little space to roll on the floor with me. That's at Leavell Up Fitness. You can just find me through social media and ask me questions, but I would love to have you to experiment and roll around with me.VirginiaIt's so much fun, I can confirm! Thank you. ---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti-diet journalism.

I just want to push people to be more specific about: Which culture? Whose culture? Because that wasn’t my culture. You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.Today I am chatting with Dominic Bradley.Raised in the crunk-era "Dirty South," Dominic Cinnamon Bradley is a Brooklyn-based Black disabled queer visual artist, writer, and performer. In 2021 they were a RiseOut Activist-in-Residence fellow focusing on creating resources and conversation about mental health on behalf of BIPOC LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers.Dominic is also a freelance sensitivity and authenticity reader who has worked with various publishing houses —and I was incredibly lucky to have Dominic as the sensitivity reader for Fat Talk. Sensitivity reads are a somewhat new, and very important, part of the book publishing process. So I thought it would be really interesting to have a conversation about what a sensitivity reader does and what it adds to the book—and also have you all get to know Dominic a little bit more, because they are amazing.I’ll also take a minute to remind you to preorder Fat Talk if you haven’t already!You can preorder your signed copy from my favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!1). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books.And! You can now preorder the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible. (I’m recording this at the end of the month, so more on that process soon!)I wrote last fall about why preorders are so crucial, but let’s review:Publishers use preorders to decide how much to invest in a book in terms of its marketing and publicity. This directly corresponds to the amount of media buzz a book generates (think NPR interviews, TV appearances, and prestigious book reviews—all of which contribute in their own way to preorders and sales once the book is out). Retailers use preorders (and that related media buzz) to gauge how many copies of the book to stock in stores, and whether or not to display the book prominently in the window, on the new arrivals table, etc. Amazon and other online retailers use preorders to decide how hard to push a book on their homepage or new release lists. All of this also drives future sales, because people who see the book while book shopping, are much more likely to buy it than people who cannot see it. And: It’s pretty rare to make a bestseller list without strong preorders. That’s because preorders all count towards your first week of sales—and that’s when most authors make a list. Preorder FAT TALK!I hope this conversation with Dominic makes you feel even better about supporting the book that Burnt Toast built. We are almost exactly three months away from pub date, so there is a lot more book talk to come (about events and giveaways and some great newsletter-only perks and behind-the-scenes access!). Thank you for being down for this piece of things. It means so so much to share this process with you all.Episode 79 TranscriptDominicI am based in Brooklyn. I’m a visual artist, a writer, sometimes performer. And I also happen to do freelance work for publishing houses in regards to what’s known as sensitivity reads or authenticity reads.VirginiaDo you have a preferred term, sensitivity or authenticity?DominicI use them interchangeably.VirginiaWhat got you into doing sensitivity reads in the first place? I’m curious to hear the backstory.DominicPurely by accident. It was happenstance, really. There was an author who was not connected to a publishing house that I read for. Then there was an editorial firm that I read for and gradually I started to get deeper and deeper into it, until I ended up in a binder full of sensitivity readers. I was in several databases. That’s really how it happened.VirginiaWhich is so odd to think about, but yup, that makes sense. There are these binders full of people. Well, you really have a gift for it. Your notes were incredibly helpful on Fat Talk. You and I were connected by the folks at my publisher, Henry Holt. You just completed a sensitivity reading of Fat Talk. It was really important to me to have a sensitivity read on this book for a lot of reasons. I did have to nudge the publisher a little, but they were very open to it. It’s an increasingly standard part of their process. But I was like, “We’re doing this, right?” And they were like, “Yes, yes, we’ll do it.” So why don’t we start by having you explain what is the sensitivity or authenticity read and what’s the purpose?DominicThe purpose of a sensitivity read or an authenticity read is to have someone with fresh eyes look at an author’s manuscript. And we’re looking for specific things. Let’s say that the author has a main character, or even a secondary character, that they’ve written that is outside of their own lived experience. They want feedback on making sure that those characters are as three dimensional as possible and that’s where I come in as a reader.VirginiaI can see for fiction this being so valuable to help flesh out characters and give the really true context of their lives in that way. And what about nonfiction?DominicI think that nonfiction can be approached much the same way. But in nonfiction, you’re not really assessing a character per se. What you’re assessing is, are these facts full-bodied? Are you getting the entire picture? Are there other things to know about this event, this place, this person, that the author may not have been clued into, because the author, again, does not have the lived experience?VirginiaWhat are some of the challenges of doing this work?DominicOne challenge of doing the work is you’re very likely to encounter something that’s going to upset you. I think the other challenge would be trying to give feedback that propels the author forward, rather than “I don’t like this,” or “you should take this out,” or “this is bad.”VirginiaYes. “This is bad” is always a hard note to receive.DominicYes. So, attempting to go beyond that. For example, there was one manuscript where darkness had become synonymous with evil. So, just pointing out, “I’ve seen you do this a lot and you’re falling into this trope which has already been widely discussed and you may want to rethink how you approach that.”VirginiaYes. Do you think it was a, for lack of a better term, a blind spot of that writer, that they hadn’t put that together? Is that what you often find, authors are just not aware that they need to be sensitive to this? Or are there times where their bias is leading, so to speak?DominicYou know, it’s hard to speculate about that sometimes. In most cases, I would say, it’s lack of awareness, rather than someone leading with their biases, just because all of these things are baked into our society. It is pretty much the path of least resistance. I think that authors find themselves relying on these stereotypes and tropes sometimes without even being fully conscious of what they’re doing.VirginiaAnd it is uncomfortable to have your biases named, but we’re never going to make progress if we can’t sit in that discomfort and learn from it and really deal with how it’s coming out. You mentioned another challenge is the toll it can take on you, that you may read something that’s triggering or upsetting to you. Do you have any strategies for how you navigate that? How do you take care of yourself?DominicSometimes the way that I might be triggered by an author’s manuscript is not immediately obvious. Sometimes it’s very subtle. I pay attention to what I’m feeling. And sometimes it’s just a passage that I read it, and I’m like, something doesn’t feel right with this. I read it over. I sit with it to try to see if I can articulate what it is specifically that is troubling and that has turned out to be a good exercise.VirginiaThat makes sense. Both in terms of helping you identify what feedback you want to give to the author about why it’s troubling, but also for your own process around it. DominicYes. VirginiaThis potential for harm to ourselves is a tricky piece of this work. I mean, Fat Talk, as you know, is a book about anti-fat bias, which meant in the research of the book, I was often interviewing people who held really significant anti-fat bias. And as a fat person, it’s not fun to have those conversations but it felt like such an important part of doing the work. So I can relate a little bit to what you’re talking about there in terms of like, how do you protect yourself. When the work needs to happen.One comment from you that struck me early on, when I got the manuscript back, and was first sitting down to look at the notes—the comment that right off the bat, I was, like, “oh, this is going to be very useful” was, I think, in the introduction. I’d written something like, “our culture teaches us that the ideal body is thin,” and you just wrote, “Do you mean white culture?”And I was like, Oh. Yes. This is what I need. I’m not realizing I need to specify which culture I’m talking about. Because my white privilege lets me assume everyone knows what I mean by culture.DominicYeah, I think that’s common. And you know, I just want to push people to be more specific about: Which culture? Whose culture? Because that wasn’t my culture. The impulse to number one, not name this as white culture and number two, to position it as universal, that’s common unfortunately.VirginiaWell, it was a really helpful note and it helped me then go through and look for other instances where I was doing that and tighten it up a little bit, hopefully.There is also a section where I deal with Michelle Obama, who is a really complicated person in the conversation of anti-fat bias. And your notes there were also just incredibly helpful, because it helped me realize how important it was