The Burnt Toast Podcast

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 Emiko Davies, an award winning Australian-Japanese food writer, photographer, and cookbook author based in Italy.Emiko grew up in a diplomatic family and spent most of her life living in countries other than her own, from China to the United States. After graduating from art school, she ended up in Florence, Italy in 2005 to study art restoration, and fell in love with a Tuscan Sommelier. They live with their daughters in a charming hilltop village between Florence and Pisa and plan to open their own space for sharing food and natural wine experiences in San Miniato in 2023. (Book your travel now!) Emiko has also written five cookbooks, most recently Cinnamon & Salt, and she also shares her recipes on her Instagram and in her Substack newsletter, Emiko’s Newsletter.But today we’re talking less about Emiko’s amazing food (although I always have time to talk about Emiko’s amazing food). We’re talking about Emiko’s experiences parenting her daughter Luna who is in a bigger body. And as you can imagine, that gets especially complicated for Emiko, as a semi public figure who shares pieces of her life and her kids online. Episode 70 TranscriptVirginiaYou have been on my radar for such a long time as someone who produces this beautiful and delicious food. You live in Italy and live out my dreams in many ways—or at least it looks that way. I’m allowed to fantasize. But I didn’t realize until you started doing your Substack about a year ago that you were also very firmly anti-diet. And I am always so thrilled to discover food people who feel that way. Because, as I’ve discussed in the past (here with Julia Turshen!), the food world has a complicated relationship with all of these issues, as I know I don’t need to tell you.EmikoWell, I actually didn’t realize that there was a term for anti-diet until I started reading some of your work. I’m pretty sure you had a lot to do with it, Virginia, so thank you. But I once I started reading about that I realized I’ve been anti-diet my whole life. Because I, like my daughter Luna, grew up in a in a bigger body. I basically went through puberty and then became thin, like over the summer. My body completely changed. And then I was a thin teenager and have been all kinds of body shapes as my through my 30s and now I’m 42. Especially having babies and everything else.VirginiaWe all try out a lot of bodies, a lot of shapes.EmikoYeah, exactly. But one thing I have never been into was diets. I was just very lucky that growing up, that was something that my family never hinted at or never suggested that we needed to do. So I realize now, looking back, that I went through those periods of my life where I was in a bigger body completely unscathed really. I don’t really remember anytime ever feeling ashamed of myself or hating myself. For that, I feel really grateful. Restricting food was never something I was gonna do. I loved eating and I loved cooking. So when I realized there was a term for anti-diet, I was like, wow, this is, this is me. I found my home.VirginiaWhat a gift your family gave you. Do you have a sense of why your parents or the adults in your life were able to provide that safe space? EmikoI don’t know why I was so lucky. My mother is Japanese and she’s very tiny. She’s a really tiny Japanese lady. My father, though, is in a bigger body. And I don’t know if that had something to do with it. Body commenting or any of that sort of thing, it just was never something that we did in my family. I have a younger brother, who was always stick thin and still is stick thin and has never changed. My sister, though, was just like me, she had a bigger body as a child and as an adolescent. So maybe it was just a combination of the fact that we we all had different shaped bodies. And that was just who we were.VirginiaThey didn’t feel like, “We have to fight this.”EmikoI feel very lucky. Looking back on this now, I didn’t realize how lucky I really was. VirginiaSo you had this realization when you started sharing pictures—particularly of Luna, you have an older daughter, too—that suddenly you were in this conversation in a different way, that you weren’t just sharing pictures of your kids.EmikoSo my older daughter is nine and she’s straight sized. And actually, we had a few years of really difficult eating, where she basically was only eating a handful of things. She was so anxious about school that she wouldn’t eat breakfast or eat at school. So she would come home at four in the afternoon and hadn’t eaten a thing and she was getting so skinny. So she was a whole different thing. I was always trying to make sure she was really comfortable around food and that mealtimes were just really the chillest and most peaceful place to be. I didn’t want to create any more anxiety than what she was already going through. And then Luna came along when we were in the middle of this really difficult eating phase. I’m gonna say its a phase because she is getting out of it now that she’s nearly 10. But the ages between four and eight were really, really difficult years.And Luna was born when she was five and a half, so right in the middle of this. And Luna was just this bubbly, funny, kind of crazy, little second daughter. When she was a toddler, I was posting photos and videos as I had always done on on Instagram and on my blog, of food things that we do together, which is basically like what we do whenever we have any free time. Almost every day, on the weekends or after school, we’re making something or at least I’m cooking something and my kids usually jump in and want to play with whatever it is that I’m making.And when when Luna was a toddler, people loved seeing Luna content. You could tell she really loves food. She loves trying anything, eating anything, sticking her hand in a bag of flour or whatever it was. You know, making a mess. I’m usually in the kitchen testing recipes and things like that and I would post all these photos and videos and sometimes we’d be making pasta or baking something, whatever it was. And so that was great, people love seeing little Luna doing that.And one of her one of the videos that that people still talk about when they write to me about her is Luna drinking a bowl of minestrone which was her favorite thing. She literally will pick up the bowl and drink every last drop out of there. And then like put it down and give this big sigh. Like, “That was so good.” So I was sharing these things. And when she was little, people just loved it and saw the joy and the innocence. That was the main thing people would write to me: This is just pure joy.VirginiaI mean, her reaction to minestrone is exactly correct. It’s delicious. EmikoThe first time I got some really startlingly negative, really hateful comments was about a year ago. I happened to be making a tiramisu when Luna popped in like she always does no matter what I make in the kitchen. She’ll be there like, what are you doing? Can I come and help you? And she’ll stick her hands in whatever it is I’m making. I was gutting a fish and she did the same thing with a fish, right? She’s just in there, curious about whatever it is that I’m doing.But this time, it happened to be a tiramisu, which, you know, is a dessert made with mascarpone, eggs, cream. I had some persimmons that were super ripe and I was using them in the tiramisu. And I think it’s kind of… what’s the word? Maybe predictable? That this was going to happen with a photo of Luna with a dessert. Not minestrone, which was full of vegetables, but a dessert. And the only actually the only times I have ever gotten negative comments is when they see Luna with something sweet. In this case, it was a tiramisu and she wasn’t actually eating it. She was helping me make… I wouldn’t even say she was helping me. She was just making a mess! VirginiaShe was in the process.Luna and the TiramisuEmikoShe was like, “What’s this?” And literally stuck a savoiard, like the lady finger biscuit, in the egg and sugar before I had even put the mascarpone in there. And she was just messing around. So I had these photos and I have the recipe that I was sharing in my newsletter. That was the first time that I got some really negative comments and the comments were basically, “What are you doing to this child?” This was clearly something that they saw as my fault. “What kind of parent does this to their child?” The assumptions are that she’s eating too much and that she has this really like hearty appetite, which also she doesn’t. She eats regularly! Thank god, she’s not a difficult eater, like my older daughter, but she’s not a particularly big eater, either. I just don’t think that that has anything to do with anything at all. But it’s this assumption that people have when they see her, especially coupled with an image of cake or dessert or sweets, right? The assumption is that I am to blame for how she looks. And I think that’s the problem.VirginiaThe problem is that they’re seeing her body as a problem, when it’s absolutely not a problem. It’s just her body. I have so much anger about this whole situation. They’re taking this one tiny snapshot of your day —I can’t even say it’s a snapshot of your life. It’s a moment of a day!—And they’re assuming that they know everything about your parenting, your feeding, her relationship with food, who she is. The number of assumptions being made here is staggering.But what makes me saddest is that it puts you in this place of having to defend yourself—which you don’t owe them or owe anybody—and of feeling like you have to explain what her appetite really is, when that’s none of our business. Nobody needs to know how Luna eats or doesn’t eat. That’s this dynamic that we force on kids in bigger bodies and parents of kids and bigger bodies that you have to justify that things are okay. And you’re never asked those same questions if your older daughter is in the tiramisu picture. Nobody would have had anything to say about it.EmikoExactly. Because I do have so many more photos and videos of Mariù, my older daughter, making cupcakes, making cream buns. They just see this thin, “normal” looking girl and there’s no problem there for them. Whereas when they see Luna, they think there is something wrong with that picture.VirginiaRight, which is just anti-fat bias. You have also had a lot of really positive comments about Luna. So I wanted to also talk a little bit about that piece of that because I mean, I love Luna content. She is such a joyous child. She’s such a sunshine-y kid and I love seeing her explore foods. EmikoI’ve actually been blown away by the positive responses from people, to be honest. They far outnumber the negative comments. People have have written privately and publicly to me—all kinds of people, younger people who don’t have kids, older people who were a kid like Luna, people who are in food, people who aren’t, so many people wrote to me—not only about this negative comment, but just in general. Whenever they see something of Luna, they just write to me to say, “I love this, I love seeing this celebration of food and joy and life.” So that has actually been something that has always encouraged me to continue sharing Luna and sharing just these little snippets of our life. Because I do get so many really, really heartwarming messages and actually quite often tearjerking messages, as well. One of the ones that really stuck out to me, for example, was I got a private message from Karen Barnes, the editor of Delicious Magazine in the UK. She wrote to me to say that she had grown up in a bigger body and how she was put on a diet. Like for Easter, she wasn’t given an Easter egg, they’d given her some tights or something else. And she felt many, many, many years of complete shame about her body and went through yo-yo dieting. She’s still now battling all of these issues, because of what was put on her as a child. And she wrote to me just to tell her her story, and to say how how happy she is to see that Luna is going down another path, and that there’s somebody showing that there is another path.You can just continue with life and celebrate food as it is, encourage a good relationship with food, and do it no matter what size your child is. So when I when I get messages like that, I think, yeah, I’m not doing anything wrong. I should continue sharing this. emikodaviesA post shared by Emiko Davies (@emikodavies)VirginiaI just had a message today from a reader who had taken her daughter in a bigger body to the pediatrician. And the pediatrician had made comments about “Are you eating healthy foods?” And she was questioning herself . When you get the negative comments, our culture has trained us to then think What am I doing wrong? They’ve called me out in some way. You sharing Luna and sharing the way your family is so joyful with food and so respectful of your kids bodies is helping families to say, “Oh, I can keep parenting my child in a larger body from this place of trust and respect and love. And I don’t need to do anything differently.” And it’s so powerful and we really need that representation. But I’m also very aware that it’s coming with a cost to you, because you have to deal with these other reactions.EmikoYeah, it feels—and I’m sure you you feel like this, too—like you’re swimming against the stream. And sometimes I wonder, should I keep doing this? What am I doing? But on the other hand, I also think the percentage of negative comments I got were actually tiny compared to the outpouring of warm and supportive messages. I think I need to maybe learn to just to block those hateful comments and try not to take them personally, which is super hard. When it’s about me, it’s easier for me to not take it personally, but when it’s about my child, that’s that’s really that’s really tough.VirginiaIt’s so vulnerable. I completely get that. And, you know, in my case, my older daughter’s story was shared in a very public way. I wrote a book about it, I wrote a New York Times Magazine article about it. I’ve done dozens of podcasts about it. And I did reach a point where I thought, “I’m going to talk a lot less about her.” I don’t put her picture on my public Instagram anymore, unless you can’t really see her face. Because I wanted to start to give her, as she was getting older, more privacy. And with the younger one, I’ve started to move in the same direction. Even though she doesn’t have a dramatic story like that. It’s easier to share when they’re little, when they’re toddlers and babies and preschoolers, there’s something much more innocuous about sharing them at that point. So I really relate to the struggle you have of like, they’re a joyful part of my life, I share my life as part of my work and where do we draw these lines? How do we figure out what guardrails our kids need? There are no easy answers to this one.EmikoYeah, the lines are very blurred.VirginiaI don’t know if you’ve thought about either turning off comments on Luna posts or putting a clear disclaimer of “I’ll be blocking negative comments.” Having some clear boundaries set with your audience can be really helpful. What’s nice about it in a way is the the people who are going to make the negative comments are still going to make the negative comments, but it gets everyone else on the same page. Your audience, the ones who support you, the ones who get it, the ones who appreciate what you’re doing and realize the value of what you’re doing. So then I find it helps the audience step up. I’ll see people dealing with the negative comments for me, which is lovely and so supportive when people want to take on that work. It also clarifies, for me, when someone breaks one of my rules that I have set, it’s an instant delete, instant block. I just don’t even engage with it because I’ve set that clear boundary. I don’t engage with it, I don’t try to convince that person of anything. EmikoI recently discovered that I can turn off commenting and only allow comments from people who follow me. VirginiaYes, I did that! That was a game changer.EmikoYes, it was. The most recent negative comment that I got about Luna, I just decided, I know that my community are the supportive ones. In fact, that one about the persimmon tiramisu, there were two people who wrote some comments and they got eaten up by my followers. I didn’t even have to say anything to them. They just got ganged up on in the comment section until they deleted their own comments. So it was incredible. I have such a supportive group. I really do. But yeah, turning off comments but allowing your followers to comment.VirginiaThat’s another reason why comments are a paid subscriber benefit on Burnt Toast. I don’t want Burnt Toast to be a place where I have to deal with trolls, or at least if I do they have paid for the privilege.EmikoThat is really brilliant.VirginiaIt keeps this community safe. And as a result, it is a place where I feel like I can talk more about more complicated or personal things in a way that Instagram doesn’t always feel like the right venue for. So that’s really nice.EmikoOne of the one of the places where I found this whole conversation really difficult actually is with a family member when I was recently back in Australia for the first time in nearly three years. They hadn’t seen Luna since she was one year old and they felt it necessary to comment. They again assumed that I was doing something really wrong, that there was something wrong to begin with all of that. That’s been more difficult because you can’t just block your family member. Well, some people do, but it’s a bit harder.VirginiaYeah, that is a tricky one. I think often in those moments—I don’t know if this comment was made within earshot of Luna—but I think what’s really important is to think, what do I want my kid to take away? I want my kid to see me trusting them. This person or family member making this comment has no business making this comment to you, so their feelings are sort of immaterial even if you have to be kind of careful because family social dynamics are complicated. I still feel like the most important thing is just, “We trust her body, we trust her, we are not worried. We don’t see her body as a problem.” And then that way, whatever that other person says, the kid is taking away that “Mom is not worried about this. Nobody in my immediate core family is seeing a problem.” And that is really powerful and something I’m sure Luna is getting from you regularly.EmikoI think that I actually read those exact words from your newsletter. I have them written down. This is something that I wanted to practice because it is so hurtful when when somebody says something about your child, and I wanted to be calm and collected and have the best thing to say back and those words are the best thing to say.VirginiaIt shuts it down because what does this person want to say? “Don’t trust your child?” They can’t combat that, they sound like an idiot. I developed that strategy when my older daughter was at the height of her feeding challenges, I developed that strategy because that’s another place where people feel very free to weigh in on what your child is eating or not eating or they’re only eating white foods or that kind of thing. I’ve actually used it with both my kids quite often, for a variety of reasons. It’s really all purpose, because these are very much the same problem even though they’re manifesting differently. In both cases, someone sees a child who only eats five foods or who in my case was on a feeding tube, and they see something’s gone wrong. There’s a problem and this child’s body is a problem. We see someone in a bigger body and we assume this is a problem to solve. In both cases, there’s this unsolicited input, feeling like they need to undermine or question your parenting in some way. It’s all coming from this larger cultural messaging about there being one right way for a kid to eat, one right body for a kid to have, and that the right way to eat should equal the right body when of course we know these two things are totally unrelated. EmikoI have actually used that phrase as well with my older daughter in a parent teachers meeting where her teachers pointed out to me that she wasn’t eating anything at school and they were very, very, very concerned. They would watch her like a hawk and if she did take a bite, they would get the whole class to applaud. They were doing this for a couple of months and she didn’t tell me about this. I didn’t know the teachers had done this. And she had developed this fear of eating in front of other people. She felt really ashamed. She didn’t even want to go over to her best friend’s house if it involved a lunch or dinner. She was like, “You have to pick me up before dinnertime. I don’t want to eat there.” Because I think she had become so afraid of the adults judging her.VirginiaIt’s an amazing erasure of body autonomy. It just stuns me that people think just because this is a child, they have no right to any privacy. It’s a such a boundary violation.EmikoMind boggling.VirginiaSo I think it is using all these skills you built with your older daughter and repurposing them for the same kind of boundary violation. I’m curious, too—I know Lunas only four, these conversations are very much probably just starting with her. But does she have an awareness of her body being different? Does she have any sense of that? Has any of that started to come up for you guys?EmikoI don’t think that she really knows or maybe doesn’t have the language for it yet. But we have had a couple of instances, especially this summer, like when we were at the beach, where other children have pointed at her and within earshot said something about her body. And I just had to whip around to them and say, “I’m sorry, but it’s really not polite to talk about other people’s bodies.” And just leave it at that. But either she didn’t hear it or she didn’t seem to care or she didn’t know really what they were saying.But what breaks my heart is when she does say that she doesn’t look like Mariù, her older sister, and she wants to be beautiful. She only ever wants to wear dresses, the fluffier and the tutu-ier, the more sparkly it is, the better. She she wants to be ultra feminine. So it’s got to be pink or maybe purple, it’s got to be glittery. It’s got to be a dress. So at the moment, all she wears to school are dresses when all the other kids are wearing stuff they can get messy on the playground. But I’m fulfilling her ballerina dreams by letting her wear tutus to school.VirginiaThat is another form of body autonomy, letting kids lean into their own aesthetic choices. I say this as the parent of a child with blue hair at the moment. We’re embracing her aesthetic choices. And it’s pretty fun to see what they come up with and see their version of these things. I mean that “I want to be beautiful” piece is of course heartbreaking because bigger bodied is beautiful. These things are not in opposition to each other. And that’s a conversation that I’m sure will evolve as she gets older. There’s that wonderful kids’ book Beautifully Me by Nabela Noor. I don’t know if you have that one.EmikoI don’t, but I’m on the lookout for any book or film or anything that’s that has somebody that is bigger bodied and beautiful.VirginiaNabela is an influencer, she started as a beauty YouTuber. She is Bengali, she’s in a bigger body. And it’s a picture book she wrote a kind of about her own childhood. The main character is probably like five or six and aware of like her older sister on a diet and her mom saying something about her body and picking up on all these anxieties about the adults in her life. And then starting to worry, “Can I be beautiful if they feel like they can’t be beautiful. “The upshot is a really lovely message about you decide what’s beautiful and beauty is inside us, as well. I was surprised by how thoughtful and how nuanced the story is. So that’s certainly one to add to your library when you have a kid who is really interested in being beautiful.The other piece of it is we have to help kids understand that beauty is the least important thing about them, that that’s not what we’re defining ourselves by, and that it’s an optional standard you can opt in and out of. That’s a conversation that takes longer. And when you have a kid craving this experience of feeling beautiful, it’s nice to be able to give them this book and give them the tutus and the sparkly dresses and let them enjoy that. EmikoYeah, that sounds great. VirginiaWhile we’re on the subject of kids clothes, you and I have also talked a little bit about the challenges of plus sized kids clothing. I’d love to hear any recent breakthroughs you’ve had on that front or, or struggle points that you’re having.Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-SmithWhere Are All the Plus Size Kids' Clothes?Listen now (41 min) | It’s hard to be fat as an adult. When you are fat adult with a fat child, you’re a particularly kind of terrible in society. You’re listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. Today I am chatting with Pam Luk, founder of…Listen now3 years ago · 21 likes · 31 comments · Virginia Sole-Smith and Pamela LukEmikoDresses are, I think, the easiest way to dress Luna. And the fact that she loves them and always wants to wear them tells me 1. She’s comfortable in them and 2. They make her feel good. Sometimes I do try to put leggings on her. The choice of girls’ clothing here in Italy is is really a disaster. Everything is made out of stretchy material so it’s more meant to be like skin tight, skin hugging. I think that she finds tights and leggings too restrictive because they are tight. She doesn’t like that feeling. So we’re still having quite a balmy autumn at the moment, so she’s still wearing her summer dresses. I usually look for A-line dresses. Nothing with a waist because those also like cinch in and are not comfortable. Anything that she can move around easily in because she’s really active. She’s a really active four year old. VirginiaYes, she wants to be able to play. I was a big sparkly dress kid, too. I can remember one of my grandmothers being sort of horrified that I was playing in the mud in a sparkly princess dress. I think it was a bridesmaid’s dress, like I’d worn it to be a bridesmaid in the wedding and then I was still wearing it every day.EmikoThat sounds familiar.VirginiaAnd my mom was like, “Well, if she wants to wear party dresses and she wants to play then the party dresses are just gonna get dirty. I’m not going to say ‘Oh, you have to be so careful because you’re wearing a fancy dress,’ because then the dress is this barrier.”EmikoA barrier to having fun and being yourself.Leave a commentVirginiaThe other thing I wanted to touch on quickly, is: You talk a lot in your work about your approach to family dinner. As you said, prioritizing comfort and relaxation above all else. This is so crucial and something I am always also struggling with. I would love to hear a little more about what you’ve figured out, and any sort of policies you have at your family table. EmikoOur family has quite an unusual dinner time because my husband works six nights a week in a restaurant so he’s not there. It’s just me and the girls. And before even Luna was was here, it was just me and my older daughter. It was just the two of us. And so two things happened with that dynamic.One was that lunchtime became our main family meal where we could all have lunch together because the girls come out of school early enough to have lunch, so like 1 pm. And it’s before my husband goes to work. So lunch was our main meal together. And I think that lunch just feels a little bit more casual. I feel like there’s a like a lot less pressure, as opposed to dinner.For people who have trouble getting the family dinner together, what if it was breakfast or what if it was lunch that was your time together? Just a time that you are all at the table together and you’re all relaxed. My experience of dinnertime is this is the time of the day where my kids are there crankiest, I am my most tired. And then I’m on my own, on top of it, and having to get them ready for bed, get them ready for school the next day, make dinner, get them bathed, get them in their pajamas, get them to bed. It’s just all so much work for one parent to be doing or even two parents to be doing that. Or if you’re outnumbered. There was so much pressure in the evening. So I kind of liked that lunchtime became our our family meal time. And that really took the pressure off in the evening.So dinner, when it was just me and the girls, has always just been what do you feel like? I would basically let my daughter choose what she wanted to eat based on how she felt because of her unpredictable appetite. I would say that whenever I did try to assume she would like this thing for dinner, even if it was one of her favorite safe foods, quite often she wasn’t in the mood for it. And then I would have wasted all this time like preparing something.VirginiaYeah, I’ve had that dinner about 4000 times.EmikoExactly. So because it was just me and her, by around like 5pm I’d be like, “okay, so what do you feel like eating?” And let her tell me how she felt. And then I would usually have whatever the basics were there, whatever their safe foods were, I usually have those around. And then that way I would make her the dinner that she that she wanted based on what she she chose. It’s usually something quite simple because we have already have had a nice lunch together with with the whole family at lunchtime. So dinner might be like a bowl of rice with like a fried egg or something. And then whatever fruit was around or whatever other little things I could add, other little dishes. I could build on that and make like a little meal out of it and make something that I would like to eat. I always have something else that I want for myself. That’s important, too. Like, we’ll both be eating a bowl of rice as the base, and then she’ll have her thing and I’ll have my thing. That’s kind of how our family dinners evolved, when it was just her and me having dinner together.And then when Luna came along, I just I just kept going because that was still quite a big thing for us. When we were at the table together, I just wanted that to be the most safe, comfort, comforting, comfortable place for her to be so that she could just be herself she could eat if she wanted to. She didn’t have to eat if she didn’t. I just wanted us to sit around a table together and and be able to connect and maybe chat.VirginiaI think that’s a really helpful reframe. I mean, my family’s schedules and lives does make it so dinner is the time when we can come together. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how do we prioritize that this is the safe space and a relaxed place, and not prioritize what everybody’s eating or how much people are eating and all of that and just I think that’s a useful touchstone to keep coming back to so I really appreciate you speaking to that. ButterEmikoThis might be wildly unpopular, but at the moment what is on my mind is tofu. And the reason for that is because I’ve just come back a couple of days ago from Japan. I haven’t been back to visit my family there in five years so it was a really special trip for me to be able to go back there. Also, before the country officially opened to tourists and travelers, because Japan has been closed this whole time.VirginiaWow. EmikoSo it’s a really special time to be there. And one of the things that I had organized to do, which was like a dream of mine, was to learn how to make tofu. And so my mom came from Australia to meet us there and my sister came as well and we all went to the mountains in Japan and we made tofu together, which was just so so wonderful, because I can’t get good tofu here. I always had the most amazing tofu at my grandmother’s home in Japan. I don’t know, maybe in the states you get better tofu, but in Italy you get really really bad tofu. There’s only one kind and it’s like ultra vacuum packed and it’s just…VirginiaThat’s certainly my experience of it here, but I’m not a tofu expert.EmikoSo homemade tofu or artisan made, actual really freshly made, like made that day tofu, I would often liken this to Italians, I’d be like, “that’s like having really fresh buffalo mozzarella, like a proper mozzarella. And so doing this doing this tofu making class was was exactly what I was hoping for. It was exactly that. It was just like making cheese. We were able to eat it right after the class and it was just the most amazing. I was just trying to capture this very nostalgic childhood memory I have of eating tofu at my grandmother’s table and I have never found that tofu again until the other day when I was tofu making class. So I am now going to make it at home. I can get back to that flavor and that sort of that really like creamy, melt in your mouth kind of texture.VirginiaI love that. I have to admit, that makes me want to try better tofu and give it another try.EmikoYeah, it makes a difference. It was like a whole world of difference.VirginiaOkay, well mine is like the opposite of this experience. Now I’m a little embarrassed, to be honest. There are no bad foods—I’m very big believer in that. But I’m recommending frozen dumplings.EmikoOh no, frozen dumplings are a staple in our house!VirginiaOh good, because I was like, she’s making tofu from scratch, like as it should be made in Japan and I’m like, “this box of frozen dumplings just really improved my family dinner.”But yeah, I had never made them before! I don’t know why or where they’ve been all my life, but we are doing this family meal planning where we sit around as a family every Sunday and everyone’s grumpy about it and I love their grumpiness and I make them pick meals. And I had seen a recipe in New York Times Cooking for a dumpling soup made with ramen noodles or rice noodles or whatever and vegetables and broth, like very simple. And I just thought, I’m gonna pitch this for my night where I get to pick because I knew at least one of the kids would likely eat the noodles. I was like, I can deconstruct this into elements they might go for and it looks really tasty and its fall and I’m craving good soups and soups that like fill you up because I feel like a lot of soups are not a full meal. And we don’t talk enough about that, but anyway.EmikoAbsolutely.VirginiaAnd it was so simple because you make the noodles, you make the broth for the soup with ginger and garlic and miso paste and stock and then just drop in the frozen dumplings. You can just drop them straight in and they cook in the pot. And it was a 75 percent success rate, which is the most I can ever hope for with the four of us. I will never get 100 percent. 50 percent success with the kids, one kid was delighted. And what was cool and I have to give props to their school, both of the kids had done some kind of dumpling lesson around Lunar New Year last year. So they had a passing reference for it and were like, “Oh, dumplings. We know dumplings.” And I was like, I didn’t know that your school had done this, I would have gotten on this bandwagon so much sooner. Now I’m just like, I’m gonna buy all the dumplings and I want to try other ways to cook them.EmikoYeah, actually, frozen dumplings are a staple. We always have them in the freezer, because that’s something that everybody loves. So on those nights when you only want to cook one thing, It’s like dumplings. We’re all just gonna have dumplings. And actually what you were saying that soup, I was going to say that when we’re doing one of our family meals, one of the things that I really like is the dishes that you can build on or take away from. You’re basically giving everyone the same base, like tacos. You’ve got all the ingredients, you put what you want in them. Or like a noodle soup. I do a plain noodle soup, like the one you were just describing for the girls. And then for Marco and I, I will put all kinds of things in.VirginiaYeah! We added chili garlic sauce, I’m so excited about it. That is really helpful to think about.Well, Emiko, thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation. I loved getting to talk with you. I feel like we could do this for hours. Thanks for being on the podcast!EmikoThank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you. VirginiaTell listeners where they can follow you and support your work and get more Luna content.EmikoYou can find me at @EmikoDavies on Instagram or my website is Emikodavies.com. And I have a Substack newsletter, which is just calledEmiko’s Newsletter.