to acknowledge her personal experiences both in the conversations around the fatphobia that she experienced and anti-black racism and sexism. And you really helped me sharpen that up a lot. So I really appreciated that, because I was mindful that I didn’t have the right lived experience to do her justice, if that makes sense. DominicYeah, I actually remember that part. Again, I want to be careful not to absolve her of responsibility for the way that she approached these campaigns. But it’s also important to realize that Michelle Obama’s body and her daughter’s bodies were going to be scrutinized in a way that was unprecedented, because they’re Black women. And also, that politically speaking, she was going to be funneled to whatever the administration deemed least controversial, least offensive. It gets a little bit complicated.VirginiaYeah. And in introducing her, I think I identified her as like “a beloved public figure.” And you were like, “Um. She was not universally beloved.”DominicNot at all. Yeah, she was called all kinds of — monkey, all kinds of things—and like, they went for her.VirginiaHorrendous. And again, it was just an example of, oh, Virginia, you’re in your little liberal bubble where everybody worships Michelle Obama. Which is one piece of this, but you cannot describe her as universally beloved. So that was such a helpful note and then helping me sharpen the sections where I did talk about the stigma she experienced. And the piece about the administration was such an excellent point and how they couldn’t give her any topic that would look like she was honestly like doing anything overtly political, right? Because she was already under such scrutiny that it would have led to such a backlash.And then, of course, what does it say that we’ve decided that an “uncontroversial” issue we can give her is childhood obesity, even though that should not be a neutral topic. So being a sensitivity reader is definitely not your only gig. I read in your bio that you are a recovering social worker and also an artist who works in visual art, writing, and performance. I would love to know more about that work and particularly how your art intersects with your mental health work.DominicIn 2021, I had a fellowship with the LGBT Center in Manhattan. It’s called the RiseOut Activist-in-Residence fellowship, where I developed this mental health initiative that has three parts to it. The first was the development of an adult coloring book featuring members of the community with mental health affirmations on it. And then the second was a wellness demo video on how to create a one page wellness plan using visual note taking techniques. And then the third component was actually a panel composed of four community members who were talking about transgenerational strengths when it comes to mental health.VirginiaOoh, say more about transgenerational strengths around mental health.DominicThere is a quote, I think it can be attributed to to a person named Xavier Dagba. But that quote, I’m paraphrasing, said, “Your ancestors gave you more than just wounds.” They gave you strengths, also. So I curated some questions to dig more deeply into that theme and it was a good discussion.VirginiaIt’s such a powerful reframing of the way these stories too often get told. And is the coloring book something that’s still available for folks?DominicI still have a lot of books left from this first print run. And I would love to give them away to people. With everything that’s been happening, I have not had a chance to go out and bring my books, give my spiel. VirginiaIt’s a lot of work.DominicAnd get them in the hands of people who will use them.VirginiaGreat. So folks who are interested can get in touch. Do you have any projects you’re either working on now or thinking about working on in the future that you’re excited about? DominicI can say broadly that I am working on, I want to work on, some visual things. And I’m also interested in working on some writing. I don’t want to say more because I don’t want to jinx it. VirginiaTotally hear you. DominicSo I’ll leave it at that. But yes, there are some things that I very much am hoping to complete this winter. VirginiaAmazing. Well, we will certainly be waiting to see it and celebrate it when you’re ready for it to be in the world. And I know that process can be circuitous at best. ButterDominicWell, I am excited about a purchase that’s coming. Now both of us wear glasses, right?VirginiaYes, and I’ve been admiring your glasses this whole conversation.DominicSee, what I like to do is to get my eyes checked and get the information about the prescription. And then I go to fun websites like Zeelool, Zenni, VoogueMe, and I go on a mini shopping spree in which I can get the cutest prescription frames. So, these just came a day or so ago and I have another pair that’s coming in a little while. Right now I’m in the midst of building my glasses collection back up because my prescription changed a little bit. And it’s slowly but surely, though, yes. So that that’s kind of a quirk of mine is getting all these glasses. VirginiaWe have this deeply in common, Dominic. I have many pairs of glasses. I did not know, however, about these online shopping options. So I’m very excited you shared this.I just want to share it for listeners because they won’t be able to see you. Dominic’s glasses are like a tortoise shell on top—is that right? And then yellow on the bottom half. And folks who know me know I have a tortoise shell with a light blue on the bottom half that’s like my favorite pair. So I’ve been obsessed the whole conversation, like they come in yellow! There’s a yellow pair! They’re so good. I have a local glasses shop that’s really wonderful and so I usually like get my eyes checked there and then buy their glasses, but you just opened up a whole world of possibility.DominicA whole world. You can be free. VirginiaThis is exciting. Yeah, there’s gonna be some some damage done to the credit cards.DominicNo, but the great thing about it is they often have sales. VirginiaRight? Right. DominicSo you don’t even have to pay full price. VirginiaOh, that’s exciting. DominicAnd if you can tolerate having thicker lenses, that’s a way that you can save, too.VirginiaYeah, thicker lenses are kind of just a fact of my life because my prescription is so strong that they can never make them that thin. What does the pair that you are waiting on, what do they look like?DominicOkay, so they’re kind of like, the shape of the glasses is aviator. This part is magenta and then on top is like a tortoise shell. VirginiaOh, amazing. DominicSo I’m excited to see what those are going to look and feel like.VirginiaI might need you to send a picture when they come. They sound fantastic. My nine year old daughter just got her first pair of glasses and my husband is also really into glasses. We’re kind of known, like, we’re glasses people. And we’re both like, “Oh my God, baby’s first glasses!” And she picked two pairs. Because, you do need backups, especially with kids. They might lose them. One pair is like a bright pink-y red and they they’re very round and they have little cat ears on the top like so they look like like how there’s like the cat eyeglass? These literally have little cat ears. They’re so cute. Oh my gosh, and the other pair is blue and they have rainbow hearts on the arms. It’s like really come a long way from when I was a kid, anyway. DominicOh, yes. Absolutely. VirginiaI’m gonna recommend an artist that I’m really excited about. Her name is Favianna Rodriguez and she uses absolutely gorgeous, very bright colors. She does a lot with plants. She has a whole houseplants series, like flowers from her garden, also really beautiful portraits of women. It’s all collage. They’re just stunning. And we were able to get a piece of hers for our dining room that I’m just obsessed with. It’s multi-layered. I mean, the intricacy of it just blows me away. And she’s an amazing feminist activist, just all around awesome person.So Dominic, thank you so much. It was truly an honor to have you do the sensitivity read on fat talk. It helped so so much. And it’s been a real joy to get to talk to you about it, too. So thank you. Can you tell listeners where we can follow you and how we can support your work?DominicI’m on Instagram at @DomDoesDreams. I also have a website that’s still looking a little rough, I’ll go ahead and admit it. But you can also find me at Domdoesdreams.com. And by the way, if anyone wants to help me with said website, by all means.VirginiaI love it. Great. Well, thank you for being here. ---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. ---UK/Australia/New Zealand/rest of the Commonwealth: Stay tuned! I just signed the deal on these foreign rights and should have preorder info for you soon.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health. I am Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.And it’s time for your January Ask Us Anything with Corinne. This is a good one! We are getting into language around weight, cozy clothes, how to be a good ally, how to raise your thin kids not to be assholes to fat people. It’s really all here. You’re going to enjoy it.Quick reminder that if you’d like to support the show, we love ratings and reviews in Apple Podcast! It does so much to help other listeners find the pod.Episode 78 TranscriptVirginiaSo we’re going to do some New Year’s questions. CorinneHappy New Year’s! Happy 2023!VirginiaThis is that artificial podcaster thing. Corinne and I are still in December. We’re recording in advance. CorinneMentally, we’re already in 2023.VirginiaSo we’re going to do some New Year’s questions because folks sent them in. The New Year’s thing both is the same every year and also a new level of hell every year. Is that how you feel about it?CorinneMy birthday is also in January so I feel like the December/New Year’s/birthday is always just a whirlwind of trying to fix my life and failing.VirginiaYou’re forced to take stock in all these different ways you don’t really want to be doing.CorinneI feel like if you have a birthday in another part of the year, you get another chance to reset during the year. But I have to do it all in January.VirginiaYou don’t get another shot for twelve months. That’s it. CorinneIt’s my only chance to do any planning, goal setting.VirginiaThat’s funny. Well, happy birthday! By the time this airs, it will have happened.CorinneI am now… 37.VirginiaYou can say it out loud. This is a pro-aging podcast.CorinneI’m the age where you have to do math to remember how old you are.VirginiaFor sure. I’ve been there for a while and it doesn’t get easier.CorinneQ: Do you have any ideas about fun ways to buffer yourself from New Year’s, New You diet culture bullshit?VirginiaI don’t know if it’s fun, but I do think it’s a good time to spend a little less time online, because that’s where the noise is. Making plans that will give you something to do other than doom scroll.CorinneI was going to say take a little time to unsubscribe from every email that says “New Year, New You.”VirginiaThere can be something so satisfying about using that as a catalyst because some brands you don’t think are terrible and then you get their January email and they show you their true colors. So it’s a nice opportunity. And it can be very cathartic to be like “unsubscribe, goodbye.”CorinneI sort of like the part of New Year that’s reflecting on last year and planning for the year ahead. So I think it can be fun to do some goal setting or planning.VirginiaI agree. This is something I want to think more about and maybe write about at some point. Because I do think it’s like a chicken and egg thing. Is the New Year opportunity to reset and reflect, is that something diet culture invented? Or is it something diet culture co-opted? You know what I mean?Corinne Yeah, definitely. VirginiaAnd if it’s the latter, then there’s something powerful in reclaiming it because I am someone who sets goals for the year. They tend to be work-related. But sometimes I set a personal goal or intention. CorinneEven like, go on a vacation.VirginiaOr I want to get into a fun new hobby, like knitting or puzzles. I think there can be something really great about that. But it’s so easy for all of these things to get twisted, right? CorinneOne goal I had last year was to pick up the dog poop in my backyard as it happened, rather than like…VirginiaLetting it pile up and then being like, yeah, we’ve got to do it?CorinneIt’s too gross to even talk about, but yeah.VirginiaI think a lot of pet owners see you. We have a litter box that can get similar.CorinneYeah. But now I’m thinking about what KC Davis was saying about if it works for you, maybe just let it work for you.VirginiaIf this is your system, embrace that it’s your system. That was so helpful. So that’s actually an interesting twist on the New Year’s thing, too. Instead of setting a goal to change something, can you set a goal to give yourself permission to keep doing something?CorinneRight! Or just accept the way you are. VirginiaJust be like, this is something that works for me even though it is perhaps unconventional or doesn’t match up to whatever standards. Oh, I like that a lot. Q: What was your best New Year’s Eve, and maybe your worst?You’re laughing, so you go first. CorinneI’m laughing but I feel like I don’t have a great answer! For me New Year’s Eve is always one of those holidays where you have really high expectations and it’s always a letdown. My best in recent memory was like a couple of years ago when I had no plans for New Year’s Eve and I just had friends over for dinner and we had a very chill dinner and did a little tarot card reading.VirginiaOh, that sounds so nice.CorinneIt was very fun and last minute and easy. And worst? God I’m sure there is a worst and and nothing is coming to mind. I’m sure involved a terrible hangover on January 1. VirginiaI am weirdly romantic about New Year’s Eve and I blame Forrest Gump. I feel like when I saw Forrest Gump, there’s that scene where they’re like counting down New Year’s in the bar and the hooker—I think she’s a hooker? I don’t want to make assumptions. The lady that he was talking to gets this kind of wistful look on her face and she says everyone gets a second chance at New Year’s. It’s like a core memory from my childhood. She’s a truth speaker and so I’ve always been kind of romantic about New Years. But that led to being very disappointed about New Year’s plans often. CorinneYeah, it seems like it should be this really cool thing and it’s always like, well everyone is tired from Christmas.VirginiaBut I will say when we were in our 20s and we lived in New York City still—I actually might totally be retconning this—we did throw a New Year’s party every year and I have memories of it being this epic time and that I did have a few of those new year’s that were like, the big party, beautiful memory. I don’t know if that’s actually right or if I just like to look back on that.CorinneSomeone from Virginia’s past needs to write in and let us know. VirginiaI mean, I know for sure there was one where… oh, I might get a text about this. Amy Palanjian and I split a bottle of tequila. This is a hilarious story for everyone who follows Yummy Toddler Food.CorinneKeep going. I feel like there’s more to that story.VirginiaOkay I’m telling the story because it’s mostly humiliating for me, not Amy. Dan was in a comedy group and he was performing so we had to go to a late night comedy show, which is like a big ask for me and my attention span and feelings about improv comedy. Dan is very funny, but improv comedy is a mixed bag.So we were going out to the show and then on to a party, and she came over to get ready with me. And we made some cocktail that was tequila-based and many other kinds of juices and put it in—because also Amy’s very outdoorsy— a Nalgene bottle for hiking. So it was hard to manage your intake. And that is the night where at the show I got thrown up on by a drunker person.CorinneI really thought you were going to be the one doing that.VirginiaWell, the rest of the night took a turn and my only memory is lying on the sidewalk and having to be escorted home. It was terrible.CorinneOh no! Laying on the sidewalk is serious.VirginiaI’ve never drank tequila since. I have zero interest. Zero. Oh wait, is tequila in margaritas?Corinne Yes. VirginiaOkay, so I’ve had a little bit.Corinne But never out of a Nalgene again. VirginiaNever out of a Nalgene. And what I will say, just to shore up her brand now is I think Amy was a really good mom even then. This was was well before kids. And I think she took very good care of me.CorinneShe made you Yummy Toddler Food for your hangover?VirginiaWell, she also made the cocktail in the Nalgene bottle. It was early recipe testing days. CorinneI did just see her post about things to feed your sick toddler. Now I’m imagining her handing all those things to you.VirginiaBeing like, “Do you need pastina soup?” And actually, that would be great. Amy is totally the friend to take care of you hungover. But anyway, that might have been my worst New Year’s. But also, I don’t know. I survived it. These days my house is pretty booze free. I can have half a glass of wine and I will have a migraine the next day. My relationship with alcohol was never really like that and it has never been that again. For a few years after we left the city, we got together with friends, with Amy’s family, and a couple other good friends. And then we finally all had too many children and we couldn’t all fit in one house and so that disbanded. Now it tends to be a pretty quiet night for us and I think I have a little bit of sadness of oh, those epic party days are gone but also. No one looks back and misses laying on the sidewalk.CorinneYeah, and maybe those days will come back around when you’re in your sixties.VirginiaI hope to never to drink tequila out of a Nalgene bottle again. Absolutely not. But I do enjoy a nice dinner party or something low key. Your night sounds perfect.Okay, this reader wants to know if we have recommendations for socks that don’t dig into thicker calves.CorinneOkay, so, I have a few things to say about this. The first thing is, just personally, I wear ankle socks, which don’t go to your calves and therefore don’t dig into them. I’ve been enjoying the Madewell ankle socks. They’re just like a thicker ankle sock. However, the other thing that you should know about this is there is a whole wealth of socks that don’t dig into your calves because they are diabetes socks. VirginiaOh, so smart. CorinneThey are designed to not impede circulation in any way. So, they don’t have elastic at the top, or they’re sort of like a stretchier knit. So you can just Google “diabetic socks” and you’ll get a whole slew of socks that are looser fitting.VirginiaThis is such a good tip. That’s really excellent. CorinneI don’t have any specific brand recommendations, but you’ll find them. I know Maggie’s Organics that everyone loves and like they make diabetic socks. So check it out.VirginiaPerfect. I also just mostly do ankle socks. I blame skinny jeans for that, because once the skinny jeans trend happened there’s no socks you can pull up under a skinny jean. CorinneAnd with shorts, I think I just prefer the way ankle socks feel and look.VirginiaYou sometimes do want taller sock with boots. CorinneAnother thing I’ve been seeing is brands advertising slouchy socks, which I think might be the same.VirginiaLike from the 80s?CorinneYeah, that like scrunch down.VirginiaThat Reminds me of The Baby-Sitters Club with their triple slouch socks, which is a look I really leaned into in the 80’s. CorinneYou can lean back into it. VirginiaThat’s exciting. I just bought a big hair claw, one of the big banana clip kind of claws. I’m really here for 80’s accessories returning. CorinneQ: Cozy clothes?I feel like we’ve had a cozy clothes question every month. But we do have some new cozy recommendations.VirginiaWell, last month we talked about coats so I think this time we should talk about indoor