Today Virginia is chatting with Naureen Hunani, the founder of RDs for Neurodiversity, a neurodiversity-informed online continuing education platform for dietitians and helping professionals. Naureen also has her own private practice in Montreal, where she treats children, adults, and families struggling with various feeding and eating challenges through a trauma-informed, weight-inclusive, and anti-oppressive approach. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And 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 LINKSRDs for NeurodiversityOn the Division of Responsibility and diet cultureMelinda Wenner Moyer on core strength and sitting at the dinner tableFor little ones, Yummy Toddler Food has roundups of good baby and toddler highchairs, booster seats, and toddler tables.For older kiddos, we're hearing good things about this chair and these wobble stoolswhat is misophoniaAgainst ImpulsivityThe Heart Principle by Helen Hoang Want to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe 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.Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.Episode 69 TranscriptNaureenSo I am a multiply neurodivergent person. I’m also a mom of two multiply neurodivergent kiddos. Both of my children have feeding differences. And professionally, I’m a registered dietitian. VirginiaCan you talk a little bit about why neurodivergent folks may have a hard time with eating? How much of this is due to being neurodivergent—and how much of this is due to our culture’s neurotypical expectations around food and around mealtimes? NaureenI love that question. That is something that I have been exploring the last couple of years. How much of this struggle or difference is really related to the neurotypical expectations? Who gets to define what is and isn’t a problem?  It’s really interesting because people of all neurotypes can can have challenges when it comes to eating. We do see, however, that neurodivergent children, in general, will present with a lot more feeding differences, compared to children who are developing more typically. What we often see is selective eating, or what a lot of people call “picky eating,” and those types of feeding/eating behaviors. It could be related to sensory needs or the child’s feeding ability. But I think what harms neurodivergent children the most are neurotypical developmental milestones related to feeding and eating—the shoulds and the expectations, right?I know, as a pediatric dietitian, this is huge. I remember talking to parents and saying things like, “By 12 months, they should be able to eat like the rest of the family and by 18 months they should be able to self feed.” And this is what we see in daycares, schools, these expectations that we have for children to develop a certain way. And when that doesn’t happen, a lot of parents struggle. Because parents are given prescriptive advice, right? So when there are differences that show up, it becomes really difficult to access support.So, I really see this as a difference and not necessarily a problem. And that’s what I encountered also, as a parent, right? When I was struggling to feed my family, it was really difficult to find support if people didn’t fully understand what I was struggling with. I didn’t have the language and my children, of course, didn’t have the language. I think that it’s definitely a bit of both, but I do think that these milestones can can be quite damaging to children who are developing differently.VirginiaI love the language choices you’re making. I love that you’re saying “feeding difference” instead of “feeding problem.” As someone with a kid with a lot of feeding differences, I really resonate because it just is so negative. It can feel like a problem, right? Because you’re really struggling. And people are telling you that something’s not okay. But to reframe it as a difference and not something you’re blaming your kid for, or that everybody’s doing wrong—that you are doing wrong, that the kid’s doing wrong—that alone feels like such a powerful reframing.NaureenThank you. For me personally it has made a huge difference and the families that I work with feel very much affirmed by that type of language. VirginiaSo in terms of the expectations, I completely hear you on the milestones. My older daughter definitely did not eat like the rest of the family at 12 months or 18 months, or any of that. We had to throw out that whole timeline. And a lot of these expectations that are on parents today come from diet culture. What rules or misconceptions from diet culture in particular do you see getting weaponized against neurodivergent kids?NaureenI think diet culture impacts all children in a negative way. I think for kids who are neurodivergent or disabled, it’s particularly problematic. Because we know that diet culture is rooted in white supremacy and so is ableism, so then you’ve got these two systems of oppression coming at you.Because when we look at what diet culture pushes—it’s not carbs, right? Carbohydrates are softer, easier to chew, easier to digest. And a lot of the foods that kids who are more sensory sensitive gravitate towards are demonized by diet culture.There are different pieces, the ability piece, the texture perspective, and all of that and the sensory perspective can be difficult because of feeding abilities. Kids who are choosing certain foods because they’re easier to consume, often those foods—boxed foods, processed foods, packaged foods, all of those are—are demonized by diet culture. So I feel like it can become really, really messy. We see also that neurodivergent children have more feeding defenses. And when you look at the adult population, they’re also more likely to develop eating disorders later on in life, right?VirginiaYes and how much of that might be rooted in the shaming they’re experiencing around those food preferences? NaureenAbsolutely.VirginiaI think about this all the time, how the way we’ve been told to think about feeding our kids is just so wildly out of line with how our kids want and can eat. And that is true for neurotypical kids, too. But you’re right. The demonization of carbs, the demonization of processed foods—if we could get rid of those two things would make everyone’s lives so much easier when it comes to feeding kids.So I think a diet culture version of feeding kids is pushing vegetables really hard, being anxious about carbs, that kind of thing. And there’s also the clean plate stuff, like “finish this before you can have this,” those kinds of rules. And then the model we’re given as the alternative to those rules is usually Division of Responsibility, which is the idea that parents are in charge of what foods are offered and when they’re offered, and kids are in charge of whether they eat and how much they eat. You and I have also talked about how that model doesn’t always work for neurodivergent folks. So I’d love to have you spell out what you see as limitations there as well.NaureenYes, I think that DOR is something that can be adapted, right? So, if we look at, for example, the parents’ job—the what, when, and where—I find that if the parent isn’t necessarily informed about how the child’s developing, and if the idea here is to get the child to eat like the rest of the family and to appear as neurotypical as possible, that’s not going to work. I think that’s one of the reasons why DOR can fail.I do think there is still a lot of value in the child’s jobs in feeding, in terms of deciding whether or not they wants to eat and the quantity. But it’s the what, when, and where that I feel like a lot of people struggle with. Because a parent might think that the family meal table is the best place for the child to eat, but maybe it’s not. I think this is where things get really, really messy, where I have had to sometimes even separate different family members, because it’s just doesn’t feel safe. Or what the other members are eating is just so aversive from a sensory standpoint, the smell. Plus all the demands that come with socializing, when it comes to eating. Some children don’t have the capacity at the end of the day to be able to socialize and, quote unquote, behave well and sit down and all of that.So for some children, having a little table on the side works better. Or it could be in front of screens, even. For some children that works better because it provides self-regulation and some predictability instead of adding those social demands and all of that. With the what and when and where, we have to really look at the child’s development abilities, feeding abilities, preferences, all of that, and then make the right decision, whatever that looks like.VirginiaOn the one hand, I hope what you’re saying is giving a lot of parents a moment of real relief and giving them permission to think “Oh, I don’t have to try to execute the family meal in this rigid way. I can make more of my own choices here. And really meet my kid where they are ,as opposed to trying to drag my kid into the situation that’s not working.”But I imagine, too, that you sometimes encounter folks who have a knee jerk reaction of, “This is too permissive. How will they ever improve if we make it this easy for them?”I’m deliberately playing devil’s advocate here. This is not how I feel about it. But I have encountered that perspective and I wonder if you have as well. How do you talk through those concerns? NaureenI think it’s important to have these conversations. We live in a society that is so ableist, so we do internalize a lot of these ableist beliefs, too. But if we think of the changes that parents are making as “accommodations,” (because that’s what they really are) then it makes a lot more sense. It’s like saying, “Why are we going to put a ramp? If we do that wheelchair users will never walk.” You would never say that.So, when we start thinking of eating in that same type of way, then it makes sense. Children want to learn. They naturally want to be like others and please their caregivers, but sometimes they just can’t eat the way the rest of the family does And so, these accommodations can be so supportive and actually help build a safer relationship with the caregiver. And that leads to healthy attachment because you’re meeting the child’s needs. Being responsive will not spoil the child. The children will still be intrinsically motivated. If they see something interesting that they want to eat, they’re going to take it. They’re not going to not eat it, because you’re offering preferred foods alongside that newer food. VirginiaI also think, a lot of times when parents are having that reaction, we have to take a moment and say, “Well, what we’re trying to force here is not happening.” The kid is not sitting at the dinner table or not eating the vegetables, or whatever it is. So why wouldn’t we give this a shot? As opposed to just continually trying to get this round peg into the square hole or whatever metaphor you want to use. NaureenIt’s interesting, Virginia, because a lot of parents are already implementing a lot of these strategies on their own because parents are, typically, in my opinion, quite attuned. They know what’s happening. But they just feel a lot of shame and guilt. They’ll share, “We are doing this” but feel so shameful about it. And I’m like, “This is a brilliant strategy.” So sometimes it’s really about how about maybe we remove some of that shame. How do we empower parents because they, they’re the ones who are feeding their kids, all day long. I mean, providers can be helpful and supportive for sure. But I think that at the end of the day, we need to empower parents so they can make the right choice without feeling all of that guilt and shame.VirginiaRight, and without feeling like you’re being graded. I had a mom reach out recently, she mentioned that they were doing a lot of meals in front of the TV because that’s what’s working right now. She was like, “I just think about how our meals look like from the outside,” and I just thought, but who’s looking in your windows at night? Who is on the outside that you’re so worried is seeing this and judging you? If that’s someone in your life, who loves you, that person is not being supportive. And if it’s the sort of  amorphous, larger world of Instagram and culture and whatever—none of them are invited to dinner so it doesn’t matter. I would love to get into some practical strategies. And I’ve got a bunch of listener questions I’ve gathered that I thought we could go through. The first one says:“I would love any practical tips for making dinners more doable. My child often only sits for three to five minutes tops. And as soon as she’s done, her younger sister is done, too. So it’s like the whole meal just kind of unravels at that point. Would a different chair or other physical support help her stay longer? Or is it just not realistic at this time of day for dinner to last longer than five minutes?”NaureenDefinitely, seating makes a really big difference. Make sure that you have a chair that supports the child. because often what ends up happening is that if the child is not well-supported, a lot of energy is going towards sitting down, the core muscles, and then you just don’t have the capacity to engage in the fine motor skills. Sometimes that means that just having a smaller table. Like a kiddie table with smaller chairs can work well.Virginia’s Note: For more on kids, core strength and sitting at the dinner table check out Melinda Wenner Moyer. For little ones, Yummy Toddler Food has roundups of good baby and toddler highchairs, booster seats, and toddler tables. For older kids, I hear great things about this chair and these wobble stools and like that they are both much less expensive than the beloved Stokke Tripp Trap, though you likely won’t regret that investment since it does grow with kids. If you have experience with a great kid-friendly chair or other dinner table supports you love, post in the comments!And, of course, we need to manage expectations, too, right? We don’t necessarily want kids to be at the table for 30 minutes. That’s way too long. Sometimes getting them to move a little bit can be helpful and provide a little bit of that input because sitting down can be difficult for some children. There are weighted objects that can be placed on the lap, which can be supportive too.Something else to consider, and I’m not saying this is the case, but this is just something that I thought about: A lot of people with misophonia have these very strong reactions when they hear other people chewing or yawning. So sometimes, later on, we find out this is why this particular kid was running away constantly.So the first thing is chairs, seating, all of that. If that’s adjusted and the child still escaping? Well, it’s because they’re telling us something. Something’s going on, right? And so then we have to see what can we do to make this more comfortable and figure out what type of accommodations we need.VirginiaI’m also just thinking, and I don’t know if this is that letter writers perspective, but: For kids who have had a hard time with eating and feeding dynamics, the dinner table can just be this thing, right? It can just be a trigger.NaureenOh, yeah, absolutely. The fight or flight response. So if there has been trauma or a lot of pressure or other factors that we don’t necessarily think about, if there’s sensory differences, like the smell of what others are eating is a lot. I really think the child’s behavior is telling us a story. And then we need to figure out what does this really mean because children don’t just behave a certain way for no reason. There’s always a reason.VirginiaThis next question is about an adult child, which I think is interesting.“My daughter is 23 and living with us, is autistic and ADHD. She’s not intellectually disabled, but I’d say her emotional maturity lags by a good bit. She’s very impulsive, and she also takes medications that affect appetite and has since she was five. It complicates so much about decision making and hunger and eating.When I say impulsive: As a kid she could be sick and throw up and immediately want a milkshake and not understand why that might not be a good idea. I’m pretty sure this still holds true at 23. The hyperactivity is 24/7, so it’s her nature to wake up, walk around, eat a banana in the middle of the night, forage for breakfast number one at 5am, and then have another breakfast once I’m up. Then the meds kick in and hunger is back burnered until five, when it roars back with urgency.I try to be weight neutral. She and I are both in bigger bodies. She’s mostly comfortable in herself, much more than most young women, I think. Although every now and then I hear an ‘I’m fat’ type of comment. But I’m often lost in the quandary of what boundaries are okay to set and what’s really not. I often say, ‘Are you sure you’re still hungry? Can you wait 10 minutes and if you’re hungry, come back and find something?’ Or ‘Hmm I think you already had two breakfasts, are you really hungry?’ And sometimes, of course, as the human mom running in the kitchen. I’m just frustrated, and ‘how can you be hungry?’ But that’s probably unfair.” NaureenWe have to be careful because, often, neurodivergent people are more likely to get infantilized. Because 23 is an adult, right? With or without cognitive impairment. But if we want to generalize a little bit, children sometimes also have these behaviors, right? Where they’ll go and eat, and you feel like maybe it’s not the time to eat. And in this case, it seems like this person maybe has an eating pattern that wouldn’t be considered “typical.” It’s also important to remember that when we eat, we eat for different reasons. Sometimes it’s related to physical hunger, but it could also be to cope with certain emotions, it could be for stimming, because it provides certain sensory input, stimulation, self regulation, all of that. So it is important to acknowledge that whatever is going on, there is a reason behind this. There’s a purpose and it’s not just for nothing.In this case, I would really look at what does the day look like, aside from eating. What else is happening? Sometimes mornings are really difficult for a lot of neurodivergent kids. Getting through the routine. Let’s say this particular person has to go out to work, school, whatever their routine looks like, and there’s a lot of stress. Sometimes we want a little something to soothe us. So I wonder if maybe the mornings are a little bit stressful.It can also be related to interoception. Some people need to eat frequently throughout the day because their early satiety signals are sometimes uncomfortable or maybe even painful. So some children will eat more frequently. And that this is where you see that they’re grazing all day, and we see that in adults, too, right? I see a lot of adults that will have a lot of different small type of meals instead of sitting down because sitting down, eating a big meal can be understimulating, as well. Some even call it boring.VirginiaMy kids definitely say that.NaureenAnother thing I find that shows up—even for people who are totally on board with weight neutrality and size diversity—sometimes we can still, as parents, struggle with internalized fatphobia. So I notice that parents who have children in smaller bodies often don’t have these types of concerns. I’ll hear things like, “He eats like all day, but he has a good metabolism.” And it’s like, no concerns, right?I have a lot of compassion for parents who are in larger bodies and have children in larger bodies because it is violent. Our culture is so terrible, right? And so you want to protect your kids and you want to make sure that that they are accepted and all of that. So I think sometimes that shows up, too, because I do see often a difference in how parents will treat children who are in larger bodies versus smaller bodies when it comes to this type of eating pattern.VirginiaI’m just realizing, when I read her question, my screen cut off the last line of the email. She also wrote, “And the idea of not limiting sweets is blowing my mind trying to relax around that one,” which I also have a lot of compassion for. That, of course, is a message that’s drilled into us for so long. But I think you’re completely right here that some of this anxiety about this adult child’s eating patterns, is probably rooted in some of this weight and diet culture stuff, as much as it is also confusing and discombobulating to the mom to have a kid who’s not eating during the day and wanting multiple breakfasts. It sounds like the adult child’s schedule is not lining up with what the parent wants their schedule to be. NaureenAbsolutely. VirginiaSo there’s that conflict, which is hard, especially as you are two adults living together now. But then there’s this added layer of maybe this parent is worrying that that the adult child’s eating schedule is the reason for their body. And we need to disconnect that.NaureenAnd medications are involved. So what happens is meds really—depending on the medication—will impact appetite. So the person may not feel super hungry and then when the meds wear off—I see this all the time in my practice where parents think their kid is bingeing. No, this is just a natural response because they couldn’t eat enough earlier in the day, when the meds were really impacting the appetite. They eat smaller amounts and then at some point, they need to make up all that. So the fact that it’s happening a lot in the morning tells me that maybe this is maybe before the medication and there is more appetite. Bodies are brilliant, really.VirginiaYes, it seems really smart to eat a lot in the morning before the meds kick in so they have fuel to get through that long stretch when they won’t have appetite. It’s just a brilliant strategy and maybe just making some space for, “this is what she needs.” And then yes, at 5pm she’s going be really hungry again when the meds wear off. But that’s not a problem unless we label it a problem.NaureenAbsolutely, it’s a strategy and I work with families where their kids will have two or sometimes three suppers after dinner because they really are not eating much during the day because of the medication and all the other factors. VirginiaThat’s so interesting.Alright, another listener question:“Recently, I’ve found myself resorting to cajoling bites for my child (age five, uses they them pronouns.) They become so absorbed in play that they forget to eat or reject the suggestion that it’s time for snack. I suspect ADHD. Sometimes hours later, they’ll completely collapse into meltdowns lasting 20 to 40 minutes. I’ll sit there begging them to just eat the snack because I know it will make them feel better. But they always refuse my initial offers. At meals they will often only nibble on things, or take three bites from a happy meal before declaring “I’m full” and playing with the toy. Now I find myself resorting to “take three bites,” as my child retorts, “I know my body and I’m not hungry.”“I have ADHD time blindness1 and getting absorbed in tasks also makes me forget to eat. But I’ve been working on that more lately. How can I improve things for my kiddo? I’m worried about them not eating lunch at kindergarten.”NaureenYes, things can get quite messy when there are multiple neurodivergent people, because you want to make sure you can eat and it’s a schedule, and routine—and remembering all of that can be hard. When kids don’t eat when it’s time to eat can be quite stressful because it’s like okay now I have to remember to offer something else, maybe 30 minutes later. It really increases the executive functioning load.But there could be so many reasons why this type of behavior is like showing up. For some children, asking “would you like this or that?” creates a demand on kids who are more demand-avoidant or have demand anxiety. So sometimes leaving the food in the environment—and I know this is totally going against DOR again—but just very casually leaving it in the environment can be helpful. The important thing here is we’re giving frequent opportunities to kids to eat and nourish their bodies.Sometimes that could be like, “We’ll read a book or we’ll do something that doesn’t require a whole lot of focus and then have snack in the environment.” You’re just kind of eating and just engaging in that. For some kids, that works really well because they’ll say no if it’s a demand and they don’t want to be forced into this snack time because they’re busy doing something else. But when you pair it with another activity, that works. It has to be something that doesn’t require a whole lot of focus, though, because then you forget about the snack.VirginiaBecause they’re getting so absorbed in the playing. NaureenExactly. So it varies from child to child. But this is where we have to think about more creative strategies, right? And I love that child confirming “No, I know my body, I know my body.”VirginiaWe love body autonomy.NaureenI love it. I love it. But yeah, sometimes it’s really about creativity and letting them lead. Because again, some children won’t eat because it becomes a demand. So we have to find creative ways.VirginiaI’m also wondering about having a snack cabinet (here’s ours) or a snack drawer that the kid can access on their own. And again, this might lead to a grazing pattern that feels counter to what you’ve been told to do. But if it lets them engage a little more directly with feeding themselves, that might help with starting to hear some of those cues, too, right? NaureenAbsolutely. VirginiaAll right, and then this next question, oh, this is another person who has been burned by Division of Responsibility.“The strategies you often write and talk about don’t work for us, especially Division of Responsibility. My son is eight years old and has ADHD. He takes Ritalin which suppresses his appetite, so he doesn’t get reliable hunger or satiety cues. I would like to understand how to develop body trust when you have a body and brain that you can’t always trust because of medication, and because it struggles with self-regulation, impulse control, distractibility, et cetera. How much can we expect our kiddos to get this? And how do we help them with it, especially since impulsivity is also such a thing and I don’t want to demonize or pathologize his impulses, either.” NaureenThere’s this misconception that we can’t trust neurodivergent children when it comes to their bodies and food. And it’s because we are looking at neurotypical ways of eating and showing up in this world and then we’re comparing neurdivergent children.Again, when there are medications involved, typically children will eat a lot more food before taking the medication and then after the medication wears off, and that is totally fine. So I’m really curious about what the eating pattern looks like and what is it telling us right? And impulsivity is very interesting. Shira Collings, one of my friends and colleagues, wrote a blog on this topic, Against Impulsivity. And it talks about how the behavior we’re seeing is a result of unmet needs.I’m just going to make some assumptions here. Sometimes I’ll see parents say things like, “Oh, my kid is so impulsive when it comes to eating sweets or sugars or certain foods.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, I would be like that, too, if I wasn’t allowed to eat sweets and all the foods that I enjoy. I wouldn’t leave the sweet table either.” So I think often, it has to do with some type of restriction or unmet need. I think that again, we need to approach this with a lot of compassion and curiosity, and think about how these behaviors are actually serving this kiddo. Understanding the story can be really, really valuable.VirginiaI really understand where the parent is with their initial perception, but I love this idea of reframing impulsivity as a strategy, and as a way of expressing a need, that’s really powerful. I’m thinking about this medication piece of it, which I had not really considered before. And I’m just curious: Do you often see a lot of kids on these medications basically not eating lunch at school? I’m sure that’s worrisome to parents as well. Do you have any strategies to help with that?NaureenSo for some kids during the day, they can’t eat all that much because of the medication. But they’re okay drinking chocolate milk. So let’s pack three of those, please. We’re going to try and get in some nourishment that way. It’s about being creative, so when it comes to certain more palatable foods that bring a lot of joy and pleasure, those are easier to consume, right? And we’re like that too, right? Sometimes it’s like you’re full, but then you see the dessert and you’re like, well, I’d love to have a piece of that. So I think sometimes it’s about that, too. So this is how you feel, but what are some foods that might be interesting or easier to take in? For some kids that can work really well. You know, liquids or more snack type of foods, right? Not necessarily like pasta in a thermos, but maybe some cheese crackers and a little bit of fruit or something. And that might work.VirginiaI was going to ask about crunchy foods or foods that give a lot of oral feedback. Do they help ever?NaureenIf that is what the child is into, yeah, absolutely. We all have different sensory profiles. So it’s really about being creative. And about giving more opportunities before and then after. That’s where we see parents that are concerned, “My kiddo just ate dinner and 30 minutes later, they’re hungry again. What do I do?” And I’m like, “Well, if they’re hungry, it’s because they are hungry. Let’s offer more opportunities to eat.”So the pattern ends up looking different, and sometimes it looks very different, and it doesn’t align with how the rest of the family members are eating, and that’s okay. And that’s totally okay.VirginiaRight, it makes sense that these are kids who probably need a good bedtime snack. So in terms of these kids, who, at least from the parents’ perspective, don’t seem like they have strong hunger and satiety cues, or we know medication is a factor and it’s suppressing those cues: How do you talk to the kids about that? Is there language that’s helpful to a child to start to help them tune into that?NaureenI am very careful about teaching children hunger/fullness. That’s something that I’m actually quite uncomfortable with. I think that children, as they get older, they see how other people are eating and what eating looks like for others. I think that they make connections. They are very aware. When we start telling kids that they can’t feel fullness or they can’t feel hunger, we can run into a lot of trouble. Because how hunger and fullness show up in the body can look different for different people, depending on interoception.So for some kids, parents will say things like, “Oh, my kid doesn’t say that they’re hungry and then they have a meltdown.” I’m like, “What else happens before that?” Those are the signals that we should be looking at. We don’t want to hyper focus on like, “hunger should be felt in the stomach” and “this is what your tummy is telling you.” Because for a lot of people, that’s not where they will feel it. They will not feel it there. They will feel it as “I can’t focus and I have a bit of a headache.” Or “I’m not feeling super good. I’m thinking about food.” Or there are other ways, right? And that looks so different. So we can’t really teach that.VirginiaBecause you don’t know what their experience is.NaureenWe don’t know, right? And it’s so interesting because adults will tell me, “I don’t feel hunger, I don’t feel fullness.” And then a few months later, they are so aware of their eating experience. They’re like, “I can actually do my homework and I don’t feel tired. I’m in a better mood.” And like, these are your signals, right? This is what’s happening inside your body.I think that having a flexible structure and teaching children that we can develop a flexible structure where there are multiple opportunities to feed the body can be super valuable. And that’s the work I do with adults, too. They’ll say “I don’t feel hunger,” but like, okay, well let’s see what happens in your body when we start feeding it every couple of hours. Oh, wow, I feel different. Okay, do you like that feeling? Yes, I do. Okay, let’s keep doing this. So it’s really about helping them, giving them that structure so they can take care of their bodies, right?VirginiaAnd I think, too, a big part of this must also be accepting that it’s not going to look like what you the parent are expecting it’s going to look like. And it’s going to change. Kids are changing all the time. I think one of the most exhausting parts of feeding your family often, is that realization of, “This dinner that was working so well a month ago, now, everyone hates it.” Or this dinner time that we had picked based on our schedules doesn’t work because the kids are hungry an hour earlier or not till an hour later, or whatever. You’re constantly pivoting, which can be exhausting. NaureenIt can be, absolutely. But it’s also useful data. VirginiaI want to end on this last question because I just really love it:“What do you think our priorities should be in terms of helping neurodivergent kids with meals? What matters most to help them build and maintain healthy relationships with food?” NaureenHonestly, the first thing that comes to my mind is validation. We need to validate that their experiences are real. Whatever it is they are experiencing has meaning.I can share a little bit of my own personal experience here, as a mother who doesn’t have feeding differences, who is supporting children who do. I really had to learn to normalize their experiences. So I remember my daughter having these very unique experiences with food and then I would totally validate that. “You’re right, if you’re saying that this doesn’t feel good, then then that’s okay. That experience is real and we’re going to figure something out. If you don’t want those little pieces of whatever it is in your rice, we’re going to take that out and I’m not going to say you’re being too difficult or your brother’s eating them.”So, really offering validation and normalizing whatever it is that is coming up. I have one kiddo who likes spices and another one who doesn’t like spices. I often have to accommodate and modify my recipes. So, that’s a lot of work for me as a neurodivergent parent. And at the same time,I also want them to feel like their bodies are not broken, right? That these experiences are their experiences. They have the right to be able to find joy and pleasure in food. And I don’t get to define what’s pleasurable, they get to define that for themselves. And that is what I think is super important. VirginiaYes. Empowering them to have these experiences and to know that their experiences are real and valid. That feels like everything. ButterNaureenWell, I am in Montreal, and the fall weather here has been just fantastic. So I’ve just been spending a lot of time outdoors and just admiring the beautiful leaves, the colors. And that’s what I have been doing. It’s just so nice.  VirginiaEvery year I think of myself as someone who doesn’t like fall because I’m really someone who doesn’t like winter. And so I get a little sad at the end of summer because it means winter is coming. And then every year I’m like, oh, wait, fall is great. NaureenIt’s beautiful, it really is magic.VirginiaI grew up in New England, like I’ve experienced falls for 41 years. And I don’t know why every year I’m like, Oh! It’s beautiful.Okay. Well, my recommendation is a book I just read actually, over the weekend, while I was on a little admiring pretty fall leaves weekend away from my kids. It was great. I read the book The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang.It’s a really delightful romance novel and it is about the experience of a neurodivergent woman. She’s actually a violin player and she’s gone through a sort of traumatic experience with her violin playing and her relationship to music. And it is a romance. There’s a delightful romance plot. But it’s also her starting to understand her her identity as an autistic person and having to come out to her Chinese American family. There are a lot of complicated dynamics. I saw the title The Heart Principle and I thought it was just going to be a fun romance novel and it absolutely was. And I was also sobbing because the story of this woman’s experience was so beautifully done. The author is herself autistic, so it’s also very much grounded in her own experiences. I just loved it. It was much more than I had expected from the very cute cover and delightful in many ways.Naureen, thank you so much for being here! Tell listeners where they can follow you and how we can support your work.NaureenI have two social media accounts. For parents, I have an account Naureen Hunani Nutrition on Instagram and Facebook and then for providers It’s RDS for Neuro diversity. 