loungewear coziness which is a different category. I don’t want to necessarily wear like a big sweater. I’m actually wearing a sweater today and I’m really hot. It’s reminding me that don’t want to be doing that. I actually want breathable cozy clothes versus heavy wool sweaters. I think I want to be cozy and then I’m just boiling. So I have a sweatshirt from Eileen Fisher—we’re gonna be team Eileen Fisher again.CorinneOne thing I want to say about Eileen Fisher—because we did have someone comment that it’s very expensive. There’s so much of it on eBay and Poshmark. You don’t need to buy your Eileen Fisher new. And you can find it on sale a lot through department stores and stuff.VirginiaThat is a very good tip. I’m glad you mentioned that. I got this in my Stitch Fix. So I paid a Stitch Fix price. It wasn’t super cheap, probably a lot for a sweatshirt. It’s a really cheerful bright pink color that makes me super happy. And it’s very well cut and lightweight, I don’t get hot in it but it’s still very soft. I’ve been wearing that a lot with leggings or sweatpants etc.And I will also be a total influencer for a moment and say the Boston Birkenstock clogs really are as good as everyone says. I am on my second pair of the shearling lined ones. I made a mistake the first time, a few years ago, I bought them in light pink. And that was a poor choice because they got very dirty very quickly and kind of just looked not good. After I wore those into the ground, I bought them in navy. I love them so much and they’re my indoor shoes.I’m a big fan of house shoes and house pants. I like slippers. But I’m 41 and my feet hurt a lot and I need arch support. And I work from home, I never leave my house. On the price point, I had a moment of, am I going to spend over $100 on house shoes? And then I thought, I will wear these more than any of my outdoor shoes. CorinneThat’s a good point. Virginia I don’t really understand how the Boston clogs got so trendy on TikTok.Corinne I feel like it’s one specific color.VirginiaIs it the taupe color?CorinneYeah, I think so. And in like a young woman range of sizes. I think you can still find them in men’s sizes and different colors.VirginiaWell, the navy shearling are great.CorinneMy new cozy clothes investment is a robe from Peridot Robes.VirginiaYour robe! I’m so obsessed. Tell us, I don’t even know this brand so tell us everything.CorinneWell, it’s a brand that makes plus size robes. That’s almost all they make. They make a few other things, like a crop top and like a jumpsuit. And I think there may be some other things coming next year. She uses all remnant material, so it’s earth friendly, sustainable. The cuts are just great. I feel like robes weirdly are kind of hard to find, especially ones that overlap a lot. And the one I got is the cuddle robe. It has a hood! And it’s not a V-neck, which I really like. It’s almost like more like a coat. And it has sweatshirt cuffs. It’s so great. I’ve just been wearing it like over my clothes if I need to take the trash out or something like that. I’m going to a hot springs place with my mom and sister over Christmas and I’m so excited to wear it over a bathing suit.VirginiaA good robe to wear over a bathing suit is critical for getting out of the water, when it’s cold. You’re gonna be happy about that.CorinneYeah, so definitely check out Peridot. VirginiaAnd for a quick budget cozy option, I have a fleece from Target I really like. It’s like pink—very into pink for my coziness apparently. I got it last spring. So I’m hoping they’ll still have it. But if they don’t have this one, they’ll probably do a similar cozy fleece option. I will say styling-wise, it’s definitely a knockoff of like Madewell or Alder Apparel or one of those, which you can have your feelings about. But it was $20. So you know, a really good price! And it’s very oversized, like the arms are blousy. I think probably Target caps out at a 3x, but I would guess there’s some flexibility.CorinneTechnically they now have a 4x.VirginiaI don’t trust us to say that ever since the J. Crew coat saga. I don’t want to promise that it comes in whatever sizes it comes in because  it will change by the time this airs. But yeah, in theory.CorinneTarget has good fleeces. There are probably other ones if this one is sold out. [Virginia note: It is! Sorry! We linked a GREAT alternative above and I also like this one and this one.]VirginiaTarget is one of the more reliable budget plus size options in general. CorinneQ: Can you talk about what terms like small fat or skinny fat mean? I want to better understand how these ways of identifying can help us acknowledge how we show up in these spaces and what privileges might be clouding our view.VirginiaThese are great terms to understand. They are not the same. And I also just want to quickly say that language is always evolving, and terms have different meanings to different people. So Corinne and I will talk about what these terms mean to us and our general understanding. But this is in no way the final word on defining these terms. Six months from now, we might have a different definition for these terms.Small fat is a term I apply to myself or to other folks who wear anywhere from a 16 to a 20. Is that how you would define small fat?CorinneI would say it’s like the smallest plus sizes. So yeah, like 16/18 ish.VirginiaThe reason we use small fat is we want to understand that fatness is a spectrum and that anti-fat bias hurts everybody but hurts fat people the most. So the fatter you are, the more harmed you are by it. And so we are acknowledging that there is privilege in being small fat. You are going to face less discrimination than someone who is mid fat or super fat.CorinneYeah and just have fewer issues with accessibility in terms of spaces, seating, clothing.VirginiaYou still benefit from thin privilege in the small fat space, which I think is a concept that people find challenging sometimes, but absolutely true.There’s a really good piece on Medium by Cherry Midnight explaining superfat. That came out of a conference—I think it was NOLOSE. The folks who were using the term superfat realized, even at a convention for fat people, that accessibility issues were coming up. And so those folks realized that they needed a special designation for themselves to advocate for their needs, even within the community of other fat people. CorinneBecause even within fat spaces, a lot of times small fat people are prioritized or have more visibility.VirginiaI think small fat people are the most likely to cause some of the harm around “it doesn’t matter how much you weigh, as long as you’re healthy.” We just have to be really mindful that our role here is not just to make our own lives easier. And to recognize that there is a privilege in being a palatable fat person. And that that comes with a responsibility, where you need to advocate for the needs of other people who are not being heard and will look for ways to make them be heard. CorinneWhat is your understanding of skinny fat?VirginiaSkinny fat is I think a more offensive term. In my understanding it is used to describe thin people who don’t exercise a lot. My pop culture reference for this is an episode of Weeds where Jane Lynch, who was a scary fitness obsessed pot dealer I think, called Mary Louise Parker skinny fat. Because she was trying to yell at her about working out or something. And it was like “funny” in the scene. And also not. It’s basically a way of being like “You’re thin, but you’re still not good enough. And the reason you’re not good enough is because you remind me of a fat person.” So, it’s an anti-fat term.CorinneI’ve heard it also only in like a “joking” context meaning people who are thin but not like muscular, kind of? Like you’re thin but still have body fat?VirginiaWhich one would hope that you would! Body fat seems normal for health and functioning of a human body.And it’s also reinforcing so many things, right? Someone can work out a ton and not have the body type that produces a lot of visible muscle. It’s definitely playing into thinking you can look at somebody’s body and decide everything about their lifestyle habits, which is just absolutely false. So yeah, I would say ditch skinny fat from your vocabulary or at least reflect upon it. Small fat I think is a useful term.CorinneIf you want other terms to describe fatness, you can look up the spectrum. There’s also mid fat, superfat, infinifat.VirginiaWhat do you like? Like, what how do you identify yourself?CorinneUm, that’s a good question. I’m on the edge between mid fat and super fat. So I guess I would use those.VirginiaAnd do you find that helpful? Or is it frustrating? CorinneI mean, I’m so rarely in a space where I could be using those terms and anyone would know what I’m talking about, at least in real life. Online, maybe?I definitely get how accessibility changes as you change size. And I do think it’s helpful to acknowledge that people at different levels of fatness experience different levels of not being able to access things. So I do think it’s helpful in that sense.VirginiaWhat’s your take on the term small fat?CorinneI think small fat is helpful designation.VirginiaQ: What is helpful as an ally to say when a fat person denigrates themselves to you?CorinneThis is a tough question because on the one hand, you want to not be fatphobic. And on the other hand, you want to be supportive of your friend and their experience. So you have to tread lightly and it’s gonna depend on the situation. Something I have recommended in the past to thin folks is just to be like, “I love you” or “I love fat people.” Just to be like, however you might feel this is how I feel.VirginiaThat’s lovely.CorinneThere’s a lot of contexts in which that might not be comfortable, though. Like, if it’s like a co-worker or someone you don’t know very well.VirginiaSomeone where declaring your love feels inappropriate. CorinneSomeone you just met and you’re like, “Well, I love you. So who cares what you think.”Virginia“Thanks for walking my dog.” “Thanks for dropping off this UPS package.”CorinneI guess you could be like, “However you feel, there are fat people in my life that I love. And I don’t love to hear them complaining about themselves.” I don’t know.VirginiaWhenever possible I like to put the blame on the system, not on the people. I love saying “I love a lot of fat people. I hate that this culture makes you feel bad about your body.”CorinneI like that. VirginiaI’m channeling my Aubrey Gordon advice here. But don’t dismiss what they’re saying they experience. Don’t say like, “I’m sure that person didn’t mean to be so rude.” Or, “you’re probably misreading that.”CorinneOr “You’re not fat.”VirginiaYeah, don’t deny reality. And don’t deny their reality. If they’re saying they are feeling bad because the doctor said X, like, that happened. Don’t deny that. And ask what they need and how you can support them. CorinneI think that’s good advice. Q: This recent newsletter was such a good read regarding supporting kids when they’re bullied about their weight. I’d also love to hear you guys talk about the flip side.Two of my young kids (7 and 4) have started using fat as an insult to each other. They’re both very thin. And the phrase was inspired by a movie with a fat cat character and lots of fat jokes (Miyazaki’s The Cat Returns - to be honest, do not recommend.) My instinct was to say both “Hey, never say that again” and also, “there’s nothing wrong with being fat,” and start a conversation from there. But all of these feel insufficient in different ways.And it’s not close to home enough for them right now to engage with me in a very meaningful conversation. My husband and I are also thin and the closest person in their life who is fat is my mom, who was very vocal about her body being bad, and also just had weight loss surgery. In a way, even though we don’t live close to her or see her more than a few times a year, it feels like she will be the authority on fatness in their lives because of how much she talks about it. And the fact that it’s her lived experience.So anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on raising my thin kids not to be assholes.VirginiaFirst, thank you for this question. I really appreciate when thin parents are doing this work with their thin kids and recognizing how important this is. So that’s great. I think there’s two layers to this. I think the first is, what do you say in the moment? How do you respond when your kid uses fat as an insult? And I will share some thoughts on that.But first, I want to take a step back and say: We need to facilitate more examples of fat joy and fat excellence in your kids lives. Y’all need some fat friends! And you need to look for books with representations of fat characters! We can link to some of those in the transcript that are age appropriate. Definitely Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder, but there are others: Check out this list, as well as I Love My Body Because, Beautifully Me, and I just picked up The Truth About Grandparents, which I love especially given your question and because it shows a fat grandma living such a joyful life, without any discussion of her body.You need to be showing them fat bodies as joyful and strong and competent and wonderful and saying “I love fat people” to your kids often to start to do some counter programming.I think when you watch a movie and there are fat jokes, you press pause and you say, “I don’t love what I’m hearing, I don’t love the way they’re talking about this cat. I think a fat cat is awesome. What do you guys think?” And you try to have a conversation. I get that your kids are young, but they’re not that much younger than my kids and I’ve been trying to have these conversations with my kids since they were that age. There are definitely a lot of blank looks and a lot of “I don’t knows” and why is mom talking about this again vibes. But I just keep chipping away at it because I’ve got thin kids, too, and they’re not allowed to walk around being assholes about this. CorinneI think it would be great if you could find some fat people to befriend. Showing them media representation of fat folks would also be awesome.VirginiaI’m probably not gonna watch The Cat Returns now, either, even though Totoro, I think, is a great fat icon in Miyazaki’s world. So this is disappointing that they went there with this one, which I haven’t seen. But if we stumble across it, I use that as an opportunity to have a conversation.Okay, so then in the moment when your kids start using fat as an insult to each other, I think you can just quickly say something like, “Why are you using fat as an insult? There’s nothing wrong with being fat.” I would require some accountability—gentle, loving accountability. They are only four and seven, they don’t understand the broader context of all of this. And you do have to make space for the fact that they don’t really understand it yet. And yet, all the research shows us these are the ages when fat phobia is learned. You are up against that. So I think, “Why are you using fat as an insult? Tell me more about why you’re using that word,” and then starting to have that conversation. I wouldn’t say “never, ever say that again,” because fat is not a bad word. It’s not a word you’re trying to ban in your house. It’s a word you’re reclaiming. So that’s important. CorinneBut could you say something like, “Hey, I don’t want to hear you using fat as an insult”?VirginiaYeah, I think that’s totally fair.CorinneBecause I feel like the urge to be really serious about it could have an effect.VirginiaYou don’t want to shame your kid for trying something out, because kids are trying things out. They don’t know the bigger context. But if you just inserted any racial minority here or gay, I think a lot of parents would feel pretty competent, if their seven year old called their four year old gay, having a moment and saying there’s nothing wrong with gay. We love lots of gay people. What are you doing? It’s really the same conversation. Think about how you would talk about that. And gay used to be used all the time as an insult. Some kids still use it as an insult!I think the same rules really apply here. So if they can know that they crossed a line because these are words that describe human beings and we don’t weaponize people’s characteristics like this.CorinneI think that’s very good advice.VirginiaQ: I am from the south and I grew up on Chick-fil-A. I worked there through high school and college. As I’ve grown, I’ve come to understand how harmful their Christian stance is to so many populations and have tried to honor my values by cutting them out of my diet. However, sometimes it’s the only thing I can think of eating. And the more I restrict, the more I hyper focus on the cravings. I’m curious to see what you think and how you might react in a similar situation.CorinneLet me first ask you, have you ever been to Chick-fil-A? VirginiaDo you know, I don’t think I ever have. I was trying to remember. I’m not from the South.CorinneI feel like they’re very rare in New England and New York. VirginiaI don’t think I have, but I have heard that they are delicious. Problematic but delicious.CorinneYeah, I had never had it until I moved to Albuquerque. I feel like it’s fine. VirginiaIt’s not delicious?CorinneMaybe we have a bad Chick-fil-A here. My first thought is can you go to Popeye’s instead? Which, probably not helpful.VirginiaIt is hard because when you have like a specific comfort food craving it’s hard to substitute with another brand.CorinneEspecially if it’s something you grew up with.VirginiaI think there’s a couple ways to answer this question. I don’t think there’s a hard right or wrong answer. I do think if you are someone who has a history of restriction and that has been very harmful to you that your mental health and well-being can take priority over your larger societal values. Because the net good of one person buying one fewer Chick-fil-A sandwiches does not move the needle on shutting down Chick-fil-A or getting them to stop being homophobic assholes. And you denying yourself the sandwich does have an immediate harm for you. What do you think?CorinneI would say if you’re worried about the kind of stuff that Chick-fil-A is doing, the time you spend worrying about that could be maybe better spent doing some kind of advocacy. Like, I don’t know calling your representatives or volunteering at a trans supportive organization in your area or every time you buy a Chick-fil-A give money to the ACLU.VirginiaThat feels like a great solution. Your Chick-fil-A budget just doubled because whatever the sandwich costs, you’re going to give that plus like an extra buck to  a group that’s fighting against that.CorinneYeah. And I would just say, be vocal about that in your life! Like, if you’re gonna eat Chick-fil-A make sure that you’re saying like, “I love gay people.”VirginiaA lot of  love this month. CorinneThe overarching theme of this episode is to say “I love fat, gay people.”VirginiaIt’s a great, great message.I think there’s a parallel here to— I don’t love abusive farming practices, which are performed by many large food manufacturers in the United States. I don’t love when factory workers are exploited. I still buy processed foods for my family because they make my day-to-day life livable. I need my salad kits and my pre-cut butternut squash and my Kraft mac and cheese and my Oreos, my pantry full of processed foods that let me feed my kids. It’s such a myth that the solution to these problems are consumers individual choices. We know that’s not the case. CorinneThats where the advocacy comes in, too. Ideally we wouldn’t have to live in a world where we had to choose between our values and eating a sandwich. VirginiaAbsolutely. CorinneTry to get the Supreme Court to say that companies don’t have free speech.VirginiaTo stop treating them like people and then we can really get somewhere. So I think if this is something you love and it’s helpful to you breaking up with restriction to eat it, then think