Today Virginia is chatting with with Pam Luk, founder of Ember & Ace, a new line of plus size athletic clothing for kids. We get in what's wrong with the kids' clothing industry, and Pam has so many tips and hacks to making finding clothes for kids in bigger bodies more doable. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And 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 LINKSEmber & AceJeans Science.Virginia reporting on the weight/child custody case for SlateJulia Turshenwhat is a 10/12 pluswhy I just always buy two sizes of everythingTarget boots (yes, mostly sold out)Want to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe 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.Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

You’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, and I’m author of the upcoming book Fat Talk.This is the October bonus episode for paid subscribers! Today we are revisiting another essay from the Burnt Toast archives. We’re going to talk about gender roles and Halloween costumes. I’m going to read you the essay, then we’re going to chat about it, and you’ll get this week’s Butter. 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 my Substack. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you’ll only get the first chunk. So to hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript you’ll need to go paid.It’s just $5 a month or $50 for the year and you get the first week free. Which means yes, you could listen to this episode and then cancel and not get charged! Of course, I hope you don’t do that because the Burnt Toast community is a truly special place. One of my favorite things that you’ll get to participate in our Friday Threads, where we discuss everything from what we’re reading and eating to how we’re feeling about our relationship with exercise or caregiving. And yes, tomorrow’s Friday thread will be a deep dive into feelings about Halloween costumes. So that is another reason to go ahead and join us!The essay I’m revisiting today is called Halloween in Girl World. I published it on October 3, 2019. This was back when only about 500 people read Burnt Toast. It was also, depressingly, a better and more hopeful moment to be a feminist in a lot of ways. So it made me a little sad to go back and realize how many things have gotten worse. But, I think that makes this conversation about Halloween costumes all the more relevant today. Girls and gender nonconforming kids are growing up in a culture that automatically objectifies them and these seemingly innocuous moments—like what they’re going to be for Halloween—are where a lot of that starts.On a related note: If you’re in the Bay Area, check out my step-mom’s abortion film, which is screening at the Berkeley Video & Film Festival on Saturday! (Here’s my conversation with Mary about the film and body autonomy activism.)And: Election Day is looming. Remember any dollar you give to the Burnt Toast Giving Circle now goes towards The States Project’s Rapid Response Fund, to support quick-response work like last-minute electoral opportunities, ballot curing, helping with recounts, and more, in every state where we have a chance to gain (or protect) a blue majority.Halloween in Girl WorldIf you’ve been feeling over-confident about gender roles lately — maybe because so many women are running for president, or because She Said is on the NYT Bestseller list and Harvey Weinstein got indicted again — you can slow that roll by taking yourself over to any Halloween costume website or catalog. I’ve been deep down this rabbit hole for the past month because my older daughter is of the age where Halloween costume research starts before Labor Day. And my report from the trenches is: It’s not pretty.Or rather, it’s all too pretty. To be expected are the princess and fairy costumes and I think we all have to find our own peace with this because forbidding a princess obsession is a surefire way to ensure one. (Violet is currently debating between rainbow fairy and ladybug, or possibly a mash-up of these two concepts if she can persuade me to spend that much on her various costume components.) But I am dismayed to see we have made literally zero progress since Lindsay Lohan explained the true meaning of Halloween in Mean Girls some fifteen years ago:And so, as Violet paged through a catalog for HalloweenCostumes.com, she paused to ask me, “what is she dressed up as?” about a photo of a nine-year-old girl in a police officer costume. She was confused because the costume included a short skirt that no police officer has ever worn in the line of duty. Costumes like “doctor,” “pirate,” and “baseball player” are similarly gendered with skirts or lots of pink or both. Over on Chasing-Fireflies.com, boys can choose between costumes for doctors, firefighters and dinosaurs, while girls are given not one but three different options for waitress costumes including my favorite because it’s such a delightful mash-up of diet culture and misogyny (so, diet culture): Donut Waitress.I mean no disrespect to baked goods or service sector workers. But if our daughters like doughnuts, maybe instead of “look pretty and serve them to other people” a more fun game would be “eat them your goddamn self.” (No, there is no equivalent costume for boys. They cannot be a Donut Waiter.) I want to say, oh it’s just dress-up. Because I know that a parent hand-wringing about gender stereotypes is a surefire way to a child wanting to be a doughnut waitress with her whole heart and soul. And of course, plenty of parents aren’t going to be perturbed by the symbolism. Two moms we know from preschool, enamored of the friendship that had developed between their children, decided to put them in a coordinating “couple” costume for Halloween. The four-year-old boy dressed up as a hunter with a camo vest and toy rifle. The four-year-old girl wore a short-skirted, lace-trimmed doe costume. She looked very pretty. She was his prey.These moms weren’t thinking about the optics of this costume; how it communicates that boys should chase girls, and even try to hurt them. They thought it was sweet and silly and a fun way to celebrate their children’s friendship. But it didn’t surprise me that they landed on such a violent metaphor of domination, because those messages about boy/girl interactions are everywhere and thoroughly reinforced by the companies that sell toys, clothes and other products geared towards kids. The doe costume was not homemade.Seeing all of this, I have newfound respect for the parents that go viral each year with their baby dressed as Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Rosie the Riveter. I just wish, on behalf of working parents with no time or inclination to make a costume everywhere, that capitalism would catch up.PS. OK, a little more Googling and I did find a ready-made RBG costume on Etsy. And the very good humans at Mighty Girl have put together this excellent curated round-up of girl-empowering costumes, which, now that I’ve discovered it, will be the only way we shop.Okay, so some thoughts on this essay. Number one, it’s pretty gender binary. And I just want to note right off the top that there are kids of all genders struggling with this gender binary in Halloween costumes. Obviously, the whole premise of the essay requires the gender binary, but I could have done a better job folding in that basically everyone who’s not a cis male is getting left out of this Halloween costume situation. So let me note that here right now. One update I have to give, is that I have of course completely forgotten to use that Mighty Girl link for empowering Halloween costumes since I wrote this piece. As a lot of you heard me discussing in detail with Corinne last week, I kind of hate Halloween. And buying costumes stresses me out so much no matter what. So I often end up taking the easy-but-evil Amazon Prime way out a lot of years. This year my older daughter is being a panda which turned out to be a surprisingly fraught costume shopping journey. And my younger daughter is a ladybug which is great because we already own like three ladybug costumes because this is an evergreen choice at our house. I don’t feel good about buying cheap costumes we’ll wear once I often do try to go to like Hanna Andersson’s pajamas, you can turn into costumes, or other elements we can repurpose. But in thinking about this piece, I’m realizing I haven’t had to steer either of them away from that sexy donut waitress version of things yet. I think a lot of this is just luck and down to who they are. Neither one of them had a particularly prolonged Princess phase. We haven’t had a Barbie phase in our house. And I’m not saying like Oh, we did so well. We didn’t have to ban these things. They just never really came up. But a big reason they haven’t come up in my house is rooted in our privilege. We can afford to give our kids a lot more options in terms of toys, clothes and experiences. A lot of stereotypical gendered toys and clothes are the cheaper options. I’m going to link to a piece I wrote about Barbie that makes this point because if you price out Barbie is compared to, say, American Girl dolls—which while still very feminine, give you a lot more ways to be a girl—I mean, there’s a huge price difference. Barbies are like $12. American Girl dolls are like $85. So obviously, the gendered toy gendered clothing options. I mean, you see this as well brands like Primary and Hanna Andersson. Higher end kids clothes tend to be less pink princess versus blue and sports motifs. When you’re shopping at Target or Wal-mart, often it’s a lot more binary. So that’s a big piece of this.And we see that with Halloween costumes, too. The cheaper options offered on Amazon and at Spirit Halloween totally play into all the gender norm stuff. Although to be fair, Pottery Barn kid costumes, which I think are one of the priciest options, are equally gendered, and stupidly expensive, says the woman who once bought their flamingo costume and had it fall apart in her dress up box like a month later. So don’t fall into that trap. This is one aspect of pop culture and modern life where gender norms and expectations are just really tough to avoid. And while my kids have not wanted to go the sexy route yet, they have vetoed plenty of costume ideas over the years as quote “boy costumes.” And we’ve had to talk quite a lot about how actually, you can be a hedgehog or a dinosaur of any gender.One other thing I think is missing from this original essay, though, is the understanding that the real victory here is not overhauling the Halloween costume industry. That would be lovely. I don’t know that it’s ever going to happen. Like, this is not our biggest battle to fight when it comes to gender equity. What we really need to do is use moments like these to talk with our kids about the importance of subverting gender norms and expectations. And I get my initial rage here. When I reread this piece, I was like, wow, I was really pissed about this. And I still feel that rage. It’s super frustrating to have to explain that this is supposed to be a police officer costume, when no police officer my child has ever seen has dressed like that. I am no longer framing the sexy Halloween costumes as heroin because I know that’s counterproductive. If I were to ban that type of costume, of course, that’s what they would most want to wear. But the other reason I’m more relaxed about it is because I can trust at this point that my kids are developing some of the critical thinking skills they need to navigate these things. I think if you’re still choosing costumes with toddlers and preschoolers, obviously you have a lot more say over it. And you can do some curating of the options they see. If you have an elementary school kid like they’re going to beat you to the Halloween costume catalog in your mailbox. It’s just what it is. She also gets every toy catalog first. I don’t know how. So what matters then is: How are we using this media? How are we teaching her to think about this media?And I’ll report one sort of moment of hope here: We got our 900th American Girl catalog of the year last week. (They’ve been sending them to us almost daily since my children were born.) And my older daughter was the one to notice, “Wow, almost all of the dolls in this catalog are girls.” There is one token boy WellieWisher, which I think is a new addition to the lineup. And in the section where you can make the dolls look like a creepy version of you, there’s a boy option. But all the historical figure dolls and the girl of the year and all of that—always girls. And my kid was like, “Why do they think girls liked dolls so much anyway?” Because she is not a doll kid. She had a WellieWisher and a Nanea doll, and gave them both to her little sister several years ago. These are, like, the least played with toys in my house, which is enraging to me because they are, of course, some of the most expensive toys. And I don’t understand it. Childhood Me never got an American Girl doll and would have killed for a Samantha. Not the point of this podcast, but just while we’re here, I wish my children appreciated more of the things they have. Anyway!She’s not a doll kid. It’s confusing to her that there’s this assumption that just because she’s a girl, she’s going to be a doll kid. And so I was pleased to see that she was noticing that discrepancy and sort of wrestling with it, while looking at it. She, of course, still reads the catalog despite not liking dolls. And we were able to talk about like, “Yeah, this is weird, and they’re making so many assumptions about you. And you know, that doesn’t feel great.” So that’s a way to use this onslaught of capitalism that is all toy catalogs and especially Halloween, in your favor to have these more productive conversations.I will also say, I feel a little bit of exhaustion with the progressive parenting trend of dressing your child up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg or another feminist icon. Because honestly, this probably isn’t most kids first choice of a costume. I mean, yes, if your child came up with the idea herself, and she wants to be Jane Goodall, great. But: If you are pushing her into those options when she would rather be Elsa from Frozen, you’re undermining the feminism of the costume by limiting her body autonomy. So how is this better? This gets us into a much bigger conversation about girls’ bodies and clothes and what are we teaching them when we talk about an outfit not being quote “appropriate” for school or some other public space. This is something I thought about a lot when writing the book. So you’ll get more of all of this when you read Fat Talk in a few months. But suffice to say that for now, I always err on the side of letting kids dress “inappropriately,” if that means they are making their own choices about what goes on their body. That can come with lots of nuanced conversations about why certain outfits get overly policed, why girls are encouraged to be sexy in these ways, also whose bodies get police the most, etc, etc. But I think if we’re going to take anything away from this whole Halloween/gender binary thing: Halloween should be a time to to try on different personalities, different identities, explore, be creative. And whatever that looks like for your kid, it’s fine. It’s one day of the year. And you can use that as a jumping off point to have bigger conversations about gender norms and bodies and all of the shitty messages our kids are already getting about those things. Post-recording note from Virginia: I didn’t include a discussion of the fact that the other problem with hyper-gendered kids Halloween costumes is, of course, that they are never size-inclusive because Corinne and I touched on that last week. But in editing this transcript I wish I had! Lots of former fat kids have told me they stopped trick-or-treating pretty young because the costume was too stressful, to say nothing of the potential for candy shaming. So this is another way that the our culture’s obsession with Halloween reinforces super toxic messages about body autonomy. And if you have leads on great plus size kid costumes, or other ideas for how to support kids in marginalized bodies on Halloween, I hope you’ll drop them in the comments.ButterMy Butter this week is not a particularly revolutionary one. Because you should know by now: I like to be late to a trend. I like to ease my way into a cultural moment. So I’m going to recommend a movie that was a huge hit over the summer, and you probably already saw, but I feel it is timely to bring up now. Mostly because I just saw it, but also because there are amazing Halloween costume ideas in the movie.So the movie is Everything Everywhere All At Once. Michelle Yeoh stars in it, as well as Ke Huy Quan, the guy who was the kid in Indiana Jones and is now grown up and just like a brilliant, beautiful performer. It is a family drama. It is an action kung fu movie. It is a multiverse sci fi story.It is just one of those movies, I was saying to Dan, you know, if we were still in college, and like getting a little bit stoned? This is the movie we’d be talking about till four in the morning, trying to unpack all the layers of it, and rewatching it constantly. Now I go to bed at 9pm, so I’m not going to do that. But I am going to tell you all, if you haven’t seen it, it is a completely beautiful, wonderful, amazing film. And As regular Burnt Toast listeners know, I do a movie club with my siblings, and this was somebody else’s pick because I’m not cool enough to know about cool movies, but my siblings keep me in the loop. And we all really loved it and had such a good discussion about it. And so I was reading more about it after that discussion. And I came across an interview with Michelle Yeoh where she said that they actually originally wanted Jackie Chan for her part. What’s so powerful about the movie is that it’s the story of this Chinese immigrant mother trying to connect with her very Americanized daughter, and bridge the language gaps and the cultural gaps. And it’s also about her own sense of her identity as an older woman, and just, it’s so rich. And the idea that they were just like, “Well, we should make a story about Jackie Chan doing those things.” No disrespect to Jackie Chan, although he comes with a lot of baggage, but it just shows how far we have to go in Hollywood, in terms of representation that they were like, we want to make a Chinese movie, the only movie star we can think of as Jackie Chan. Like, so depressing. So anyway, they did not, he was too busy. They went to Michelle Yeoh, who they originally wanted to play his wife, but then they realized that she should not be second fiddle to anyone. They made her the star of the movie, and it’s incredibly good. And there are just like a million Halloween costumes in there. It does raise the whole cultural appropriation questions of if you’re a white person and dressing up as a Chinese character from a movie—that’s fraught. But white ladies, we have Jamie Lee Curtis in the movie. And I think hot dog fingers and a Jamie Lee Curtis outfit is an amazing choice. I hope to see that when I’m out trick or treating. I will say no more in case you haven’t seen it, but do put that on your calendar. The Burnt Toast podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and now TikTok! 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! 

Today’s episode is our October Ask Us Anything with Virginia and Corinne Fay of @SellTradePlus! We get into unlearning fatphobia, managing treats with kids, and our very unpopular opinions about Halloween. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And 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 LINKSVirginia (Corinne) joined TikTok.The good seltzerHow to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davislazy can also be a very racialized term@LordTroyour last reader surveyBody Liberation Hiking ClubSTP's Philadelphia Clothes SwapChristy Harrison’s provider directoryCorinne's cheesy songEllyn Satter/DORKid Food InstagramAubrey Gordon has a great argument for why we should say anti-fat bias and not fatphobiaHow to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes by Melinda Wenner MoyerThe $58 plus size Rockford Peach Costume on Amazon. Noihsaf BazaarCorinne is making this chocolate sheet cake with brown butter frosting.Lizzo playing James Madison’s fluteVirginia is into Lauren Leavell FitnessWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 66 TranscriptVirginiaI’m excited we’re doing this. I’m opening a seltzer.CorinneI also have seltzer.VirginiaI’m opening the good seltzer.CorinneEssential.VirginiaOkay. I’m ready. We’re going to answer some questions. We’re going to talk about Halloween. We’re going to talk about some good stuff.CorinneOkay. I’m gonna ask you the first one.I’d love for you to talk about the intersection between diet culture and being freezing. The temp where live has dropped below 80 finally, and suddenly all of these very thin moms are super bundled up at drop off. Meanwhile, I’m sweating still and shedding all my layers. Feels like one of those weird things where it’s expected that women are small and freezing. Is this a thing? Just me being self conscious about still being sweaty in October?VirginiaI think it’s a thing. Don’t you think it’s a thing?CorinneI don’t know. I was confused by this question.VirginiaI have often noticed that I will not be wearing a coat and my skinny friends will be in scarves and very bundled. CorinneI definitely am hot. I definitely am hot and sweaty.VirginiaAll the time, year round. And maybe because you don’t live in a cold climate you don’t see this juxtaposition? But I know what she’s talking about. I mean, I could rant for several minutes about my hatred of coats, particularly coats and cars together. It’s the worst because you just feel like bunched up and stuffed into this thing.CorinneYeah, like your shoulder mobility.VirginiaAlso I have garage privilege. We have an attached garage to our house where I spend most of my life because my office is above it. So when I leave my house I don’t have to put a coat on because I’m going to walk into my attached garage. And so it takes until bitter cold here, like February, before I actually wear a coat. Do you know what I mean? I live in suburbia and so I’m driving everywhere and I get in my car without a coat and then I get to the grocery store and I just run in. Like, do I need a scarf and a cute hat to walk across a grocery store parking lot? I don’t. But I definitely notice this and people will always be like, “Aren’t you cold?” And I’m like, “No, I’m fine.” I have padding.Corinne“No, I’m not cold, I’m fat!”VirginiaThank you.CorinneIt’s funny because I actually love coats. But I don’t get to wear them very often. I like a light coat. But I do understand what you’re saying about wearing them in the car.VirginiaI was just fighting with a raincoat earlier today, picking my kid up, because it’s pouring rain and I was like, “Oh, I guess I need to wear a raincoat.” And I got in the car and I was like, “I am being suffocated!” CorinneYeah. That’s not a good feeling. Raincoats in particular just make me sweat. VirginiaBecause you’re wearing a garbage bag! Even if it’s a cute garbage bag, it just is.CorinneAre people expecting women to be small and freezing?VirginiaWell, we know they’re expecting women to be small. I think there’s some cheesy romcom tropes around this, don’t you think? Like, “Oh, she’s wearing his big sweater.”CorinneI feel like people are expecting fat people to be hot and sweaty. And I am living that.VirginiaI am meeting their expectations. I guess I would just say, be comfortable? I mean, who cares? Let those ladies have their sweaters and their scarves. We’ll get there. CorinneYeah, it definitely seems better to just be honest about it than to try and bundle yourself and make yourself uncomfortable.VirginiaOn the flip side, I will say I have one thin friend who runs very, very cold. Thats just her journey and she has said that people will comment on that.CorinneIn conclusion: Stop commenting on what people are doing with their bodies.VirginiaAll right. I’ll read the next question. I think this is from a teacher.My colleagues constantly called fat children lazy. What to say? It’s obviously fatphobic. I usually challenge them about the individual child. Also, do they think I’m lazy, too? Hard to trust now.It was sort of truncated because she put it in an Instagram question box. But yeah, that sounds awful. Awful.CorinneMy first question is what profession is this? Because that’s so sad.VirginiaWhy are these people allowed to work near children? I’m guessing it’s either a teacher or some kind of health care provider.CorinneYeah, I was guessing health care. Just sad to imagine that people that take care of kids are calling them lazy. Virginia I think it’s great to challenge them about the individual child. I also think is there a way to say something thing like, “I’ve been really trying to unlearn some of those stereotypes.” Or, “I think it’s such a bummer that we are so hard on fat kids.” You’re not specifically calling out your colleague for saying the terrible thing, but you’re talking about the fatphobia. I always like to bring it to the larger system. CorinneMy suggestion was, if someone says like, “Oh, that kid’s lazy,” ask some follow up questions. Like, “Oh, what makes you say that? I’m so curious why you think that?”VirginiaYou’re kind of putting them a little on the spot, not in an aggressive way. And then if they have to really spell it out, hopefully they hear themselves. CorinneI think you could also continue that into the more broad thing and just say, “Why are we calling people lazy? It’s sort of mean.”VirginiaThis is reminding me, I just finished KC Davis’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning. CorinneI really want to read that.VirginiaIt’s so good. I’m obsessed with KC. She talks about how lazy doesn’t exist. I’m just thinking this might be a good read for this person because she’s not talking about it in the context of weight. She’s talking about it in the context of how clean your house is and if you’re neurodivergent, how thats challenging. But it could be great to just be like, “I was just reading this book and lazy is a social construct.” People being lazy need to rest. Resting is valid.CorinneI think you’re right. It makes sense maybe a teacher would be calling someone lazy because you’re supposed to be ‘hardworking’ in school. But I don’t know, I think calling someone lazy is mean. So just don’t do it, whether they’re fat or not. VirginiaYeah, it’s a really unhelpful term. It’s super ableist and super fatphobic.CorinneIt’s trying to shame someone into doing something that they maybe don’t want to do.VirginiaWhich is always a successful strategy. We’re really sorry you have to deal with that. It sounds terrible. And in terms of can you trust your colleagues, I think that’s valid, to feel like you can’t trust them. I don’t know how safe you would feel doing this because it does not sound like a super supportive environment, so consider this part very optional, but you could also say: “That does not feel safe for me as a fat person to hear you say that.” I think that would make them deeply uncomfortable and hopefully they’d shut the fuck up. But I throw that out there with all the caveats of, that may not feel like an option.CorinneI also feel like we should probably mention that lazy can also be a very racialized term. That could also be playing a part. So let’s not call anyone lazy. Okay.Recommendations on finding and building fat community as a fat person unpacking their diet culture BS?VirginiaI feel like you should answer this first because you have been building selltradeplus as a wonderful, fat-positive community. CorinneI think it’s kind of that question of how to make friends as an adult. And I guess my first answer is: Online. VirginiaIt is often the safe starting point, right? You don’t have to leave your house or put on pants. CorinneAnd I think also people can be a little more upfront about how they feel about things online in a way that… You know, sometimes you meet someone in person and you like them and then you realize like, we disagree about a lot of things.VirginiaI shared a reel the other day from @LordTroy being like, “I don’t trust it when I see a group of friends and they’re all thin.” (Sorry, we can’t find the specific reel anymore but everything @lordtroy posts is gold.)CorinneOh, I saw that.VirginiaI was like, YES.So obviously there’s Burnt Toast, where I think we are building a great community that is quite size diverse, according to our last reader survey. So, I would not say we are a specifically fat community, but there’s certainly a lot of fat folks centered in the community. And I think that’s been really lovely. In terms of in-person community, really, my only experience with it is this Body Liberation Hiking Club I keep talking about. Alexa, who is a teacher here in the Hudson Valley, just decided that she wanted to build fat community and started this hiking group and made a Facebook and an Instagram and started putting up schedules for hikes. And people go on the hikes, it’s so awesome. I mean, I’ve only been on one hike, but I aspire to go on more.It made me realize I had never hiked without—I’m married to a thin guy, and I’d never hiked with other fat people! And I was like, I’ve been doing it all wrong. It’s so much nicer. Just not having any of that noise of comparison or anything and just all being really supportive and safe together.So, I guess, look for a group like that. And if there’s not one, start one! It doesn’t have to be hiking either. Obviously hiking has a little built-in ableism because not everyone can hike, but it could be a book club? I think book clubs are great. Someone told me about starting an articles club, because reading books takes too much time. And I was like, I love it. CorinneWow, that’s a great idea! Oh, Pool Party.VirginiaPool party, always always. CorinneI like the suggestion of starting something if you can’t find something in your area, because there are definitely fat people everywhere who probably want other fat friends.VirginiaYes, I don’t know if you’ve heard the talk about this epidemic…? You can find us. Although, I will just say as an introvert, starting an in-person thing sounds scary. I would be so anxious that no one would come and I would feel bad. So maybe if you have like one friend, even if they’re not fat, but they’re just supportive that you can like anchor it with, you know? CorinneFrom SellTradePlus, there have also been a few groups of people meeting up that met on SellTradePlus. So you could come to SellTradePlus and see if there’s people in your area. There’s now a Philadelphia Clothes Swap that’s very big and happening at the end of October. So, if you’re in Pennsylvania, you could go to that.VirginiaThat’s awesome. I fantasize about Burnt Toast meet ups! My hope is when the book comes out, maybe book events can be a useful starting point for that.CorinneOkay, next question.If your eyes are wide open to diet culture and fatphobia, but you still hate your body, how do you move forward? For example, I know why I find being bigger triggering, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to be smaller. How do you unwire that?VirginiaI do think it’s important to know that you can have your eyes wide open to these things, you can be a good advocate working to dismantle fatphobia, and you can still be in your own personal struggle. Like, you do not have to have the shit worked out in order to be a good ally or advocate or any of that. So, cutting yourself some slack here and giving yourself permission to be struggling might be helpful. It can often be really beneficial to work with a therapist, a good anti-diet, fat-positive therapist. I can link again to Christy Harrison’s directory for finding folks. What are your thoughts?CorinneYou can’t completely unwire this without solving fatphobia on a global level. It’s just the air we’re breathing. Everything around you is telling you that you should hate being bigger. And, it’s uncomfortable! It can be very uncomfortable to be in a body that doesn’t fit places or breaks chairs or whatever. So, that’s valid.That said, my recommendation would probably be to try and find some stuff that you could do where you’re enjoying just being in your body. Whether that’s some type of exercise or swimming or meditating or yoga, or like taking pictures of yourself and looking at them without feeling disgusted or just some way to appreciate what your body can do for you, even if it’s not like the body that society tells you you should have or should want.VirginiaThat’s so smart. And yeah, appreciating your body for what it does versus how it looks, like releasing yourself from the expectation. I just described 10 years of therapy for a lot of us.But at least noticing. I think it can be good just to notice. I’ve talked about this before, when I have wardrobe anxiety about things not fitting or it doesn’t look right, when I take a minute to say, “Wait, what else is going on?” It is always not about the clothes. It is always that I’m cranky and hormonal or because I have to see people in the world and my social anxiety kicked in or I’m stressed about work and taking it out on pants.I think it’s good you’re noticing that you’re getting triggered because I think for a long time people stay stuck in this perpetual triggered state that feels like normal. You’re at least like, Oh, I’m getting triggered and now I’m having these thoughts that don’t align with my values. That’s a useful place to be.CorinneEven if being in a bigger body doesn’t allow you to do certain things like run marathons, maybe you can still like smell flowers or like feel the rain on your skin and now I’m singing a cheesy song.VirginiaGot a little Julie Andrews there, but that’s fine. But no, you’re right. Finding ways to enjoy the tactile experience of your body. Like cozy blankets. If you’re not too hot. CorinneLaying on the couch. Having a body allows you to lay on the couch which is fun.VirginiaIt’s so great! Let your dog sit on you, it’s awesome. Finding ways to appreciate that or just noticing that. Maybe while you’re noticing being triggered, also noticing positive sensations in your body could be useful. CorinneWe solved fatphobia on a global level.VirginiaWe did. We broke down a lot of systemic bullshit.CorinneOkay, here’s the next question.We’re trying to be an Ellyn Satter/DOR house and avoid labeling any food as “treats” so as to present food more neutrally. In our own unlearning, sometimes this goes better than others. But we’ve been doing the Ellyn Satter deal for his whole life, four and a half years now, yet he regularly asks us for “treats” or why there isn’t a “treat” at every meal or snack. We bake often and we’ll do snacks where the treat is on the menu. And he gets unlimited access to those things. We try to do it regularly. But still his talk of treats persists, he goes to daycare and gets a heavy dose of this kind of messaging there even if implicitly. Ideas?VirginiaOkay, so this is fascinating because it makes me realize something that I think we’re doing wrong when we talk about keeping foods neutral. I do think it’s important to avoid labeling foods as junk or bad foods or trash, but I think also some foods are treats and that’s okay. I think it’s okay to say that something is a treat. Maybe a treat is something you eat daily and maybe I have a treat at most meals, you know? It doesn’t mean it’s something I can’t have. We could reclaim the word treat.He maybe is just asking for foods that feel fun to him to eat. It’s okay that he’s noticing that some foods are more fun to eat than other foods. He’s figuring out preferences. And people have different ideas of treats. I was just hanging out with a bunch of girlfriends this weekend, and I made brownies because me and one friend really wanted brownies, but the other two just wanted cheese. And like I love cheese, too, but that’s not dessert to me. But they were like no, that is our dessert. And like, that’s a valid life choice to feel that cheese is your dessert, but it’s a valid life choice to feel the brownies are your dessert.CorinneDoes Division of Responsibility say that you shouldn’t call things treats?VirginiaI don’t think that’s textbook. It does emphasize the importance of not labeling foods as good and bad and it is true that there are certain contexts where treat equates with bad. I do think the messaging he’s getting at preschool may be like, “Oh, don’t eat too many treats.” You see that on Kid Food Instagram a lot.But what I’m saying is, I think you’re going to be making your life hard and also sort of doing a disservice to your larger goals if you’re trying to correct him when he’s using the word. You don’t have to get so hung up on the word treat. If he was saying “junk food” or “it’s bad for me” or something, that would be different. But treat is not an inherently negative word. So maybe we’re overthinking a little bit. CorinneDoes the fact that he’s asking why there isn’t a treat at every meal or snack mean that he’s not getting enough treats?VirginiaWell, that was where I was going to go next. I’m just looking at the question again, this person says “we bake often, and we’ll do snacks where the treat is on the menu, and he gets unlimited access to those things. We try to do it regularly, but still his talk of treats persists.” So, what is regularly is my question. Because if it’s once a week, that may not be regularly enough.And the advice, if you’re gonna go back to Ellyn Satter canon—which you don’t have to do. You don’t have to follow all of those rules, this is a choice. But the official advice is you can serve dessert at most meals in a smaller portion and then also have snack times where treats are unlimited, so that kids get these opportunities, at least once a week, it could be more often, to eat as many cookies as they want. and there’s a cookie available at dinner. Now in my house, we are not that precise about it. My kids eat treats—foods that I think this four year old would call treats—pretty much every day as after school snack. They tend to have cookies or chocolate or whatever they want along with what other other food they want for snack. So we don’t always do dessert every night at dinner because I know they’ve got that like built in snack time and that’s always unlimited access at snack time. And then also usually on the weekends, there’s going for ice cream or making brownies or something where it’s really unlimited, like you’re gonna have as much as you want.My point is, they call them treats, but they don’t have like a lot of hang ups about the idea of treats. And I think that’s our goal. It’s okay to describe cake as a treat but not have a restrictive attitude towards treats. The other thing I want to say, because what I think I’m really picking up on in this question is a level of perfectionism around how to do these concepts. And I think that’s so understandable, but it is also what diet culture teaches us. So it is diet culture showing up in your attempt to not do diet culture, which: Valid. But I think it is useful to know is that your four year old bringing home some messaging around treats from daycare is not a disaster. It’s expected. That’s how most daycares talk about like “eat your sandwich before your cookie.” Do I agree with it? No. Do I think it’s going to lead your child to have an eating disorder? Really not. Especially if what’s happening in your home is we love all foods, we embrace all of this, we don’t have a restrictive mindset. CorinneAll right. This is another question for you.You said the book title changed love the title, but can’t find the old one in my brain? Explain more also?VirginiaThe original title of the book was Fat Kid Phobia. I think the subtitle was still going to be “parenting in the age of diet culture” or something like that. And I was very attached to it, because I liked how it was taking fatphobia and putting kids in there and, you know, sort of exploding that. I know Aubrey Gordon has a great argument for why we should say anti-fat bias and not fatphobia, but I think when it comes to parents, a lot of it is fear driven as well as bias. So I did really love the title, and my publisher and my agent liked it, too, initially. And then as we got kind of further along in the process, they became concerned for a couple of reasons that were interesting to unpack. A big one was they felt like parents would not want to read a book and leave it lying around the house with “fat kid” on the cover. They worried that would be triggering to kids to see. CorinneThat totally makes sense.VirginiaIt does. And it also broke my heart because the whole point is that we’re reclaiming fat and there’s nothing wrong with being a fat kid and fat kids are awesome. But the kid may not have read the book and the parent reading the book may be where they are with their work. They may not even want to buy it in the store, you know? So I thought that was really right, but in a way that made me sad.I was like, “Fat has to stay on the title.” I can’t remember all the other titles we left on the cutting room floor. But there were various versions that didn’t have fat in it and I was like, No. I mean, this is a book about anti-fat bias. We’ve got to say it. CorinneYeah, I remember growing up seeing books around the house and not loving it. So I think that makes sense, like Reviving Ophelia or whatever. VirginiaWell, and I had a whole conversation with my friend Melinda Wenner Moyer who is the author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes. And they did stick with that because they felt like it was such a central idea of what that book is about, which is basically you don’t want your kid to be Donald Trump. Here’s how we do that. CorinneI can imagine not liking that as a kid though.VirginiaRight. And she said some kids are offended by the title.So it was sort of interesting that that one made it through and fat kid was where we decided it was too hurtful. And I have feelings about that. But I do think Fat Talk is a great title because it also works on multiple levels. We are talking about the issues of fatness and anti-fat bias. Fat Talk is that thing that people do to hate on their bodies, like women do it together, and we’re challenging that idea. And it’s also a play on “sex talk,” like how you have to have the sex talk with your kids. A big argument of the book is you have to talk to your kids about anti-fat bias. You have to talk about how it manifests and how to push back against it. The last chapter of the book is called “How to Have the Fat Talk.” And of course, it’s many talks. It’s not one talk. If you like the title, you can go ahead and preorder it. CorinneWhere would we preorder it?VirginiaAnywhere you get your books! My local independent bookstore is doing signed copies. I will sign the copies, that sounded awkward how I said that. Pre-Order a Signed Copy of Fat TalkCorinneDid you come up with a new title or did the publisher?VirginiaThey came up with Fat Talk and so also I had to get over my ego because Fat Kid Phobia was mine. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, I do like it. I do think just putting fat in the title at all does automatically mean there are people who won’t pick up the book. And that is what it is because it’s a bummer because they maybe most need to. But I just couldn’t see a way around that. All right. People want us to talk about Halloween costumes.Do you dress up? What are you going to be this year?Also got some questions about Halloween candy. We could talk about that a little bit, too.CorinneOkay, well, I do not dress up. And I do not have children. So no one in my household dresses up.VirginiaNot even Bunny?CorinneI mean, no. She doesn’t love having clothes on. And I personally feel like having to dress up as a human every day is enough of a costume.VirginiaI am right there with you. We’re about to make ourselves very unpopular. I hate Halloween and this is a very unpopular opinion in my town. I live in a big Halloween town. So having kids in this town means that there is a school parade, there is a town parade, there is a neighborhood party. and there is trick-or-treating at this one street in town that goes crazy for Halloween and everyone in town goes there. So it is like a four day situation. And adult costumes are strongly encouraged for all of this except maybe the school parade. I hate it so much. It was just ranting to Sara Petersen about it because it’s awful.CorinneSo are you being pressured into dressing up?VirginiaEvery year I just half-ass it and at the last minute think of something. Like last year I wore a floral sweatshirt and carried a watering can and I said I was my garden. CorinneThat’s cute. VirginiaIt was cute. It was fine. Nobody wants to do a family costume except me because I want to do it so that I don’t have to make a decision about myself. I’m like, can you all think of a cool family costume and I’ll just be Marge Simpson or whatever you make me be? And they’re like, we’re all doing our own cool thing. You need your own cool thing. But can we also talk about how this is also a fat tax issue. Halloween costumes are harder if you’re fat, I think.CorinneYeah, that seems right. I mean, I was thinking part of the reason I don’t like dressing up is because I just feel like I don’t need anything else to make me feel more uncomfortable. Like, I just want to be comfortable.VirginiaYeah, completely. And the sizing issues on costumes.CorinneIt’s not like you can just walk into Spirit Halloween and buy a whatever costume.VirginiaAnd, also, I don’t know, I feel like this is going sound preachy, but it’s like everyone’s environmentalism goes out the window around Halloween? The only way to efficiently do Halloween is to Amazon Prime some shit. And the whole rest of the year I’m supposed to feel guilty about Amazon. And then suddenly, for Halloween, everyone’s like, I’m Amazon-ing an astronaut costume. And I’m like, What are you going to do with it afterwards? Do you have a closet full of costumes in your house? I mean, I guess people do, but why? I don’t need a closet full of grown up costumes.So I don’t know what I’m doing. I have a lot of angst about it already. My one idea for a costume is to be a Rockford Peach from “A League of Their Own.” Topical, witty, aesthetically pleasing to me. And I did look and there seems to be a plus size option on Amazon. CorinneWow.VirginiaBut I’m still like, number one, will it fit? Like will their 1x or 2x be the 1x or 2x I need? Question mark. Number two, it’s $58. Do I need to spend $58? But I have to go to all these damn Halloween events.CorinneI mean, I feel that it’s impressive that you haven’t just bought a witch hat and worn all black because that’s what I would do.VirginiaMaybe. And then I just, that’s what I do forever. Because there’s like just a huge mental load piece of it, too, figuring out your costume. Like I’ve already had to figure my kid costumes with them and like lock them in and be like, it’s panda and ladybug, guys. We’re not changing our minds.CorinneThat’s what they’re being this year?VirginiaYes. The older one is being a panda. And the younger one is now being a ladybug, which I’m thrilled about because the older one was a ladybug for like four years. So we own so much ladybug stuff. CorinneYeah, that’s great. Do you follow Noihsaf Bazaar on Instagram? It’s another like buyer/seller Instagram and they now have a website. And they have historically done like a Halloween costume like resale thing. VirginiaOh, interesting.CorinneWhere I think you can buy used Halloween stuff. So that might be something to look into.Virginia I’m gonna investigate this. That would be useful. I do feel like I need to just lock in on one thing and just be like, this is my costume for the next 10 years.CorinneDo you have a preferred Halloween candy?VirginiaIt’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Mini Snickers. The end. CorinneI like Butterfinger. VirginiaOkay, yeah, respectable. And people are gonna want to know how we manage Halloween candy. And the answer is we let our kids eat all of it. I don’t care. I don’t think about it.CorinneDo you sneak or steal candy from your kids?VirginiaNo, but I buy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Mini Snickers for myself. I make sure we have the candy I’m going to want to have in the house. I also buy these candies at any point in the year I want them, because they are treats but I don’t have a restrictive mindset around them. See this in action right here, guys?I let them have all the candy they want. I have literally no rules. They can eat it while we’re walking around trick-or-treating. Some people are very big on “wait till we get home so I can check it for razor blades.” And I’m just like, if this town makes me go to five freakin Halloween events and someone’s putting a razor blade on this candy? There’s no way.So they can eat it while they walk around, I don’t care. They can come home and sit there and eat as much as they want before they go to bed. I don’t care. The next day they can eat as much as they want. Usually by day three, they’re so over it. Like, we ate all the good stuff and we’re done. And then we just throw away what they don’t feel like eating. You’re just setting yourself up for negotiations and power struggles if you try to put a lot of rules around it.CorinneYeah. I will say I was very obsessed with Halloween candy as a child. I definitely noticed when my parents took one single piece out of the collection. VirginiaThat’s mean! They worked hard to get it. They wore the costume. They walked around.Butter for Your Burnt ToastCorinneMy butter this week is a recipe. I was at my mom’s house this summer and she gets Bon Appétit. And she was like, looking through it and she was like, “Look at this cake. It looks amazing.” And the cake is this chocolate sheet cake with brown butter frosting. And we proceeded to make it a few times over the months that I was staying with her. And it is delicious. The cake part is a chocolate cake, but it’s one of those chocolate cakes that you don’t have to use a mixer for. You can just mix it in the bowl, which I love.VirginiaYeah. Not Having to haul down the mixer is big.CorinneYes. So you just mix it in a bowl with your spatula and dump in a pan and bake it and then the frosting has brown butter in it and it is delicious.VirginiaQuestion: Is brown butter a type of butter or you have browned it in a pan?CorinneYou have to brown it in a pan. Okay, so brown butter is when you cook butter until the milk solids in the butter turn brown and toasty. It’s very delicious.VirginiaThat sounds yummy.CorinneYeah and in this particular recipe, you actually add milk powder to the butter and to get extra brown toasty bits before you whip it into frosting. And I have been putting sprinkles on top of it. And that is also very beautiful.VirginiaThat sounds really, really delicious.So I just want to circle back to Lizzo and the flute and just say how much I loved her playing James Madison’s flute. And of course the discourse around it got ridiculous because people are absurd. But it was so great. Oh, I am going to also talk about Lauren Leavell Fitness. I will link to her Instagram. I have just started doing her workouts and she does bootcamp, which I haven’t tried yet, cardio barre, and regular barre. And they’re just joyful. Her whole energy is delightful, super anti-diet, super fat positive.CorinneYou do it through Instagram or she has like a Youtube or?VirginiaShe has a membership. I think it’s $40 a month. She is doing a couple of live Zoom classes per week in each of these categories. I never make it to the Zoom live because they’re like 11 on a Sunday and I have to parent my dumb kids, but she then uploads the Zoom so you can do them anytime afterwards. And so I do them at seven in the morning before my children are awake, which is when I can do them.[Post-publication note from Virginia: A kind reader pointed out that it was unproductive and potentially harmful to listeners to call my kids “dumb” here, even as a throwaway joke, since that’s the kind of word that is often weaponized against children. I am so sorry for inadvertently triggering anyone. My kids know I think they are brilliant and beloved on a lot of levels, but I do regret this poor choice of phrase.]CorinneDo you need any stuff? VirginiaWell, for barre you need a yoga mat. I do have some little two pound weights. You could probably use like a seltzer can. And then you just need like, like I just use my desk chair like as the barre. Or you could do it by a kitchen counter.I have done barre in the past and really hated it. I did—I’m just gonna throw them under the bus—Barre Three when I was in a more diet-y place. Now I understand they have had an evolution and now they’re very body positive. But from what I could see they have hired no fat instructors. So how far have they gone?CorinneThere’s another good one, I think body posi barre on Instagram?VirginiaThere’s definitely a couple of people doing barre in a body positive way. And I was curious to try it because I knew the exercises are similar to what I’ve been doing in PT to build up my core and work through all my back issues. It’s like a slightly more aerobic version.Lauren is very funny, I love her energy. I just decided I am so done with having to filter it out. Do you know what I mean? Like people will be like, “I love this workout, but sometimes they talk about...” And I’m like, no. Why are we paying these people money? Why are you encouraging them? CorinneYeah, I don’t need the baggage.VirginiaYeah, I don’t want to have to like turn down that volume and be like SHHSHHH. I just want a safe space. I am confirming that Lauren is a very safe space.CorinneWait! We have one other thing we need to talk about. VirginiaOh, yeah? What is it?CorinneVirginia, you joined TikTok.VirginiaI did. I did join TikTok. You’re right. Let’s be clear when I say I joined TikTok.CorinneI made Virginia a TikTok account.VirginiaCorinne was already on TikTok.CorinneI am obsessed with TikTok, unfortunately.VirginiaFortunately for me because I was like “Corinne I think I have to do it and I don’t want to and I don’t know how.”CorinneSo, we’re trying out TikTok. VirginiaWe are. Burnt Toast TikTok. CorinneCome find us. Yes. It’s @v_solesmith. VirginiaYeah, we just made it the same same as my Instagram so it’s easy to remember, and my Twitter. It’s a lot of cross posting from Instagram. Because now that I have to do reels on Instagram, we could do a whole other episode about my feelings about all of this. Oh, god, it’s the worst.But we’re really trying and we’ll do some stuff probably just for Tiktok, too. Especially if more than the two of us start following me. CorinneYes. Yes. So come find us on TikTok. We will follow you back.And if you see stuff on TikTok that you think Burnt Toast should know about, send it to us. At @v_solesmith.VirginiaPlease do. Corinne is making it happen. Thank you for doing this.CorinneYes. So if any Burnt Toast people need a little extra push to get on TikTok, maybe this is it. It is really cool and fun. You will lose hours of your life.VirginiaI enjoy watching the Tiktoks that people post Instagram. As an elder millennial, that is how I have chosen to engage with that.CorinneYes. You’re just seeing them weeks late.VirginiaI like being three weeks late to something. I think that’s good for me.Alright, I think we did an episode. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Tell people where to follow us on all of the places.CorinneWell, you can follow me personally at @selltradeplus on Instagram or at @selfiefay my personal account. And you can find Virginia @v_solesmith on Instagram, Twitter, and now TikTok!VirginiaWait, what’s your TikTok? Are you on TikTok? CorinneYes, I’m on TikTok. I think my TikTok is @SelfieFay which is the same as my personal Instagram. I will say I rarely post. I think I’ve only posted like dog stuff, but maybe that will change.VirginiaI mean, we’re here for the dog content. But you’re not doing @selltradeplus on TikTok.CorinneOh, God. Well, stay tuned.VirginiaAwesome. Well, thank you for doing this. This was great. 

Today’s episode is a delightful conversation with Shelly Anand and Nomi Ellenson, co-authors of the wonderful new picture book I Love My Body Because. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And 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 LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.Shelley's first book Laxmi’s MoochErika Medina, illustrator of I Love My Body BecauseRoxane Gay's book HungerSonya Renee Taylor's book, The Body Is Not an ApologyTyler FederNabela Noor (Beautifully Me)More body positive picture books studies on representation of kids of color in children's booksNomi's Butter: The Cycles JournalCREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 65 TranscriptVirginiaWhy don't you each introduce yourselves?Shelly I'm Shelly Anand and I am a picture book author. I'm an attorney. I'm an immigrant and worker rights attorney. I'm a mother of two. And I'm really excited to be on your show!NomiHi, I'm Nomi. I'm a photographer and I specialize in a genre called boudoir photography, which is about empowering women in their bodies, connecting with that inner goddess, and all of that good stuff. I have a photo studio in Brooklyn and I'm also expanding. I live in Montego Bay, Jamaica and I'm starting to do photo shoots here, as well.VirginiaWe are here to talk about your wonderful book I Love My Body Because. It is very beloved in my house already, I can tell you. So I want to hear the story, how do a boudoir photographer and an immigrants rights attorney decide to write a body positive kid's book?NomiIt seems so random, but it really was such a moment of flow. Shelly and my sister are best friends from Wellesley College and when Shelley's first book came out, we were hanging out at the beach. As a boudoir photographer, I'm constantly talking to women about their bodies and how they feel about themselves, their sensuality. So much of what I say to them is what you would say to that inner child in all of us. And I said to Shelley, “What are your thoughts about doing a body awareness children's book?” and she was automatically like, “Let's do this.” It just all felt like it was in the stars and meant to be. That's the short version of how it all happened.VirginiaShelly, I would also love to hear how you came to do Laxmi’s Mooch. And how you see these books as connected?ShellyI didn't set out to become a picture book writer. I've always loved stories and storytelling, and reading, but I think becoming a parent and being a brown mom in the Deep South, raising biracial children—my kids are half Indian, and my husband's a white white man from Wisconsin. We were looking for books that were important to us, that instilled values that were important to us. So children's literature became something that I got interested in as a mom. I was on maternity leave with my second when a friend of mine from from college who lives close by, who's also South Asian, also raising hairy Desi kids in the south, called me and said that her daughter had been teased in school for having a mustache. And she was only six years old.It just was a very poignant moment for me. I had given birth to my own daughter who inherited my hairiness and it just brought back a flood of memories of body hair removal and being teased myself as a young, brown, hairy child. And really thinking that I wanted it to be different for for my children and for all children, that that they not go through what what we went through and it really be a choice that you know, you don't feel this pressure to wax or bleach or thread a part of your body off because other children or other people are teasing you or because that's what Western society is pushing on you.And so that's where the idea for Laxmi’s Mooch came from, I wanted to create a story about a young girl discovering her body hair and hair removal not being the answer. I started reading a bunch of kidlit and joining writers groups and things like that and that's how Laxmi was born.So when Nomi was like, “I'd love to work with you on a book about body positivity,” it felt like a natural next project for me, because they are very much connected. Laxmi’s Mooch is very specific about body hair positivity. But when Nomi and I were talking about this, there weren't a lot of picture books out there on body positivity and specifically fighting fatphobia and dispelling the word fat being something negative. Like Nomi said, it was a very different process than writing Laxmi’s Mooch. Laxmi had more of a narrative and this is more like an ode to your body and all the amazing things our bodies can do—not just physically but intellectually. That we can read and we can learn and we can take care of ourselves. It really just poured out of us and it was a very, very healing. Both books were a very healing experience for me.VirginiaOh, I bet, I bet. I work particularly in the anti-fat bias space. And the body hair conversation does not come up nearly enough. I was thinking the other day, my kids have—because I'm their mom and we talk about this stuff all the time—they have really good fat positive vocabulary. But they've seen me shave my legs or tweeze my chin hairs and been like, “What are you doing?” And I'm like, Oh, I don't have the narrative I need for this piece. This is another part I need to work on.I'm always just like, “It's a choice, you don't have to do it.” But I feel very panicked in the moment, realizing I haven't thought about it. So, I love that you are giving us language and giving us a story that we can use to have these conversations. And not just when you're being barged in on in the shower, when I don't do my best parenting.ShellyI mean those are the moments, when when our children come to us, in the shower or on the toilet.VirginiaIt’s like, Okay, let's do this. ShellyLet's have this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Uma, my daughter, now asks me, “Why are you shaving your legs?” Because of this narrative that was created when she was born around being being proud of your body hair. She is kind of like, “What are you doing? Why are you removing your body hair? You don't have to do that.” I'm like, Okay, Uma. Thank you.VirginiaIt’s so cool to see that happening.It sounds like this was like a real mind meld of a process. How did you each think about what bodies you wanted to represent in the new book?  Nomi What we were thinking about with different bodies is anchoring in the gratitude for what our body enables us to do. And anchoring in that respect, and that love, and that feeling of celebration, because it is such a gift. Often, everything in the outside world can make us feel negative towards various aspects of ourselves. Creating vocabulary around what's positive and what feels good, enables a new kind of conversation to take place.We would receive sketches from Erika Medina, our illustrator—she really did an amazing job—and we would be like, “We would love to see this representation and that representation,” and just making sure that it was visually aligned with what we felt in our hearts. While we were writing it, we were definitely thinking about the visuals of the words. For us, it was very intertwined. We wanted the words to be meaningful, but also for the book to evoke a certain kind of imagery.ShellyTwo books, in particular really inspired me. They're not children's books, but they both address children and perception of bodies. The the first book was Roxane Gay's book Hunger. Something that stood out to me was her talking about children looking at her and pointing at her and being like, “Oh my God, that woman is so fat” and being horrified. Thinking of myself as a parent, but not wanting my children to ever do that to another human being.[Virginia’s note: This piece is a good read for strategizing on that kind of comment.]And then Sonya Renee Taylor's book, The Body Is Not an Apology. She talks about children having this sense of joy and wonder and curiosity about their bodies that goes away, and is eroded by messages from the culture about having to look a certain way, having to be skinny and light skinned and blue eyes, and blonde hair, all of that. And I, unfortunately, like so many people, grew up in a fatphobic household and a fatphobic culture. It's actually something I'm starting to think about that's specific to South Asian culture. We have a word for fat, “moti,” and it's pejorative. And it was a word that I feared. It was so negative for me. I think having my children and the pressure that postpartum people feel to have their bodies somehow go back to the way they were before giving birth to other human beings. VirginiaBecause that’s a realistic goal. ShellyI mean, that had a huge impact on me. And not wanting my kids to have to go through what I went through in terms of being so mean and self-critical to myself. So there were things in this book that were really important to me, like talking about stretch marks, right? And how they're tiger stripes. Those were things that were really important for me. Because I have these stretch marks now and I see them as a sign of my strength that I carried two human bodies in my body. I think children are taught that there are things about their body they should be ashamed. When in fact, they're quite beautiful, and they should be celebrated.Even though this is a children's book, it's very much a book for everyone, not just children. It's a book of, like Nomi said, of gratitude. This phrase, “I love my body, because…” can be a gratitude practice, and a reminder, when you're feeling unsure, or insecure, or whatever. Just reminding yourself, I love my body because it helps me move through the world. It helped me start that practice, writing this book, creating that gratitude practice for myself.VirginiaI'm just thinking too, as you're talking about these inspirations and the wonder that Sonya Renee Taylor talks about that comes so naturally to kids. Little kids—like three or four year olds before the world descends on them in this way—don't feel like they have to justify these things about their bodies, right? They don't feel like they have to give a reason for having stretch marks. It can just be that you're growing or this is your body. We, as adults, have learned this other language of needing to say, “Well, the stretch marks are because of pregnancies.” Some of my stretch marks are just fat, you know?And I love this idea of starting in this place of gratitude and meeting kids where hopefully at least some of the kids reading this book still are, in this place of “of course, I love my body, why wouldn't I love my body?”That's so powerful to think about how at some point, however fleetingly, we all started there.ShellyYou're exactly right. All of us have signs of our growth and our development and we're told that it has to look a certain way. Like, for some reason, having a mooch or a moustache at two or three is okay, but at 12 and 13, it's not. I went through my mother putting bleach on my skin and trying to turn my hair blonde. So unnatural. And I think it was her way of protecting me, but I think it has to be a choice. And it has to be something that a person wants to do, versus “This is what I have to do to make myself acceptable.” NomiWith kids, these neural pathways are being highly developed and we want to be building up that muscle memory of feeling good about their bodies. When they're met with that resistance of the negative narrative, they build that internal muscle that much more where they're able to actually think about it for themselves, rather than just accepting what they've been taught.VirginiaWhat I really love about the book is that you do expand this idea of body beyond just physical to talk about intellectual gifts. It takes the focus off the aesthetic completely, right?NomiBoth of my parents are rabbis and I grew up with a sense that our external bodies were not the most important thing at all. Not that we were like schlumpy, but it definitely was not about pop culture and whatever the trends were growing up. So when I started doing fashion photography and I saw that the focus was so based on the external, I was like, “There's a disparity here.”There's a disconnect between the value we place on our external looks—even though there's value to that and it's okay to want to feel good externally. I think we lose that conversation. Because we get so stuck in this fat skinny/binary convo versus like, actually, what does it mean to self care and take pride in this external, in our looks, versus this internal. That's how we're able to actually live our lives and be connected more to our internal souls and everything.ShelleyGrowing up as a woman, in any culture, but in this culture in particular, there's so much emphasis on having to be beautiful or considered beautiful or being attractive. It's certainly an aspect of South Asian culture, as well, that's pretty problematic. We want kids to be thinking about what our bodies are capable of —beyond whether or not someone thinks we're pretty or cute or handsome. And we're capable of so much, right? The way we can move through the world, the way we can read and learn. We talk in the book about building bridges and skyscrapers. The possibilities of what we're all able to do is so much more than our physical appearance. That's definitely important to me. I'm very mindful of what we say, especially to girls. “Oh, you're so pretty,” is the first thing that will come out of someone's mouth about a girl versus her intellect versus her capabilities.VirginiaYou also have kids using wheelchairs and you're speaking to mobility on a lot of different levels, which I appreciated.NomiWe have a child with a hearing aid, too! VirginiaThat's great. I'm curious to talk a little bit too about how you feel publishing is doing on this front. Book publishing in general is super white, super not evolved on a lot of these issues. As recently as like three or four years ago, when parents would ask me for book recommendations, I felt like I had nothing to give them. And now we have your beautiful book, we have Tyler Feder, we have Nabela Noor. In the picture book space, I feel like we are starting to make some progress. I mean, not enough. But I now have a list of like eight books I can put on the website, as opposed to one that was self published by someone 20 years ago. What do you think is changing? ShellyYeah, I definitely think there's a change. I think a lot of writers in the social justice space are looking to children's literature as a space to start having these conversations because that's when ideas and values are formed. I mean, there have been studies showing the percentage of books that feature children of color being so low compared to picture books about animals talking and things like that. VirginiaYes, we have more books about snails or something than about Black kids.ShellyAnd I think, more and more, authors of color are wanting to create narratives that are stories that children walking into a bookstore can relate and see themselves on the cover of a book and messages that are important for all children to learn. When I wrote Laxmi, I wanted something that was going to be empowering for hairy, brown girls all over the world. And I think more and more authors are wanting to do that, and publishers are seeing the value of that. I think we're recognizing as a culture that there's so much unlearning we all have to do from how we were socially conditioned to think about ourselves and about others and the value of starting really early, starting as young as you can with with reading these books. It does make a huge difference. I mean, I didn't believe it, but when Laxmi came out, people were saying, “Oh, my gosh, my kid discovered they had leg hair and is really excited.”VirginiaAww, I love this.ShellyAnd same thing with I Love My Body Because. Erica’s illustrations are phenomenal and kids are seeing themselves in this book, like, “Oh, that looks like me.” Or being able to be inquisitive and asking questions, like maybe they haven't seen someone in a wheelchair before, but then they're seeing it in a picture book. That's an opportunity for caregivers or teachers to have have those conversations about the diversity of what bodies look like. I think more is needed, right?There's this book Beautifully Me which is about a Bengali South Asian girl.VirginiaYes, that’s Nabela Noor’s book!ShellyThere has to be a point that we get to where you see a child, a fat child, and the book is not about her fatness or his fatness or their fatness and it's just about them going trick-or-treating or just about them playing. I think we have that discussion a lot as authors of color. There doesn't always have to be a book about our our struggling or us being teased or us having to confront oppression, right? We can just be kids. So I think that's the future and that's the next step that we need to get to.VirginiaCompletely agree. I do love Beautifully Me. But now I just want to follow that character doing something completely unrelated to how she looks.Any other fun responses you're getting from parents or kids when they're seeing the book and seeing themselves?NomiI have several clients who are teachers who brought the book to their classrooms and they've sent me these really adorable drawings of what the children love about their body. Shelly and I are actually in process of developing some curriculum and worksheets to help people who are reading the book to others to have the conversation. Because it's about reading the book, but it's really about the discussion that flows from reading it and continuing that conversation after you're done turning the final page.ShellyWe we went to a local library here in Georgia, in Lilburn. We read the book to the kids and to the families. And at the end, whenever we're reading the book, even at home, the last phrase is, “So what do you love about your body?” And we turn that question to the audience. And this boy, he must have been eight or nine years old, he said, “I love my body because I'm Black and I’m me.” And he was there with his younger siblings and it was just so, so powerful. So beautiful. And you know, his mom was there, smiling with pride. That's why we wrote the book.Butter for your Burnt ToastShelleyI have a pretty robust mental health self care regimen which includes a therapist, a life coach, but I've added in incense. I light incense in the morning and it helps me relax and set the mood for the day. I've gotten into crystals, as well. And then I recently started going to this local healing arts center. It's called Decatur Healing Arts and there's a woman there who's trained in Reiki and in gong baths which is like sound baths and it has been amazing. It has changed my life.VirginiaSo wait is a sound bath… I've been confused about sound baths for a long time, so I'm glad you brought this up. Is there water involved? Or you're bathed in sound?ShellyYou’re bathed in sound.VirginiaThank you for clarifying what was obviously a dumb question.ShellyNo, not at all. I mean, I didn't know anything about it. But I was talking to my therapist and I was in like, a difficult space with my my day job, and I needed to find release. She's like, “You're Indian, have you tried ayurveda? Have you done any of these things?” I'm like, no, I haven't. And I've been taking SSRIs for forever. VirginiaAlso a useful tool.ShellyYeah, SSRIs are great. I'm very pro but I needed more than that. And gong baths, incense, and crystals have been a great addition to my mental health regimen. So I wanted to share with folks.NomiSo my butter on toast situation is I found this journal called the Cycles Journal, which allows you to track your flow with the moon. I'm interested in continuing this internal work as a way of empowering women to view the things that maybe have made us feel less than, like getting your period is a negative and being like, actually, how can we harness our flow as a way of empowering ourselves to live our best lives, basically. So, this woman named Rachel Amber created it. And you can track where you are in your cycle with the moon and all the different ways to kind of check in with how you're feeling, what your body is doing. I'd highly recommend it.1VirginiaI love anything that helps people understand our bodies, more especially stuff like menstruation, which has such a ridiculous taboo.My recommendation this week is a gardening recommendation—I don't know if either of you are gardeners, but my podcast listeners have to indulge a lot of gardening talk. And where I am, in the Hudson Valley, it is now Dahlia season. Dahlias are native to Mexico. They are a spectacular, spectacular flower. We have to plant the tubers in the middle of May. And then you really wait all summer because they have to like grow up from just a root. They start to bloom at the end of July, but they really hit their stride in September and October. It is just something I really need in my fall because I don't have seasonal depression exactly, but I definitely have seasonal anxiety. I am not someone who likes like traditional cliched fall things like pumpkin spice and all that because it just means the end times are coming. That is not exciting for me.But realizing that I could grow dahlias and still have really spectacular flowers in my garden at this time of year helps me. Now I really look forward to September and October. Last year, they even bloomed into November. So, fingers crossed for a late frost this year.Thank you both for being here. Again, the book is I Love My Body Because. Tell listeners where else they can follow you both?ShellyYou can follow me on Twitter at @maanandshelly. You can also follow my organization, Sur Legal Collaborative which is a nonprofit immigrant and worker rights organization at @SurLegal_ATL and that's the same on Instagram. And then my Instagram is @LikhoShelly. Likho means ‘to write’ in Hindi.NomiThe best way to see what's happening is my Instagram @boudoirbynomi. It's a place with my photography, but I also talk a lot about mindfulness and getting more in touch with your body. Then also I have another Instagram handle, @nomifoto, and that's where I also post stuff about the book and just some other things going on in my life. So Instagram is the best way to see what's up.---We just want to acknowledge that not everyone with a uterus has, or can have, or wants to have a regular monthly menstruation cycle. And that is totally fine and totally normal!