about how to live those values in other ways. And I think that’s just the same exact advice I’d give about any fast food, processed foods. CorinneYeah, I’m with you. I mean, I did admit at the beginning of this question that I have eaten at Chick-fil-A. I do try to avoid it. But we also have a Popeye’s here, and I think Popeye’s is superior. VirginiaIt is an easy moral quandary for you to solve.CorinneI’m sure Popeye’s also does not great things. VirginiaThere’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. So yes, we’re all just doing the best we can. CorinneQ: Do you ever just not want to think about this stuff? I’m grateful that you do, but it must be a lot.VirginiaI weirdly don’t have this happen too often? I guess that’s why I do the job I do, is that I really love thinking about this stuff. I admit there are aspects of it that I tap out on sometimes. I think the thing that sort of exhausts me the most—and this is why I’m very grateful to Maintenance Phase for doing what they do, is the individual diet debunking. We’ve done some of it here. People love it! Those episodes do really well. I find it very irritating, because it is just always the same thing. It is always a restrictive diet that they’ve just wrapped up in some kind of bizarre marketing to convince you it’s not a restrictive diet. It’s always the same thing and I get sort of exasperated telling that story over and over, even though I also do think they’re important stories to tell and I understand why people love it. These brands and this marketing is really powerful. It’s helpful to break through, but that piece of it, sometimes I’m just like, oh, that’s again.The other thing, too, is I have a lot of time in my life when I don’t think about this stuff, like if I’m doing a puzzle or hanging out with my kids I’m not wrestling with diet culture at the same time. So this isn’t 24/7 for me. I don’t know, what do you think about this?CorinneWell, I was like, immediately, yes. VirginiaInteresting. CorinneFor me, it’s more stuff that impacts accessibility. Like I would love to be able to book a plane ticket without being like, am I gonna die? VirginiaYeah, that seems fair. CorinneOr without thinking about seating at concert venues, restaurants. I would love to be able to go to a restaurant without thinking about what the seating situation is going to be.VirginiaThis is such a perfect example of what we were talking about earlier in terms of the small fat privilege versus the mid-to-super fat experience. I just want to say very clearly, what Corinne is saying here is I (Virginia) get to opt out sometimes and she does not in the same way. That is so real and I just really want to respect that.CorinneMy mom is coming—this is in December. And she’s like, “I want to go to this place for breakfast” where we’ve been before and I’m like, I don’t want to go there because half of their seating is a very small booth that I can’t fit into. So we have to go show up and be like, “I will sit anywhere except there.” Even if my mom does it, it just puts a damper on the whole thing.VirginiaYou don’t feel welcome there because they didn’t think about larger bodies when they designed this restaurant.CorinneAnyways, it’s a bummer. Don’t recommend it. VirginiaTotally. I think not wanting to think about it in the sense that I would like to not be perpetually oppressed is a pretty valid way to want a break. It is fair to want to break from the oppression. I was thinking of the question much more in the personal struggle space. And again, I just think that speaks to the different experiences. So I’m glad you highlighted that.CorinneQ. What are your personal philosophies on aging? And are you conflicted about it in any sense?VirginiaI feel firmly that I am someone who was born to be an older person. I think my whole life I have been working towards being someone in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s who mostly stays in and does puzzles and has plants. I think the story I kicked this off with about my one night of tequila-sidewalk-lying illustrates how bad I was at being a fun young person. I’m so glad that I don’t have to be fun and young anymore. CorinneWow. There’s nothing you’re conflicted about? How do you feel about gray hair?VirginiaI actually feel fine about gray hair. CorinneDo you have any? VirginiaHere’s the thing about me and gray hair. I don’t have a lot. I have several. I am not actively trying to dye them, but I do get highlights. My very talented hairstylist often places the highlights in ways that distract from the gray hairs. She doesn’t cover them completely, but yes. And because I made a self care decision to outsource my hair to her like about a decade ago, I just do whatever she wants to do with my hair because I’m always happy with it. That way I don’t get worked up about what should I do with my hair? So I haven’t started not dying it, is what I’m saying. It’s not because I’m happy it’s covering my grays, it’s just that I don’t want to think about my hair that much. But as I get more grays, I will not be trying to hide them. Am I conflicted about aging? When does it come up for me?CorinneSagging face? Menopause? Any feelings?VirginiaSagging face, a little bit. I will admit to feelings about face sagging sometimes. That’s come up a few times. I do have a lot more chin hair in my 40’s and managing that is a hobby I didn’t really want. So that one, sure.Menopause, I don’t even know. I mean, my relationship with my menstrual health is that I’m suppressing it all with an IUD for as long as possible. So I don’t know, menopause could be a gift. It could be a nightmare. I have no idea. But what’s going on currently isn’t great, so it’s not like I’m gonna be losing out on some beautiful experience of menstruation.Mostly I just love having to give fewer fucks about stuff. What about you? You sound a little more conflicted. And we should say, I’m older! I’m several years older, CorinneNot by much.VirginiaI’m going to be 42 in a few months. CorinneI’ll be 37 when you listen to this podcast, if I did the math right. I always thought that I wouldn’t care and then when I started getting gray hairs, I was like, OH, I do care. I have the color of hair that you can’t really see them unless you’re up close. I feel sad that I’m gonna have different hair in a few years. I identify with how my hair looks. But I don’t know that I will start dyeing it because it seems like a lot of work and money. But yeah, I feel low key sad about it. But I do feel also good about still being alive and giving fewer fucks.VirginiaI mean, I think there’s a lot of ways in which I haven’t had to contend with a lot of ageism yet because I work from home, not in an office where I think it would be dealing with ageism much more concretely on a daily basis. I think that that would be harder and may become harder.I have hit this point when I suddenly realized that my age or my weight—either one—often renders me invisible, like to a man or something. I’m usually amused/fine with it. Like annoyed sometimes, but also like, oh God, are you really going to be this cliched? Oh, right. Of course. This is where we are.But again, there’s privilege here. My job is not hinging on how people perceive my age yet, so we’ll see. Obviously, the idea of adding more oppression is not exciting. And the idea of dying one day isn’t a cheery thought. But I don’t miss my 20s at all. No.CorinneYou don’t miss lying on the sidewalk?VirginiaIt was one night! It was one night. I can’t underscore that enough. CorinneYou’re never going to live that down.VirginiaOh boy. Alright. CorinneOkay. I’m also really excited about this question.Q: I’m in a breakfast rut. What are your current favorite breakfasts?VirginiaI am a lifelong breakfast rut person. Fun fact about me: from the ages of 8 to 33 my breakfast every day was toast with peanut butter and banana on top. And then when I was 33, I got into smoothies. And my breakfast ever since has been the same exact smoothie. CorinneWhoa. VirginiaSo now because I get up so early now I have the smoothie as my first breakfast and then I usually have my peanut butter and banana toast around 9 or 10 as my second breakfast. That is my breakfast story.]When I’m going on vacation I can mix it up. I do really enjoy an egg sandwich or a breakfast burrito situation. I wake up very hungry and excited for my breakfast, but I also don’t want to cook or prepare elaborate things in the morning.CorinneI have the opposite experience, which is I’m always eating something different for breakfast. But I think for the same reason, which is I wake up starving. Breakfast is my hungriest, big breakfast. And I have come around to the philosophy of any food is good for breakfast. So I will eat soup or a burrito. I’ll just eat any food that I’m excited to eat.VirginiaLeftover pasta is a great breakfast. Sometimes I have that as the mid morning breakfast. CorinneI don’t love sweet breakfast stuff. So peanut butter toast and smoothies are like, eh. I’ve gotten really into having beans for breakfast. That’s my new thing. Sometimes I’ll have like beans and tater tots or sometimes I’ll have a quesadilla with beans in it.VirginiaI am hangry if I don’t have enough to eat by 10 am.CorinneI really feel like people should just eat whatever they like for breakfast. If you want pizza, if you want mac and cheese, just eat it.VirginiaI like this. CorinneBut also a smoothie is good if you’re in a rut. It’s very practical.VirginiaI also want to be clear that when I say smoothie, I drink like 20 ounces of smoothie. It’s a very large smoothie. I’m not having some kind of diet culture-y sad breakfast. It does contain protein powder. I’ve written before about how protein powder is a diet food I reclaimed. Just because I do find it really actually fills me up. Portein poowder and peanut butter—they both have to be in there—and blueberries and milk, is my smoothie recipe.CorinneSo, is it cold?VirginiaYeah, the blueberries are frozen.CorinneI don’t want a cold drink in the winter.VirginiaI get that, but It doesn’t bother me. CorinneYou don’t care. VirginiaAnd my kids are obsessed with it, too. I make like a 50 ounce smoothie every morning and we all split up. We spend a fortune on frozen blueberries. Dan buys the five pound bags at Wal-mart and we go through one like every three days.CorinneWow. That’s amazing. I might try that. I really like smoothies in summer when it’s hot.VirginiaI mean, it basically is a chocolate milkshake. That’s why my kids like it. And I also why I like it. Again, when I travel, I do enjoy mixing it up. But I will tell you my anxiety when I travel is that there will not be enough breakfast because I know how much I rely on a very large smoothie followed by generous pieces of sourdough with peanut butter and a banana or sometimes an egg sandwich. If I’m not home for my second breakfast, I’ll often like get an egg sandwich when I’m out. And that will tide me over and I’ll still be hungry for lunch in two hours.CorinneThis is making me hungry.VirginiaWhat we’re saying is, Corinne and I are very invested in early day eating and we want you to have a delicious breakfast, whatever that is.CorinneI do think sometimes that for whatever diet culture reason, people think that breakfast is like a piece of toast and an egg. And that is not enough! VirginiaIt’s not enough food.CorinneI could maybe eat that for dinner, but I need like a huge breakfast. Anyways.Q: You have 24 hours just for you. What do you eat/watch/listen to/do.VirginiaOh, man. 24 hours just for me? What would that be like?Corinne I know, this is not a question for me, because every 24 hours is just for me. VirginiaYou live the dream. CorinneSorry, sorry.VirginiaI would have my smoothie in the morning. And my second breakfast. It depends on what season we’re in. If it’s winter, I’m probably just gonna curl up by the fire and read novels all day and then bake brownies and eat the center ones myself and not share them with my children. Maybe do a puzzle and watch a movie.If it’s summer, I’m going to do more gardening things and maybe go for a hike. But only if the weather is really perfect for it. Let’s not get crazy. The other thing I would do is some very finicky type of shopping, like antiquing, which is something I don’t really do anymore because bringing kids into antique stores is a stress level I’m not willing to achieve. Something like that, where this would be a bummer with the kids but really fun without them.What do you do? Tell us what is it like having 24 hours?CorinneLike I said, I do what I want all the time.VirginiaBut what about 24 hours with no work, no obligations?CorinneThat’s what I was thinking. So, if I had 24 hours where I had no plans, I would maybe go somewhere. I would either go on a little short day trip or go for a walk in a place I’ve never been so I don’t know how long it’s gonna take or something.VirginiaRight, right. Something where you don’t have to worry about how long it’s taking. You don’t have stuff to get back for. CorinneI would do that in the morning. And then I would come home and do the movie/book/puzzle evening.ButterCorinneLast weekend I went to a potluck and someone for the potluck had brought a huge bowl of popcorn and it was mushroom popcorn. VirginiaWait.CorinneWhich refers to the shape of the kernel. It’s popcorn that pops into a ball instead of like a little floret or whatever. And it was so good that I immediately got home and ordered mushroom popcorn. VirginiaWow. CorinneWhich I have not received yet. But my recommendation is if you like popcorn, which I do—that is sometimes dinner for me. VirginiaSo, not mushroom flavored?CorinneIt’s not really even shaped like a mushroom so I don’t understand why it’s called that, it’s really just shaped like a little ball. I’m really excited to eat a lot of mushroom popcorn this winter.VirginiaI’m excited for that because it sounds like maybe a slightly smoother shape and my big beef with popcorn is the stuck in your teeth finickiness of it sometimes.CorinneI’m hopeful. Wherever I ordered this from also had hulless popcorn which I thought maybe it would solve that problem.VirginiaMy butter is my Kobo eReader. I am so obsessed with my Kobo. I need to give it a real shoutout on the podcast. If you are an ebook person—I am definitely someone who given the choice will read paper books. I find it more lovely. But for travel, obviously, you cannot bring a lot of paper books with you. And the Kobo e reader is so delightful. I have had a Kindle and I actually liked the Kobo a little better, but the functionality is totally the same. CorinneWhy do you like the Kobo better?VirginiaIt’s tiny differences. The one I have—I have the Clara—and it fits in my hand a little bit nicer. It’s a little bit smaller than my old Kindle was—I think I had the paperwhite. And I just really love it!I am not someone who has divested from Amazon in any major way. I want to be clear, my protein powder comes from them every month, and many other things. But I did make the decision several years ago not to buy books from them because the harm they caused to the book publishing industry is so severe. So I buy all my books from my local independent bookstore or other independent bookstores when I’m traveling. And the great thing about Kobo is your independent bookstore can give you a link so that they get a cut of the ebook sales when you buy them on your Kobo. So it’s a way of supporting your independent bookstore and they have everything and the battery lasts 1000 years. I think I can have 6000 books on there. It’s just so great. And so convenient.CorinneThat’s awesome. That’s a really good recommendation. I have a very ancient Kindle Paperwhite that could probably be replaced.VirginiaWe got my nine year old one for Christmas. So this is a little sneaky parenting hack—I’m also not anti-screentime—but I have moments every few months where I panic that we’ve lost the plot on screen time. I realized I could diversify the screentime a little bit. So I don’t put rules around when she can use the Kobo, unlike the iPad where I do have like a no-iPad-after-dinner rule because I don’t want the blue light to keep her awake. So she really loves the unlimited freedom of, I can have this screen in my room, I can read it anywhere. And she’s just reading. It’s all you can do on it. It’s great. And you can hook it up to Overdrive. So you can connect to your library and so we also are using our library cards way more. CorinneThat’s awesome.  VirginiaAll right. We did another AMA! That was a good one. Thank you, Corinne, for being here. Remind people where they can follow you.CorinneOh, you can follow me on Instagram at @Selfiefay or at @selltradeplus.VirginiaAmazing and we will do this again next month, so send us your questions, guys!---The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. 

You're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.One quick thing before we get into it: Today is our Corinne’s birthday! Yay Corinne! You are awesome and we literally couldn’t do Burnt Toast without you, very much including this episode. (Everyone else: Drop some love for her in the comments please!)Today is a Very Special Burnt Toast Episode. Imagine me saying that in my best after-school special voice, but really, it's just a super fun episode because it's the first time we're getting to hear from all of you. If you’re a paid Burnt Toast subscribe, then you know about Friday Threads. Today's episode is like a Friday Thread for your ears.So just like with Friday Threads, we started this episode with a prompt: Tell us your anti-diet resolution for 2023.I want to be clear before we start, you do not need to make any kind of resolution. Time is a construct! The start of a new year is super arbitrary as a place in which to start making changes! We’re almost 3 weeks into the year anyway! And you probably don't need to change anything about your life. But I think a lot of us, especially those of us who identify as recovering perfectionists, feel that pull in January. We feel that urge to set a goal, look at our lives, make some kind of change. Often it's because we were socially conditioned to do this for years, and particularly to work on our bodies at this time of year. To resolve to eat less, to exercise more, to be smaller any way we could.So if that's you (and it’s me too) I think that setting some kind of intention, and specifically an intention to do something that is not a diet can be a really helpful way to move yourself through that urge. So you’re not getting caught up in the “New Year, New You” whirlwind, but still taking advantage of that fresh start energy if that is helpful to you. For example, here is Stella setting some goals that will help her very directly avoid the typical January dieting trap. My anti-diet resolution for 2023 is to eat comfort foods this winter according to the season and not to wear my Fitbit except to bed to help with my sleep. And to avoid the Noom emails. In fact, even block them. I have been a repeat on Noom and it's thanks to you that I've stopped that. Thank you, have a great new year! I just love the idea of blocking Noom from your inbox. Like, why are they in your inbox? Get them out. Honestly, all diet ad spam! This is a great time to be unfollowing and unsubscribing. I love that as a resolution idea. We also heard from Kristine with this goal. So here's Corinne, who's going to read the resolutions that got sent in via email.I am slowly unsubscribing from all the email newsletters I get from the wellness folks I fell for over the last couple of years. I deleted apps, ended subscriptions, even deleted games on my phone that tended to feed me ads. Kristine also has some other goals for herself:The advice I'm going to actually follow is getting a good night's sleep. That and yoga stretches in the morning. I am a single mom of two and I celebrate a variety of foods with them, even if I still have to hide the veggies in something else on their plate. But I finally noticed that the message I was telling my kids was different from the message I was telling