Today’s episode, a conversation with blogger and fat liberation activist Linda Gerhardt, is the kind of story I can only tell on Burnt Toast. Because lipedema—despite impacting some 11 percent of women worldwide—isn’t a Sexy News Story. It doesn’t have the kind of hook mainstream media outlets want. Lipedema patients aren’t the kind of victims (i.e. thin white ladies) that America loves to rally around. But there are millions of them living quietly, in pain, unable to access healthcare or even clear answers because, as Linda puts it, “lipedema lives in this cursed intersection of medical fatphobia and medical misogyny.”If you want more conversations like this one—about the true costs of anti-fat bias, told in ways that center fat folks—please  rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.And 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.CW: This episode does contain some discussion of medical fatphobia and medical trauma, as well as prescription weight loss and weight loss surgery. If any of that wouldn't be good for you to listen to, please take care of yourself and give this one a miss.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 LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.Linda blogs at Fluffy Kitten PartyLinda's (awesome!) Instagram is @littlewingedpotatoesThe Standard of Care for Lipedema in the United States by Dr. Karen HerbstRagen Chastain on why movement doesn’t have to be joyful and health is not a moral obligationVirginia is watching Bad Sisters (on Apple TV). CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 64 TranscriptVirginiaWhy don’t we start by having you tell people a little bit about yourself and what you do?LindaMy name is Linda and I run a blog called Fluffy Kitten Party, which I chose because I couldn’t find a domain name that was allowed and available, so that was what I chose. I haven’t written in it for a while, but on that blog I wrote about fat liberation and Health at Every Size and my own experiences within the health care system.I also have an Instagram account, @littlewingedpotatoes, which is a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference, for anybody who’s curious. That was another desperate choice when I couldn’t find a name and everything I tried was taken. I post a mix of memes and personal nonsense and fat liberation health and every size content. It’s a real grab bag, but you can always follow me there if you’re curious about what I do.This isn’t my full-time job, I have a full-time job doing something completely different as a consultant. I’m just a fat lady who’s really invested in fat liberation and Health at Every Size. I need it. And so I share my story, and my experiences and my thoughts and feelings and opinions in the hopes of moving things along. VirginiaI just want to say right now, anyone who’s not already following Linda, please follow Linda, because just there have been so many issues over the years. I think you’re the first person who taught me about terms like “small fat.” You’re doing 101 stuff for those of us who need it. LindaThank you. The real feather in my cap is that I am one of the top search results for “Fat at Disney.” I will rest on that for quite a while, if not my whole life.VirginiaHow much higher can one fly? LindaIt’s the dream. VirginiaToday we are going to talk about lipedema, which is a condition you have been struggling with for many years. But you’ve only recently gotten properly diagnosed and started talking publicly about this.littlewingedpotatoesA post shared by Linda (@littlewingedpotatoes)LindaHindsight is 20/20 and having the diagnosis, I can look back and reconstruct when it started for me. I was a thick, chunky kid, but at puberty, I got really lumpy. Like, I was hoping for boobs and I got giant thighs and a fat ass instead. I was like, “Well, that kind of sucks.” I looked around at my peers and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m lumpier than you guys. I’m shaped very differently.” But I just kind of carried that and lived my life.It wasn’t until I was in my mid 20s, I was working as a photographer—very active job, lugging equipment up and downstairs, setting it up and taking it down multiple times a day—and I started to have problems with swelling and pain in my legs. And just for context, I was a baby photographer. So this involves getting down on baby level. I spent 20 to 30 minutes at a time on my knees without any real issue. So when I started having this pain and swelling, like first of all, this could affect my livelihood if I can’t kneel anymore. I went to the doctor, and they were kind of like, "Huh, well, your legs are really weird. They’re kind of firm and full of fluid, but we don’t know what that is. But you should probably just get weight loss surgery.” So I ended up at a weight loss surgery seminar. Went through a few beginning steps of getting weight loss surgery, but ended up not getting approved because I had terrible high deductible pre-Affordable Care Act insurance. So I was kind of saved by my bad insurance. So I just said, “Okay, well, I’ll just keep living my life and do my best.” Then in my early 30s, I started getting a lot of pain right underneath my knees. I had developed this pad of fat, for lack of a better term, that was on both sides, so symmetrical, and just extremely painful. If my little eight pound cat placed one paw beneath my knees, I hit the ceiling. It was like somebody was stabbing me.Pain is normal to some degree in life but legs that are throbbing with pain all the time is not quite normal. So, I started the journey of going to different doctors and saying, “Do you have any idea what’s going on with me?” Didn’t really get anywhere. I had many, many scans done of the veins in my legs. Veins are healthy. Ruled out things like congestive heart failure. And it was actually really frustrating because it’s great to be healthy, but when you’re in pain and you know something’s wrong, when you get that clean bill of health, it’s really frustrating. I didn’t have a lot of those metabolic issues that doctors were looking for. They didn’t know what to do with me.VirginiaMeanwhile, you’re still in pain and you have no answers as to what’s happening.LindaYeah, and my mobility decreased. It had really inhibited my ability to do a lot of things because my legs were heavy and painful and swollen. A friend of mine, I was complaining to her about my sore legs, and she said, “Have you ever heard of this person on Instagram? She has painful legs and looks pretty similar to you.” So I follow the link that my friend sent me and I went to this woman’s Instagram. And it was like running into a wall because this woman had my body.Her legs looked like mine. And she had a condition called lipedema, which I had never heard of. This was I think 2018 or so. And so I started researching lipedema like, what is this? Is this lymphedema? I didn’t know anything about it. And as I was looking at the description of the condition, I thought, Oh my God, this is me. This is what I have.I started this process of going to doctors and being like, Have you heard of lipedema? I think I might have it. And either they had no idea what it was, or they were just like, “eh probably not.” Because there is this misconception about lipedema that it only is present in thin women who have large lower bodies, which is not the case.VirginiaOh, so it was like, they only diagnose it in someone they don’t expect to be fat.LindaPrecisely. That’s it on the nose. I’m kind of fat everywhere and that’s how I’ve always been—like I said, I was a chunky kid, I was a chunky teenager, I’m a chunky adult. And so they would think, “Oh, well, you can’t have that because you are fat elsewhere.” And I thought, oh, okay, well, maybe I don’t have it. But you know, I just I had it, I knew I had it.Eventually I found a doctor who specializes in lipedema. He’s a surgeon and he was able to diagnose me on sight because lipedema has a very characteristic look. You can see it on people’s bodies. You can also feel it, because the texture of the fat with lipedema is not normal. It kind of feels like marbles. Which are these nodules. And some of those nodules can get extremely large. So when I was 13 and saying, “Hey, I’m so much lumpier than my peers,” that was a big part of it.A lot of things clicked into place once I had a name to call it. But the bummer is that there really isn’t much that can be done for lipedema, because doctors, especially in the US don’t really know a whole lot about it. As a condition, we’ve known about it since the 1940’s. But it’s still kind of a mystery and if you went to your family doctor and wanted to talk about lipedema, they would probably have no idea what it is. I’ve heard of people going into their doctor’s office, telling them to Google Images of lipedema and then the doctor goes, “Oh, well, you absolutely have that.”VirginiaThat is wild.LindaIt’s been interesting to see the gaps in medical knowledge among medical professionals. It’s kind of the saddest club because you have a name you can call the thing that you experience, but nobody can really help you in any significant way. There is help available. But it’s very tricky to get because this is all very new and experimental and nothing is really evidence based at this point because people are not interested in helping lumpy fat ladies.VirginiaSo just to do the 101 thing for all of us who are learning here, let’s just say what lymphedema is versus lipedema and how they’re related. LindaSo lymphedema is something that you’ll often see in people who have had cancer and have lymph nodes removed, where the lymph fluid—which we all have, it’s just this waste fluid that flows through our cells—is pooling in a particular area. So, in lymphedema, somebody will have like one arm, typically, that’s very large and swollen and painful, or a leg. And in lipedema, it’s all over and it’s slightly different.How lipedema works: It’s believed to be hereditary, so your genes are kind of a loaded gun and hormones are the trigger. So a lot of women will start to see symptoms of lipedema at puberty. And then if they get pregnant or start birth control, that can kick it into high gear. A lot of women who have lipedema, notice it after a pregnancy. I noticed it after starting Depo-Provera. People gain weight on Depo-Provera, but I gained a significant amount of weight on Depo-Provera. And that was around the time I started having the symptoms that worried me, like the pain under my knees.All of us have fat cells that are moving fluid in and out all the time—that’s how our cells work. With people who have lipedema, the cells are letting fluids in and not cycling them out fast enough. So these fat cells are just full of this garbage fluid that your body is supposed to be getting rid of. And it causes pain, it causes swelling.And one thing I did want to note because I keep saying women, lipedema affects almost exclusively women and people assigned female at birth. I haven’t read any cases of cis men with it. Lipedema is hormonal and lives in this cursed intersection of medical fatphobia and medical misogyny. Because people aren’t interested in learning how women’s bodies work.VirginiaNo, nope, definitely not. Or including them in medical studies until like 10 years ago. LindaSo these fat cells that are holding onto fluid, it can cause overgrowth of fat. It almost kind of spreads and builds upon itself. So that can cause compression on your lymphatic vessels in your lymph nodes and that can cause lymphedema. Later on when you have widespread lymphatic dysfunction—which is where I live right now, I have leg lipedema and I also have a mild case of lymphedema that is nonetheless very painful and annoying in one of my legs. That is called lipolymphedema, which is the final stage of lipedema. And it’s hard to deal with, medically, because you’ve got two things going on. You’re full of fluid and nobody wants to work on you.VirginiaThis is a lot you’re dealing with. I just want to take a minute and say, as someone who considers you a friend, it’s been really tough to watch how much you’ve had to struggle and it’s really fucking unfair.LindaThank you. I appreciate the support. Just hearing that it’s unfair is really helpful to me because it’s the barriers to getting help are really significant. There’s not a whole lot of help available because, again, people don’t understand what it is, which I think is a travesty in and of itself. If I were an ob*sity researcher, I would be interested to find out what’s making all of these fat ladies so lumpy and miserable. Like, why are they in pain? Why are they lumpy? Why is their fat different? What is going on?I think it’s really fascinating. And there just isn’t really much research. The treatment options are limited. I wouldn’t even call them treatment, I would call them symptom management. Compression is the frontline treatment. Wearing compression garments, pneumatic compression pumps.Manual lymphatic drainage massage has been a life changer for me. It kind of gets that lymph fluid flowing and helps with pain and swelling and kind of loosens you up. It’s actually really wild, I’ll walk into a massage appointment and my shoes and pants will be tight. And I’ll leave and my shoes are loose and my pants are loose.VirginiaWow. So over the course of the session you really see a difference.LindaI can feel the lymph moving. It’s very strange. It’s almost like water trickling inside your body.VirginiaWhoa. That’s intense.Linda It’s it’s a little weird, but now I look forward to it. I need it every every couple of weeks—ideally every week, but it’s not covered by insurance.VirginiaI was going to say that sounds expensive.LindaIt’s definitely expensive. VirginiaYou’ve talked a little bit on Instagram about looking into surgical options.LindaYeah, at this point the major surgical option is liposuction. This is not normal, healthy fat, this is abnormal—I don’t want to use the term “diseased,” but it’s not healthy tissue. So removing that tissue also removes a lot of the pain, the nodules that cause that immediate sense of “oh my god, don’t touch me.” And there’s a network of surgeons, they’re not affiliated with each other, but they are plastic surgeons who perform liposuction on lipedema patients. It is different than standard liposuction because you’re not looking for aesthetics, you’re basically looking to remove as much lipedema fat as you safely can so that the patient experiences relief. I’ve heard of people getting liposuction who say that they feel better being wheeled out of the surgical room than they did going in, even though they come out with drains on.VirginiaRight and recovering from anesthesia.LindaBut again, your insurance isn’t likely to want to cover liposuction because people hear liposuction, they think, Oh, that’s cosmetic. That’s optional. And a lot of the plastic surgeons are frankly used to being able to pick and choose their patients and not operate on people that they don’t want to operate on. So, especially for larger patients, it can be a real difficult process to find a surgeon who wants to operate on you, especially if you also have lymphedema, which is another complicating factor.So that’s been where I’ve been looking into getting help and finding door after door getting slammed in my face. But that’s one of the treatment options that’s available. It is considered experimental because there haven’t been any longterm peer-reviewed studies. There has been some preliminary research into it. Dr. Karen Herbst is one of the researchers who has been really proactive about publishing research papers about lipedema. She also published [a paper called] The Standard of Care for Lipedema in the United States. But this is all really new. It’s kind of the wild West. And in terms of treatment, gosh, if you go into a Facebook community for people with lipedema, people are just gonna scream “keto” at you until you leave. VirginiaSo I want to get into the keto of it all in a minute, but on the surgery piece: Listening to you talk, I’m just thinking about what a disservice doctors are doing to patients here. Because plastic surgery has become this specialty that we associate with aesthetics, right? We associate it with nose jobs and boob jobs and lipo for thinner thighs. When it should be very focused on treating conditions like yours and things like burn victims. But because diet culture, because beauty culture, etc, the money for this specialty is not in helping lumpy fat ladies. The money is in doing it in this other way. And I’m just thinking about how much that has distorted the ethics of that entire specialty, but also your ability to access care.LindaI mean, plastic surgeons do a lot of non-cosmetic procedures. I would say most of them are trained to do things like help babies with cleft palates, and help people who have skin issues and injuries that require resetting bones and that kind of intense surgery. But people hear liposuction in particular, and they think of the only utility as making a person thinner for purposes of vanity. Literally, my legs could look like hamburger meat and if they didn’t hurt, I would be fine with that. They could give me like wooden pirate legs and I would be fine with that. The reason I want this surgery is not because I want to be smaller, I’m just looking for relief from this condition that is causing widespread lymphatic dysfunction in my body. And that’s it.I think there’s also this issue of capitalism within the doctors who treat lipedema. There’s a lot of marketing. They’re all in private practice. So some of them don’t work with insurance at all, right? And they’re looking to market themselves, so they’re also looking at a patient and saying, “will this give me a good before and after picture that I can put on social media?” And my legs are probably not gonna be beautiful after surgery. I just want them to not hurt. I want them to function. VirginiaAnd how bananas that this is not a success point that a surgeon feels like would market his or her practice effectively? And is it your impression from being as active you are in the lipedema community, that the thin woman with the bigger lower body, that she is more able to access this treatment than someone like you?LindaOh, 100 percent. I’m in a couple of communities online for people who are pursuing or have had or will get liposuction for their lipedema. It’s much easier for thinner patients not only find surgeons who will happily operate on them, but to get insurance coverage. Because that’s sort of the new frontier, is getting your insurance company to actually cover all or some of the procedure. And it is sequential, so typically for people with lipedema, we’re not talking one and done. We’re talking five, six procedures, possibly things like thigh lifts and skin removal, because it really can be disfiguring in a lot of ways.VirginiaI was wondering if there was recurrence. I have endometriosis and I had surgery to remove all my endometrial cysts, but my body keeps making more endometrial cysts. They can remove the current issue, but they can’t turn off the problem completely.LindaExactly. It’s exactly like that. So if you have liposuction for lipedema, you’re not looking for a cure. You’re just looking to improve your quality of life in the short term or the long term. It’s hard to say because there haven’t been many studies. Anecdotally, people can see it come back in other areas. I’ve heard of patients saying, “Okay, my abdomen is growing lipedema now, now that it’s been removed from my legs.” So it can recur. It’s really just sort of the last hope for people who are in a lot of pain and want to have some option to live a normal life, even if it’s just for five years after surgery.VirginiaI mean, that’s huge. LindaIt’s definitely not a cure because, frankly, we don’t understand why it happens. And until somebody is curious enough to investigate that question of why this is happening to certain people and what is kicking it into gear, how can we slow it down? How can we stop it? There’s not really anything that we can do significant for people with lipedema, aside from manage those symptoms and try to provide a decent quality of life and mobility for as long as possible.VirginiaI’m just filled with white hot fury right now. Because it is, as you said, this intersection with women’s healthcare in general. How little we understand endometriosis, how little we understand migraines, how little we understand PCOS, all of these conditions that, like lipedema, we have known about for decades. And yet, because they primarily happen not to cis white men, we haven’t bothered to do the science and that bias is just holding us back.And because there’s this expectation that women should be okay with living with pain, right? Women’s pain is so dismissed and minimized. That it’s just part of being a woman that your life’s gonna be full of this hormonal driven constellation of pain, and that we should accept that.LindaI sometimes wonder what I would be capable of if my legs didn’t hurt. Like, what would somebody with endometriosis achieve if they weren’t, like out of commission in like horrible pain for like a week of every month? It’s unreal that it’s allowed.VirginiaIt’s completely ridiculous. White hot fury for that.The other thing I have white hot fury about is that of course as you’ve been on this journey, trying to access the liposuction or any other type of treatment you’ve been able to find, the number one thing doctors have been saying to you over and over is just lose weight, right?LindaYeah, sometimes with no modifier. Like, just that. And I’m like, “You acknowledge that I have this condition, that is a fat disorder, that makes it difficult or impossible for me to lose significant amounts of weight. But I also need to lose like 70 pounds so that you will feel more comfortable putting me under anesthesia? Even though if I went to a different surgeon in your same hospital system, and was like, ‘Well, I would like one weight loss surgery, please,’ they would happily put me under?”VirginiaNo problem with that anesthesia. LindaAnd I think the root of it and how this intersects with fat liberation is people have an expectation that—and I think it’s a very Calvinist American idea—that the outcome is the proof of your virtue. So, if you have a fat body, that is evidence that you have done something un-virtuous to get to that point. And that is very hard to untangle because it’s so ingrained in who we are.It’s so ingrained in our medical system that if you do the right things, and you follow the path, and you eat the right foods, and you exercise the right amount, if you do the correct things, you should be the ideal of the thin person. That is the expectation that most of us have is that we see a thin person and we think that they have done something correct. We see a fat person and we think they have done something incorrect and wrong and that they need to take some sort of corrective action, they need to change their behavior.The doctor who diagnosed me told me very clearly: “There’s no diet, you could have gone on, no exercise program you could have joined, that would have prevented you from having this body. This is lipedema. This is the condition that you have, and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.” And I wept. Because that’s the opposite of what I’ve heard my whole life, which is “Well look at you. You are clearly doing something wrong.”So either you’re at home with your secret Cheetos shovel or you’re lying to me in some way. There’s this suspicion—and there’s almost this desire, because the thing that has been suggested to me was, of course, weight loss surgery. And I haven’t read any evidence that it helps with lipedema. In fact, that’s how a lot of women discover they have lipedema. They’ll undergo weight loss surgery and they lose weight up top, in their face, in their chest, and their arms. And then they have this large lower body and it doesn’t budge. And so that’s when they go, “Oh, well, there’s something else going on here.”But weight loss surgery is also presented to me, like, “well, let’s just cross that off the list.” I don’t think that 75 percent of my stomach is a reasonable barrier for entry. It’s not like it’s something that we’re just going to try to exclude just for funsies.VirginiaI mean, what you’re outlining here about the puritanical Calvinist nature of it, I think, is just dead on. Because what they’re really saying to you is: “Even if this underlying lipedema is through no fault of your own, you need to atone for your body before we’ll help you.”What happened to meeting people where they are? What happened to “do no harm?” Even if you did have the Cheeto shovel, right? You still deserve health care, you still deserve to be treated like a human being. And that’s what’s missing.LindaYeah, for sure. And no disrespect to people with Cheeto shovels. Like, I love Cheetos. But there’s this desire to rake us over the coals, make us walk through the fire, jump through some hoops before we can get the thing that we need. I really think of it as proving our virtue. We understand that we have to atone and we have to sort of come to this place where we’ve been brought to our knees by all of the things that we’ve had to do just to prove that we’re not actually sinners. VirginiaAnd it removes your ability to advocate for yourself. You’re having to meet this arbitrary standard and perform the Good Fatty for them. Just the way you’re being asked to play this game is so insidious.LindaI think that one thing that a lot of lipedema patients have in common is that we approach every appointment as preparing for battle. And the end result is unfortunately that these interactions with doctors don’t tend to go well. Because we go in with our dukes up, because we’re expecting a fight, because that’s all we’ve ever gotten from people in those white coats.I wish that I could make myself smaller. I have tried. I’ve tried everything short of surgery. I gave myself gallstones when I tried Atkins. I’ve given myself kidney stones. I have put myself in the hospital. I have starved. I’ve exercised until my ankles were screaming at me and I could barely walk, and it doesn’t move the needle in any significant way. So at a certain point, I’m not willing to play that game anymore.I’m willing to play ball a little bit. Like if they said, “Well, we want you to follow this diet before [liposuction surgery.]” Sure, I can do that. But I’m not willing to allow myself to be raked over the coals in quite the way they want to and I’m certainly not willing to try out amputating part of my stomach, in case I’m lying and I do actually just eat a ton of food. I’m not willing to shrink my stomach just to prove to medical professionals that I’m worthy of treatment.We know that when we get a 90-year-old patient, they’re going to have certain risks. And there’s certain things you have to keep in mind if you’re operating on a 90 year old person who needs surgery. But you know you can’t change them. You can’t make them younger. Same thing with babies! Like, operating on small babies and children. It happens a lot. And it’s not a standard surgery, it’s not an ideal situation. But you can’t make them into fully grown a healthy adults. VirginiaWe have all these protocols to make pediatric surgery safe for their tiny bodies. LindaBut for fat people, it’s, “Well, let’s make the bodies smaller and more convenient for us,” instead of just allowing for the fact that, yeah, they might be harder to intubate, but we can do it. Again, if I wanted weight loss surgery, they would find a way. Because that’s highly profitable for them. VirginiaSo that is the super depressing story on the health care side.Another piece of this is how the Health at Every Size community has really let down folks with lipedema and in our haste to untangle health and weight, we often gloss over the lived experiences of chronically ill fat folks. So take us through that.LindaYeah, so for me personally, there’s a lot of shame in not being the Good Fatty and being the chronically ill fatty, who can’t go on a long hike because my legs are heavy and swollen and hurt. There’s this focus on “well, you can be healthy at any size, just do the health behaviors.” And, you know, some people can’t.Some people can’t be healthy, sometimes the literal problem is in your fat. So, it’s kind of this interesting contradiction, which I’ve been grappling with. Because I identified with Health at Every Size. I care about Health at Every Size. I want people to be able to access better medical care, and I want us to have this broader understanding of health, and maybe treat it more as a resource than an end goal. But we’re just not included in the conversation.And it can be a really weird place because, it’s a lot of thin yoga ladies giving advice that you can eat the cookie and you should engage in joyful movement. And literally, the only movement that I can manage these days is “I hate every second of it, but I did it anyway,” because I needed to get lymph flowing in my body. So it just kind of feels like we’re left out.I also think that there’s been a lot of capitalism that has infiltrated Health at Every Size. People marketing services as dietitians and coaches. And you know, get that bread. I want everybody to be able to make money. But the activism of going inside these systems and making substantive changes that produce better healthcare for fat patients—that isn’t happening because we’re all busy doing webinars and attending conferences where we all talk about the things that everybody already agreed upon.And there’s no outward looking, like how can we actually make life tangibly better for fat people and make it easier for them to access medical care? The house is on fire. People are dying. You can’t sit on the lawn and talk about the architecture of the building. I need you to get in the house and pull some people out. And that’s why I stopped really identifying as heavily with Health at Every Size as a movement and moved into fat liberation because this is ultimately oppression. This is systemic oppression of a certain population of people based on something that is not within their control. I think that I just want to see more action and more attempts to get inside the building and pull out the people who are suffering. VirginiaIt feels like what HAES ends up doing is not that different from what you’re experiencing from these doctors that are asking you to perform Good Fatty stuff for them. They’re asking you to say, “Of course I want to lose weight, of course I’ll do anything to be thin.” And then the Health at Every Size folks are saying, “You have to pretend you can be healthy, even if you’re not healthy.” And so there’s still this performance element. And there’s this discomfort in acknowledging: Yes, some fat people are chronically ill. Sometimes that chronic illness is related to fatness. As you’ve said, lipedema is essentially a fat disorder. And weight loss is not the answer. Healthcare is the answer. But in the haste to promote this idea of being healthy at every size, we’re rendering invisible these other struggles. LindaThe point where I started feeling this disconnect between HAES and and my own life was when I started developing lymphedema in my left leg. And again, it’s pretty mild. But even the most mild case of lymphedema is very uncomfortable and painful. And it was affecting my ability to walk around and comfortably engage in any sort of movement. There was a lot of shame that came with lymphedema with the realization that this is growing. I can’t control it. It scares the shit out of me. And it’s also making it so that I am one of those fat people.Because I think there is a challenge point with fat people for HAES in particular, where we start seeing people who have lymphedema, people who have chronic illnesses, and their weight is not immaterial, that’s the body that they exist in. And sometimes that can come with unattractive conditions like lymphedema.But I think that HAES spaces are very uncomfortable with those types of people who have some issues that may be associated with their weight. And I’m not saying caused by, but associated with, because people at the higher end of the weight spectrum, oftentimes do struggle with lymphedema and other issues and there can be a lot of shame in it. I can feel the discomfort sometimes, when we talk about these issues, because they’re seeing a fat person who’s not healthy, who can’t go put on yoga pants and go hike around and engage in joyful movement. And lumpy fat ladies who are not engaging in joyful movement just kind of get left out. And that makes me very sad as as one of the lumpy fat ladies.VirginiaI think it’s not even discomfort. I think they’re worried it’s gonna blow up the whole thing. They’re worried that doctors are going to be able to point to a case like yours and say, “Well see, you can’t have Health at Every Size. You can’t do it.” And that is such bullshit. They’re afraid. LindaYou can see that in who HAES spaces lift up as the icons. Like, you look at somebody like Ragen Chastain, who does amazing work. I think she’s fantastic! She’s also famous for being a fat person who ran marathons. So, those are the people that HAES wants as the mascots. And I hate to say it, but there are mascot fat people in HAES. And fat people who have messy medical conditions that are difficult to untangle and may have some association with weight. And it feels like if we admit that that is the case, then the whole worldview just gets blown up. VirginiaAnd I do like that Ragen has a great piece she wrote about how movement doesn’t have to be joyful and health is not a moral obligation. But you’re absolutely right, the way her work gets quoted by others is often reinforcing this very thing that I don’t think she wants to reinforce.So, not to make you do the thing of like, “tell us all how to fix it.” But what change do you want to see? How can people be good allies? LindaThe thing that I would really like to see is thinking strategically about social change. How do we create change? What’s our theory of change here? So that we can make a plan to do outreach to medical professionals. How can we get this message that fat people deserve health care in the bodies they currently have? How can we get that to exist in hospital systems? How can we take that nugget of wisdom that everybody deserves the right to health care? How can we put that into action so that when a fat patient walks into an office they can be met with compassion and a desire to care for them?Because that’s what’s not happening. I don’t work in the healthcare industry so I am not great at understanding what the path is to get into the right spaces, get in front of the right people, get in front of the right organizations, I don’t really know. But I think that HAES has often split off and offered this place that operates outside of the mainstream medicine. And I want to see it infiltrate mainstream medicine. I want to see a takeover, where if a fat patient walks into an office, they have nothing to worry about. They will be met with somebody who wants to help them and can care for them and is not going to blame their body for the failings of training of medical professionals. That’s what I want.And I guess that’s not really as a strategy. But that’s the end result I want to see. And I really want to look to the people who do have those connections that experience that clout to think about that problem. VirginiaI actually am really encouraged how often I do get an email from someone in medical school right now, saying they’ve listened to the podcast or they’ve read something. I just got one from someone saying, “I was listening to the podcast, I had to pull over and cry,” and I’m like, “good.” I mean, I’m sorry you cried, but good. This is what we need. It is these people who are going to be health care providers going in and thinking about how they can blow it all up and rebuild something better. LindaI am encouraged because I do see change happening. It’s not happening overnight, but I do see small shifts. And one thing that I am also seeing is that people are learning about lipedema and getting diagnosed. Again, saddest club, we can’t really help you.VirginiaBut it is true knowing what it is is the first step of anything happening. That is something. Leave a commentButter for Your Burnt ToastlittlewingedpotatoesA post shared by Linda (@littlewingedpotatoes)LindaI want to say my adopted kittens. Go adopt a kitten everybody. I adopted two of them recently and they bring such joy into my life. I could literally just stare at them all day. So adopt a pet, go to your shelter, find some cute animals, adopt them and love them. They make everything better, I swear to God.VirginiaAnd wait, one you thought was a girl and then turned out not to be a girl. So remind me their names?LindaLuke and Liam. Liam used to be Leia until Leia was walking across my desk and I looked under the tail and I was like, “Oh, you are not Leia.” The Star Wars theme is gone. But they’re still very cute and fluffy and adorable.VirginiaThey are so adorable. One of them has a little heart on his fur. Oh my gosh, they’re so sweet.LindaHe’s a real life Care Bear. My husband sent me a picture of this kitten that was at a local rescue and he had a heart, it’s like a perfect tabby heart. He’s a white cat with Tabby spots. He’s got a tabby heart. And I just lost my cat Pixel after 17 years of living with her. And I thought okay, well my heart is broken. And this kitten has a heart on his side. VirginiaMy older daughter is a devoted passionate animal person who would like us to have about 900 more pets than we currently do. And we have a dog, a cat, and a fish tank, but it’s not enough and I often show her your kitten content. We have a couple celebrity pets we follow on Instagram and Luke and Liam are on the list. We like to check in on them,LindaLove it. I’ll tell them that they are famous.VirginiaAt least locally, in my house. Yes.Well, my recommendation for butter this week is a TV show. I’m obsessed with Bad Sisters. It’s on Apple TV with Sharon Horgan. She was in that really awesome show “Catastrophe” a few years ago. She’s an Irish comedian, actor, writer. And it is kind of like Irish “Big Little Lies,” but better. If you like dark comedy. It’s about this family of five sisters—and this is not a spoiler because it’s in the first episode—one of them is married to a total asshole. And the other four are plotting to kill him. And I just love ladies murdering a shitty man.LindaI also love to see that. I love to see it. VirginiaI just love any kind of content about destroying a terrible man. And the sisterhood relationships are beautiful. It’s really funny. It’s beautiful because it’s in Ireland. So check it out.Linda, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation. I am so appreciative of your work, and you taking the time to educate all of us and share all of this. Tell listeners where they can follow you and how we can support your work.LindaThank you so much for having me! I really love that you’re talking about this and that you invited me on. You can follow me on Instagram @littlewingedpotatoes. Again, lots of memes, lots of cats, but you’ll also get some fat liberation content occasionally. And you can also check out my blog Fluffy Kitten Party. I haven’t written there for a while, but I think I should start doing that again. So, maybe there will be a new post.

This week, we're taking it old school with a solo Virginia episode! She's reading her most popular essay to date, about why you should stop romanticizing your child's lunchbox. (Note: We recorded this before the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health; check the transcript for some thoughts on these new developments.) If you'd like to support Burnt Toast, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.We've got an urgent call to action for the Burnt Toast Giving Circle! Details in the transcript. Help us fight for a blue majority in the Arizona state legislature. And 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 LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.The original essayHere's the Biden administration’s new National Strategy on hunger and nutrition, including school lunches. The pandemic school lunch scramble.Jennifer Gaddis on school lunchesSchool lunches are healthier than you thinkSo, what about processed foods?Meal planning mental loadstress-organizing my kitchenTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle ZevinCome hiking with this amazing groupCREDITSThe 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.Please Stop Romanticizing Your Child’s Lunchbox(This is a reprint of last year’s essay, with a few new additions in footnotes. If you read it before, just scroll down for the rest of the episode’s analysis and your Butter recs!)Back in April 2021, the USDA announced that it would extend a waiver that allows schools to serve free meals to all students through the entire 2021-2022 school year. Families no longer have to apply or demonstrate eligibility for free lunches in most districts; cafeterias are just feeding every kid who shows up for lunch. This effort started as a response to the pandemic-fueled increase in childhood hunger, as I reported for the New York Times last year. And anti-hunger advocates are hoping to make it a permanent change by getting Congress to pass the Universal School Meals Act.1 So we are now officially back to school in every district in the nation, and most kids are walking into a radically different cafeteria than ever before.   There are some nuances to this, of course. “Please note that USDA is not providing a free universal meal program,” a USDA spokesperson told me via email because I guess the government never wants to look like it’s caring too much. States have to opt in to the waiver before schools can serve free meals to all; otherwise they can participate in the normal National School Lunch Program, where kids pay full price, reduced price, or nothing based on their family’s income eligibility (meaning schools and families still have to do that application process).And some, such as the Waukesha School District in Wisconsin, have opted not to participate. In that case, it was because school board members worried that feeding kids lunch would make them “spoiled” and also, rather inexplicably, pave the way to mask mandates. (The school district has since reversed that decision.) The USDA does not yet have data on how many districts around the country opted in or out, but the same spokesperson confirmed that “the majority” of states are in. So we can expect to see a big spike in participation numbers from the last time this data was collected, in 2014-2015, when just one in five schools offered free lunch to all students. I also did some extremely un-scientific Instagram polling (on my own account, and then I borrowed Yummy Toddler Food’s much larger one), 81 to 89 percent of followers who voted said lunch is free at their kids’ school this year. Unless you are a heartless Wisconsin school board member, universal free lunch is unequivocally great for the estimated 12 million American kids who can’t get enough to eat at home. There is no debate about that (which is why we should have been doing it for decades already). But what if you don’t have a financial need for school lunch? The real question—that may very well determine whether or not universal free lunch becomes a permanent part of the American education system—is: Will Nice White Parents let our kids eat school food? So far, the answer appears to be: An awful lot of us won’t. “Roughly 20 million eligible children, mostly from middle- and upper-middle-class families, continue to opt out of the national program by bringing lunch or by buying special à la carte food items not covered by the program,” wrote Jennifer Gaddis, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Labor of Lunch, in a New York Times op-ed from February 2020. We don’t yet have data on how the shift to free lunch will change that for this school year, so I once again turned to Instagram for more insight. In my (again, totally unscientific!) poll of 210 parents, 49 percent of parents said yep, their kids are eating the free school lunch, and 51 percent said no, they are still sending in lunchboxes. In other words: Just over half of this group of parents are paying for a meal—and investing time and labor in preparing said meal—that their children could be eating for free. I suspect the vast majority of these folks were horrified by that Wisconsin school board. These are parents who support free lunch programs, in theory, at least, for other kids. Indeed, some said they didn’t want to take free lunch away from kids who need it. But the reality is that participation rates drive this program’s funding: “When millions of families [pack lunch], their actions reduce the political will and financial resources necessary to make public school lunches better for everyone,” wrote Gaddis last year. I checked in with Gaddis yesterday and she confirmed that this is still true, even though lunch is now free. The federal government reimburses schools per student eating lunch and they reimburse at the highest rate per students eating for free, so schools can now receive the maximum subsidy.2Perhaps even more important: When lunch is free for everyone, then the kids who need free lunch aren’t stigmatized by the kids who don’t. “You can often see huge divides along income and racial lines in cafeterias between the kids who get free lunch and the kids who bring lunch from home,” notes Gaddis. “If we want to create spaces in our schools that are inclusive and welcoming for all, participation really matters. When people with the economic means opt out of school lunch, it sends the message to policy makers that this is a program they don’t really have to care about.”So why aren’t more parents—especially progressive parents—sending their kids to the lunch line? Diet culture has taught us that school lunches aren’t good enough for our kids. I asked the lunch-packers for follow-up and this lesson came through explicitly in about 14 percent of my respondents, and was implied by many more. “While the lunch is free, it’s not actually healthy and I like knowing my kids aren’t eating junk,” said one mom. In fact, school lunches are pretty darn healthy: A 2018 analysis of over 16 years of data concluded that schools “are now the single healthiest place Americans are eating.” This shift is due, in large part, to the 2010 Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Michelle Obama, which overhauled school nutrition standards and changed the nutritional intake of school children in several important ways. And, as Gaddis argued in her piece, with more kids eating, school lunches could get even healthier: “The food-service director of the Austin Independent School District, Anneliese Tanner, told a local news outlet that the district could afford to serve grass-fed beef if the kids who currently opt out of the national program would eat school lunch just once a week.” (Tanner is now the director of research and assessment at the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping schools do more from-scratch cooking.)But no, cafeteria meals likely won’t pass muster if your definition of healthy comes from diet culture. “We eat plant-based,” or, “There aren’t enough whole foods” came up a lot in my Instagram DMs. See also: “Kid says school lunch tastes like plastic,” and many similar comments equating school food with “processed food,” “fast food,” or “diner food.” And it’s not just my followers. In Royal Oaks, Michigan, parents protested when the elementary school’s free lunch included grab-and-go items like bagged Goldfish crackers and Scooby-Doo Graham Cracker Sticks. And the Chef Ann Foundation where Tanner now works had to apologize recently after posting a meme unfavorably comparing school meals to ultra-processed foods. It’s also true, as Bettina Elias Siegel reported last week (CW for o-words), that due to Covid restrictions, labor shortages, and supply chain issues, many schools have been forced to switch out hot meals for grab-and-go lunches. Gaddis acknowledges that these issues may be impacting menu composition right now: “What you’re likely to find in a typical cafeteria right now is more processed food and less scratch cooking than you would have seen pre-pandemic,” she says. And, Covid or not, many schools incorporate processed foods into their meals, both because such foods are cheap and convenient when you’re mass-producing meals (and don’t have the budget to hire experienced school cooks), and because their pre-printed nutrition labels make it easy to ensure they are meeting complex government nutritional standards. But Graham Cracker Sticks are not our enemy. Nutrition perfectionism is.As I’ve written before, the problem with processed foods isn’t their ingredient lists; it’s our culture’s dysfunctional relationship with them. Your fear of snack crackers is a big reason why your kid seems so obsessed with them. Letting kids eat these foods at school, alongside the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that school districts are also required to serve, could be a great way to lessen a child’s scarcity mindset around them.But to do that, we have to sift through the layers of classism and racism that underpin our feeling that kids eating “fast food” for lunch is proof of lazy or bad parenting. Many parents who are using school lunch this year told me that they feel guilty for taking such an “easy” way out, as if letting your child eat the same meal that another kid has no choice but to eat is being a #badmom. Meanwhile, one school lunch abstainer wrote that she has “been dreaming about packing lunches for kids 4ever ♥️.” Instagram, Pinterest, and the rise of the momfluencer has turned school-lunch packing into a cross between competitive sport and creative self-care practice. We’re flooded with images of $60 PlanetBoxes and $42 OmieBoxes, rainbow produce cut into stars and hearts, and the message that all of this is a valid measure of our mothering. But that’s only true if your definition of motherhood is almost exclusively white and upper-income. Possibly related: Around 40 percent of my followers said they were skipping school lunch because “my kid won’t eat it.” As the parent of one child with a traumatic feeding history, and another doing the typical picky preschooler thing, I absolutely feel this. But within this “picky” group, I noticed that responses ranged from “ARFID! She needs her safe foods,” to a more shrugging, “My kid doesn’t like it.” I wonder here whether it’s always the kid who doesn’t like the food, or the parent, or the kid internalizing a parent’s rigid standards. Children with true feeding disorders or other sensory challenges do need extra support and may be overwhelmed by trying to eat in a cafeteria setting. And, of course, kids with food allergies, especially life-threatening ones, may need a packed lunch to eat safely. (That group made up about 8 percent of my respondents.) But: Our more garden-variety picky eaters may get more adventurous in the cafeteria than you’ll ever see at home. Research shows that kids tend to eat a larger variety of foods when they get repeated exposures to them in a peer setting, as Sally Sampson and Natalie Digate Muth, M.D., wrote for the New York Times back in 2015. This is also another reason not to freak out about processed foods on school lunch menus; Goldfish and the like are often the familiar, predictable foods that cautious kids need to use as stepping stones and to feel empowered when navigating a new eating situation.About one-fifth of the parents in my poll said they took a hybrid approach, letting kids study weekly school lunch menus and decide which days to bring or “buy.” Gaddis and I agree that this seems like a great work-around for most picky kids because it lets them build confidence eating in a new setting with foods they like, and still encourages involvement in school meals—which benefits everyone. Some of this group even require kids to pack lunch themselves on the days they don’t want to eat the school meal, which is a rather genius way to get kids more involved in their own meal planning mental load.I also heard from a vocal minority of parents who really want to do school lunches but have opted out because of logistical issues, especially long lines that don’t leave their kids time to eat (especially in places limiting lunch periods to 15 minutes right now to reduce Covid risk). I too worry about kids who need to stand in line, eat, and get to the bathroom during this timeframe—solidarity to all the kindergarten teachers dealing with afternoon wet pants! If a lunch logistic is your deal-breaker this year, Gaddis says, “Just don’t make this your permanent decision about school lunch.” And do contact your elected officials and let them know that you want them to support the Universal School Meals Act and several other pieces of legislation pending now.So no, school lunch is not perfect. But the problems likely aren’t what you think. And it could be so much better if we started to shift away from this diet culture-fueled hierarchy of kid lunches, with cafeteria trays always on the bottom. Letting go of these standards for perfect kid lunches and perfect parenthood is hard. More than one mom told me they pack lunch because, “This way I know what food she’s offered,” or, even more bluntly, “I like the control.” But our kids will have a healthier relationship with food in general if we empower them to eat this meal without our micromanagement. Releasing some of this control can be a way to let our kids know we trust them; to encourage their curiosity; to enable more community building in cafeterias, instead of dividing kids up into those with lunchboxes and those without. This could be how we turn school meals into something different, and better. And probably, still containing Graham Cracker Sticks.Essay DiscussionSo there were several threads to the reaction to this piece that are interesting to discuss a year later. One: I heard from many parents of picky eaters and parents of kids with true feeding challenges who said that eating school lunch has been really helpful for their kids. It can be more neutral place to try new foods than the family dinner table. And because school lunches are designed to be kid-friendly, they often do feature foods that selective eaters do well with. This is not to say that school lunch will work for every selective eater – but don’t rule it out as an option full stop just because you have a picky kid. It can absolutely be a helpful tool. A lot of you also told me about the logistical issues with your school’s lunch program that make buying lunch too hard. Super short lunch times, long lines, even food shortages in many districts. That was particularly hard during the pandemic and I get it if you packed lunch for your kids under those circumstances. But I do think those of us with the privilege to pack should not check out of those issues completely. We still need to be thinking of lunch as a school community event that we all participate in and work on. But the really fascinating thing is how many comments I get—and this just happened on Instagram when I did a repost of this piece at the start of September—from people saying they can’t buy school lunch because the food isn’t healthy and is too processed or has too much sugar. This is the whole problem. We have to stop defining “healthy” as a plate full of fresh vegetables. Lunch does not need to be a salad to get a gold star. Most kids won’t even eat a salad. (Also plenty of schools serve salad!)We can define a healthy lunch as a meal that kids are able to navigate themselves, as a meal where they share food with their community, as a meal where they can get full enough and get the energy they need to learn and play the rest of the school day. All of that can come in the form of an Uncrustable. We don’t need to make this so hard. The last thing I want to talk about is what we’re doing in my house, this year, for school lunch. One thing I didn’t share when I wrote the piece last year was that my kids were attending a small private school that didn’t offer a lunch program. This was a super hard decision that we made during Covid due to my older daughter’s high risk status—and it was absolutely a decision we were able to make due to a pile of privilege. But let me tell you how much I missed the school lunch program during the two years we spent there! This year, we are so happy to be back at public school. Our school, like many schools, is no longer offering free universal lunch because the federal government program expired June 30. So we are paying $3.10 per lunch and I am happy to do it. My younger daughter buys every day and gets the exact same thing every day; Peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk plus whatever fruit they have that day. The first day she told me she ate mango and carrots, and believe me when I say those are two foods she has never willingly eaten at home.My older daughter, who is more selective and also more independent at age 9, is studying the cafeteria menu each week and buying some days and packing her own lunch some days. I told her she could make that decision as long as she packs her lunch herself—because I know if she forgets, she can eat the cafeteria PB&J even if it’s not her favorite. (She has opinions about the thickness of their bread.) And this is working really well for her because she loves the control of picking her own lunch. We also had some good conversations about the importance of the school lunch program and the role of privilege in packing. So she is buying less frequently than her sister, but still buying at least once or twice a week and I’ll call that a win for now. Butter for Your Burnt ToastYou’re just getting my recs this week, but I’m giving you three of them! These are all things I did over Labor Day weekend, when I had my house to myself for THREE WHOLE DAYS and, as newsletter readers know, spent a lot of that time finishing my book and stress-organizing my kitchen. But that’s not all I did! I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and loved it. Someone on Instagram compared it to A Little Life and I got scared, but can now reassure fellow literary-trauma-avoiders that it is NOT on that scale. (But yes there is heartbreak and loss.)I went hiking with this amazing group and yes, I want to write more about that experience soon. (You can spy me here!)I watched so many episodes of the new A League of Their Own and sobbed through the last two. Fervently hoping for season 2.

This week, Corinne joins Virginia for another Ask Us Anything episode! We have a lot of thoughts about pants. So buckle up for that. We also talk about snacks. Pants and snacks, and I know, you're already in.If you'd like to support Burnt Toast, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And considering becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.You can also now officially 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 LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.For previous Corinne episodes, start here and then go here and here. Corinne's amazing jumpsuitShould you get rid of your scale?Jeans ScienceUniversal Standard black leggingsUniversal Standard ponte pantUniversal Standard buttoned down shirt similar pink clogs to Virginia'sEileen Fisher lantern pantDraper James dressDacy Gillespiecashmere bike shortsCorinne’s Barbell Lift Off experiencethe conversation I had with SerenaCREDITSThe 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 62 TranscriptVirginiaI feel like we should catch up a little! I haven't talked to you, I mean, we haven't recorded one of these in a few months. We talk frequently but it's like text and email. How are you?CorinneI'm good. This summer has been a whirlwind. VirginiaYou have been all over the place, right? CorinneI have. I came out to the east coast for the summer. I've been staying with my mom and I've been spending a lot of time with family—my mom, my sister, extended family, and traveling to see lots of old friends.VirginiaThat sounds so great. I was so mad, you were in the Hudson Valley like an hour from me but I was in the final days of book revisions and we couldn’t make it happen. CorinneAnd how are you doing? You've had a busy summer as well.VirginiaI am good. It was unexpectedly extra busy because it turned out my book timeline was different than I thought it would be. But now September Virginia is so happy because this morning I turned in the revise, as opposed to when I originally thought I'd be starting the revise in September. Now I'm like, it was totally worth it because it's done.Preorder FAT TALKCorinneCongratulations!VirginiaThank you. It's so huge. It's now 400 pages in Word. It won't be a 400 page book—I don't want to terrify people. Word page counts and book page counts are different. And like 50 pages of it is just end notes, which I assume nobody reads but I'm still very obsessive about. Writing the end notes really almost ended me, but I made it. I made it through.CorinneThat's so awesome.VirginiaIt's good stuff. My kids are back in school and the book is someone else's problem for a few weeks. I'm living life. All right, should we do some listener questions? We've got a lot of good ones this time.CorinneWe do. Let's dive in. Should I read the first one? Q. How do you work with yourself when you are having one of those days when you either feel bloated, feel like you're carrying some extra weight or just feel lousy and a little bigger in your body? Does it trigger any anxiety or fatphobic thinking? If so, how do you work with yourself?I ask because as a human, I assume we all have some of these days with normal body fluctuations if we are connected with our bodies. It is a normal part of living in a body, but I tend to get really anxious and my fatphobic mind starts up when I'm having a day when I may be holding on to some extra weight.VirginiaMy first response is like, yes, I think this is how we're taught to think about our bodies. It's normal for these feelings to come up and to have this moment. But let's push back on the phrase “extra weight” a little bit. Let's be curious about that because that is sort of tricky language, right? That's the fatphobia. I have a lot of empathy, these are very real feelings that come up because you've been taught to feel this way about your body. And bodies do change. Our bodies change size throughout the month, and the year, and the seasons. And it is hard to not have that knee jerk response to it because that's what you were taught to do since you were a kid.What do you think?CorinneI'm struggling with this question. One, because I think what you're picking up on, it is coming from a very real place. And it is slightly equating “feeling bigger” with feeling lousy. I feel like the word “bloating” is like a trigger for me. What do you mean when you say “bloated?” Are your clothes uncomfortable? Are you seeing the way you look and not liking it? VirginiaDo you just need to poop? Are you constipated?CorinneAre you having trouble with mobility? Or are you like weighing yourself? I'm curious what the feeling is.VirginiaI think you're right. What is coming up? I think in this person's effort to be careful in how they're talking about this, they're not giving us all the details, which is understandable but makes it harder for us to answer your question.For me, there are some times, like a change of season, when I bring out the next season's clothes and something is tighter than I expected it to be. That is, I think, a common point where people suddenly are like, wait, did something go wrong? And then I have to reframe. If my body has changed, that is fine. It is not my body's fault. It's the pant’s problem, not mine.I also try to take a step back and ask what else is going on with me. Because often, worrying about how clothes fit is a place my brain goes with anxiety because it's got that groove worn into it. But actually, I'm anxious because I have a work meeting where I have to be on camera or be in person with people or we're gonna see friends we haven't seen in a long time. Often it's my social anxiety that manifests in body and wardrobe anxiety. And so taking it back to like, Oh, I'm just anxious about this social encounter because I'm an introvert who works from home and isn't great at seeing people. Then I can sort of keep it there versus going to the body negativity place.CorinneRight. And those two things are so linked, because anxiety makes you uncomfortable but also if your clothes physically feel weird, it can amplify it.VirginiaI think where this has gone really badly for me in the past is if I haven't taken enough time in advance to figure out what I'm going to wear to the thing and now the thing I thought I could wear is uncomfortable to wear. So now my anxiety about the thing is compounded by the fact that I feel miserable in this outfit that doesn't fit right. Then you're in this whole vortex. So one workaround is I try now to plan further out. I’m going to take author photos next month, and I'm already thinking about what I'm gonna wear so it's not the morning of author photo shoot day and nothing works.CorinneThat thing where you’re throwing everything you own…VirginiaYes, Exactly. Let's avoid the flailing and hating everything. CorinneMaybe this person just needs some soft pants.VirginiaDon’t we all just need soft pants? CorinneYeah. If you're feeling that discomfort, put on your soft pants.VirginiaI don't know if we totally answered that. CorinneI hope that didn't sound dismissive because that's not how I meant it. VirginiaWe don't want to dismiss the really real feelings that come up. But look at what's underneath it. Don't feel bad that your brain went there because you've learned to go there, but recognize that that's not where it needs to stay.CorinneAnd whatever you can do to make yourself physically feel more comfortable will probably help.VirginiaWell, on the subject of soft pants, these next questions are ones I'm very excited to talk about with you.Q. What are some of your favorite or go to “business casual” clothes outfits?Q. Fall wardrobe essentials?So I feel like we should talk about like fall clothes in general. I don't know that either of us would describe ourselves as business casual.CorinneOh man, the business casual is straight up triggering. That is a situation where I'm throwing everything in my closet on the bed and, so uncomfortable. I'm so sorry for everyone who has to try and figure that out.VirginiaYou guys can't see us but Corinne is in an adorable Target jumpsuit that we just discussed in great detail. I am in cutoff shorts and a tank top because it's really hot in my office. So, we did not go business casual for this Zoom recording CorinneOh my gosh, no. VirginiaBut I do want to give a plug for soft pants for fall. I decided after having spent months on Jeans Science as everybody knows, that I am going to try not to buy new jeans this fall. Because they will be bad. All the jeans are bad. They will inevitably be disappointing and I won't like them. So why would I spend money on them?I have three or four pairs left from Jeans Science. I tried them on all last week. Two pairs didn't fit anymore, so I threw them out immediately. But I think I still have two or three left that are fine. They're not great because there are no good jeans, but they're fine for the days when I really feel like I need jeans. And otherwise, I am embracing leggings. I got some great Universal Standard black leggings. I also got the Universal Standard ponte pant, which is a very difficult phrase to say on a podcast. CorinneI’ve always said “pont-y,” just throwing that out there.VirginiaThat could be right. It sounds like panty, but okay. Pont-ay?CorinneThere we go. Yes, say it with an accent.VirginiaOkay, so question mark on how to pronounce it. But I feel like it's like a dressier legging. It's very versatile. I just have a black. I have a black pair and I have a bright red pair. The other thing I'm really excited about for fall is I also bought—another word I can't pronounce, “chambray.” Is that how you would say that? The denim but it's the soft denim? I bought a buttoned down shirt to wear with the black leggings or the ponte pant and also like maybe my cute pink clogs (Charlotte Stone doesn’t have my exact color anymore but these are similar, also for sure wait for sales!). I'm pretty excited about this as a look for fall. Sort of transitional. Could go to a clog boot once it gets cold here. What about you? What are you wearing?CorinneWell first I want to address business casual. My business casual go to is just Eileen Fisher, whether new or secondhand. I feel like they have so much comfortable stuff that's like that “artsy” business casual. I'm a particularly huge fan of their lantern pant, which is like kind of like a wider style that like goes in at the bottom a little bit. It comes in like a million different fabrics and slightly different styles every season.VirginiaOh, I know this pant. CorinneIt’s great. Goes with everything. And comfortable! You could wear it on an airplane.VirginiaThey're kind of like pajama pants, but like a little more tailored? But not super tailored.CorinneI would also say Universal Standard also has great stuff. I used to be more of a dress-wearing business casual person and now I'm like, I don't want to wear a dress. I want to wear pants all the time.VirginiaYeah, I'm in more of a pants place, too, although I have I'm doing some shopping for dresses right now because of the author photoshoot. So I just got one from Draper James (and hat tip to Dacy Gillespie who found this for me, I’ll talk more about that soon!). It's not a super inclusive line, but they do go up to 3x, I think. Yeah. I'm very excited about it. But I haven't like worn it out in the world so I feel like I can't fully endorse it.(Update: I wore it out in the world after we recorded! To a work event! And I loved it though I did worry about sweat stains but it was okay.)But if you're preppy—and I'm from Connecticut, so I can't not be preppy sometimes—I recommend. When I was looking at Draper James, they had some really cute tops that I think would certainly qualify as business casual, particularly if paired with a ponte pant or linen pant. Dresses are tricky because then you also have to make decisions about tights.CorinneAnd shoes. I don't like the shoes/dress situation because I don't want to wear heels ever. VirginiaGod no. Yeah. I left women's magazines for a reason and not having to wear heels is one of the top reasons.CorinneCan you wear it with Blundstones? That's my question. VirginiaYou can totally wear cute dresses with Blundstones. That's a great look.CorinneBut might not be business casual. VirginiaWell, as we established up front, we do not have the credentials to speak very well to business casual. But I do think a dress with tights and Blundstones could work in a lot of more creative corporate settings. If you work at a bank, I don't think I can help you. I mean, I think a jumpsuit can totally work too for business casual. I mean, as you are proof right now. I have one from Athleta that's like a nylon-y fabric. (Guys I lied, it’s from Target and they don’t have it anymore, sigh.) It kind of reminds me a parachute fabric. But I feel like I can dress it up a little if I need to. Jumpsuits get tricky in the winter with shoes, at least here on the East Coast where you don't want bare ankles. It always comes back to the whole bare ankles thing. California has really done a number on us.CorinneSo true. I will say one thing I've been wearing a lot in this cold damp summer thing we're having is I got a pair of cashmere bike shorts.VirginiaWait, what?CorinneFrom Naadam. Do you know that brand? VirginiaI do not!CorinneThey're so great for that sort of humid, cool, but it's summer weather. Could maybe work for fall in some places?VirginiaThis is reminding me of that old photo of Princess Diana wearing a blue sweatshirt and white shorts. People post it on the one day a year where the weather is appropriate for this combination. But in Maine that’s like a lot of time actually?CorinneI love long sleeve top and shorts. These are also very good for if you're “feeling bloated” because they're just very soft and very stretchy comfortable.VirginiaYes. I am excited about this. I also want to know if they make like a longer pant? I have long wanted a pair of leggings made out of sweater material for winter. And J. Crew sells them but they're not size inclusive enough for me.CorinneYou should definitely check out Naadam. They go up to a 3x but it's a very generous 3x. They definitely have a jogger style. And they have a lot of sales, so if you're interested, I would subscribe to their emails and wait for them to be like 40% off.VirginiaI don't know if a knit cashmere jogger counts as business casual. If it doesn't, that's not a world I want to live in.CorinneYou should be able to wear cashmere pants anywhere. VirginiaYou're so fancy! CorinneAlways in fashion. VirginiaAll right. The next question is:Q: Can we have an update on Corinne’s Barbell Lift Off experience, if you're comfy and want to talk about it?CorinneYes. I mean, the update is that I am not doing it. Basically, as I mentioned, I came out to the East Coast and once I got to my mom's house, I just kind of gave up. Partially because I was at the point where I needed to actually obtain weights.VirginiaYou'd progressed beyond the broomstick. Which is exciting! Congratulations!Corinne I mean, yes. I just got like, overwhelmed by having to get stuff. But it is on my radar to restart when I get back to New Mexico and can have my own space and my own dumbbells or whatever.VirginiaI think this also just speaks to how so many workouts are location and schedule specific. And then we beat ourselves up—and I'm not saying you beat yourself up, I hope you didn't. But there's this tendency to be like, “I'm gonna do this thing.” And then you don't do the thing and you might feel bad, but it's like, the thing stopped working. The thing was great for that month and then your needs changed. And maybe you're doing something else or maybe this isn't a month where exercise makes sense. And that's cool. That's life. CorinneTotally. Yeah, and I think in general in summer, I would rather just go outside.VirginiaTotally. I agree. Next someone would like to know:Q: Favorite Snacks!CorinneSo many, so many ideas.VirginiaYou just took a pause to just prepare yourself for that.CorinneI mean, hard to know where to start. Big topic. Especially this time of year when like I feel like all the best snacks are like seasonal fruit.VirginiaIt is a good fruit time of year.CorinneMy first answers were peaches and cucumbers. But my favorite grocery store or roadtrip snack would be Cheetos probably. Or like any cheese cracker. Goldfish!VirginiaYou know me and Extra Toasty Cheez-Its. I feel like I don't even really need to answer this one because I've discussed this. CorinneDo your kids like Cheez-Its?VirginiaOne of my kids does, one of my kids doesn't like any crackers. I know. I'm just trusting that she's going to come through this. She likes potato chips. I'm not saying she doesn't have any crunchy carbs in her life. But she's a potato chip, tortilla chip type kid. Not so much a cracker type person. CorinneInteresting. VirginiaBut yes, Extra Toasty Cheez-Its for me. The Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, I like to eat by the handful. That's a snack often when I'm writing and I feel like my brain just needs a steady drip of glucose to keep me going. What else am I snacking on lately? We make a lot of the Ghirardelli brownie mix. That is very popular in my house. A brownie is a delightful after school snack. It's very popular. I feel like I'm on a little bit of a snacking rut to be honest. I feel like I always give the same answers. (San Fran people, sorry, I know, I mispronounce Ghirardelli every time!!!)CorinneI was gonna say, in a few weeks I'm driving back to New Mexico and if anyone has any car snack suggestions, I'm always looking for stuff.VirginiaThat's a great Friday thread. Your best car snacks. Or anytime snack. Do you want to ask the next question?CorinneYes.Q. Would you put your pet on a diet if your vet said it was necessary?VirginiaThis one, I had a lot of emotions.CorinneSame. This was just hitting a little too close to home.VirginiaSo we did have a cat—this is a fatphobic story, but it is also a little bit funny, and it's about a cat, so I'm giving that setup. When we lived in the city and our cat was an apartment cat, so his world was quite small because we lived in like a 600 square foot apartment. And I took him to the vet and the tech lifted him out of the carrier and said “Jesus Christ!” because he was—he was amazing. He was very chunky and delicious and I loved him so much. But I did feel that she fat shamed my cat. And they did suggest a diet. And I don't think we did the diet.But we ended up moving out of the city to a house where then he had a bigger space to run around and he did slim down. But no, I didn't alter how I fed him because we had two cats and it was gonna be too hard. I feel like they are good intuitive eaters. I don't want to mess with that. What about you?CorinneI have a dog named Bunny. When I got her, from an Albuquerque city shelter, she was fully grown and 38 pounds and now she's close to 60 pounds. When I got her I took her to the vet, they were like “she's the perfect weight. She looks great.” And I was like, “Are you joking? She looks like a lollipop.” Like, her huge Pitbull head on like a little scrawny body. So I just fed her normally and she grew to be a normal size. And when I take her to the vet now, they're also like, “she's the perfect weight.” I’m like, she weighs almost twice as much, but whatever. So recently I took her to the vet because she's been having some issues with UTIs and they gave me this whole explanation of how—I don't know. Basically like if dogs’ vaginas get too fat, urine can pool in weird places, and then they get UTIs a lot. 1VirginiaUm, wait. This cannot be a thing. Corinne I mean, I don't know. But so I have recently been faced with a question of whether I would put her on a diet to try and help with her UTI issue.VirginiaHow are you feeling?CorinneI have tried to gently cut back her food a little bit. I have no idea if it's made any difference or effect. It's just such an interesting question because I also feel like people are so weird about pet weights. VirginiaYeah, it feels like not a very evidence based statement. “Her vagina got fat.”CorinneI mean, I'm doing a little bit of interpretation.VirginiaPeople have asked me this question over and over, and I keep being like, Oh, I'll do a reported piece on pet health. And then I keep not doing it. But now you're making me feel like maybe there's a story here? I also wonder how much of it is the vet's own anti-fat bias and making judgments about owners. You know what I mean? I want you to say to that vet just like Ragen Chastain teaches us: What treatment would you give to this dog in a thin body? Let's start there.CorinneYeah, interesting question. It's one of those situations where people will say stuff to pets or about pets that they would never think of saying to people. I mean, my dog also gets a ton of treats because she's reactive and I use hot dogs to train her. So I've always just been like, who cares? Give her as many hot dogs as she wants. VirginiaI do feel like I would interrogate your vet on this a little bit. Like, how much of it is the weight? How much of it is them wanting to prescribe that versus medication? And obviously, that's complicated. It's hard to give pets medication. So maybe this feels easier in some ways to control. The quality of life matters, too! And hot dogs are great. And also managing your dog's reactivity matters. So yeah, that's tricky.CorinneAlso, having pets “fixed” also really changes their body. So it sometimes feels like we're getting pets. We're changing their hormone profile. We're controlling how much they eat and how much they exercise. VirginiaAnd then we're getting mad at them for being fat. CorinneYeah.VirginiaSocial determinants of health for pets matters, too! Okay. If anyone listening has good anti-diet vet sources let me know! Part of why I haven't reported that is because I can't figure out how to find the counter perspective. I'm sure the mainstream veterinarian view is that animals weights should be managed. So if anyone knows someone taking a different approach, send me resources if you have them.CorinneAll right. This is another good question for you.Q. I'm the mom of a three and a half year old who is in a major “why” phase. I've read from you and others that it's not advisable to talk deeply about nutrition with kids before around middle school age and to avoid labeling foods as “good,” “bad,” “healthy,” etc. My kid is very curious about why he can't eat chocolate and candy exclusively. In his own words, “they taste much better to me so that's what I want to fill my tummy with.” I don't know how to answer this question without talking about nutrition. So far, i've tried to place value on eating a variety of foods, something like “different foods do different things in our body. So it's good to eat a lot of different things.” Do you have any other tips for good language to use here? My major concern is not his sugar consumption, but rather being able to respond to his curiosity honestly and accurately for his age.VirginiaI like the language that this person is using: “Different foods do different things in our body.” I also often say, “Well, we couldn't eat just broccoli all day either.” The point is you can't eat any one food. That way you're neutralizing it. Like you can't eat chocolate all day, you can eat broccoli all day, these foods are equivalent.I do think, though, you might want to do a gut check on the fact that your kid is asking this question enough that you are now asking me about it. That says to me that this kid might be fixating on treats, which suggests there may be some unconscious or not restriction of the treats? So, another way around this is to let your child eat chocolate and candy exclusively. And let them figure out how that feels.Because nothing really bad will happen if your child eats nothing but chocolate for a day, right? Unless they're allergic. Like, they're maybe gonna have a stomachache and maybe poop weird because they only ate one food, but nothing bad's gonna happen in a day or two of this. So maybe declaring a chocolate day, and just go with it and see what happens. And probably not much happens, other than, if you do this maybe for a day and maybe once a week, maybe in some regular fashion, they should, over time, become less fixated on the idea of wanting to eat only chocolate and candy. So that's something you can play with.I would definitely make sure you have times in their day, like maybe it's after school snack or dessert after dinner, separate from whatever you eat at dinner, where they can determine the quantity of the treat. CorinneThat's a good answer.Q. I'm not sure this is the right place for this question. But it's happening in my life. And I don't know what to do. A friend, not in my inner circle of friends, but in the next ring, so very important, has gotten Lyme disease after having COVID. He is treating it by fasting. I feel as though he and his wife are headed down the rabbit hole of eating disorders. As a person who loves them, I feel like there's something I could say or do that would at least give them the heads up. But I do not know what skillful action I could take.VirginiaWell, first, just really sorry. That sounds scary and stressful. And Lyme disease, when it's really severe, is horrific. So I'm super sorry you are going through this and your friend is going through this. I definitely understand your concern. Experimenting with diet in order to treat a medical condition can be a really fraught thing to do. There's a lot of wellness culture around Lyme. There's a lot of practitioners that push dietary restrictions without necessarily having evidence on their side. Would you agree with that?CorinneI would agree with that.VirginiaSo it is worrying that your friend may be getting some advice that's not evidence-based. What's also concerning is most likely whoever's encouraging them to do this has not screened them for risk of eating disorder, has not talked about the ramifications of it. On the flip side, it's his struggle. You want to center his experience, you don't want to come in and be like, “Don't do that. That's a terrible idea.” Because that's not supportive or helpful. I think I would just try to be the person who makes a space for him to talk about how it's hard. This kind of reminds me of the conversation I had with Serena in the office hours episode that just aired a couple of weeks ago. When you're told you have to do something for your health, all too often we don't make any space for the conversation about what else is it going to do to you? How is it going to mess up your relationship with food? How is it gonna impact your mental health? So, just being someone who makes space for that, I think could be helpful.CorinneMy ideas around this were basically, first: Do you need to protect yourself? If you need to be like, “I don't want to be around this,” then take care of your own stuff. I feel like the thing that's really hard to do but might be helpful would just to say how it's affecting you. Like, “hearing you talk about this is making me feel anxious or I'm having anxiety hearing about this,” or something like that.VirginiaYes. I mean, it's hard when your friend is the one who's going through the really hard thing and you don't want to center your emotions over his. But I think just expressing concern like, “That sounds so hard. How are you feeling mentally about it?” Or “In the past when I've tried something, I've tried something like that and it really fucked with my head and just checking out how are you feeling?”CorinneI think sometimes when this stuff comes up in relationships, we think that if we give enough research and evidence to someone that they'll come around and agree with us. My experience has been that that doesn't usually work. So either they're gonna figure it out themself or maybe not, who knows? VirginiaI mean, that's the other thing. You may be feeling like it's your responsibility to save them. And it's not. If this is a rabbit hole, they go down, it's not your fault.You can express concern, you can be a place for them to put the feelings about why it's hard, and maybe help them process that. But if that's not something that they want right now, they may just be so laser focused on trying to manage these symptoms and feeling like they have to try everything to do that even though, again, I don't think the evidence around fasting and Lyme recovery is there. Yeah, I think that would just create more tension and create more distance between you when I think your goal is to maintain connected to this person.CorinneIt's a really tough situation.CorinneQ. What's one topic or piece of research, you have to cut from the book that you want to tell us about?VirginiaI love this question. I'm not going to tell you too much because these are all things I'm hoping to turn into features for the newsletter. So, I don't want to give away the story, but just a little teaser. One story I'm really interested in that I couldn't fit into the book is how BMI cut offs are used to ban fat parents from adopting, especially in certain countries.CorinneI hate that. VirginiaYeah. So that's a story I want to dig into some more and find out more with what's going on about it. And I say that also understanding that adoption is like this hugely complicated topic. And there are lots of feelings on all sides, but at the very least, we could take weight out of the conversation that would be cool.The other one I'm really dying to do is a story on co-parenting when your ex is really deeply enmeshed in diet culture. There is some stuff on this in the book. I think there's so so much to say about that topic. I should say, I'm going to start looking for sources very soon so feel free to email me if one of these is like, “Oh, that's my life,” because I would love to talk to you.And then the last one, I know I've been promising to do this forever, it really is going to happen this fall: Plus size clothes for kids. I'm getting into it. I didn't have space for that in the book either and I also felt like that was a story that it wouldn't age well. If I do find any good brands, we can't trust brands to still be good a year later, as we all know from Old Navy. So I didn't want to put brands in the resource section of the book. But I think it would be a great newsletter piece. So those are three I'm excited about.CorinneI'm excited about those too.Q. Curious what productivity methods work for each of you, especially as writers slash editors, stuff like writing at a certain time of day for a certain amount of time, special email answering strategies, et cetera. I love hearing about how people organize their days.VirginiaThis is a fun question. Do you want to go first?CorinneYes, although I feel like my advice will not be helpful. My advice is that I find it really helpful to do a bunch of phone work in my bed before I get up, which is just the opposite of every productivity thing. VirginiaIt is, but I love it. CorinneI do some work on Instagram, so @SellTradePlus and some social media stuff. I find just doing that before I've even gotten up and had breakfast or caffeine makes me feel like I'm on top of it. VirginiaBecause those are tasks, you just want to blow out of the way and you've done it and you can start your day feeling like you've gotten stuff done.I mean, my strategies are not dissimilar. I don't do the in bed thing because I try to keep my phone out of my bedroom at night. Because when I don't, I stay up too late and it ruins my life. But I'm a fan of the early morning work hours which I've talked about. Before my family is awake and before I'm getting emails and stuff. I often get a lot done between 6 and 7 am. Post coffee, I do need coffee and breakfast first, before I can be a remotely functional human being.I also am trying to do more batch working. I feel like that's a trendy concept but it's kind of resonating with me. Because now that the book is mostly done, like the newsletter work, because that's like the bulk of my work week, is very discrete tasks like research a newsletter, record a podcast, prep for a podcast, and so I did map out all those tasks. Wait, I'm gonna show you something and you're either gonna be mortified for me or think this is amazing.CorinneThat's beautiful. VirginiaThis is a piece of my children's construction paper with many colored post-it notes. It is color coded. The orange is editing, like getting the next day's newsletter ready. Pink is writing or researching newsletters, and blue is all the podcast stuff. And they're blocks of time of when I'm doing stuff. I'm trying to mostly record podcasts on Wednesdays now because when I'm recording a podcast any old day of the week that kind of throws off like when do I need to prep, if I'm trying to also write that day, and then I lose a block of time anyway.My other suggestion—this is also a batch working thing—is emails that don't require an urgent response I put in a folder called “Friday.” And every Friday morning, I just go through and deal with all those emails at once. So it's not the death by a thousand cuts where you're trying to answer lots of emails throughout the workday. There are surprisingly a lot of things that I’ve found can wait till Friday. Some of it is like life stuff, like make a doctor's appointment or whatever, sending invoices, or I don't even know. There's so many things that every Friday it's like, “Surprise! What's in the Friday folder?” All that stuff that is not that huge of a time suck, but it takes you out of whatever else you're trying to do for three to fifteen minutes. I like to deal with it all at once.CorinneI love that tip. What do you use to do that? Do you use Gmail or Outlook?VirginiaYeah, I just have a Gmail label and I set it up so it's the top third of my inbox, but I close it. So the rest of the week, I don't see those emails. And I just throw stuff in. And then on Fridays, I open it and just race down them all.CorinneWhen you're done you just delete them?VirginiaYeah, or file them if it’s something I need to keep. But yeah, I take them out of the Friday admin folder. So yeah, you feel very accomplished because then it's empty. You did it all.CorinneThat's a really good idea. VirginiaYeah. And you don't obviously have to do Friday because your schedule might be different. I don't work a full day on Fridays because that's my life day when I go to the grocery store and have the doctor's appointments and run errands. So like, it makes sense to like have a chunk of that Friday morning be dealing with all those thingsCorinne Totally. Yeah. VirginiaOh, this is a very interesting one.Q. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Sober September and if/how you think it intersects with diet culture and restriction.I have two friends doing it now and a part of me completely understands why they want to drink less and have a healthier relationship with alcohol. Drinking less can help people feel better and I want to be supportive. But another part of me feels uncomfortable with the restrictive nature of the campaign, especially when one friend is saying “drinking less is also good because it cuts out sugars, which are the real culprit for my body.” That text made me so sad and I honestly didn't know how to respond, so I didn’t. I wanted to send them the Comfort Food episode on sugar not being addictive, but it feels pushy. So I listened to it as a way to calm myself down instead.I don’t want to be the person who’s always chiming in with “hey, that’s diet culture talking and restriction is the bigger issue here!” bc people don’t love that, haha, and I know everyone is on their own journey, but I’m struggling to be supportive of the pursuit to cut out a substance that can actually be harmful to your health (unlike sugar & food), bc it feels like it’s part of the same old diet culture/healthism scam.For some context, I drink, and while I don't think it’s excessive, I do sometimes take breaks, so I get that impulse to cut back (I also wonder why I do it). But I kind of hate public campaigns for this kind of thing— It’s like an ice bucket challenge for restriction and my eyes can’t help but rolling. Any thoughts you have on this newish campaign to abstain from alcohol (for one month— to reset! To cleanse your body! To test your willpower! And then you just go back to drinking for the rest of the year…?) would be welcome. Thanks for all the work you do, Virginia & Corinne! I’m so incredibly grateful for this community. <3Oh, this is a big question. CorinneI know. This one is so complicated.VirginiaSo, I actually wrote a piece for Medium a couple years ago about the whole sober-curious, dry January phenomenon. I started out with the same skepticism. I was like these feel like diets, this feels weird. I also have people in my life who struggle with addiction and who are sober. So I know what like “real sobriety”—that's sort of a judgy way to put it—but I've seen people get sober. I know how hard that is, and what a huge accomplishment and how necessary and life saving it is for a lot of folks. And so the experiment-y, trendy way of doing it just felt sort of insulting to me, to people who are doing this really hard work. So I get that.But then I interviewed a bunch of really smart people for that piece, including Lisa Du Breuil, who was on that Comfort Food episode. She had a much more generous framing that really changed the way I thought about it. Basically, she was like, “It's an opportunity to be curious about your relationship with alcohol. It can be harm reduction.” For some people the idea of getting sober be really daunting. And taking a break and seeing how you feel can be really useful to people.She saw it quite differently as from a diet, I think because alcohol is such a different substance than sugar, right? I mean, it is addictive. Sugar is not physically addictive. It is not necessary for life in the same way that sugar is. There's just all these distinctions. And so that made me feel like I totally agree the marketing around it is really irritating, and there's often a lot of diet-y language and like this sort of add sugarphobia gets in there, but if someone wants to take a break, and see how they feel, that can be a really useful thing. So I ended up being more pro- it than I expected.CorinneI think I more come from the Lisa perspective that it could be useful to see what's going on. But it also sounds like in this case, your friends maybe have more diet culture-y reasons for doing it. Are you doing it to explore your relationship with alcohol or are you doing it because you don't want the calories or something like that? And those two things are not necessarily separate. VirginiaI think, too, a lot of it depends on what you do with the information. So if you're counting down the days, and then going to the bar like we're free from the Dry January or sSober September, that's sort of revealing about your relationship with alcohol. And it does imply you did more of the “diet until your cheat day” approach, which we know is not a helpful strategy for anything. I think if people don't use it as an opportunity to look at the relationship, then that is more troubling.I just think when it comes to addiction, we need so many tools in our toolbox. If taking a break and thinking about it, even if you then decide, “Nope, I'm going back,” and maybe this is the first step of many towards a path towards true sobriety or maybe you are someone who doesn't need true sobriety, but this helps you figure out what you do need, that can be good.CorinneYeah, it is really complicated. I also don't know if binge drinking or heavy drinking is usually in response to restriction in the same way that binge eating might be? Just something to think about. I drink a lot less as I've gotten older because it makes me feel horrible, which I think is kind of an intuitive response to alcohol, but it can be hard to listen to that. VirginiaYeah, taking a month off, I think it can be a chance to both physically and emotionally see. Like seeing how you feel in social situations without it, seeing how you feel in your workday. There's so many ways that it can be interesting to understand your life without that if thats something that's in your life in a big way.I guess another thing I want to say is, I think it is important to classify alcohol differently from sugar. Because if we don't, we're kind of grouping them together and that's the diet culture thing, to frame sugar as addictive. And I think that's something you can push back on with your friends. Like, it's not really about the sugar. CorinneThat comment is definitely troubling.VirginiaI would certainly be like, “I think if you're trying to restrict sugar, we know where that will go. That won’t work for most of us. And the people it does work for usually works in dangerous ways.” That's quite different and it's not a necessary restriction the way for some folks alcohol is a necessary restriction.I really also liked Jessica Lahey, who's the author of The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, I liked her approach to it. She talked about how taking breaks was helpful for her in the lead up to becoming sober as a way of understanding her relationship.The last question is a fun one we'll wrap up with.Q. I'm curious how you all Virginia and Corinne met and became friends.Oh, sweet. We met because Corinne applied to be my assistant, right? We didn't know each other before that.CorinneNo, I was a Burnt Toast subscriber and I saw that you were hiring someone.VirginiaAnd it was meant to be.CorinneIt's worked out great for me.VirginiaLike we said, we still have not met in person and I'm very excited for that to happen eventually. But yes, we are now buddies and in all of the different computer ways you can be friends. In our first conversation, I was like, “Oh, she's who I want.” We also figured out much, much later—so this wasn't a nepotism thing at all—that Corinne went to college with my sister. Although I think at slightly different times?CorinneYes. I don't think I knew your sister, but I did go to Smith.VirginiaIt's a very cool thing about working online in this way that you get to know people. You're in New Mexico, I'm in New York, I don't think our paths would have crossed otherwise.CorinneMaybe you can do a book event in New Mexico.VirginiaThat would be amazing. That would be really fun.ButterCorinneWhen I got out to the East Coast and was starting to work at my mom's house, I was working at this little desk upstairs with a window open. And there was a bird screaming at me. It was driving me freaking crazy, despite being a very beautiful, warbly noise. Yes, so lovely, but it was driving me nuts. And it was so loud. So I downloaded this app, and I'm curious if you know about this, or have this. Merlin?VirginiaOh, I know about that.CorinneOkay, so it's an app, like a bird watching / listening app. So you download it and then you download a pack that lets you like identify birds by their call. It's kind of like Shazam for birds. You can you just turn it on and press a button and it will like identify the birds like as they're singing, which is really cool. So yeah, being in a more nature-y setting, I've been really enjoying just using Merlin to listen to all the birds that are around me. VirginiaAnd what kind of bird was it? CorinneIt was a robin. An evil, evil robin.VirginiaThey can be kind of bossy. Big personality.CorinneYeah, and now just a few months later they’re not here at all. So it was maybe some kind of mating or defending their nest situation. But yeah, the robins have died down and we've moved on to, I don't know, blue jays or something. VirginiaMy mom is a huge birdwatcher, so she uses that app all the time. And she taught my daughter how to use it. And last weekend actually when I was on a hike with my local body liberation hiking club we whipped out Merlin to identify some warbler that we all were excited to hear and it was this great little moment.CorinneI guess if you're a bird watcher you probably already have it but if you're not a bird watcher it's still really fun.VirginiaLike you don't have to learn all the bird calls, that feels hard to me. I can barely tell like three bird calls apart that I've mastered over like 41 years of being told about bird calls. My recommendation is sort of dorky but I'm very excited about it. It’s these little—I'm holding it up—food storage containers that I just got. Isn’t that the cutest thing? CorinneThe cutest thing I've ever seen. It's like a small, round container in like a beautiful light blue collar with little windows on the side.VirginiaOkay, so people who are parents may have encountered Life Factory, which is a very expensive and very adorable line of baby bottles and they’re glass, but they have like a silicone overlay with little holes in it. For a while they did food storage containers and they don't seem to be doing them anymore. I held on to my Life Factory bottles for years past my children using bottles, because they were just so cute. Literally, I'm just letting the last two go and my children are nine and almost five.So then I was cleaning out my Tupperware drawer last weekend, which is something I just wrote an essay about. And we needed to replace some of our food storage containers because they were done. And so I found this brand called Ello at Target. They make bigger sizes too. They make both plastic and glass with the silicone overlay. They're not that expensive. This is the size I'm using for my kids snacks, like they take like yogurt or fruit in it. Actually, I had it on my desk with my chocolate chips earlier. It’s really delightful they come in so many cute colors.I feel like this is like peak white mom recommendation and I'm sorry, but I love them so much. CorinneYeah, they look great. VirginiaWell, Corinne. I think we did an episode! Thank you for being here. This was super fun.CorinneYeah, it was.VirginiaDo you want to remind people where to find you and follow your work?CorinneOh, yes, you can find me mostly on Instagram @SellTradePlus, where I am posting people's plus size clothes for you to buy. And my personal Instagram which is @SelfieFay where you can see my dog.Thanks so much for listening to the Burnt Toast podcast! If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and leave us a rating or review. It really helps folks find the show. You can also consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter! It’s just $5/month or $50 for the year. You get a ton of cool perks, like commenting privileges, the Burnt Toast Book Club, and our awesome Friday Thread discussions. You also help keep this an ad and sponsor-free space, and enable me to pay podcast guests for their time and labor. ---Corinne here: I did not do a great job explaining this, but Bunny has a somewhat recessed vulva, so the vet’s explanation was that extra body fat in the pelvic area can sometimes exacerbate the condition by creating extra crevices or folds which can then get irritated or infected.

This week, Virginia chats with Chelsea Conaboy, author of an amazing new book, Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood.If you'd like to support Burnt Toast, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And considering becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year. Producing a weekly podcast requires a significant investment of time and resources from several talented people. Paid subscriptions make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space. BUTTER & OTHER LINKSWant to come on Virginia's Office Hours? Please use this form.Chelsea's NYT Op-ed: Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men CreatedChelsea's chapter book read-aloud picks: The Wild Robot, The Wild Robot Escapes and (strong co-sign from Virginia) Dory FantasmagoryVirginia's Instagram Gardening Content.CREDITSThe 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 61 TranscriptVirginiaHi Chelsea! Why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?ChelseaI'm a longtime newspaper journalist. I was a reporter and editor for a long time and for the past few years I've been a freelancer writing a lot about public health, in its broadest definition, and health policy. And I'm a mom of two kids, ages five and seven.VirginiaWe are here to talk about your new book, Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood. I should, full disclosure, note that Chelsea and I share a publisher and editor. So we were set up as author friends in that way, but I would be asking you to be on the podcast regardless because the book is fantastic. And just exactly the kind of conversation we need to be having and that I love having here. So, the title is Mother Brain, but you're very clear from the get go that you take a more inclusive definition of that concept. So talk a little bit about who you're speaking to in this book and also how gender and biology impact this idea of the “Mother Brain.”ChelseaI'm glad we're starting here, it's really important. A parent is anyone who commits their time and energy to caring for children. And there are different mechanisms for how we get to a parental brain depending on whether we're gestational parent or not, but we arrive at very similar places regardless. The one key point that I make over and over in this book is that it's experience that matters most. Time and attention are the things that shape the brain. I wanted to get at how not only have we created such an incomplete understanding of what “mommy brain” is, as something that undermines women, but we've also oversimplified the idea of who gets to do this, whose biology determines them to be really good caregivers. And the answer is everyone. Everyone who commits themselves to this work is changed by it at a neurobiological level.VirginiaWe think of that as a modern invention that (some?) men now take an active role in caregiving and that nonbinary and trans folks can be parents. But I loved how you talked in the book about how this has actually always been happening. It's a core thing that distinguishes humans from other species, that we've always had this idea that everyone can be a caregiver.ChelseaIt's really ancient. It predates humans in the sense that the circuitry for caregiving is this fundamental evolutionary lever that shapes social structures of species across time. It's why we have such a diversity of parenting structures across animals, and of fathering. But in humans, it became important in the way that it wasn't for other primates before us, because human mothers started having babies closer together, and human babies couldn't rely only on their mothers to take care of them. So there were other adults that stepped in and kind of allowed the species to flourish the way it did, and created the hypersociality of the human brain. That is rooted in the idea that mothers couldn't do it all, that other adults had to help.VirginiaAnd not necessarily just female adults. We can think more comprehensively about gender with this, too, right?ChelseaI mean, it was actually thought that it was probably grandmothers who were like the original helpers. Grandmothers who lived a little bit past their reproductive years started helping and allowed their daughters to have more kids more quickly. But the idea is also that they passed on their willingness to engage and be captured by their babies. And that became a human trait, it enabled what is referred to as “alloparenting,” or other parenting, that it's not just mothers, anyone can do it.VirginiaFascinating. And such an important part of the conversation when we talk about how motherhood is portrayed now as this solo operation of self sacrifice.ChelseaIt was never meant to be that.VirginiaLet's talk a little more about some of the popular culture misinterpretations. I mean, we hear about terms like “mommy brain,” as you said, that serves to undermine women. We also talk a lot about maternal instincts. I was thinking, reading your book, that I'm planning to give it to my father-in-law.1 Because an anecdote he loves to tell is how his wife would always wake up for the crying babies and he would sleep through it. And he always framed this to me as like, “It's just the mother's instinct! You'll hear the baby cry before your husband will.” And, “That's just the mother's instinct to just be tuned into the baby that way.” So can you debunk that for me, please?ChelseaI mean, it's possible that she did hear it more than he did because she had thousands of nights of practice of getting up and doing it. Sometimes she probably woke up before the baby even cried because she knew that they were going to be hungry soon because she had the practice. You know, experience matters. So it became part of how her parental brain worked. Also, maybe because she couldn't rely on her husband to get up, too, so it was up to her.I mean, maternal instincts are a really tricky thing to talk about in some ways. It's kind of like a comforting idea for some people to feel like we have this maternal intuition that will get us through the hard stuff. The issue that I have with it is how we arrive at this idea that the maternal instinct, as it sounds like your father in law might say, is innate and automatic and uniquely female. That is a myth. It's just not true. The parental brain is something that takes time to develop. It's not automatic. It's something that grows in us, and it can be really grueling, especially at the beginning. And it keeps growing and changing as we grow and change. And it's a major transformation. And it's one that needs time and support and attention to go well. And it's one that comes with real risks, too. The idea of “maternal instinct” ignores all of that. It was written into science by men who held fast to these religious beliefs around womanhood and who also had a stated interest in compelling women, especially white well off women, to have more babies. There were feminists at that time, in the early part of the 20th century, who were saying, “You know, this is a ruse. We know that what you're trying to do here is to make it look easy, and it's not easy.”VirginiaOne of the things I took away from your book is just like, it's so comforting to realize I’m not alone in that experience of expecting to have the baby arrive and just immediately know what to do, and then realizing you have no fucking clue what to do. It's so hard, that transition that a lot of us go through. You can end up feeling like it's something you did wrong and that it's your fault for not tapping into this more immediate sense of maternal wisdom or whatever. ChelseaI mean, that's why I wrote this book. That's how I felt when my son was born in 2015. I was just completely blindsided, especially by the intensity of the worry I felt for him and the complete lack of certainty that I knew what to do, or that I could even figure it out. And how consuming that feeling was and my complete lack of words to describe it. I mean I went looking for them and really went down the rabbit hole of the of the brain research and found a completely different story than the one I feel like I had been fed.Virginia I want to circle back to what you were just talking about with male scientists creating this narrative, because I was fascinated by your reporting on the history of scientific research on motherhood, and on parenting advice. I think of parenting content as another modern invention, but clearly not. Men have been telling women how to parent for centuries, and yet, doing so little of the actual parenting work. How do you make sense of that? How has it done a disservice to all parents?ChelseaI think this has a lot to do with the rise of the expert. In 1877, Charles Darwin published a journal about his own son's development, and that kind of launched the field of child development. Following his example, lots of women started forming child study societies documenting their own children's growth and sharing what they learned. Very soon after that, they were told that they couldn't be trusted for this work that their own maternal instincts made it impossible for them to be objective observers.VirginiaWow.ChelseaAnd at the same time, medicine and science was really walled off to women. So instead, we got this long string of men publishing books about child rearing. Some were better than others. Some were absurd. My favorite is John Watson in, I think. 1928, telling women to put their kids in a hole in the backyard from the time they were born and to avoid kissing them at all costs.VirginiaI think I wrote “holy fuck” in the margins on that part. He was like, “Just put your baby in a sandpit?”ChelseaYes, yes. And I mean, that book sold tens of thousands of copies in its first months and it really influenced parenting for about a decade. It's really laughable, but then sometimes I think, well, some of the parenting advice we get today is no less laughable? It's just the landscape is different now. Things can be critiqued in real time, there's more diversity of ideas, there are more women and nonbinary parents giving the advice, but we still definitely have this sense that good mothers produce good children and that if we just Google enough, we'll find the answers. And that's almost never true.I think the disservice that this causes is really the anxiety that it creates in us all and the judgment. And, how that can deflect from what we really need and what our kids need, which is connection. They need our our time and attention and also a community of adults around them who can connect with them as well. VirginiaI mean, there's a great parallel with diet culture here, which is always where my brain goes. It's ignoring the fact that you can be a really “good” mother, but if you can't afford rent or you don't have childcare, you know, these larger structural issues that we just don't have to deal with, if we're too busy telling parents the one thing you have to do to have a healthy baby is co-sleep or put your child in a dirt hole or whatever the trend.I was thinking about it, too, and I was like, this dirt hole thing could totally become some new Instagram parenting trend. Like, “free range!” It has sort of gentle parenting vibes of, “just put up a Montessori gate” or “use a floor bed.”ChelseaChild-led sandpit exploration.VirginiaOh my God. That's a hashtag. That's great. I do want to talk a bit more about the brain chemistry piece of it, because that's obviously a big focus of the book. How parenting changes our brain in these important and necessary-for-the-good-of-society ways is very interesting. Talk a little bit about what happens, on a fundamental level to our brains. What about these brain changes surprised you the most?ChelseaThe changes to the parental brain are fundamentally adaptive. I think that's an important place to start because it's so counter to the narrative we often talk about with mothers and brains. They occur because this new role is just dramatically different than what we, at least the vast majority of us, have been in before. We become wholly responsible for the survival of a tiny, nonverbal, human who is vulnerable, and who doesn't have the brain development yet to regulate themselves and their own physiology.So at first, the parental brain changes in ways to make us really hyper responsive. We talk a lot about the dramatic shifts in hormones that happen during pregnancy and what they mean for our bodies and childbirth. But that talk typically ends at baby blues and the sense that for most people, things sort of settle out after a few weeks. When in reality, this flood of hormones primes the brain for this period of plasticity or malleability, so that babies, who are these powerful stimuli, can go to work and shape us to meet their own needs.What happens is brain regions that are related to motivation, and vigilance, and how we make meaning of the world around us become really active. And at least in that early postpartum period that can feel really intense and also deliberately colored by worry. We're driven to pay attention to our babies, to respond quickly to their needs, and to try and try again to meet them. Knowing that we're going to make mistakes and that and we're going to have to respond really quickly.So that's hyper-responsiveness and then over time, it's thought that things shift to this more regulated state, that parents fine tune their ability to recognize their child's cues, and to predict what they need. So brain regions involved in self-regulation and social processing, and what's called theory of mind, or how we read and respond to other people, those also change both in function and in structure. One researcher described it to me as if the neural networks that support our ability to understand ourselves and our own needs in a social context, get extended to also now include our children and like our extension of ourselves at a neural level.VirginiaThat's fascinating because you do have a felt experience of getting better at parenting. I mean new things happen. It gets hard again at different ages, but I do think a lot of us have an experience of competence increasing and feeling more qualified to make these calls. So it's just fascinating to understand that your brain has literally done that work, that you're evolving in this role.ChelseaAnd there's some research that looks at second or subsequent pregnancies and everyone's experiences are different. I know people have had harder second pregnancies in terms of their mental state, but there is some research that indicates that you become less hyper reactive in terms of your neural activity, because you've got that infrastructure in place that, you kind of know how to do the prediction piece better. So it's less intense the second time around. VirginiaAnd again, I just want to reiterate that you're saying most of this is coming from the experience of caretaking, not the biological process of pregnancy, right?ChelseaLet's clarify that. So, the vast majority of research in this area is still in gestational, cisgender mothers. But what there is in fathers in particular, and some other non-gestational parents, foster mothers and adoptive mothers, shows that there are similar neuro-like hormonal shifts that occur when you become a parent, even if you're not a birthing parent. That is thought to also prime the brain for this hyper responsiveness. And there is a global circuitry that develops over time. With parenting, it's a little bit different, but it's more similar than not, and it is, remarkably, really tied to how much time you spend with your baby. VirginiaInteresting. ChelseaSo there are these fascinating studies that look at heterosexual male-female couples, and then gay fathers, half of whom are biologically related to their children, and looks at their their brains over time. And they found that for primary caregiving fathers, the circuitry was very similar to the mothers who were in the study considered primary caregivers also. And in certain measures of connectivity, it was more profound the more time they actually logged with their children.VirginiaI appreciate that clarification. And this is not to downplay the profound changes that one does experience if you're a birthing parent, obviously.ChelseaIt’s kind of like a jumpstart intensity. But yeah, it's not the only way, there are multiple paths.VirginiaWe can take a more inclusive approach to it.The other thought I just kept having as I was reading your book was how refreshing it was to read this analysis of parenting, and of motherhood as a brain-based activity—as something that we bring experience and skills and learning to—because so often the cultural conversation is the dismissal of the mommy brain that we talked about. But then also it's like all about mothers’ bodies, right? Like it's how your body changes, will you get your body back, the shame of having a mom body.And that's another way we both narrow who can qualify as a parent and we reduce the experience and the work that's going into it—because we're making it all this sort of embodied thing. What do you think we gain when we change the focus to talking about parenting in terms of brains?ChelseaI mean, most importantly, I think we what we gain is a chance to really prepare for what this life stage means for us. It would have made a huge difference to me, if I had understood this neurobiological process, before I was in crisis mode, you know, as a new parent. I think the science can help us to talk to expectant parents about what they need, and also put our own individual experiences into into context.There's a really interesting parallel here with the teenage brain research and we've really come to understand much more in recent years about what happens in in our teenage years and to see it as a time that the brain requires extra support. Science has been shaping policies around school start times. Delaying start times for teenagers, that comes from brain research and the science on on how much sleep the brain needs to really go through the changes that that people are experiencing then. It's changed policies around approaches to discipline. It's changed public health messaging around substance use and other risky behaviors. It's also been used in schools to help teenagers to understand themselves and their own mental health and what they're experiencing.I feel like the parental brain science can be sort of like that, too, if we use it the right way. It should affect the policies that we make—or fail to make as is often the case right now—around what young families need. It should also change how we talk about ourselves and how we how we prepare people to make this transition to parenthood. And I think the other point I'd make is talking about the parental brain in a broader way should give us more of an appreciation for ourselves. I think one of the most surprising pieces of the the parental brain science is this stuff that's looking at how long lasting these changes are. There are these fascinating studies that are taking big data banks of brain imaging, like thousands of people, and comparing the brains of parents and non-parents in older age. So people who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s and older. And what they're finding is that parents brains are what they say what they call “younger looking,” like they've had fewer effects of aging. One group of researchers described parenthood as, you know, a lifetime of cognitive and social demands, as a kind of enrichment. And that is very different than how we typically talk about it. And I love thinking of it that way.VirginiaYes, yes. I will quickly add that, of course, we're not saying you have to have children, there are certainly other ways to seek enrichment in your life. And enjoy all the sleep that you get by being child-free.But that is a really interesting reframing because the typical narrative is that parenting ages you so fast. Parenting is all gray hairs, which is both an ageist way of looking at it and so reductive.I also want to circle back to what you just mentioned about using the science for better policies, because you and I were talking before we started recording, and you're saying how there's also a lot of opportunity here to serve reproductive justice.Chelsea I think there's two pieces to this one. There's been a lot that's written and been said in the past couple of months about, what does it mean to carry a child and what are the real risks and long term effects of that and and how the law doesn't account for them at all to the to the birthing parents life. I think this brain science just adds evidence to the case that's already clear. But reproductive justice, as it's been defined by the the black women and trans people who have really led that movement, is about access to reproductive health. We typically think of abortion and contraceptives, but it's also about being able to thrive in parenthood if you choose it, to have access to both the perinatal care you need and the resources to parent well. And many people lack those things now.And I mean, the perinatal care in particular, we need so much on that front. I think that the parental brain science can be used to improve it. We don't routinely screen expectant parents for risk factors for postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, even though we know some of them and we know that referring people to therapy can help. There's so many pieces of this to talk about in terms of post childbirth. Mortality and morbidity, but also the absolute absence of postpartum care in the United States is really awful and like glaringly in need of correction. We have one six week postpartum appointment. That's the standard and yet, we know that many people experience crises of mental health long before that. And there's research that indicates that significant percentage of people screen negative at that six week appointment, but then go on to develop postpartum depression. There are so many layers here where we can do a better job and I think the science can help.VirginiaWe really couldn't be doing a worse job, so any opportunity to improve. Paid leave, more affordable childcare. I mean, it's a very long list. But I'm really excited for your book to be out there and helping to bolster the fight.You talked a little bit about what inspired you to write the book, because of landing in that postpartum period and having that experience. How has doing the book—especially, you've been working on the book during a pandemic with young children—changed and informed your own parenting?ChelseaIt helps me cut myself some slack, primarily. It's something that I really struggle with a lot. But it's definitely helped me to shed some of the societal expectations around how I should feel as a mother and how mothering my particular kids should feel. All of that. The whole section of the book dissecting parenting advice, I wrote a lot of that during the height of the pandemic, when things felt so impossible and messy. And it was pretty grueling to go through all of that, and to grapple with my own internalized messaging around motherhood. But ultimately, I arrived back at this basic point that I think the science makes, which is just about connection, that I can look at my kids and figure out what they need and that I will make some mistakes and that those are prediction errors that will help me to do better next time.And all of that can sort of like sound trite, except it's real, like on a brain level. We're growing and getting better at this all the time.VirginiaIt's a message we try to teach our kids, right? That making mistakes is part of learning. I think I've said to my kids, “this is how your brain grows.” So why are we not giving ourselves the same? I'm definitely going to use that the next time I screw up, which will surely be later today. While my brain is growing, I am becoming a better parent through this experience.ButterChelseaMy kids are finally at the stage where they're both into chapter books, and I couldn't be more excited about it. I pretty much wanted to have kids just so that I could read to them. And that was really fun in these first few years, but then how many times can you read Grumpy Ladybug. So I'm excited to be in this new stage, and we just read The Wild Robot and The Wild Robot Escapes. I just love them so much. We live in Maine and the author's from Maine so it feels like the island that the wild robot ends up on is from Maine. So we've been like going out and pretending that we're the wild robot and on the coast of Maine. VirginiaThat is so fun. My older daughter read those recently. My younger one is about to turn five, so she's probably ready for that as a read aloud soon. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. We've been reading a lot of Dory Fantasmagory.ChelseaOh, that's our one of our all time favorites.VirginiaMy younger daughter really is Dory and my older daughter is named Violet so Beatrix really connects with Dory and having a bossy older sister named Violet. It’s a real emotional journey she's on with that. ChelseaI feel like the first time I saw my kids laugh at a book to the point of uncontrollable laughter was with with those. They’re just so good.VirginiaThey’re so good. I wish she would write more. Beatrix will like quote lines. We’ll be somewhere else and she'll quote a Dory line. ChelseaBanana phone.VirginiaYeah, so many things. I could have a whole Dory appreciation episode. You and I were also talking about how you are interested in meadows, like making a meadow in your garden. So I was like, oh, I'll do my butter about how much I love my meadow!We live on a small mountain in the Hudson Valley. So our yard is all sloping, we have no flat backyard. So having a big sloping area of lawn made no sense to us so we have turned it over to a wildflower and wild grasses meadow. We're fortunate we have this big area we could do. You could do a smaller scale version, absolutely. But especially this time of year, the pollinators are out in full force. And every morning I'm out there, just like getting very excited. This morning I was like watching a monarch and I was like, the monarchs I'm so worried about them. And I have them here. This is a monarch sanctuary. So what are you thinking about doing? Tell me!ChelseaThere's a part of our yard that the woods are kind of taking it over again. But it's just messy and I don't want more lawn, I know that for sure. I love the idea of deliberately creating something where the point is to not maintain it, or like minimal maintenance. And yeah, the pollinator piece is huge. One thing I'm not sure is like, how do you keep it from becoming woods again? I guess that's just the mow.VirginiaUsually, once a year you mow it. That keeps the woody shrubs and trees from getting too much of a foothold. You time your mowing, usually, like late spring. You leave it up over the winter, if you can handle how messy it looks. And I actually think it's sort of beautiful, the dead seed heads and grasses can look really beautiful. It did mean we lost our sledding hill. So it was controversial locally in my house. But it is what it is. So you leave it up for the winter because it creates a lot of habitat for hibernating animals and bugs, and then once spring hits and things have kind of warmed up and critters have woken up and are out of their burrows and leaves or whatever, then you mow it for the season and let it grow up fresh. So yeah, so you don't really have too much of a problem with woody plants if you stick to that.The bigger issue is sorting out if you have invasive weeds. We did have a situation where like 95% of the meadow was this plant called Mugwort which doesn't have a lot of wildlife value. And just in becoming a monoculture was not as pretty as I wanted it to be. It doesn't have a nice flower. And it was preventing us from planting other things. So we did ultimately spray. We tried hand pulling, but it was such a big infestation that would have been like years of our life. We sprayed last summer, all the invasives, let them die down. We mowed in November, so that it was kind of just scorched earth at that point, and then we did a big wildflower seed mix that we spread out in December because a lot of them need a cold period. So we did a big heavy seeding in December. And then this year, it's mostly been grasses coming up, because the grasses kind of wake up first. We've had a lot of milkweed. There's some that come up right away. But then next year, there's some wildflowers that start by pushing down their roots and then hopefully next year, we'll get more flowers in there. So it's a it is a long process, and it's surprisingly complex. But those are the basic things: figuring out what you have, if you need to eradicate invasives, doing that, and then doing a seeding. You can also just like, let it grow and see what comes up. You may be better off than I was.ChelseaI think we'll be somewhere in between. We have a little bit of invasives but it's a smaller space, I think, than what you have. So I think we'll be able to manage some of that. But I love it. Yours is beautiful. We also have turkeys in our backyard often and I just feels like it could be a good wildlife space, too.VirginiaYeah, definitely. Oh, that's really cool. Well, keep me posted.On that note, Chelsea, thank you so much for being here. We want everyone to go get a copy of Mother Brain, which is out this week or the week that this airs. Where can folks find you and support your work?ChelseaThey can buy the book at their local bookstore and they can read more about it at MotherBrainBook.com.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much for being here.ChelseaThank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure.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. 1Just noting for the record that I love my in-laws and we enjoy a good scientific debate. I also previously corrected my father-in-law’s long-held belief that a cat would eat its owner’s dead body but a dog would never with science and he was delighted to be wrong.