myself. I'm gonna have a long conversation with that inner child and 2023.Y’all also had a lot of other great food-related resolutions. Let's listen to a few of those:Hi! My anti diet resolution this year is that when I eat in a restaurant, which is honestly not even that often, that I choose what sounds best to me on the menu without considering calories or protein or anything like that, just what sounds most appealing to me at the time.For the last several years, my New Year's resolution has been to try to find ways to make my life easier. And I think this became a nondiet resolution because I realized how much time and energy I was putting into monitoring what I was eating, how much I was exercising, and the size of my body, and what other people thought of it. And so this didn't fix that obviously, but it put me on a path to where I could start to take steps to make changes to those things and it's been a huge improvement in my life and I'm looking forward to seeing where this resolution will take me in 2023.And I absolutely love this concept of a gentle fitness related resolution from Alexa: One of my biggest intentions that I want to have this year is to be much more gentle with myself. I'm finding that I'm using this word gentle so much more in the last few weeks. I just see that using the word gentle takes the pressure off. I used to punish myself. I used to do boot camps and used to have to earn food, right? I don't want to do that anymore. It's really, really hard on my body. And it's hard on my mind.So this year, if I have a goal, which I do, I do want to become stronger. I do want to become a stronger hiker. I founded the Body Liberation Hiking Club, and I find that I still have some difficulty when it comes to steeper inclines and I want to change that. So my gentle goal is just to go and lift weights, which I enjoy, when I want to do it. No schedule. Just go when I want to go, make it enjoyable, make it short. And that's gentleness, that's being kind to myself. So my anti-diet intention is to whenever I feel like I have a goal or want to do something for myself that I do it in a gentle way. And here's Corinne with Paige’s resolution: My resolution is to only buy clothing that actually fits, is comfortable, and looks good on my body right now. Only small alterations, like hemming length. No aspirational clothes, no clothes that require changes to my body in any way. A lot of you took this prompt beyond body-related resolutions and I think this is another awesome direction to go in. Here's Corinne with Laura's resolution:I financed a slightly used hybrid car in May 2022. And my monthly payment goes through a bank I've never used. My first attempt at setting up auto debit monthly payments failed, and then work burnout kept me from doing whatever dance I have to do to set it up—call my home bank, get customer service help from the car payment bank. Even typing out the sentence makes me exhausted and anxious! But also mailing a check every month and waiting for it to clear is a hassle. I know I'll breathe just a little easier if I set this dang auto payment up. I'm using a new year as my gentle push to do this boring chore. I need minor sinus surgery in the new year and while hospitals scare me, I look forward to fewer headaches and sinus infections. It's not a resolution to get surgery, I guess, but my health goals for 2023 include giving myself time to recover from surgery. My job is the kind that will pressure me to be on email basically until the anesthesia kicks in and to continue to reply to emails and be on Zooms during my sick leave. I won't do that! And also just note the ways I truly do feel better after I have recovered. Or I guess note honestly if I don't feel better—just a neutral honest noting of how my body feels.Laura, I so feel you and I really want you to report back to us when you get the auto payment setup. We will all cheer for you! Oh, I have so many of these like boring need to get this done, will make my life easier, but it's gonna take like half an hour to do it and I don't want to. So I love this idea. And good luck with sinus surgery!Here are some other really great non-body-related resolutions. This is fromJen Swho writesflab:So, my most focused resolution is to just create. I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic and focusing on creativity and creating, even if I think that other people have done it better than me or before me, and that there's no room for what I have to say out there. I'm going to say it anyways and put my spin on it, but just create as much as I can this year.Also love these:My anti-diet resolution is to go to the movies more. I started a monthly movie group with friends and we are all looking forward to it.P.S. During a New Year's Eve dinner that I hosted, instead of going around the table and saying our resolutions, I asked that we each say one fun thing we hope to do more of. At first, some of the guests struggled to come up with something beyond the usual diet culture resolutions. However, it soon became a very light and funny conversation. People wanted more game nights, more sex, more concerts, more phone calls with long distance friends, and more movies. Hi, I wanted to send in my anti diet resolution with a little side note that I've grown not to use the word “resolution” because my resolutions were always so toxic and related to diet culture, or like finding a boyfriend. ‘This year I'll get a boyfriend,’ or, you know, things like that. And so my intention for the year is actually to slow down and to read more fiction.My resolution is going to be not to save things for someday. To enjoy things in the present. It applies to lots of things: Hello, pile of beautiful notebooks that I've collected and never written in! I see you Waterford Crystal glasses that I got from my first wedding! But it also applies to food. I will not say to myself, you can treat yourself to poutine/cheesecake/Taco Bell if you lose five pounds or exercise five days this week or whatever arbitrary rule you've made up that's about limitation and control.We just moved into a historic 1911 Aladdin kit built house in Bay City, Michigan, and it just does not feel like us and does not feel like home yet. So a big resolution of mine for the upcoming year is going to be turning this house that we just entered into a home that works for our family, reflects our style, reflects what we need it to do for us. And last, a few of you did let us know that you are planning some resolutions that will help you further your activism against anti-fat bias. Kate let us know that her goal is to write to her school board to advocate adding weight and body size to the hazing harassment and bullying policy. That's amazing! It is a really big problem that weight-based bullying is the number one reason girls are bullied. It's the number two reason boys are bullied. But it's often not included explicitly in school bullying policies. So that's something that's good for all of us to know. If that's the case in your school districts, sending this kind of email is a great resolution.I also love this goal from Katie:I became fully licensed in social work recently. And there is a massive, massive need for more qualified mental health providers, not just in Michigan, but across the country. So my resolution for the upcoming year is to become one of those mental health care providers. I'm going to start taking on clients over the summer—hopefully adolescents for mental health services. I want to contribute to the field where there's a need. And as for me, it's probably a little bit ironic that given the theme of this episode, I am also landing in the no resolution camp this year. But I think it's actually a victory. As I said, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I have done many, many, many resolutions over the years and I'm generally someone who loves setting goals and being sort of caught up in all of that. so not doing it feels like you know hard in its own way and a good thing. For the past few years, the only resolution I did let myself make was to set a goal for the number of books I want to read. I would put the reading challenge in Goodreads and I would track my reading all year long and it was really satisfying. Like, I met those goals! I read a ton more books! I started this in 2018—my second child was born in 2017—so, it was a very concrete way to reclaim reading after several years of not reading very much because I was in the newborn haze, the toddler haze, then another newborn haze. And if you are in the baby or toddler stage and you're not reading a lot, just please know that I think it's really normal and just where our brains are in those years. Sleep deprivation kills reading for me in a huge way.So, I wasn't reading and setting these goals really helped me bring reading back to my life in a big way. I read 85 books last year! Yes, of course I'm bragging about the number even as I'm telling you that I'm not setting this goal anymore.But now that I've done it for a few years, I just want to read. I just don't want to gameify it anymore. I want to not pick books based on how fast I can get through them. I want to maybe pick a longer book without thinking it's going to throw off my count. And I also just want to trust that I have reclaimed this reading habit and I can now just do it. Even if I read less this year, or differently, or whatever it looks like. I just want to kind of go with it. So, here’s to going for big goals if you've got them, but also to not waiting to enjoy the good stuff, to getting those annoying chores off your to do lists, and to just being gentle with ourselves. If hearing these resolutions sparked anything fun, I hope you'll share it in the comments. And if you do absolutely nothing but exist and survive this year, please know, I think you're doing an awesome job.---Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me 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 independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon.