The Burnt Toast Podcast

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.

It's our September bonus episode! And we're trying out a new format: Virginia's Office Hours, where a Burnt Toast subscriber comes on the pod to chat with Virginia about fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. Our first guest is Serena, who is trying to navigate family gatherings while in eating disorder recovery—but her relatives aren't just diet-y, they are diet culture creators. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon.If you are not a paid subscriber, you'll only get the first chunk. To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to go paid. This episode does contain some discussion of eating disorders, eating disorder recovery, and family medical crisis. 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 LINKSVirginia has previously discussed her daughter's medically necessary (but awful!) fat-free diet in this episode. Serena recommends this poem by spoken word poet Andrea Gibson. 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.---Today we’re trying out a new format for the podcast called Virginia's Office Hours! This is a chance for a Burnt Toast subscriber to come chat with me about any question they're mulling over related to diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, health, etc.The way I think of both the Ask Virginia column and what we do on the podcast with listener questions is not so much “here is an expert sharing their wisdom.” I think that’s the model we're all trained to expect with advice content—in large part thanks to diet culture. But I think of this as much more smart people having thoughtful conversations…the same way I do, and I bet you do. over wine or coffee with friends or over my group text chats with my friends. And, a big problem with trying to get advice about any these topics is that people boil it down to an Instagram post or a little nugget of wisdom and that just isn't applicable to all of our lives. So, a much deeper, richer and more nuanced conversation is what I'm aiming for with these Office Hour episodes. I see it as a chance to have the kind of conversation we often have on Friday Threads. But here we are, conversing more directly, Zoom face to Zoom face.Today's Office Hours guest has asked me to change her name to protect privacy, so we are calling her “Serena.” We’ll be talking about how she can navigate encounters with extended family members who aren't just diet-y and on diets, they are diet culture creators. It's your uncle who's really obsessed with Paleo, but if your uncle invented Paleo. (Her uncle did not invent Paleo, just to be clear.)This episode does contain some discussion of eating disorders, eating disorder recovery, and family medical crisis. If any of that wouldn't be good for you to listen to, please take care of yourself and give this one a miss. Everyone else, it's an awesome conversation and I can't wait to hear what you think of this new format!Want to submit a question or volunteer to be an office hours guest? Please use this form.Note: I am a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. I am 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 I give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.Episode 60 TranscriptVirginiaHi Serena! This is the inaugural Virginia’s Office Hours episode, so we’re figuring out the format together and I appreciate you being game for the experiment. I would like to start by having you read us the question you sent. SerenaOkay, great. So the question is:How do I maintain a relationship with or move on from my extended family members whose livelihood is rooted in wellness culture, selling, “food as medicine,” and weight loss as a cure for everything from heart disease to type two diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis and lupus? During my years following their rigid vegan / whole food, plant-based, no salt, oil, sugar, etc diet, I developed severe anorexia from which I am just now extricating myself with lots of professional help and support of anti-diet journalism and podcasts like yours and Food Psych, for example.It feels awkward to be around my family now that I’m trying to follow Intuitive Eating instead of the whole food, plant-based diet rules. They are famous, revered, and well-loved in their circles. I’m not necessarily here to bash them, though I now see their messaging as privileged, fatphobic, not at all aligned with my social justice values and the opposite of intuitive/anti-diet.VirginiaThis question jumped out at me because you’re in a very specific situation with who these folks are and the work that they do, but I think there’s a lot that’s relatable here. Like even if someone’s cousin or grandfather isn’t like the father of Keto—which is not who her family member is, we’re not disclosing their identity. But you know, even if you’re not related to the founder of the Paleo diet, you might have a relative who’s a doctor or a dietitian or in health in a diet-y way in some other arena. And the authority that we give these folks in their professional lives can often show up in the personal interactions as well. So I just thought, Oh, I bet a lot of people can relate to what you must be feeling when you go to Thanksgiving dinner.Why don’t we have you tell us a little more of your own story because I think that’s going to be really important to how we talk about how you’re navigating this. So, tell us a little more about when your eating disorder started. And what were some of the key ways you saw your relatives’ work in forming your disorder?SerenaSo my mom was kind of an early vegetarian in the 1970s, when she was pregnant with my brother, after me. And then my dad had a GI cancer in the mid-70s. Part of his treatment was a major operation of his whole GI tract that basically they weren’t sure he was gonna survive or recover from. So my family went into full on survival mode and a lot of that was figuring out how best to eat. Now I know it’s orthorexia, and yet it came out of this real fear of my dad may not make it if we don’t eat right. My extended family, about whom this question is focused, started their vegan path in the mid-80s. So that was around when my immediate family also adopted this pretty strict way of eating. My first round of anorexia was probably my last year of high school and definitely grew out of a lot of that restriction, no animal products and all of that. But I pretty much recovered and found a somewhat of a middle ground, until it came roaring back in the last decade of midlife and changes with my children. I think it’s pretty common, coming around again during the changes of midlife.Part of what did it was being diagnosed with Lyme disease and a fairly well-meaning health care provider suggesting that part of my recovery could be giving up other food groups. Kind of classic wellness culture around gluten and other things. So that got me back into that mode of “food as medicine” or rather, restricting food as the only path to wellness. So by the time 2015 rolled around, I was definitely deep in it and it was only just reinforced by not my immediate family necessarily, but my extended family.VirginiaSo your whole relationship with food is rooted in this big trauma, right? This experience with your dad. That sounds so terrifying. And how that kind of informed the way your family was navigating food when you were a kid, is that right?SerenaYeah, I was five when he was sick. VirginiaThat’s a lot. And it was all under the guise of “this is what we need to do to make him better.” And I’m guessing less attention was paid to, “what is the toll this is taking on all of us?”SerenaOh, for sure. No. It was all about how do we keep him alive and we’ll do anything. VirginiaWhich, of course you would. But also you’re five and you’re having to eat in this really difficult way. Were you aware, as a kid, that your family ate differently from other families? SerenaOh, yes. And it was always kind of a “we’re better, we’re superior, we’re righteous, we’re healthy,” you know? “We’re eating clean.” So there was always kind of a comfort there to me. Not a shame or like, ooh, we’re different. And it wasn’t the kind of thing where I couldn’t eat birthday cake at a friend’s party or something. But at home, it was all very clean because of dad’s survival. And he is still alive!VirginiaWhich we’re delighted about!SerenaFor sure, yeah. Whether it was the food or something else.VirginiaI’m just thinking about how that set you up to interact with food in a really specific way from the get go.I’ve talked in the newsletter about my daughter’s medical experiences. We spent a lot of time with her on a really strict fat-free diet. It was necessary to save her life at that point in time, and because I was the adult in the situation, I was able to look at it and say: It’s a no brainer to do this to save her life right now. And, what are the broader implications of this? How is this going to impact her longterm relationship with food? What is it doing to us?I think that part of the content of the conversation so often gets missed when we’re thinking about food as medicine. It may be that there’s a food restriction that’s necessary for a health condition, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring along all this other stuff.  We’re given this message of “well, if it’s what you have to do, then you have to just be all in on it,” and you don’t get to have feelings about it being a hard way to live.What was your turning point, if there was one? I understand you recovered from the first round that happened when you were a teenager and then this later around related to the Lyme disease?SerenaThere probably wouldn’t have been one because I really thought I had it nailed. I had gotten all the bad foods out of my diet, and I was eating as healthy as anyone could and you know, all that righteousness that comes with the territory. But during the pandemic, I was out running, and a friend of mine who also works in healthcare saw me, and emailed shortly after and said she was concerned because I looked like I was emaciated and not doing well, which was a shock to me. It hadn’t occurred to me that all of my healthy stuff was leading actually down a really dangerous path.So, it was having a fellow healthcare person say that she was concerned that really got me to go for an assessment, plus the concern of my husband and other people in my world. I was referred for residential treatment, but I was in denial that that was really necessary. But I did get on board with a really amazing all virtual recovery team. And I’ve been doing that for most of the pandemic, all by telehealth.I continue to just see how how sick I was where I had no clue. I really thought I was doing everything perfectly.VirginiaYeah, the eating disorder can be so loud and very good at talking you into certain thought patterns. So in terms of both your earlier struggles and what you’ve been working through recently, are your extended family members, the ones who are so entrenched in this world, are they aware of what you’ve been going through?SerenaI came out to most of my family and extended family pretty soon after I was engaged in recovery. Partly because I just needed them to know that I was kind of hopping off the train or exiting the cult or changing the narrative or whatever metaphor you want to use. I really felt kind of naughty and it was impossible to think of another way of living at first. But  I did call them and I think I was looking for some sort of acknowledgement of, “Oh, yeah, I could see how all this restriction could have led down that path and I’m really sorry that happened for you.”But I mean, there’s just such a… I don’t know if it’s blindness? Or just the assumption that it’s still really the best way to live and be and it’s your own personal failing if you take it to this unhealthy place. Or it was still very much my fault that it happened that way. And no one has really changed their beliefs.Even just this couple of weeks ago, we were out there visiting, and there was still a lot of talk about clean eating and weighing yourself. And, “we don’t eat these bad animal products” and stuff. So coming out was important for me, but it also hasn’t really changed much. I still feel really self conscious doing things differently. Virginia That is frustrating. Of course, we can never control other people’s reactions, but still such a letdown that they couldn’t say, “Wow, we’re really sorry this happened and we’re willing to look at the broader implications of this.”SerenaWell, I think it would throw into question everything that is held as truth. It is a lot easier to see things in a very black and white, binary way. I think I kind of throw a wrench in their whole understanding of the world, that whole dogma, because it didn’t work for me or it worked so well that it just went bad.VirginiaRight, they don’t know what to do with you. You’re not the story they want to tell. But you can’t be the only person who has shared this with them, given what we know about the way these kinds of eating programs contribute to disordered eating and eating disorders. It’s fascinating to me, how often I see big diet brands, give this total stonewall response that’s like, “Well, that’s not what we’re doing. We don’t do that. We don’t want people to get eating disorders, we’re doing something else.” Even though the evidence clearly shows that what they’re doing is contributing to eating disorders.SerenaYeah. And the messaging around it all, as you’ve touched on before, is very slippery. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not a diet. It’s just how we eat, always, with all these rules that are just sort of baked in. It does feel a lot like being gaslit because there really is no problem there. I’m the problem.VirginiaWhat is food like when you do get together with these relatives or in family gatherings? SerenaThey are very exuberant around food. Very much it’s about color and presentation and fresh and it’s delicious and it’s usually abundant. There’s still a lot of rhetoric around, well, we don’t eat processed foods. So, we’re not going to have chips with the salsa. And for dessert we will do something with fruit. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it. But there’s always that level of, we’re doing this pristine and doing it right. So we’re not going to ever serve fun foods. Maybe there’ll be some chocolate that appears at the end of the meal, but it’s dark chocolate of the bitterest sort.VirginiaThe least tasty of chocolates.SerenaThere aren’t a whole lot of get-togethers, it’s maybe once or twice a year. And so it’s not the kind of thing where I face it regularly. It’s more how to maintain that relationship over the years and over time, not like the every weekend gathering. But yeah, food is is scrumptious and follows lots of amazing recipes. And it’s all based on very much restrictive, all whole food, all plant-based.VirginiaInteresting. Do you feel like you can get enough to eat at those meals? Is there enough food, even though it’s sort of specific? Or do you walk away feeling dissatisfied?SerenaI’ve found ways, especially in the disorder, to feel full. But satisfaction, as you just named, is definitely something I’ve really only started to name and discover in recovery. Because the trick for me during a lot of those years was like I have to get as full as possible but on things that were just hella fiber-rich and are filled with juice or water or something that would kind of make me feel full versus satisfied.My kids, however, are the ones who actually started to flag it for me pretty early on because they were like we’re never full or we never get enough. Or why can’t we have eggs for breakfast? Or, you know, where’s the yogurt? VirginiaWhy can’t we have eggs? Yes.SerenaOr there’s no butter for the toast! Speaking of Burnt Toast…VirginiaRight! Oh God, toast without butter is a crime.So there’s a performance of abundant food and a celebration of food, but not necessarily either the types of foods or quantities of food that you would find satisfying, or that your children find satisfying.SerenaRight. I think that the kids were the canary in the coal mine. Like, wait, hold on. Yeah, it’s all very much of one type of thing. There’s no fat and there’s no substance.VirginiaAnd I’m just thinking so many kids—littler kids, but even older kids, too—just don’t eat those kinds of foods. I would take my children to a meal like that and they would be like, shat do I do? They’re just not there yet with eating lots of vegetables. They want white bread, they want french fries, grilled cheese, and especially when they’re in a new experience like a big overwhelming family gathering. They are not their most open minded about trying lots of food, they want to get something satisfying and go back to playing. And this is a normal way for kids to interact with food.SerenaYeah, I remember one particularly fraught gathering when one of my family members asked my kids with genuine curiosity, “So what are your favorite foods?” And I just knew that my oldest was in a phase of loving fried chicken. And I was just like, oh, no, no, no, no. Because I knew it was coming. And lo and behold, he said fried chicken and mashed potatoes. And there was this kind of like, oh, your mom is really not doing a good job—or at least that’s how I took it. You’re not doing it right if your kids know what fried chicken tastes like.VirginiaI mean, are you not doing it right or are you letting them experience one of the true joys in life? It sounds like you and your kids are on the same page, which is helpful. Do you feel like you have other allies in the family? Like other folks who are at these gatherings who are also loosely on the same page with you about this stuff?SerenaFor sure, my husband. From the get go, he’s been like, I love all foods. And so that’s been really helpful for me to kind of come back to. I think my dad has really, I’ve had to talk with him about the orthorexia of our upbringing and you know how it came out of an understandable place with his cancer, but how it really became something that was unhealthy. And he remarkably, in his 80s, has been able to say, I see how that could have been hurtful or damaging or restrictive from the get go.VirginiaThat’s amazing.SerenaYeah. But otherwise, I do feel like I have to be on guard and protect myself and keep that boundary of, I know I’m in recovery. And it’s the best thing that I can be doing for myself. And I just have to let go of the rules that I subscribed to for so long, even though that was something that I got so much feeling of superiority and identity from in the eating disorder.VirginiaThis may not be an idea that resonates right now and feel free to say so. But one thing I often think about, and I think someone mentioned this in a Burnt Toast discussion recently, is: When you’re eating with people who are eating in a much more restrictive way than you, it can be really helpful to reframe it as “I get to eat what I want.” Instead of feeling like I’m so bad, because I’m not adhering to their standards.It’s I’m free from their standards, I get to feed myself, and they don’t get to do that. Does that land at all?SerenaIt does land. Yeah. I mean, it’s so tricky, because I was so young when it all started, so it never really felt wrong. It felt safe. You know, we’re doing this for my dad’s survival. And then it just felt right because it was always portrayed in this, like, “we’re so much better than the standard American person eating crap.”So, I like that and I would try that on for sure. But it’s not something that’s really comes easily yet. I still feel like, well, I know I’m supposed to be doing this. But I really remember how much comfort there was in knowing that this was a safe way to eat, no danger here, you know? VirginiaThat makes sense. That’s a way in which your story differs a bit from a more common story I hear, which is like, “as a kid, I got to eat whatever I wanted. And then when my dieting set in, as you know, all these foods were suddenly off limits.” And so often, for folks who’ve had that experience, it’s about reclaiming these comfort foods that you were denied, reclaiming this experience of comfort that you then didn’t let yourself have. But for you, comfort was defined differently. So now you’re having to redefine comfort and find food as a source of comfort in a different way, which sounds really hard. SerenaYeah. I hadn’t thought of that. The return to comfort food is not really... It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. VirginiaRight. Do your kids have comfort foods that are things that kind of fall outside what you as a kid would have considered comfort food?SerenaOh, for sure. Well, the fried chicken. I think my husband’s been a good influence. So they love burgers, and they love mac and cheese, and they love pizza, and all that standard stuff that I’m actually having to discover as comfort food now. I think of them as being clear channels of what tastes good, what feels good.VirginiaYes, yes. I love that. I feel like that can be helpful to see, especially when it’s our kids, right? Because seeing your kid experience comfort and pleasure is of course rewarding to you as a parent, kind of what we’re hard-wired to want. It can be helpful even if your brain is not responding the same way to it, to see your child having that experience, when you’re dealing with seeing these other family members pushing this other message. I’m also wondering if when you go to these family gatherings, if it’s worth making a plan for when your nuclear family will actually eat. Like, making a plan to stop for ice cream afterwards. Like, considering the big family meal as more of an appetizer and then letting yourself go out for like a really nice dinner later because why should you all feel deprived. It’s just something to play with maybe.SerenaI like that. VirginiaOften on days when there’s a big family meal, there’s not a lot of attention paid to breakfast. Like, we’ll have family over for lunch and then I will still want dinner at six o’clock, even if we had a big meal at noon. And sometimes my husband or someone will be like, oh, but we had that big meal. And I’m like, yeah, but four hours have passed. I think sometimes in our culture we have this idea that on big feast days, that’s all you need. But that’s not how a lot of our bodies work. And that’s a feature, not a bug.So making a plan for how you will still get fed throughout that day takes some pressure off that meal needing to be something that it can’t be, right? Because the odds of you coming in and being like, Hey, guys, we’re bringing fried chicken to the family potluck…SerenaThat will be my next stage of recovery,VirginiaI mean, I love that as a goal. I love that as a goal for us. But I can see that that might not feel doable yet. You know, if you were seeing them every week, I would feel like that would be more important to push. But if it’s a once or twice a year thing, it’s probably in some ways not worth the hassle. SerenaYeah, I think the the family meals will potentially always be fraught if things continue as they have been. But I think my hope is to have just a lessening of food and this lifestyle stuff as a central part of what we talk about or how we relate. I think if I continue to get stronger in this, you know, I’m different and it’s okay, then I could see bringing something along. I actually did bring some banana bread to this last gathering, but it had white flour in it and it had oil in it. And it definitely sat on their counter. I’m not even sure they ate it. VirginiaI mean, that’s on them. You get to eat the banana bread. In terms of shifting the conversation, you’ve had this coming out process that went the way it went. When you’re with them, this is still a big theme of general family conversation is talking about the diets and the food rules and that kind of thing.SerenaYeah, it’s truly their professional focus. It’s not just “this is how we eat,” it’s “this is what we teach. This is what we produce. This is how we are in the world and want as many people to get on board as possible.”VirginiaGod, that sounds exhausting. There’s so many jobs that are boring to talk about in a lot of detail. Like if they were accountants, like, would it be okay for them to talk about taxes for the whole meal? It’s just interesting, when people’s professions become this sort of calling/cult experience that they then can’t recognize how boring this is.What do you think about the idea of trying to set a boundary with them, like, “heads up, before the next family meal, here’s where I am with my recovery, and it’s really important that I don’t talk about X,Y, and Z. Would love to catch up on all of your lives, but hoping we can do it without…” How does that feel as an idea to you?SerenaI love that the way that sounds. It would be a huge step for me for sure. Because I think the way it’s felt the last two years is just Oh, I have to power through I have to make sure I don’t regress and use this as a reason to go back into the eating disorder. And not let it make me feel like I’m doing the wrong thing, or I’m somehow bad or failing, because I’m not on the family bandwagon anymore.So I love that idea of kind of proactively saying, Hey, this is what I need. And can we please enjoy a meal together but not talk about food or what’s right and wrong as far as what we prefer? And what can I bring? You know, that kind of thing.VirginiaAbsolutely. I also want to hold space for like hosting a big family meal is a lot of work and whatever diet ideology you’re overlaying is added work. But just the sheer act of feeding people is always labor, so contributing where it makes sense to contribute and then also that lets you bring something you do enjoy eating, like the banana bread. There’s one thing on the table that your kids like even even if you don’t go as far as fried chicken. That can be a really nice way to do it.And it softens a little bit, what may make them feel defensive about you setting that boundary. But I also want to be clear that we can’t control their reactions, right? Them getting defensive because you set a boundary for your health is a Them Problem, not a You Problem.Because if you think about it, what everyone in your family did was to rally around your dad when he was sick and make all these dietary changes because they were what your dad needed. Your health is just as important. And now you have a health issue that requires a different approach to food to save you. And what if everybody rallied around that and said, “What Serena needs is for us to change the way we’re talking about food and have doughnuts on the table at breakfast and eggs. What if we did this because her health really matters.”SerenaThat gives me goosebumps, actually. That reframing is so generous and I would have a really hard time with my extended family going that way. Because eggs are evil and butter is evil. And you know, it’s just, there’s really no getting through a lot of that stuff.VirginiaI agree. I don’t think you would win them over on all of this. I mean, it sounds like they’ve built their lives and their business around these beliefs. But I do think it might be helpful for you to hold on to that framing of if they couldn’t do that for you, that is them choosing their business model over a family member’s health. And it is what it is.I think they probably have a lot of active disordered eating in their own lives they’re not looking at. I’m just totally speculating here, because I don’t know them at all. But they may have their own reasons that we should feel compassion for, for why they couldn’t support you in that way. But it still sucks that they wouldn’t support you in that way.SerenaYeah, having compassion for that sort of not really blindness, but maybe, I don’t know, having blinders on. I think that that’s something that I am coming to as more of the nuanced, you know, year three of recovery or two whatever this is. I can’t change the way people think or feed themselves and that’s not really my job. My job is to find ways of relating to them as humans and finding that place of connection.It’s hard to jump off the bus and want to keep up with the bus at the same time. I still want to be accepted and approved of and all those sorts of little kid feelings. This is why we do what our family does, because we want to be part of this community. So yeah, it is hard to take that separate path, but stay connected or stay alongside.VirginiaI think that’s something you and your recovery team will be working on for a long time. Food brings up such deep stuff for all of us. It really, really does. That question of feeling accepted is just enormous. And how do we ever truly get there? Because in a way it would be easier if you felt like estrangement was the appropriate path for you, the necessary path. It would be painful. There’s grieving. I don’t want to simplify estrangement, but it’s a choice people make when it’s so bad, they can’t maintain the relationship and they have to protect themselves and it’s a really valid choice, but you are not, it sounds like, in that place. You want to maintain connections with these people. And that’s valid, too.And so it’s like okay, what does that look like? What do I need to protect myself when I’m with them? What strategies? Maybe it’s conversations you have with your husband about like, when x topic comes up, you jump in and and pivot us quickly to sports or something. Having some of those like plans in place of like, if you see me stuck with Aunt so-and-so, come over and rescue me because probably she’s just talking about how much she hates eggs.And maybe have the plan to have a meal afterwards that you guys will actually enjoy. Or a meal beforehand. Eat first, feed yourselves first! I don’t know why I said afterwards, actually. Now I want you to have the meal before you go. So you don’t have to feel sad while you’re there that you’re hungry and can’t be fed. That feels really important and will probably have your kids be in better moods about being there, too. Because they’re not getting cranky hungry. I just think managing everyone’s hunger is always so important. SerenaIt’s interesting that you bring up estrangement because I’ve wondered if that was something that would have to happen. But I think the reason I sent in my question is because I don’t want that to have to be the end of the road. But I think the more committed I am to my recovery, the clearer it will become what actually is possible. But I like to think that using these strategies is kind of a middle ground.VirginiaWell, it’s always an option, right? No decision you’re making is the final decision on how you interact with these people for the rest of your life. There may come a place where that feels right. Or it may be more of the work of how do you detach your sense of your own value and your relationship with food? How can that become its own thing, separate from this dynamic?Because I’m guessing your husband is probably annoyed by it, but not as triggered by it. Like, he’s like walking into this strange world like, wow, these people have strong feelings about stuff and so glad I’m gonna go get a burger later. It’s still kind of gets to a point where it’s exasperating but not triggering in the same way.SerenaYeah. I think that’s a good distinction. VirginiaI mean, it sounds like you’re pretty clear on what your goal is, for right now, of wanting to be able to maintain the relationships without so much food talk. Do you talk to them much in between visits? Do you have other ongoing communication? Or not really?SerenaNot as much as I used to honestly, because when I was so on board and going to all the conferences and all the things, too, that revolved around plant based, it was kind of exciting to be part of the same team. But that’s really dropped off quite a bit.VirginiaThat sounds like probably a good thing.SerenaYeah, not really intentionally, but it just kind of happened because that’s just not where my energy is going and can’t.VirginiaAbsolutely. But it is a change in the relationship, if you had more points of contact with them throughout the year before and now there’s a separation. It’s tough. One thought I had was: Can you find other ways to connect with them that are not about food? But it sounds like this is so fully their lives and their world. It would be hard for you to be like, “I’m getting really into embroidery. Who else likes embroidery?” My sister-in-law and I talk about knitting all the time. And we’re also on the same page about food, but if we weren’t, we could just talk about knitting. Having those safe topics that you can get into with people.SerenaThere is a lot about exercise.VirginiaAh, well, that’s a…SerenaMixed blessing?VirginiaThat’s not at all a land mine. I was thinking more hand crafts, but okay.SerenaMaybe gardening? I mean, occasionally, it’s like books or what podcasts? Or, like, about Ukraine.VirginiaWe can only spend so much time thinking about the end of the world.SerenaAnd it’s hard because eating plant-based is a way to save the planet. So there’s that whole piece of like, well, here’s what we’re doing!VirginiaRight. I was thinking even with gardening, they could bring it back around really quickly to like, we’re growing our own food, because blah blah blah and you’re down the rabbit hole.SerenaMaybe it’s worth me taking up a hobby just to have that talk about.VirginiaJigsaw puzzles? I’m just trying to think of hobbies that would be really hard to pull into a diet context.SerenaRight, Zero to do with fiber.VirginiaIt’s tricky.SerenaMaybe that could be a Friday Thread. VirginiaOh my gosh, I love that. We’re gonna do that the Friday this airs. That’s a great. What are your non-diet-culture hobbies? is a really great question.SerenaNot even food adjacent. VirginiaRight. Totally outside the realm, like board games is another one maybe. SerenaBird watching. VirginiaBird watching. It’s hard to get into diet talk around bird watching.SerenaYeah, unless hiking is involved, but yeah. VirginiaOf course, yes. Okay, there we are. I only watch in my own garden. My mom does more hiking birdwatching, but I’m sitting on my front porch. It’s great. Oh Man. Well, I hope this has been somewhat helpful. I really appreciate you sharing. Is there anything we haven’t talked about? That would be sort of helpful to brainstorm further on?SerenaOh, gosh, no. I was really nervous because I don’t want to get into that, like, “You’re wrong. I’m right. You’re bad. I’m good,” that kind of stuff.VirginiaTotally. SerenaBut this has felt really productive to try to just find a way through that’s supportive, that’s protective, that’s connected, that also takes into account the fact that my children are usually part of this, and that I really want to change the narrative for them. So no, I think it’s just been really fruitful. And it’s not like we did tie it up in a neat little bow.VirginiaNo, no, I mean, I don’t think this is the kind of thing one can tie up. Because I think you’re going to be navigating this in different ways. For a long time.But I think just sort of centering your own needs in the conversation is helpful, and and how much it matters that you’re doing this really hard work of recovery, how much that matters for your health your kids and this is so important and worth protecting.SerenaI think it wasn’t until you said about calling ahead of time and saying, “This is what I need for my recovery or for my health or my progress.” Because I’ve, until now, I think I’ve just been so apologetic and ashamed A. that I couldn’t make the plant-based thing work and look what happened to me and B. part of my recovery involves eating all the things. I’m now not part of the hierarchy of perfect plant based poster children.VirginiaYou reacted like a person with a body reacts to restrictions. You did what humans do. And I know that you’re looking at these family members and thinking, Well, they didn’t ever go this way, they’re able to sustain this. But it is such a small percentage of people who can live on these plans long term and not end up where you’ve ended up. This is what our bodies do in the face of restriction. They either push back and we can’t sustain it or some of us have the brain chemistry that goes deeper, deeper, deeper into restriction and gets really dangerous. And neither of those is a failing! They’re your body sounding alarm signals and saying, this isn’t okay, this isn’t safe.And I can understand that sense of failure because this is all so tied to what you grew up with and the expectations that were wired into you about how you should relate to food. But you’re a human and humans need to eat, right? Many times a day, even, and many food groups. Butter For Your Burnt ToastSerenaA friend just read this poem out loud to me by Andrea Gibson today. They are a spoken word poet who did a performance out in Colorado for an eating disorder recovery center. It was about goosebumps and how finding the magic in life can bring us goosebumps. And it did give me goosebumps while I was listening to it. So I want to look up more of their poetry. So that’s one thing that’s exciting to me.VirginiaThat sounds really wonderful. My recommendation this week is a little callback to birdwatching, which is we put a bluebird box up in our yard for the first time this year and had a nest of blue birds. I saw the blue birds arriving and they were like flying around, considering the box. I was like an anxious real estate agent. I was like, how do I make it more appealing to them? Like, oh, they’re coming for another open house? Our school district is very good. There are not a lot of predators in our neighborhood! But they did choose us. And then we had this whole experience this summer of watching them build the nest and then spotting the eggs and seeing the baby birds, seeing the baby birds fledge. Oh, it was so lovely. And it was very easy! And I didn’t have to do any work other than the initial 10 minutes of hanging a bluebird box.So I recommend it for just something that’s nothing to do with food and body and diets and just kind of take you out of that whole space. Also watching how hard bluebirds work to feed their—I mean, all birds—work to feed their babies. They are feeding them all day long. It’s so much effort. They’re just flying out for something, flying back. And flying out, flying back in. And it’s great for remembering how essential it is and how much work it is to feed kids, feed ourselves. I had a lot of respect for this little blue bird family. I hope they come back next year. SerenaI love their color, too. It’s such a happy blue. VirginiaYes, yes. And the eggs are blue. It’s really cool.Thank you again, Serena. This was such a great conversation. I just really appreciate you being open to it and sharing with us and I think everyone’s going to learn a lot from this.SerenaI hope so. I’m here for the conversation!

This week, Virginia chats with with Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant, cofounders of the Center for Body Trust, and authors of a new book out this week, Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing and Liberation.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.Post-Publication Note: Dana let us know after this episode aired that credit for this episode title (which she also quotes in the conversation below) belongs to Dr. Crystal Jones. We apologize for not properly attributing that during the conversation. BUTTER & OTHER LINKSWe're getting ready to do another AMA episode soon. And we need your questions! Put them here, so we stay organized. Hilary and Dana were on the Dear Sugars podcastVirginia previously interviewed them for a Health Magazine pieceOne of the frameworks Hilary and Dana use is Barbara Love’s liberatory consciousness, which is something they learned from Desiree Adaway and Ericka Hines.Nonbinary psychologist and Body Trust provider Sand Chang contributed to their book.Hilary is obsessed with the show on Apple TV called Home and her dog Arrow. Dana is obsessed with her hot tub, heated or not, and English muffins from Sparrow Bakery.Virginia and her lower back are obsessed with this $29 heating pad from TargetCREDITSThe 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.VirginiaLet’s start by having each of you introduce yourselves.HilaryI’m Hilary. I am a cofounder of the Center for Body Trust, formerly BeNourished, and I am a therapist and a coach and I spend a lot of time doing training with healthcare professionals around helping them be better around people’s relationship with their body and addressing weight stigma in their work. And my business partner is Dana.DanaI’m Dana Sturtevant. I’m the dietitian. Sometimes I say “I’m the dietitian.”VirginiaIn your spookiest voice, I like it.DanaWe’re a therapist/dietitian team. I worked in the dominant weight paradigm early in my career where I didn’t believe I was promoting dieting behaviors. I thought I was promoting healthy lifestyles. And then through years of that work and becoming disillusioned and starting to feel unethical, I was really curious about offering people a different approach. At the time, I was a yoga teacher—I no longer teach yoga—but I was really curious about the mindfulness and self-acceptance practices of yoga and also coming back into our bodies and how that could change people’s relationship with food and their bodies. And I knew nobody would hire me to do what I wanted to do. So I started a private practice and shortly thereafter met Hilary. And the other hat that I wear in my business is I train healthcare providers in motivational interviewing, which is a counseling style that is collaborative and less pathologizing and more humanizing of people.VirginiaThe two of you have written a brand new book called Reclaiming Body Trust. I was very lucky to get to read an early copy. It is absolutely remarkable. It’s really unlike anything else out there in this space. I think it’s meeting a need for a book that meets people where they are and helps them work through all of these issues and put them into the larger context of systems of oppression. There’s the self help books and then there’s books talking about systems of oppression, but you are bringing it all together. So, let’s talk a little bit about what inspired you to say, “We run this really all consuming business but also we should write a book.”HilaryWe had always thought about writing a book, but it didn’t rise to the top because we’ve always been really immersed in running our programs and that is very consuming and is a full time job. And we’ve had practices and do trainings on the side. So it totally has not fit in. And then we got to a place where we wanted folks to have all these things that we’ve been saying for years in trainings and in workshops in a format that they can hold, really. That’s really exciting and that’s really accessible, you know? We were approached to write a book proposal after we were on the Dear Sugars podcast and we did that. And here we are, just a mere two years later. A pandemic, a few house moves, no problem.VirginiaI’m sure it was a very relaxing book writing experience. Kind of one of those zen retreats.HilaryVery easeful.But we really wanted this to be accessible. I consider myself to be a politicized therapist and coach. I do not separate politics from the change process. Our work is situated liberatory frameworks. We believe that this movement of weight inclusion is a liberatory process. And so that’s what we wanted this book to be about. Not so much situated in the bodies of individual people. Like, “How do I heal my relationship with food and body?” is a valid question, but what is the context in which we are trying to heal cannot be left out, and it’s so frequently left out in eating disorder settings and disordered eating settings. And it can’t be. People aren’t getting well and we’re missing this big piece of that big conversation.VirginiaWhy do you think it’s so often left out? HilaryWell, I think everything in the food and body space is tied to capitalism and white supremacy. And there is a lot of money to be made, in dieting and fitness and cosmetic industries, off of telling people what is wrong with them and then selling them solutions to that. In the eating disorder treatment space, we have a really big problem with only having services that are really fit for thin white women. And we tend to relegate folks with larger bodies, fat bodies, we continue to outsource them to diet culture spaces instead of really understanding that the overall climate around thinness, around healthism, around all of these things, is really creating the problem of disordered eating and eating disorders and dissatisfaction with the body. But there’s no money to be made if we dismantle and divest from these systems. VirginiaThis is true. HilarySo herein lies the problem. I think people don’t know how to tie these things together. I think people have suffered greatly in their bodies. And from what I know of talking to some folks who have suffered greatly in their bodies, it’s really hard for them to build a bridge between what’s happening in the world around bodies and what’s happened in their relationship with their own bodies.VirginiaThey don’t see how their struggle connects to these larger struggles.HilaryYeah, I think we outsource our struggle to critical voices and shame and things within us that tend to uphold the dominant paradigm within us, right? Tend to keep us trying to perform and better ourselves. And we struggle to know that letting go, not suppressing our weight, things like that are actually what gets us free  instead of trying to do it all right, or better.VirginiaOne thing I loved about the book is that you give these very concise explanations of a few concepts that I also think a lot about and I think are really tied to the need to put our personal struggles in this broader social context. So, I thought we could chat about a few of them. The first is healthism. What is healthism and how does it show up?DanaHealthism is this belief that our health is the be all and end all of our existence. If we’re not actively pursuing health through personal lifestyle changes, that we are somehow morally failing. It seems to be pretty individualistic and focused on individual lifestyle behaviors instead of looking at the broader context and social determinants of health and how social determinants of health have far greater impact on people’s health and wellbeing than their individual lifestyle choices.One reason we started to talk about healthism in our work is how weight and health are always conflated. So many of our clients believe they gave up dieting years ago because they knew that it didn’t work. But they’ve been just trying to “watch what they eat” or just “being healthy.” And people really get stuck in that place because it upholds this dieting mindset. To really unhook from it all we need to keep laying down our thoughts about our health and our weight and nutrition and saying “not now” to nutrition, because to get out from underneath all of this conditioning, it’s really challenging. We talk about it in the book how it’s this bargaining phase of grief, where people make their lifestyle changes about their health, not their weight but they’re secretly dieting. So, that’s what I’m thinking about when I think about healthism.HilaryIt’s a social construct. Some of it we can see, but a lot of it we can’t see. It’s hard to figure out what’s ours and what was never ours to begin with. What doesn’t belong to us, what doesn’t help us, what doesn’t need to live under our skin at all. So in the book, we talk a lot about ways to see that and begin the process of divesting from these cultural constructs and systems of harm that uphold themselves within us.VirginiaThe question that I hear often from readers and I’m sure you encounter all the time, too, is when folks will say something like—trigger warning for fat phobic comment— “Well, I can’t move the way I used to or my body hurts and I need to lose weight in order to feel better in my body.”You don’t want to discount that they’re experiencing discomfort and pain in their knees, you don’t want to discount that they’re feeling like there has been a perceived loss of health that’s impacting how they function or move or feel in their bodies, but how do you take that experience of what’s happening in their body, but separate that from weight and separate that from healthism?HilaryAnything that we experience as a so-called side effect of weight, which, there could be a long debate about what those things are. We’ve all been conditioned to think that’s bad and correctable. Instead of really holding it to maybe something more akin to a disability justice framework that would say all bodies go through stuff. We’re not guaranteed able bodies for our lifetime. Hustling to become more able may actually cause me more harm in the long run or may put me down a path of having such an overemphasis on doing and production that I never achieve a relationship with myself that I want to be in for a lifetime. There’s a lot to unpack there.And I want to say that just based on what I said, it can be so easy to get pulled into like, “okay, so be good, then I need to embrace that idea.” And the truth is that everything that we do to survive in the system that only values certain bodies is okay. But we want there to be an honesty  within yourself to say, “I’m doing this to put up with these systems. I’m doing this to survive in a system” instead of “I’m doing this because I’m not good enough.” Or “I’m doing this because I’m bad.”VirginiaThat is a useful reframing. And it also gets a little bit at the next concept I wanted to talk about which is personal responsibility rhetoric. And I think that’s very related, right? DanaI think healthcare in general relies on a lot of personal responsibility rhetoric. One of the things I’m always doing when I’m training in motivational interviewing—I train in all kinds of fields, outside of our echo chamber. I’ve trained people who have never heard about Health at Every Size—is to talk about how health care really puts the responsibility of health on an individual person, instead of seeing it through a systemic lens and the way racism and poverty and oppression and stigma, trauma impact our health and our well being. I think health care providers and institutions at the leadership level, there’s a lot of pressure on frontline providers to get people to make these lifestyle changes so they’re not costing us so much money.Let’s face it, it’s not about people’s health and wellbeing, it’s about costs. And so I think health care providers tend to rely on personal responsibility rhetoric, like “if you get sick, it’s your fault.” That’s a big part of healthism, is if you get sick, it’s your fault. There’s something you could have done to prevent it and there’s some magical eating plan that’s gonna make it all go away and be better. There’s a fitness plan that will make it all go away and be better. That’s what I think of when I think of relying on that personal responsibility rhetoric.VirginiaIt’s interesting, too, because it’s making it our problem while telling us to define our health according to all these external rules. It’s such a fascinating disconnect that you’re the one getting it wrong, but it’s because you’re not doing it how we told you you have to do it.HilaryIt’s pretty insidious.DanaYou can put all these healthcare providers in a room and ask them to define health, and nobody’s going to be able to come up with a definition that everybody agrees on. So, when we’re talking to our clients and they’re telling us that health is important, it’s a value of theirs. We say, “Nobody is required to pursue health to be deemed worthy of love, respect, or belonging.” When people are really hooked into that place of wanting to be healthy and we talk to people about what does that mean to you, when you say the word ‘health’? How do you define it? How would you know if you were ‘healthy’?Having them unpack the ways we’ve been socialized to think about health, so that they have a stronger analysis around all the factors that impact our health and our wellbeing.VirginiaI remember the last time we spoke, it was an interview for a Health Magazine piece about cultural competency and healthcare. I think we were talking about this idea that health is actually a very personal concept to define on your own terms. I think you said something like “daily heroin use could be health for somebody,” and I couldn’t use that quote in the Health magazine piece. But I think about it really often when I think about trying to unpack healthism, because, it was a great example of how this is such a personal thing. Somebody’s goals and priorities and access to resources and all of that is going to vary so much. So why are we trying to ascribe this giant overarching definition to everybody?HilaryYeah, we can’t. There’s lived experience and access and what kind of support and help is available, what kind of community care is available. All of these factor into what is the best decision for me to maintain my life and to stay connected to my people in my life. The things that make me me.VirginiaThen the last concept I just wanted to quickly touch on which may be newer to my audience is this idea of bootstrapping, which I think certainly dovetails into the whole personal responsibility thing. But it’s such a uniquely American value, I think.HilaryIt is. In the United States, if you do it all right, you can have the American dream. And if you just work your ass off endlessly forever, you will arrive. In the context of immigration survival, it’s about access to resources and things like that. In the context of diet culture, we keep just trying to be better and better and better. Making ourselves into this two dimensional version of health or wellbeing. What has irked me throughout my career as a therapist in this space is like, Okay, what gets left behind if all we’re doing is trying to become an image of something that may or may not even exist, or that may be a caricature anyway?Bootstrapping to me is like all that we put aside within ourselves in order to make something possible. And that is something that’s very American and very survivalist, of course. But we often leave out that that has an impact on our emotional and psychological well being, and that we don’t necessarily get to know ourselves well if we’re always trying to become something else.VirginiaDefinitely. And it just reminds me of, again, this, this narrow definition of what health is, and the idea that you should sacrifice so much to achieve it. When folks are told weight loss is necessary for X health health outcome, setting aside the fact that you probably won’t achieve that weight loss, there’s never any discussion of the side effects of the pursuit of that weight loss and the toll that takes.HilaryExactly. Yes, yes.VirginiaSo many books around body positivity and intuitive eating are written fairly directly to, as you said with eating disorder treatment, white, cisgender, thin women. I mean, that’s a valid criticism of my own work, something I’m definitely working on. But I was just struck over and over again, in reading your work, how inclusive it is. And especially, how much time you spent in really thoughtful explorations of trans bodied experiences. So I would just love to hear a little more about why that was so important to you to do and also how you, as two white women, went about prioritizing and achieving this inclusivity in the work.DanaWe have been working on our own liberatory consciousness for many, many, many years now. One of the frameworks we use is Barbara Love’s liberatory consciousness, which is something we learned from Desiree Adaway and Ericka Hines, who have both consistently put upon us that we must situate our work in liberatory frameworks. When we’re doing our anti-oppression work and our anti-racism work, we’re developing this liberatory consciousness.I was thinking about, when Hilary was talking about eating disorder treatment earlier, I was like, “all are welcome here” is very different than “this was made with you in mind.” So, a lot of treatment centers out there are “all are welcome here.” “You’re all welcome here!” We don’t have gender neutral bathrooms, but you’re welcome here. We’re gonna do a body acceptance group where we’re primarily talking about cisgender people, but all are welcome here. Well, I don’t think we should talk about body acceptance with trans and nonbinary people. Initially, that’s not what we talk about, eventually it could be helpful. That’s not where we start, we’re talking about gender affirmation not body acceptance with people who are trans and nonbinary.One of the biggest things was, as a more diverse group of people were showing up to our workshops and retreats, as we were developing our own liberatory consciousness, we really started to revise all of our programs and workshops so that people really felt like they weren’t just welcome here, but we were really speaking to them directly. And you know, it’s through our own learning and unlearning and devoting time to reading books only written by people of marginalized identities and going to trainings and learning about neurodiversity, and all of these things that helped us try to create a book that speaks to a broader audience than simply white women.VirginiaFor a long time in women’s media, there was this push to be more inclusive. But what that would mean is the editor would say, “when you find five women to interview for this piece, make sure two are women of color, and one is gay.” Just like boxes we’re checking to make sure we’re hitting the diversity buttons. And it’s such a different thing. I mean, that’s not inclusivity. It’s just not.HilaryWell, and with the number of books out there around eating and disordered eating and body positivity, it’s remarkable that they don’t speak to the trans experience. Because trans folks, we know, have the highest rate of eating disorder. And while we, I don’t think, as two white women should ever be the ones primarily addressing that or developing programs that support that, I could not think of putting out a book without having a way of speaking more directly to that trans experience. So we did have a nonbinary psychologist, Sand Chang, who’s a Body Trust provider, write a letter to trans folks in the book and that felt like one way we could say we see you and we see your experience and we don’t want it to be erased.Virginia It’s a beautiful part of the book. So important.DanaWe really wanted to feature people’s stories, too, and make sure that we weren’t speaking for people. So we asked people to submit body stories, we did a questionnaire of people who’ve been in our programs, and we pulled a lot of quotes so people could hear directly from folks who’ve done this work who hold a variety of identities and positionality on things.HilaryWe don’t want our book to be the like, “here’s your 10 steps to freedom, follow our path.” We’re trying to shine a light on all the things that are in the way of people having fuller access to their own experience and the healing process that’s inherent within them. And that is really more of what the book is trying to do. Not so much trying to prescribe a path for all people.VirginiaWell, I guess to wrap up, I’d love to just give some thoughts—for folks who are just beginning this work or even just thinking about beginning—on common misconceptions. I mean, I’m sure a big one is people come in assuming this is what’s gonna finally make them lose weight. But anything else like that, that you think’s important for people to know or be thinking about at the beginning of this work?HilaryI would say this isn’t going to feel like anything you’ve done before. So, good news and bad news, right? You’re not going to get that initial new plan high from this book, but you are going to be introduced to parts of yourself that have been orphaned off or lost to this extreme hustle around our bodies. This is a slightly longer game. And I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by it. We want everyone who approaches our work to know straight off the bat that we don’t believe the ways you’ve suffered around your body have been your fault. And we want to show you why we know that.DanaI think the common misconception of this work is that it’s the “fuck it” plan. Especially when people are new to this and they start talking to their relatives about it or the people in their life about it. This is like developing a language and when we’re new to it, we’re hardly understanding it ourselves, and then we’re trying to tell people, if people are asking us or wanting to tell people, sometimes we don’t have the language for it. And then, people often misinterpret this, you know, if you’re not focusing on your weight, and your health people interpret it as the “fuck it” plan. And so, this is just a really radically different way of showing up for yourself in the world and for other bodies in the world and challenging our conditioning. But there’s a big difference between letting go and giving up. We would not describe this as the “fuck it” plan.VirginiaYou’re actually fighting for something way more profound. DanaAnd we need people to do this work. There’s a phenomenon we see in this work where people want it for everybody else, but believe there’s a different set of rules for people like “me,” in air quotes. That can be a common misconception: “Oh, this is good, but I have diabetes,” or “this is good for them but I have joint pain.” And this is for everybody. There is not a different set of rules for people like you.VirginiaSo important. Well, thank you. I’m so excited for this book to be reaching folks because everybody can be doing this work. Butter for Your Burnt ToastHilaryI’m obsessed with the show on Apple TV called Home. I want to talk to anyone else who is watching it. It’s like a docuseries kind of thing on people who have made homes that fit their lives or address a problem in some way. It’s leading me into an investigation around ideas of home and how we make ourselves at home. How we include others in it. I don’t even have words for why I’m obsessed with it, but I’m totally obsessed and I want everyone to watch it. There’s two seasons. VirginiaSounds fascinating.Hilary And I’m obsessed with my white golden retriever, Arrow.VirginiaOh, I’ve seen pictures of Arrow. Very, very cute. HilaryHe’s a dream. He’s a dream boy for sure. VirginiaThat’s a good one. Dana, what about you?DanaWell, I just got my hot tub back up and running yesterday. I filled it up yesterday. And it was 100 degrees here and I got in the water. I filled it up and then didn’t turn it on and just got in the water. VirginiaOh, got in the cold water. DanaYeah, hung out for the afternoon. And it was amazing. I’m a water girl. I go to the Japanese garden here in Portland and there’s lots of water features in there, so you can’t walk through there without hearing the water trickle. VirginiaI love that. DanaI love spending a morning a week up in there. I come out a different person compared to when I walk in. My nervous system is so calm when I walk out of there. And then I’m loving these these local English muffins. HilaryFrom Sparrow Bakery, I just had them this morning, too, for breakfast, and they are so damn good.VirginiaI am also a big hot tub proponent and water proponent. We have a debate in our house about the appropriate water temperature based on the weather because I kind of always want it to be a hot tub. I just love being in hot water so much. But other people I live with feel that because it’s 100 degrees, It should be cool and refreshing. It’s a current debate we’re having.HilarySounds like you need two hot tubs.VirginiaRight? Feels like such a great solution.HilaryYeah, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. No problem.VirginiaMy recommendation this week is also heat related. It’s my heating pad that I am living on right now. Because I am in a lower back spasm situation, it’s an ongoing journey in my life at the moment. And I just want to give a shout out to heating pads and heated car seats that are really making my life a lot more functional.HilaryYeah, heating pads are kind of a forgotten item. But they’re so essentialVirginiaAnd they’re not expensive. This is a $29 one from Target. I just carry it around the house with me as needed. HilaryAnd plug it in?VirginiaDepending on the day, yup. One of my daughters is actually always trying to steal it and I’m like you don’t need this, you’re a child. No. You can’t have it. Maybe for a birthday or something, I’ll get her her own heating pad. So yeah, anyway, I realize it is summer it is 100 degrees. Nobody actually wants to be as hot as I do. So that’s my recommendation if you have any kind of pain or just like cozy things.DanaYes.VirginiaWell let’s wrap up by having you tell listeners how we find you? How do we support your work? I want everyone to go buy Reclaiming Body Trust. What do we need to know?DanaWe have recently rebranded. We’ve changed our business name from BeNourished to Center for Body Trust so you can find us there. We are not on TikTok, but we’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Instagram is kind of our primary engagement. If you go to our website, you can learn more about the book and you can sign up for our newsletter, where you’ll get updates from us. We have a Body Trust Tuesday newsletter that we send out every Tuesday with body trust message. The book is out now!VirginiaSo people should go buy it immediately! Well, thank you both so much for being here. It’s such a pleasure.

This week, we revisit an old episode of Comfort Food where Virginia Sole-Smith and Amy Palanjian chat with Lisa Du Breuil, an incredible fat activist and clinical social worker who specializes in eating disorders and addiction. They discuss sugar addiction and how to navigate endless treats with your kids.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.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.Episode 58 TranscriptVirginiaHello and welcome to episode 24 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.AmyAnd this week, we’re talking about sugar and whether we can really be addicted to it, if it makes our kids hyper, and how we can have a saner relationship with it, both ourselves and with our kids.VirginiaI’m Virginia Sole-Smith, I’m a writer, a contributing editor to Parents Magazine, and the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America. I write about how women relate to food and our bodies in a culture that gives us so many unrealistic expectations about both of those things.AmyAnd I’m Amy Palanjian, a writer, recipe developer, and creator of Yummy Toddler Food and Yummy Family Food. I’m a contributor to Allrecipes Magazine and I love to help parents relax in the daily challenge of feeding their kids.VirginiaAs we’re recording this episode, I am just finishing the first month of my book launch and wrapping up my book tour for The Eating Instinct. I really loved all of the events, and if you guys are listening, anyone who has come out to the events, thank you so much. It’s been a total joy to talk about the book with people. But there’s one question that comes up at every single event, which has been really interesting, which is, “But what about sugar?” What I think happens is people hear me talking about the importance of trusting our bodies and listening to our hunger and fullness cues and not being afraid to take pleasure in food and how comforting eating should be at its core. And everyone’s with me. Everyone is nodding along like yes, yes, yes, we want to do that. We want to do that. And then someone raises their hand and says, “But wait, surely you don’t mean sugar?” And it’s so interesting that we just have, right now, this phobia around sugar. This cultural moment we’re having where we classify sugar in this different category from other foods. We really have started to think of it almost like alcohol or drugs.AmyAnd in terms of kids, there’s this giant fear of juice. There’s all of these fears of going to birthday parties and kids eating birthday cakes, that the kids are going to have these flaming meltdowns due to the sugar. And I think a lot of us believe these things because we hear our friends talking about it. But we don’t actually know what’s true and what’s not.VirginiaSo, we wanted to sort through all of this. And we wanted to bring in a really great expert to help us. So, we have Lisa DuBreuil with us. She is a therapist from Salem, Massachusetts, who works with clients on both eating disorders and addiction. So she’s kind of the perfect person to help us sort through these different issues. So Lisa, welcome! Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work and your family?LisaWell, thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here with you. So yes, I’m a clinical social worker. I work at Mass General Hospital in Boston, working with people who have substance use disorders and my particular clinical specialties are folks that have both eating disorders and substance use disorders, and also people that have developed different problems after weight loss surgeries. I also have a private practice in Salem, where I live with my family, and up here I see mostly people dealing with binge eating disorder, body distress, trying to recover from diet culture, things like that.VirginiaI should mention, Lisa is also quoted pretty extensively in chapter six of The Eating Instinct. So there will be more of her in the book.LisaAnd I’m married, I have a husband and a 13 year old daughter.AmySo, let’s start with the big question here. Is sugar addiction a real thing?LisaIn a word? No, it’s not. There’s obviously way more detail to that. But bottom line? No, it’s it’s not an addiction.VirginiaI think that is so important and so refreshing for people to hear. I hope people are breathing a sigh of relief, because this really is this misconception. It’s everywhere. So I really appreciate you saying that. Let’s get into that detail a little bit more. Why don’t you tell us a bit about the biology of addiction? And why is sugar not classified in that same way as drugs or alcohol?LisaThe first thing I want to want to say is, I really understand why people have this concern, because we are living in a cultural time when we’re being told that sugar is dangerous and addictive. I want to make it really clear, I have total sympathy for people that are worried about this and parents that are worried about this. But when we look at the science, we’re just not seeing the evidence that we respond to sugar the same way that we respond to what what are called “substances of abuse.”One of the most important things, I think, for people to know is that our entire nervous system requires sugar. It runs on sugar. That’s all your brain uses for energy is carbohydrates and all carbohydrates break down, in the end, to sugar. So, we do have a drive for sugar because we can’t survive without it. But that’s not the same thing as having an addiction. So that’s the first piece I think it’s important for people to know.The biggest piece I think that can be helpful to people is understanding the concept of habituation, which is what happens when a person is exposed to something and because of the exposure and the access, is able to regulate themselves around it. When I work with people with who are dealing with both a substance use disorder and an eating disorder, with the substance use disorder, we can we talk a lot about restriction and abstinence, because that’s the best way we know right now to help people stabilize and live a balanced life. When I’m helping them with their eating disorder, we are moving away from restriction. We’re moving away from abstinence, because that’s the best way we know how to help people be able to live in balance and feel like they can regulate themselves.AmyI think a lot of what stresses adults and parents out is just that it often seems like treats and sugar are everywhere that we go. That in itself can make it seem like sugar is out of control, because it’s all over the place. But that’s a very different thing than being physically addicted to it.LisaYes. And the piece that parents need to understand is that the more restrictive they are, that the more special and forbidden they make them, the more a child is going to be interested in them. That’s Parenting 101. The minute you say to your child, “don’t touch that,” what happens? That’s all they want. That’s all they want to touch. So, it’s the same thing with foods.VirginiaIt sounds like one of the key differences we all need to kind of wrap our minds around is that if you are talking about a substance that is physically addicting, it is important to avoid. An alcoholic can’t drink, a drug addict needs to avoid drugs, whereas in terms of managing our feelings of out-of-control-ness or anxiety around something like sugar, we actually need to be okay having it. We need to be comfortable with the exposure.LisaRight. So with with a substance use disorder, the exposure to the substance, heavy use of the substance—because of neuroplasticity, because of our brain’s ability to adapt, and change—we develop tolerance. Anyone who has struggled with substances can tell you, there was a time when one or two drinks was enough, and now I can’t seem to stop. And that has to do with physical changes that occur in the brain. And obviously, I also want to say that addiction is much more complicated than this. It also involves psychosocial factors and oppression and all these other cultural influences. It’s not just about someone’s biology, but when we are talking about the biology there’s this tolerance that develops because the brain adapts to the heavy use. And we don’t see that with fruits. We don’t see that with sugar. What we see is that through exposure, and abundance that people and animals actually are able to regulate. It’s the restriction that creates the drive, the over over attention to to these foods.AmyIs it the restriction that causes some people to then binge eat? Is that like an emotional response?LisaYes, yes. Really all eating disorders involve restriction, which also we can call dieting. I mean, that’s what dieting is, it’s restricting calories or restricting certain foods. And so when that happens, you can create a strong drive to then overeat, and ignore your own hunger and fullness cues. Because, oh my god, now it’s available, and I better get it while it’s still here.VirginiaSo when people say, “Oh, I can’t trust myself around the Oreos. I’ll eat the whole bag,” we’re kind of focusing on the wrong piece. It’s not actually the food, it’s everything you did leading up to encountering the Oreo with restriction that got you there.LisaExactly. And when I talk to people, how I try and break it down for people is, with permission plus abundance, you can get discernment. When you have permission—honest to God, deep in your heart permission—to eat as many Oreos as you really want, and you have plenty of Oreos, you can get to a place where you can actually tell how many do I really want?The other part of this is eating regularly throughout the day, eating lots of different kinds of food, making sure your nutritional needs are getting met. Because that’s the other piece is that if you’re undereating in other ways, you’re going to make it harder for your body and brain to hear the signals for all the different kinds of food your body needs. In the end, if you’re undernourished at the end of the day, your brain is going to prioritize its needs. And what does it need? Carbohydrates.The last thing I want to say about that piece is, this is a feature, not a bug. Because for most of human history, the biggest threat to our existence was starvation. So we have an amazingly powerful, not in our direct control drive to keep us alive. And so trying to push against that is like trying to train yourself to need less oxygen.VirginiaYeah, you’re just never going to do it.LisaYou’re never going to do it.VirginiaI think we’ve all met these people who give up sugar for some period of time. And they say, “Well, as long as I don’t eat it, I just don’t crave it.” What’s going on there?LisaSo, here’s the thing. I’m a big believer in believing people when they tell me about their lived experience. So, if someone says to me, “I have to tell you, I’ve cut out sugar,”— although I have to point out that no one can completely cut out sugar because it’s present in lots of different foods and we would die without it. But I know what they mean, they mean added sugar treats, etc. So, if someone says to me, “I’ve done that and I’m functioning well. I go where I want to go. I don’t get preoccupied, I feel satisfied. And life is going well,” I’m going to believe them. It’s not my job to convince people that what they’re doing isn’t working, if what they tell me is that it is working.But that said, lots of times in my experience, most folks find that in order to maintain that kind of restriction, it requires a lot of other limits in their lives. Places they don’t go, people they don’t hang out with, preoccupation that they have to manage. One of the ways you can think about it is, if I asked you to stand up and balance a quarter on your index finger, you probably wouldn’t have a hard time doing that. If I asked you to do it all day long, this simple task over time would start to get really difficult because you get muscle fatigue and focus fatigue, and it would it would start requiring more and more of your energy, psychological energy and physical energy, to continue that hold, right? So that can be what happens when people try and have such a restriction because carbs are present in so many of our foods. And nutritionally most human diets, 50 to 60% of it is carbohydrates. Because our brains need such a large amount of carbs to run. So, for most people, it’s very hard to pull off over an extended period of time. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some people that maybe can do that.VirginiaThat’s really good to be aware of, if you’re thinking about something like that. The odds are a little bit stacked, in terms of how your body’s gonna respond.LisaYes, and the more of a history you have of restricting and foods being forbidden, the more of an emotional pull those foods are going to have on you. So, lots of times the beginning of recovering with eating disorders is really healing from a lot of that restriction. So, in the beginning, sometimes people do over focus on those foods because they’re making up for all the years they weren’t allowed to have them.VirginiaBut then you see, as someone continues in their recovery, you see sort of a balancing.LisaYes, you do. Absolutely. And when I work with people, we don’t do it willy-nilly. We very planfully think about how to help someone move foods from the “forbidden” column into the “it’s okay to eat” column, and we do it in a way that feels safe and is planful. Because it can be very scary for people because they are afraid of getting completely out of control.VirginiaLisa, you work primarily with adults struggling with food in these profound ways, but I’m curious to know if there are any particular strategies that you use with your clients, particularly when it comes to overcoming these anxieties around the so-called forbidden foods, that you think are also useful for parents to incorporate.LisaSo, the first thing I would recommend is to look at the resources available through the Ellyn Satter Institute.VirginiaWe love Ellyn Satter on this podcast.LisaMy daughter is adopted from China, and when we brought her home, even though I was in recovery from my own eating disorder, I was really worried, like any parent would be, what if I pass this along to her? And a friend of mine said, “Oh, you have to check out Ellyn Satter.” And so I did andI discovered the Division of Responsibility. And that’s what I used when she came home. Although initially I just fed her on demand even though she was 18 months old, because she came to me undernourished because the orphanage didn’t have enough resources. She was very well loved, but they literally didn’t have enough food to go around sometimes. And so initially, I remember her eating big pats of butter because she was making up for lost time and her brain was growing exponentially and she needed fat. But eventually, as she was ready to do so, we moved into the division of responsibility and I found it incredibly helpful. So that’s always my go-to resource for parents.AmyI just want to jump in here and say if you guys haven’t listened to it, Episode 19, the whole episode is about the Division of Responsibilities. So definitely check that out.LisaI think It’s even helpful for adults. Lots of times with binge eating disorder, as well as the other eating disorders, people don’t do a great job of making sure that several times a day they have opportunities to eat, and that they build predictability into their life. Even for grown adult, that can be a really great way to think about feeding yourself.The other thing I think it’s important for parents to understand is, because I’ve seen this where people create this sort of bubble of safe foods at home. When you’ve got your little one, your toddler, you’re just starting grade school, your baby’s heading out into the big wide world where there are lots of different kinds of foods available at all sorts of different times, and going into all different kinds of households. I’ve heard from people about their kid’s friend showing up at their house and eating huge amounts of a snack because they don’t get access to that snack at home. We all want to keep our children in these safe little bubbles, but they’re heading out into the world. So, you really want to think about preparing your child for for this environment. And, again, that’s why I really like Ellyn Satter’s approach about creating eating competence. So your child is really connected and their connection to their hunger and appetite cues have been have been protected, so that when they head out there, and there are all these different things they can explore, that they can tell what they really want to eat, they can tell when they’re full. Because sooner or later, they’re going to have access to those foods that you’ve decided are not allowed.VirginiaOne strategy we use, we actually just use the other night. We had a bunch of pie leftover from the holidays and I put it down on the table just as part of dinner. We do dessert alongside the rest of the food. And it was really interesting. My five year old definitely had apple pie as her primary dinner, which I thought was a very excellent choice because pie is delicious. But she still was done with the meal just as quickly as she always is. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m gonna really like go to town on this pie, because it was just there on the table with everything else. So, do you use that kind of, like neutralizing treats?LisaExactly. One of the greatest pleasures I’ve had, as someone who’s in eating disorder recovery, has been to, to watch my daughter be able to take or leave treats that I would have been obsessed about. It just feels really good to know that she’s so in tune. It’s very bad when when we train children in diet culture to not trust their bellies, that’s a very bad message to send, especially for girls. Don’t trust your gut. Don’t listen to your body. That moves out into other ways that they’re supposed to be paying attention to what their gut tells them. I think that’s another important angle that people don’t think about. We’re constantly telling kids, especially little girls, don’t listen to yourself. Don’t listen to your hunger. Don’t listen to what your gut is telling you. I don’t think that serves them.VirginiaTotally agree. Especially as your daughter is getting into the teenage years. I’m sure this is on your mind. There’s so many choices kids have to navigate as they gain that independence that we want them really trusting themselves for.AmySo, if a parent is feeling like there are just objectively a lot of treats in their life, what are ways that are not full of anxiety that we can help balance intake?VirginiaYou’re talking about like, every time you go to the bank and there’s a lollipop?AmyWe just came off for the holidays and there are class parties and then parties after school and there just is a lot of that and I think some people, without getting into wanting to restrict their children, are just also wanting to make sure that their kids have an opportunity to eat other foods and be hungry for other foods.LisaSo, the first thing I want to say is it’s normal for there to be feasts in our culture. And it’s okay if certain times of the year there’s more food available or more treats available. That’s not some sort of pathology. Every culture on the planet has feast days, and especially this time of year, because it’s the darkest, coldest time of year in many parts of the world, there’s lots of celebrations. And so that’s okay. That said, if a parent was worried about this, I think what I would recommend is, and what I’ve done with even done with my own daughter sometimes is said, “Yep, you can grab a lollipop, but I’m going to ask you to wait and have it at snack time. And that can be one of your options.” In my house, have always had a basket of treats that we’ve picked up hither and yon, that then are available to her for snack or dessert. So she might not be able to have something right now, but she knows that it will be available to her if she decides to have it later. So if you’re worried about that kind of thing, then as long as you’re making sure that there are opportunities on a daily regular basis for your child to have access to that, that has worked really well. And also like, if you’re in church service, if you’re someplace where you can’t eat anyways, there are always going to be times when we can’t stop and eat right now. So, building in regular snacks and meal times are opportunities to add that treat to the options.AmySo the American Heart Association has all these very specific recommendations for how many sugar grams we’re supposed to have each day. And I know that that has a tendency to freak a lot of parents out because it’s hard to actually keep track of that, like carrying a calculator around. But it does set up this model where we sort of feel like we have to be monitoring and keeping track of things. I think it’s confusing to get that message from that type of a large health association. And I just wanted to get some thoughts from you on that.LisaThat’s a fantastic question. So here’s the thing, anyone who’s raised a child from infancy knows that they tend to have like a protein day, and then they’ll have a carb day, you know? Or all they’re willing to eat is carrots, and then all they’re willing to eat is cheese. I think the idea that when left to their own devices that humans will eat three perfectly macronutrient-ly balanced meals every day ongoing, it doesn’t pan out. I think that what you need to think about is stepping back and looking at it, especially with younger children, in a bigger picture. I know that that some recent research done has shown that even though children are “overly” focused on one macronutrient day to day, that if you step back and look at a month’s worth of eating, it’s very balanced, because they’re listening to their hunger cues. So, yes, there might be a day when, Oh my God, we’ve mostly had these treats. But then again, assuming that you’re using the division of responsibility, and giving with permission and abundance, what you’ll notice is there will be other days when they’re not that interested in those kinds of foods. Even for myself, you know, I tend to, after the holidays, I tend to be looking for a lot of greens and soups and things like that. And I think it’s a reaction to all the richer foods that I’ve been enjoying in November and December.VirginiaBut it’s just a sort of natural balancing, not a furious like, Oh, God, I have to…LisaExactly. It’s not driven by “Oh my God, I have to make up.” It’s just literally like, wow, I’m kind of sick of those foods at this point. I don’t want any more. I’m looking for other things now. And it sort of balances itself out. The other thing I want to say is I know how scary it can be for parents. There’s so much pressure on parents to do it correctly and so much fear about children’s bodies and body sizes. And it can be really anxiety provoking for parents to step away from the the dominant culture and give this a different try. So, I really do want to encourage people to look into Ellyn Satter, to look into the resources out there for parents that are supporting children’s natural hunger and satiety cues. There are resources. There are other folks out there that are doing it this way. And it makes mealtimes so much easier when you’re not attempting to negotiate exactly what they’re putting in their mouths. There are other things we do need to be very controlling about what goes into our children’s mouths. It’s wonderful to be able to encourage kids that they can trust themselves around that.AmyI just want to say that like, that is one of my big goals with my website, because I just, it’s so much. Meals are happier, they’re less stressful, and you can just take this huge burden off yourself, if you’re not counting bites of broccoli, or worried that your child is getting enough and that if you just can get to a place of trusting them. But it of course does take a lot of work. And it’s not something that will just automatically click into place. It often takes some work and then take some more work. And it’s like a perspective that you need to keep reminding yourself is probably better.VirginiaAnd wouldn’t it be nice if big groups like the American Heart Association could get on board? Because I do think, like Amy said, people get really freaked out about these serious recommendations. And it’s hard to recognize, oh, that’s another metric, just like all the diet culture metrics that we don’t need. Just because it’s coming from a bunch of cardiologist doesn’t mean it’s actually good for your child’s mental health.LisaRight. And again, you can always ask about and get curious about, well, where’s that data coming from? Who told them that? And who’s influencing these campaigns? Because sometimes what you find out is they’re coming from pharmaceutical corporations or diet corporations that don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart.VirginiaThat is such a great point. Yes, absolutely.Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such an enlightening conversation. We could talk about this stuff all day long. So thank you for making the time. Will you tell our listeners where they can find more of you and where you are on social media?LisaMy website, which is constantly in development, is LisaDuBreuil.com. And I’m on Twitter at @LisaJDuBreuil. And I think that’s my instagram handle, as well.VirginiaI follow Lisa on Twitter, and she tweets, tons of great stuff. So I definitely recommend following her. Lots of good stuff out there.AmyOkay, so Virginia, you have had a busy few weeks, and you’re trying out a new approach to some dinners. So can you tell us what what happened?VirginiaSo, as everyone who listens to the podcast knows, I hate meal planning. See our episode with KJ Dell’Antonia for the full scoop on that. So we’ve had a couple of weeks where I have been on the road for the book nonstop, plus holidays. What I typically do is grocery shop on Fridays or Saturdays for the whole week and then just make up dinner on the fly from whatever I’ve bought. But there’s been a lot of weekends where I’ve been away for book stuff, so I haven’t been able to get to the grocery store. Dan has been doing the Walmart run to cover our usual staples, but it just seemed like we needed an easier plan. Often I was coming back from a trip just in time to make dinner, but not do anything in advance of making dinner.AmyThat’s the worst.VirginiaSo yeah, it is kind of mind bending. And I didn’t want to totally go over to take out, mostly because we eat takeout so much I’ve gotten a little sick of our local takeout options. I know. So I decided, I got a coupon in the mail for HelloFresh, which is one of those meal kit types of services, like Blue Apron or Sun Basket or all those different companies. And so let me say right up front, I paid for this myself. I mean, I did use the coupon they sent me but I didn’t get it because we’re podcasters. I’m sure everyone has gotten these coupons in their mailbox. They don’t know who we are, so it’s not a sponsoring or endorsement kind of thing. But I was like well, let me give this a try because the whole concept is that you hop on the website, pick out a few recipes you want to make for the week and then a box of groceries shows up on your doorstep with all the instructions and everything. And it definitely solved that issue of I can’t go to the grocery store or think about dinner until I need to be cooking dinner. I did like spend five minutes on the website randomly picking a few things to try. But then the box arrived, one day it got there right as I was getting home so I was able to unpack the groceries. And it’s nice! They send you stuff to make three meals and everything is in its own little bag. So you just take out your bag and then unpack and it’s got all the vegetables and everything you need. I think you have to provide olive oil and salt. But that’s about it.AmyDoes it come in a cooler?VirginiaIt’s a box that’s lined with cooler type material. And there’s an ice pack on the bottom. Everything was fresh, the ingredients all looked pretty good. The tomato was a little anemic looking. I mean, also, a tomato in November in the Northeast would be a tough sell. But everything was pretty good. So I really liked it for that ease of convenience. For non meal planners, I think it’s a great option because it totally takes away that 5pm panic. The downsides, I would say, are the meals are not very make-ahead friendly. So often when I’m not traveling, I want to get dinner figured out in the morning or on my lunch break. We’re busy doing something with the kids in the hour before dinner happens, like we’re at swim lesson or whatever. So all of these meals do require you to be able to be at the stove for like 30 minutes or so before you want to eat, which is a challenge for a lot of people juggling kids and work schedules. So that, I think, is a drawback to them. I would love to see them do more like “here’s a slow cooker recipe” or a make a head type of thing. I didn’t feel like they were marketing to families as much as I expected because you have to choose between a two person portion or a four person portion. But in my house, we are four people, but two of them are small people. So I wasn’t gonna get the four person portion, because that would have been way too much food. But there were nights where the two person portion wasn’t quite enough. Like there was one recipe that was like this taco flatbread thing, and Dan and I were both like, “Yeah, we want to eat this whole thing. What are we feeding the kids?” So I still had to figure out rounding it out with a few things to give the girls. So I would love to see them do like a parents eating with small children option. I mean, I feel like there’s a lot of us.AmyYeah, there is another company called One Potato box. But they’re not available everywhere because I have checked. It’s the Weelicious founder and then the woman who runs Shutterbean, the website, does the photos. And so I can’t tell if I just want them because their photos are so good or like whether it would really taste like that in my house, but I couldn’t get it in Iowa anyway.VirginiaWell, I’m going to check into that because I felt like they could be doing a better job. This is a great option if you’re childless and just cooking for two people or if you have older kids and like the four person portions would make more sense for you. I will say the recipes were super straightforward. The time estimates were correct, which I appreciated. I was churning out dinner super fast that week. On the one hand, it feels wasteful because all the food comes in this big box, and there’s extra packaging. But we didn’t waste food that week, because I only bought the ingredients that I needed. Like, they only had the ingredients to make these exact things, which if you don’t meal plan you often don’t have that. I’m not saying there’s not an easier hack to that, but I’m saying I don’t do it. So, I did like that there was no food waste. But I just felt like I often ended up having to like add on a little bit to the meals or improvise a bit to make it work for my family. And Dan did say he likes my cooking better overall, which I thought was sweet of him to say.AmyThat’s nice.VirginiaAs I’ve discussed, I’m kind of improvisational cook. So I did definitely play with the seasonings a bit and try to tailor things a little bit more to us. But it was great to have that starting point. Long story short, I definitely get why there’s a lot of pushback. I’ve always been really skeptical about this concept. I don’t know why I think I was just sort of being a snob about it.AmyI am too.VirginiaLike, you can’t just like cook on your own? You need someone to like send you a box? And then I was like, Screw it. Yeah, I do. No shame in that game. Send me a box of food so I don’t have to think about dinner! That part was pretty great. So I think if you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to fit grocery shopping in, because that can be such a time suck on the weekends.AmyIt’s much easier to just go and look at their options to pick what you want to cook then like have to like deal with the entirety of the internet and find a recipe.VirginiaRight, it was really nice having all the noise cut out. That is totally true. Because they change the menus week to week but it was like, okay, here are these few choices that we are offering this week. Which, on the one hand, I was like, I’m really just picking three things with meatballs because I don’t think my kids will eat the other things. But on the other hand, I like that this has taken out decision fatigue for me. So, yeah, I think I might try some other ones.AmySo I’m not like a freeze-er. I talked about prepping for when baby comes a little bit, but I’m not a freezer meals person. But Pinch of Yum recently did this massive 12 recipe freezer meals and I was looking at recipes, and it was not what I expected. Because you don’t actually—so a lot of freezer meals, you cook ahead of time and then put in the freezer, at least I thought? Clearly I don’t do this very often. But this is just like you chop a bunch of things, put it in a bag, and then it has directions for what to do and like what to add after. That’s so much easier.VirginiaOh, that’s very similar to what this is, except it’s not frozen.AmyBecause then you have all of your stuff and you put it in the slow cooker and you add three ingredients that are from the pantry and you have dinner! I’m totally going to do that. And also the recipes are like things that I would actually want to eat. Like there’s a chicken meatballs recipe. There’s Tandoori chicken, Korean barbecue beef, chicken tinga, stuff with lots of flavor in it. I don’t know if my kids will like it, but I want to eat this.VirginiaI guess my question is, when are you going to do all the food prep?AmyYeah, see, I don’t know. In theory, this is a great idea.VirginiaFor that random free Saturday…AmyOr maybe this is one of the things that I have my mom or the mother-in-laws do.VirginiaWhen they when they come to help with the baby!AmyI hand them four recipes and then they prep them. Then all I have to do is add the—I’m just looking at what I would need to add for one of these. I’d need to get some tortillas. Done.VirginiaOh, that’s very smart. That sounds like a great strategy for that particular period of your life. Maybe I can just recruit general neighborhood volunteers who want to be nice. I’m not having another baby to get it.Anyway, I think my big takeaway was just I don’t know why I was being sort of snobby about these things. I think f you’re feeling panicked about dinner, as we also often are, to try something new and see whether it’s a good fit for you. And if I do try other meal prep kits like this, I will certainly report back if I find one that feels better for those of us in the small appetite children phase.AmyYeah, and if anyone has tried one potato box, I would love to hear what you think.VirginiaYeah, or any others that you think are really good that we should be doing.

This week, Virginia chats with Dana Miranda, a certified educator in personal finance and the founder of Healthy Rich, a platform for inclusive budget-free financial education. Check out her podcast and her Substack newsletter, Founder Notes.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 LINKSVirginia found Dana through this great Culture Study interview. Dana recommends literal burnt toast with butter, and also playing the flute.Virginia recommends the Maui Mat. 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.---Post-Publication Note from Virginia:I want to thank everyone who participated in the comments on this podcast episode. This is (I think?) the first time I’ve published something here that really did not land with lots of you. It was bound to happen! I swing at a lot of pitches! You all named some very valid reasons for why this one missed for you, and if Dana and I were to do the interview over again, we’d take the conversation in a few different directions—to better acknowledge the role privilege plays both in the ability to budget AND in the ability to reject budgeting, and to make it clearer that we were questioning systems and critiquing the marketing of budget culture, not giving personal finance advice (I know it got murky at the end when I asked for tools!).I also think this conversation hit a nerve at least in part because Dana does articulate so well some drawbacks and risks to budgeting that aren’t comfortable to name or look closely at. So I will continue to investigate how restriction, perfectionism and the myth of personal responsibility (all diet culture hallmarks!) show up in how we think about money and so many other aspects of life.All of that being said: As I was reading through the discussion, I just kept thinking how much care everyone was putting into their critiques. You helped me see how the conversation I published didn’t go far enough, and where it missed the mark. And you did so with such kindness and grace. I appreciate how willingly you come along for the ride when I take us in new directions but I appreciate even more that this is a community that offers smart constructive criticism and holds me accountable. Please keep doing that!Episode 57 TranscriptVirginiaHi, Dana! Let’s start by having you tell us just a little bit about yourself and your work.DanaSo I worked as a freelance writer for 10 years. Writing is my background. And I was just kind of getting by for about five years. I started in personal finance media in 2015, when I got my first full-time job working at The Penny Hoarder, a media startup in personal finance. I really had no personal finance background when I did that, I just got into it because it was a writing job and I liked the team. And I thought, I’ll try it out. Personal finance sounds really boring, but let’s see! It’s writing.I found that I really enjoyed the things that I was writing about because I was able to learn so much about our financial systems, like what goes into a credit score. I hadn’t been making a lot of money. I grew up working class and didn’t learn a lot about personal finance from my parents or my community. I just kind of buried my head in my 20’s around anything to do with money. So it was so fun to start learning about it.Then, as I got deeper into it, I started freelancing and writing for more sites and also working with some financial technology companies. I learned that the space is pretty much 100% dominated—like so many spaces—by middle-class, cis, white, straight men. So all of the advice that we’re getting is really just coming from that perspective. It’s leaving out so many people. I brought plenty of privilege to the work that I was doing, just as a white woman with a family network to fall back on. But even just coming from a working class background, I knew how much advice and personal finance was not speaking to me. And it was something that I was calling out to all my colleagues who had a middle class background that they didn’t seem to notice in the work that they were doing.I started to notice what I named “budget culture,” and wanted to explore that more. So I started my platform for financial education, Healthy Rich, last year, to invite more voices into the space, tell stories, to share more perspectives, and just kind of explore a new way to teach about money and kind of critique the system a little bit.VirginiaI’m so glad you’re doing this work. I discovered you through Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter Culture Study, which is how many of us discover everything good in our lives. You did a great Q&A with her about Dave Ramsey and budget culture. It was so fascinating. And there was one quote that really jumped out for me and it’s the reason I was like, “Dana, come on the podcast.” You wrote:Budget culture is the damaging set of beliefs around money that rewards restriction and deprivation — much like diet culture does for food and bodies — and promotes an unhealthy and fantastical ideal of financial success.I had just never thought like, oh, wait, like tracking your spending is not that different from tracking calories. So I really want us to dive into this, let’s start with the concept of budget culture. DanaSo I think one of the biggest parallels is that the way that we teach personal finance is focused on the myth that there’s some “right” way to do money, and we just need to learn it. And we see that in diet culture, too. That there’s a right way out there and if you’re not happy with what’s going on with your money, it’s because you haven’t found quite the right way. You haven’t figured out how to follow all the right rules. That’s really how it’s taught. And also, that there’s this right way to be. You should be striving for some kind of nebulous idea of being rich, or a higher net worth, lower debt. And those are all just taken as fact in personal finance.The advice specifically around budgeting is, I think, exactly like dieting, because it’s focused on restriction. There are a few experts that talk about earning more money to do what you want with your finances. But most skip over that entirely, and just go to if something’s not right with your money, you need to start restricting how you’re spending it because it’s overspending that’s causing your problems. And again, the assumed goal is to become rich, like increase your net worth, decrease your debt and it’s all of these things that we take at face value as like, of course, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make more money, we’re trying to have less debt, we’re trying to spend less on taxes—all of these things that people just assume are the right goals. But if you start to examine them, there’s actually a lot of problems with them. Teaching those as the right way to do money can be really damaging or at best useless for a lot of people because they just don’t apply.VirginiaI mean, you are blowing my mind. You’re right. There’s this whole premise that we don’t question, which is that you must want to become as rich as possible. Just like you must want to become as thin as possible. But what if that goal is not relevant to you? What if that’s not a healthy goal for you to pursue? Or a realistic goal which for most people, it’s not. That completely changes the conversation about money. DanaAnd what is rich, too? I see the same thing in diet culture. Like, what is thin enough? Like, what’s the right amount to be? And then we also critique people who become too rich, which I don’t know where that line is. There’s really no right way to do it. You’ll find critiques either way. VirginiaYou’ll always move the bar on yourself. There’s not a number that you can get to, in either conversation, where you’re going to be like, I no longer worry about this, because this whole thing is a response to this culture telling you, you’re not good enough.DanaExactly. And we apply restriction to everyone, too, no matter how high your net worth is, or how much money you have coming in. We still look at the decadent purchases of celebrities and say that this isn’t how they should be spending their money. We look at working class and middle class people and say, you shouldn’t be spending your money this way because you don’t earn enough. So the idea is, well, if I earn more, shouldn’t I be able to spend more? But you realize that the point is just restriction the whole time.VirginiaI want us to break down why that’s so dangerous, because the other line from the Q&A with Anne Helen that really stopped me in my tracks was when you said, “budgeting, like dieting doesn’t work.” I wrote in my notes for this episode, “I REALLY THOUGHT IT WAS ME.” I thought people are either good at budgeting or they’re not. And if you’re not, you should try to be better at it. And now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m realizing how very much that sounds like a diet mentality. So why doesn’t it work? DanaThat’s a great question. It’s hard to know because, as far as I can tell, it’s studied very little. There’s very little research around whether budgeting works. It has kind of blown my mind because as I started hearing people dig into the research around dieting, and whether dieting works and the effects that it has on people’s lives, it made me interested, like, there’s got to be a parallel to that in budgeting and finance. And there’s so little around whether people can stick to budgets, and there’s basically no one questioning if people even do stick to a budget, what effect does it have on their finances? VirginiaThat feels so important to know. DanaBefore you start teaching this is absolutely what you need to do with your money, someone should be finding out: Is it the right thing? What effect does it have? Is it something that people can actually apply to their lives? Because if it’s not, then it’s not valuable advice. You can’t just keep saying, “This is the right thing to do. And so you’re wrong if you don’t do it,” when literally no one can do it.So, why doesn’t budgeting work? I can make guesses. I think it’s the restriction around it. It’s that set of rules. It’s the assumed goal of becoming rich, which, like you said, doesn’t apply to a lot of people, doesn’t make sense for a lot of us. What we’re mostly trying to do with money is just to be able to enjoy our lives day to day. There’s some long-term planning that people are doing, but most of us aren’t thinking, “What can this money become? What’s my legacy going to be?” Budgeting just makes your life difficult day to day because you spend your time constantly thinking about money, tracking your spending, restricting your costs and expenses. And constantly feeling guilty when you spend money on things that bring you joy.Even if you don’t stick to a budget, the mindset sticks around. Even if you start to splurge and start to do things that you enjoy, because you don’t want to track your spending anymore, then you still just feel guilty the whole time. VirginiaI mean, it’s the same as the sort of restrict/binge cycle that a lot of people get in with dieting where most of us cannot sustain restriction long term. People who can do that usually qualify for an eating disorder diagnosis. And the rest of us restrict as long as we can and then hunger sets in, you eat everything because you’ve been starving, and then you feel bad and feel like you have to start the cycle. It sounds like you’re seeing something really similar happened with money.And yeah, I just want to talk about the misery of doing it. I mean, I have failed every budget app I’ve ever downloaded. The idea of standing in the grocery store inputting numbers on my phone or or having to take photos of receipts or look back later and correct the way that my online banking miscategorized everything—It is really tedious. Would you say this applies to even like budget sites that have like pretty big cult followings, like You Need a Budget?1DanaSo I’ve looked into a lot of that stuff. It’s kind of interesting, especially budgeting apps and budgeting methods in particular, because none of it from the beginning has ever appealed to me personally. I’ve never really been into making a budget. But I can see the parallel because everything that you’re describing with budgeting, I did with dieting. I found and tried different food tracking apps and went through that whole experience. So, I understand the mindset that you have when you feel like it must be me. I can’t make this app work. Or I can’t stick to what the app is telling me I’m supposed to do.But as I started talking more about anti-budgeting and budget culture, a lot of the response has been people calling out certain apps or certain methods that work for them. They’re saying, “This budget culture is terrible, but that’s why I love YNAB,” when literally, the name is “You Need a Budget.”The 50/20/30 budget is also really popular, people don’t see it as restrictive because it’s percentage-based rather than category-based. But all of those ultimately still just come down to: There’s a lot of tracking your spending. So it’s just constantly being aware of and judging what you’re doing with your own money. And then also, they still set restrictions on how you spend your money, like 50/20/30 says only a certain percentage of your money can be used in this way. And you have to define what is a want versus a need. And, and you have to be saving a certain amount.You Need a Budget I just started exploring because people were sharing that as a piece of advice with me. It has a huge cult following, so I’m really paying attention because I want to know what is so appealing to people. But as far as I can tell from the app is that it is it’s kind of an envelope budgeting app. So you set a certain amount of money that you can spend in certain categories. I think what probably is appealing is that it doesn’t tell you how much those categories should be. But it’s still a way to internalize that restriction. And it allows you to move money from one category to another. But imagine that experience and the guilt that you would feel if you were like, Oh, I’m moving money from… VirginiaMy kids’ college fund!Dana…because I wanted to go have another vacation or night with my friends or something. It’s one of those things where, everyone is well-intentioned, but because we’re not questioning the premise of budget culture from the beginning, that it just continues to perpetuate.VirginiaI want to talk a little more about the role of privilege here. I mean, we see this in diet culture. So many of the gurus or diet plan creators are people who are actually genetically predisposed to being thin and then claiming that the way they eat and exercise is the answer and what you need to also be doing in order to sort of achieve their results. It sounds like you’ve encountered something similar in budget culture, where people claim they have all the answers to how to manage your money, but actually, they just have money. DanaIt’s kind of interesting to look for the parallels, too, because there’s not technically a biological predisposition to richness. But if you break down white privilege, the privilege that makes it easier to become rich in our society—it’s all just stuff that people can’t work towards necessarily. And what I find kind of frustrating is that I don’t think a lot of personal finance experts, teachers, whatever you want to call them, I don’t think that a lot of people are trying to hide their privilege. I think they’re just completely unaware of it. I find that they talk about struggles of growing up middle class. And I know that there’s a big spectrum of people who qualify as middle class income. There are real financial constraints that you deal with, you’re not Bill Gates or Elon Musk, or whatever. But because people experience a little bit of friction financially, they don’t understand the massive amount of friction that so many, like the majority, of the people who are following them, have felt their entire life.So, the things they speak to where they think, “I was able to overcome the challenges that I had in my life, I wasn’t given everything and look at the college education that I got, and the degree that I got, and the jobs that I was able to get and the money I was able to save.” They expect that they can just give that advice to anyone in any situation and think “Well, you can overcome your circumstances as well and do the same thing,” without understanding the difference, the huge gap, between their situation and a lower-income, working class person, a single mother, a Black person, or someone who doesn’t have access to education in the same way, someone who’s living with a disability, and having trouble getting hired or keeping a job or just getting the resources that they need.VirginiaThe classic example is “stop spending that $5 a day on your latte.” And it’s like, yeah, you could do that. And then you could save up for your vacation, if you already have the privilege of secure housing, food security. If you’re already operating from a base of privilege, then cutting out one indulgence to free up some fun money for something else makes some degree of sense, perhaps. But if you don’t have all of those things in place, this latte advice is useless to you and feels laden with so much judgment. And it’s so condescending.DanaIt’s the condescension and then you’re like, “They cut out lattes and now they’re a millionaire. Why can’t I do that?” And it’s because you are struggling to pay your rent! It’s not that you’re overindulging on lattes and you want to put that money somewhere else. I grew up working class. We did fine, but we definitely had a paycheck to paycheck experience. So I saw my parents dealing with money a little bit. And then as an adult, as a freelancer, I was earning like $12,000 a year, it was absurd. And so I was in that situation where I had debt that I was ignoring, I was completely strapped for money, there was no way to just cut out a couple of things and make ends meet, it was like just this constant shuffling around of money, that’s all. And then I got into a job where I was suddenly making this full time salary and at a startup where then I was being promoted and getting raises very quickly. And so I was in a new income bracket. And at the same time learning about personal finance. But I realized pretty quickly, on reflection, that the reason that my credit score was going up, that I could suddenly get a credit card, that I was feeling a lot better about my finances, that my student loans were under control was because I just had the money to deal with all those things. And that gave me an enormous amount of privilege. It didn’t have anything to do with financial literacy that I suddenly knew more, I was able to take the steps. If I had learned all of that a year before starting the job, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything with that knowledge, because I didn’t have the money to address any of those issues.VirginiaSo what is the alternative? I actively encourage people to break up with dieting and divest from diet culture. How do we divest from budget culture, and what is sort of an anti-budget mindset to approaching money?DanaI think the challenge of it is really the same as divesting from diet culture, because so much of it is just internalized. There’s so much mindset work that you have to do. The simplest answer to instead of budgeting and tracking all of your spending and restricting your spending is just conscious spending. So being mindful and, and understanding how you’re using your money. Which sounds really scary, I think, to a lot of people because money feels really finite. It feels like “if I just spend as it feels good, eventually I’ll run out and I won’t be able to pay for things.” But as someone who has like, like I said, done kind of that money shuffle of not having very much money, it’s not really as finite as it seems. Tthere’s a lot of debt that you can set aside and deal with in a different way later. Money is just not as finite as it seems, you’re able to earn a little bit and get by for the week, or you’re able to shuffle things around. You can set certain bills aside or certain debts aside, or whatever it is. And so that’s a huge mindset shift to start to think about not being driven by paying down your debt. Not being driven by improving your credit score. Rethinking how you’re earning money, where it’s coming from, how you share money, and how you can utilize community resources and government resources. And again, rethinking just that goal of increasing your net worth and becoming rich, all of that mindset work, can help.But the simple answer is the alternative to budgeting, I think, is conscious spending. And then there’s just like a whole lot of work to get there. So I think it’s a lot of conversations about what is budget culture? What does budgeting really mean in your life? And how can you break away from it?VirginiaI mean, one thought I’m having, as you’re talking about this idea of thinking of money as less finite, of setting aside some debt to deal with later, that more fluid approach you’re describing, I’m thinking, well, that’s what rich people do all the time. We just don’t let people with less money do it. I mean, just a personal example—and I should acknowledge, I grew up upper middle class.2 I come from a very privileged background. I had some broke freelancing years in the beginning of my career, but obviously, with a big safety net. But you know, recently, we were talking to a financial planner about various goals and what have you. And I had this idea that our big goal should be paying off our mortgage. We should pay off our mortgage so we own our house free and clear. And isn’t that the goal for everyone? And this financial planner was like, “Noo, because you have a really good interest rate, that’s good debt. You don’t need to worry about that debt. Your money will do better invested in other ways.” And it was so eye opening to me to understand, OH, this is a different way of thinking about money, because we have some money to think about. As opposed to “I have to get on top of this credit card bill,” that frantic mindset that we tell people with less money to be in. Rich people walk around with all kinds of debt. I mean, look at Donald Trump! They’re used to having some giant amount of debt that they’re just ignoring, while they go on their yachts and whatever. Why are we penalizing certain kinds of debt, but having no problem with other people’s debt just because they have other money to play with?DanaI think it’s such an important question to ask, like, why do we consider some things good debt versus bad debt? Mortgage is a really good example. Because, you know, like, your advisor told you that’s “good debt”—and that’s a term that I tend to try to not use. Because it assigns a quality to different things. Why do we think of student loans as such a huge, heavy, awful debt that we need to get rid of? But mortgage debt is something that we can carry our whole lives? It’s really absurd, especially when student loans are a way safer debt for most people. If you have federal student loans, there’s so much safety net there. It won’t destroy your life. You won’t lose your home if you don’t pay off your student loans.That’s why I want to talk about money more in the sense of how it fits into our culture, overall. Because I suspect that the reason that we assign certain qualities to different kinds of debt is that we privilege certain lifestyles, like homeownership is this American dream. And it’s the way that you’re supposed to live. But that, as far as like getting a job, getting an education goes, you’re supposed to bootstrap. And student loans are just a way to help you if you can’t do that. Certain lifestyles are privileged. And so we privilege the financial choices that go along with those lifestyles.VirginiaThere’s so much moralizing. I’m erasing the term “good debt” from my vocabulary now. It’s just like saying “good food” and “bad food.” So, say a little more about what conscious spending is. Okay, so it’s not budgeting, but what is is?DanaThe biggest thing is that it’s kind of a nebulous concept on purpose. The idea is to let go of the rules and the methods and everything and be more conscious of how you’re using money. It’s not just about spending, it’s just about like how money fits into your life. But one tool that I often recommend for people is to use a spending diary for a very limited amount of time. I know it sounds really contradictory to “stop tracking your spending.” But it’s a really simple sort of mindfulness, like journaling is a really simple mindfulness activity, to help you understand what you’re doing with your money and what it means in your day to day life. And so I recommend keeping a spending diary for like a week. Very limited. Not to build the habit of tracking your spending, but to see where you’re spending your money. And then more importantly, like, reflect on it and take notes on what you got out of that spending, how it made you feel. Like start to think beyond just the numbers and the charts and things.I don’t recommend using a spend tracking app, because that’s what it’ll show you, it’ll show you like, here’s what that means for your net worth, or whatever. Do it in like a really like in just like a much simpler, more personal way of like writing it down on paper, and journaling about what that spending meant to you. Like, I put some money in the savings account today, or I spent money on a latte today and that was because I was meeting my friend Joanie and this was the conversation that we had. And start to connect all those things to the larger meaning in your life. I’m not a psychologist. So a lot of this is just this is what makes sense to me, based on what I kind of have learned about mindfulness. I think also, any mindfulness practice, that’s actually what’s been really valuable for me is any mindfulness practice you do, like meditation, or yoga or journaling can help you spend consciously because it just raises your awareness in general to the things that you’re doing in life and what it means on a grander scale in your life, and spending and how you use money is just one of those pieces.VirginiaWell, it sounds like what you’re saying is: It’s an opportunity to set your own values. To reject if you’re regularly not making your contribution to your savings account, because you’re investing in time with friends or experiences with your kids or, you know, plants for your garden would be in a category in my life, where spending happens with some wild abandon. Maybe that’s a chance to say like, but this is something I value so much, and this adds so much to my life. And maybe the goal of becoming rich or the goal of saving X amount for these future amorphous goals isn’t what I really truly care about. And that’s an okay thing to question and that I feel like probably feels very scary to people because again, it’s this thing that we’ve been all conditioned to have the same financial goals, but the more you talk about it the more I’m realizing how absurd that is.DanaYeah, absolutely. I would caution with that, though, to not try to then turn that into another kind of budget. Like, people actually talk about a values-based budget. I think you’ve pointed this out with intuitive eating, too—people try to turn it into another kind of diet. It’s not about just naming your values and then creating new categories and new restrictions around those values. And that’s where it kind of becomes nebulous. I can’t hand over the percentage of where you should be spending your money or give you any kind of framework to create that because the point is to be getting rid of that altogether. Enjoy life, use your money, that’s what it’s for. It’s very antithetical to what any kind of financial advisor would tell you.And this mindset is new for me, too. Even though a lot of specific budgeting never really appealed to me and the idea of becoming as rich as possible never appealed to me. There are still a lot of foundations that are sort of instinctual for me. And throwing away those rules is something that I’m still exploring. I really pulled back on the idea of saving for retirement, because I don’t know how I feel about the stock market and I’m trying to retool that and figure out what that means. And I still have the voice in my head that says—because it’s literally voices just all over, all around me from real people—so what are you going to do when you get older? And how are you going to survive? And I don’t know if that’s going to work out. I will only know at the end of my life, if the way that I used money really worked out the way that I wanted it to. So I’m making those decisions as I go and just kind of feeling it out.VirginiaBecause that’s the flip side of this, right? When people live so long with restriction, the flip side is often we go into these periods of denial, of not wanting to look at how we’re spending and not wanting to know what’s happening. I certainly have had months where I’m putting off looking at the credit card bill, because I know it’s gonna be “bad” and I have to deal with that. And you’re saying, because you’re letting go of the guilt and the “shoulds” and the rules around it, you can actually have a much more direct relationship with your money. Which sounds very appealing. You’re of opening up to the possibilities of maybe this won’t work, but it doesn’t mean I’m a failure with money or I’m a failure as a human being. And that’s such an important mindset to divest from.DanaExactly. I love the way that you’re explaining it. I talk a lot about your relationship with money and I think that’s where the focus needs to be. It’s about having a better relationship with money. Don’t let it be something that dominates you. If money were a person in your life, you wouldn’t let that person treat you the way that you let your finances treat you. So focusing on improving that relationship, rather than “becoming better” according to a certain set of rules, I think is, is a good way to shift that mindset and get on the right track.And I’ve also had that binge and restrict cycle with finances, which is like growing up in a very conservative household where they were very focused on budgeting and not overspending, and being very frugal, then I just thought that’s like what it meant to be good with money. And so then I got into my 20s, and I was in charge of all my money, and I wanted to throw all of that out the window because I was like that is very boring. I can’t have any fun in life. And so I’m gonna go completely the other way, and max out a credit card, ignore my student loans, bury my head in the sand about everything. But then once I got into the personal finance space and started learning about those things, it was exactly like you said, where I was able to figure out what that relationship with money could look like, because I understood how all of those financial pieces in my life, where they came from, and how they fit together and the effect they might have on the future. And then I could make those decisions for myself. So I could create the relationship with money that made sense for me, instead of just like one or two extremes, like I was either good or bad with money.VirginiaWow, there’s so much here. I am so excited to dive deeper into your work and I feel like there’s gonna be more conversations I want to have with you about all of this because this is super interesting and so important and just not a conversation that’s happening anywhere else. So I really appreciate you doing this work. It’s so crucial.DanaThank you so much. I really appreciate you inviting me into this space to talk about it. Because the conversation around diet culture, and especially your podcast and newsletter, were what really opened my eyes to this, like gave me kind of this language and this framework to understand what’s going on with personal finance. So, it’s been really helpful to be able to give words to kind of the things I was seeing. I think starting with the framework of diet culture, in a space like this where people are paying attention to that conversation, I think that it makes it a lot easier to have this conversation about money and budget culture.VirginiaWell, I appreciate that so much. And I’m so glad to have helped in any small way towards this great work you’re doing.Butter for Your Burnt ToastDanaI have two, if that’s all right. Because the first one is literal burnt toast with butter. It’s always been a comfort food for me. When I was growing up, I would visit my grandparents and my grandpa would make burnt toast. It kind of became this like joke between us because he I think he burned it one time and I was like, “this is so good.” And so he was always like, whenever i came over, “do you want burnt toast?” And then it was this wonderful memory. So it’s this great comfort food. But also I would try to make it on my own and it never tasted the same as how my grandpa made it. And I realized as an adult that that was because he was putting real butter on it. And at home we had like Country Crock or whatever.VirginiaYeah, that will do it. DanaYes, spread. And so it was just fat that I liked. It wasn’t necessarily burnt bread. VirginiaBut the combination is particularly delicious. DanaIt is delicious. Yeah. So it’s still a comfort food to this day.But my more contemporary Butter is that I have just started playing my flute again. Recently, I played in middle school and high school and set it aside because it wasn’t, you know, it was just like a school thing that I did and didn’t continue with the hobby. And I have been in this habit of like, as a freelancer and an entrepreneur and trying to build a career of everything that I pick up and put time into has had to be focused on how am I going to monetize this or how am I going to use it for self improvement or whatever. And I just got a really cheap flute and have finally moved into a house where I don’t share walls with neighbors. So I started playing it this week and it’s just really nice to enjoy that activity strictly for just the way it makes me feel. And I don’t have any goals. I don’t expect to ever get good or play with a band in town or perform for people or anything. It’s just for me. And I haven’t had something like that in a really long time. So that’s been making me really happy lately.VirginiaThat is amazing. What a great hobby to bring back into your life without any of the external pressures or expectations. That’s really wonderful.My Butter this week is just a sort of fun, summer indulgent thing that I thought would be fun to share with folks. We just got back from a family reunion in Lake Michigan, which shout out Lake Michigan. I had never been. It’s amazing. East Coast girl, a little bit of a snob about lakes, I grew up by the ocean. Lake Michigan is beautiful. DanaYeah, that one will convert you. I’m in Wisconsin.VirginiaYeah, it’s better than the ocean. You get it. You understand the evolution I needed to have. Yeah, and so I mean, it’s great because there’s no sharks, but it’s like still big and amazing. Anyway, so part of my butter is just go to Lake Michigan.But then while we were there, one of my cousins who lives locally and they go all the time, she rented this thing called a Maui mat, which is like a giant floating raft that you can put in the water and you can have like 20 people hanging out on it. And I had never done this before. It’s amazing. I think she said it was $75 a day and we had it over the weekend. So obviously it’s an expense but definitely the joy it brought this whole extended family and the way it created this gathering space in the water for us was very well worth robbing your retirement fund for or whatever you need to do. I don’t know if you could use them in the ocean. You totally could I guess. I had just never encountered the magic of it before. The kids are obsessed. My older daughter was literally on it for about six hours just jumping off. It’s like, you know, it moves. So when you walk around, it’s really fun. Highly recommend.DanaThey’re very magical. It must be a very Midwestern thing. Maybe it’s a big lake thing, I think, because lakes don’t have waves and everything, so it can kind of chill on top of the water. VirginiaIt was just this delightful experience. So anyone lake-bound in any way, look into whether you can hop on one or find a friend who has one because they seem great. Well, Dana, thank you so much. This was an awesome conversation. Please tell us where we can follow your work and learn more about what you’re doing and how we can support you.DanaYeah, thank you again. You can find anything about Healthy Rich at healthyrich.co That’s just kind of the hub for the platform. You can follow our work on basically any platform that you prefer. So all of our social media is there. The blog, listen to the Healthy Rich podcast and sign up for the email list, all at healthyrich.co. And I also have a Substack if you’re interested in following my personal journey a little bit more at notesnewsletter.substack.com. I talk about my journey from freelance writer to founder as I’m building this company.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you again for being here.DanaThank you so much for having me.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.1Not linking, just like I don’t link to diet sites but if you somehow haven’t heard of YNAB, google away!2Post-publication, my mother reminded me our family’s financial story is much more complicated than this. It’s not all my story to share, but suffice to say: My teenage years were upper middle class; my early childhood and elementary school years were decidedly not. (We nevertheless benefited from white privilege, education privilege and other forms of cultural capital.)

Today, Virginia is chatting with Julia Turshen. Julia is a New York Times best-selling cookbook author. Her latest book is Simply Julia, she writes a fantastic newsletter, and she’s the host and producer of the podcast, Keep Calm and Cook On. Julia lives in the Hudson Valley, with her spouse Grace and their pets. And she teaches live cooking classes every Sunday afternoon. Follow her on Instagram: @Turshen.If you'd like to support the show, 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 me to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices in this space.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSVirginia and Julia talk about a presentation that Julia recently gave at the Culinary Institute of America about fatphobia and diet culture in the food industry.Julia's Butter is the Body Liberation Hiking Club. Find them on Instagram and Facebook. Virginia's Butter is cutting up the cheese before you serve it, the way Julia taught her. 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 56 TranscriptVirginiaI am a huge fan of your work. I know my listeners are a huge fan of yours. Today, I wanted you to come on specifically to talk about this talk you just did at the Culinary Institute. Because when I saw you post about it on Instagram, I just thought yes. There are so many dots that need to be connected between fatphobia and the food industry. So for starters, I would just love to hear you know, how did this come about? Were they open to having this conversation?JuliaGreat question. This conversation was so meaningful and the origins of it are a little bit funny, which is I heard from a professor at the Culinary Institute in like January 2020 asking if I would come speak to the students as part of a speaker series. We set a date for spring 2020. Obviously, that didn’t happen and I kind of forgot about it.And then a few months ago, I heard from her again, re-inviting me to campus. It was a very surreal email chain to look through. Our last emails were just like, “good luck,” like, “hold on tight.” And so when she re-invited me, I realized that there was an opportunity to speak to this group of students who are all—for the most part, not exclusively—really young. A lot of them are just out of high school and I thought this would be a really great opportunity to do what you said, to connect some of the dots between fatphobia and the food industry. Because I think it’s incredibly prevalent, in a very interesting and very kind of sticky way in the food industry.My own life has changed a lot in the few years and a big part of that is just rejecting diet culture. And taking accountability for how I participated in it, realizing just how much I struggled in it, which is sort of clearer to see when you’re a little bit more out of it. So I thought this was the thing that felt most important to me right now. And if I was going to accept this very kind invitation, I wanted to talk about the thing that felt most important to me and the thing that I thought could potentially be really helpful for the students.So the original topic, which we talked about years ago was like a broader topic, like how food can help build community, which it absolutely can. That’s super important. I’m happy to talk about that. But this just felt a little bit more pressing to me right now. So I replied to their email and basically said what I just said to you. And honestly, there was no pushback. She was like, “We haven’t had anyone talk about this and we would welcome it.” And for that, I’m really grateful. I felt a little bit surprised. I was sort of ready to make my argument for why this was important, but I didn’t have to, which was awesome. VirginiaI do often find—and I’m sure you’re experiencing this as well—once you bring up this topic, there’s often a little bit of a sigh of relief. Where other people are like, “Yes. Can we talk about that?” You’re naming something that they’ve already been thinking about.JuliaI think so. I mean, I don’t know the inner workings of the CIA—meaning the Culinary Institute. I definitely don’t know the inner workings of the other CIA! But there were two professors I was in touch with who I will just name because they were great to work with: Dr. Willa Zhen and Dr. Anne Henry. I don’t know the CIA very well, but it strikes me as a pretty conservative institution. So I was ready to defend what I think was a pretty critical talk. But yeah, no one asked to see any notes or anything and I just figured if they’re not asking, I’m not gonna volunteer it and so yeah, that’s how that went.VirginiaIn the talk, you articulate something that I have certainly noticed anecdotally for years. It’s this thing where people who work in food and/or are obsessed with food more recreationally, are often also struggling with food. So let’s break that down.JuliaFor me personally, I had what I thought was a weird relationship to food for my entire life. It’s what I now understand to be a decades long eating disorder. I didn’t quite have the vocabulary to express that at the time. And that developed for a number of reasons. A few include the water we all swim in, just the diet culture we all live in, a lot to do with my upbringing, a lot to do with what was modeled by a lot of adults in my life. But it was very much reinforced by the fact that I have spent my whole professional life working in food, specifically cookbooks. I’ve made my career out of measuring food down to like the teaspoon. It’s about having the sense of control over food, like here’s how you make this thing. Here’s a recipe. I think a lot of what I was seeking in my life, as someone who’s lived with an eating disorder for a long time, was just control. And my career as a cookbook author offered that to me.I’ve been thinking so much about that, especially as I, for the first time in my adult life, have taken a step back from working on cookbooks. Just thinking about what that was all about. The more I do that, and the more I talk to other people, the more I see exactly what you’re saying. Just how prevalent this is, and how it shows up in so many ways. Because the food industry—that’s a huge umbrella term, there’s so many industries within it. There’s the restaurant industry, there’s the cookbook industry, there’s just food media at large, there’s farming, agriculture, all the things that go into food. And, you know, eating disorders, disordered eating, fatphobia, anti-fat bias, this stuff is everywhere and it definitely shows up for people who work in food. Because I think when you work in food, it gives you this very socially acceptable place to put your obsession. Like when I made it my career, the more I obsessed, the more I succeeded, the more I was rewarded and validated, which is really confusing, and really tricky, especially when so much of this just really like harmful stuff goes unspoken.I wouldn’t be able to be having the conversation I’m having with you if I didn’t talk to anyone about this stuff. I needed to open up to people about it and talk about it in order to get through it. So I think those conversations just don’t really happen. It’s this just unacknowledged thing. VirginiaIt’s making me think about lifestyle and food media, where there’s so much pressure to execute these really sort of perfectionistic images of what meals are supposed to be. Of course, just that the pressure to do that is going to feed into the eating disorder, but then also the sort of praise and the success you get from doing that.JuliaWhether it’s lifestyle magazines, cookbooks, or social media—so many people consume this media, but it’s not held to the same kind of journalistic standards or rigor as other types of media. Especially types of media that include things about people’s health and their bodies and the things that we put into our bodies. All of this information is shared in this anything kind of goes way. I enjoy the freedom of expression, but I think there’s also something pretty like dangerous about that. The stuff doesn’t get fact checked. I’m not just talking about someone’s Instagram posts, like big national publications will often publish things that are false. Because things about food, things about “lifestyle” are seen as like not really counting. They’re not serious, they’re not real. So a lot gets just kind of slipped in and ends up really hurting people. Talking about like, “oh, eat this thing because it’s better for you.” It’s like, better for who? What does that mean?VirginiaYeah, better how? Certainly you see this in how recipes are tagged or marketed, you know, like “sugar free” or “lower sugar,” these buzzwords that don’t have specific meanings and are just resting on a premise that nobody’s questioning, that, obviously, you should only eat in order to pursue or maintain thinness, and thinness equals health.Did you feel, earlier on in your career or at various points in your career, like you had to participate in that? How did you navigate that? Especially prior to where you are now, doing all this hard work?JuliaI appreciate you asking because I think a big part of the work I’m doing now, both professionally and personally, is just holding myself accountable for work I’ve done in the past. So, I feel like the way you phrase that—did I feel like I had to do that?—I think that’s generous of you to phrase it that way, because I mean, I absolutely participated in diet culture and in putting it into food media. And I did that not because I felt like I had to, but because I don’t think I knew there was another choice. I was so in it that I just I didn’t know there was an alternative. So I wasn’t doing it in spite of knowing there were other options. It was all I knew.Again, it’s what I was raised in, it was what I was surrounded by. But I also take total responsibility for not questioning those systems. And I think a lot of that work, just to be quite frank, I think it caused harm, for myself included. So I think for me, the question is not so much did I feel like I had to do it? I think it’s more like, how did I realize there was another option?VirginiaRight, right. Well, you’re talking to someone who wrote diet stories for women’s media. We’re all trying to take accountability for previous harm. What was the turning point for you? When did you start to connect these dots?JuliaIt was a build up of many moments. And I would say, the biggest turning point that inspired all those small moments was meeting Grace, who I am now so happily married to. Grace and I fell in love nearly a decade ago and Grace was in a relationship with someone who hated her body. That was me. And I think that was really challenging. Grace has spoken about the following openly, so totally cool to share—but Grace has a history of having a pretty challenging eating disorder. I don’t know why I gave it that adjective—I think all eating disorders are challenging I can’t speak for Grace, but I think I came into Grace’s life as a positive thing, but also as a huge trigger. And that just sucked. And it was a lot for us to work through. Because again, I just didn’t see an alternative. And for a really, really long time, Grace just kept telling me that there was a version of my life that was possible, where I didn’t hate my body. It just took me a while to actually believe that. And then to work towards that. I would say that was like my biggest turning point.The rest has been a lot of small moments. Some of which include, honestly, just feeling really tired. Having any type of eating disorder, it’s exhausting to try and just have that much control over something you ultimately don’t have that much control over. It was exhausting for me to spend that much mental and physical energy trying to change the size of my body. I got to a point where honestly I was just really sleepy and just wanted to be a bit more awake, I guess. I mean, there’s a million little details, but I think the biggest turning point was really Grace and just that encouragement, and also having that incredibly safe and supportive, just partner and home and kind of place to land because I think navigating this stuff is really hard. And I mean, it’s definitely one of the hardest things I’ve done. For me, a big thing is I get so angry and sad when I think about how much time I spent when I could have been doing so many other things, including taking a nap or creating something. I think about how much creative work is lost to all sorts of mental health struggles that aren’t supported, including eating disorders. It just makes me so sad. Like I think about how many songs we’ll never hear, that kind of thing.VirginiaI think about that, too. I think about books not getting written and all sorts of things. I also want to shout out the episode you did of your podcast a few months back with Grace, where you talked about all of this together. It is the most beautiful conversation. I think I cried three or four times listening to it. Obviously, the relationship you have is beautiful, but the compassion that they showed for you, the way that you were able to talk. It’s just a master class in communication with a partner, even above and beyond the topic. It was really special to hear because it gives you such a sense of what’s possible with recovery. I think for folks who are earlier in the recovery journey, you know, it can feel like, well, I’ll never get there, or what does that even look like? What would it even look like not to be active in my eating disorder? Because you haven’t done it and you can’t imagine that. And so, yeah, I loved that conversation. JuliaThank you. I appreciate that. It was really great to have that conversation and be able to share it.VirginiaI want to talk a little more about perfectionism and also urgency. These were two big themes in the talk you did for the Culinary Institute. And it’s also something we talked about quite a bit when I was on your podcast. I like how we’re doing this crossover appearance, like a 90s sitcom. This week the Buffy and Angel characters are in each other’s episodes! Anyway. But we talked about the intersection of diet culture, and workaholism. You had some specific examples in the talk about how these themes show up in the food world that I just thought would be really interesting to talk more about. JuliaI love talking about perfectionism because I definitely describe myself as a recovering perfectionist. I wouldn’t say I’m on the other side of it. It’s something I have to just keep working through. This also ties into your last question, kind of like the turning point moment. For me, understanding that diet culture comes under the umbrella of white supremacy and comes under the umbrella of patriarchy and capitalism, that has also been a really helpful turning point for me. Realizing that it’s a system. It’s not me, it’s not personal. It’s not that there’s something particularly wrong with me in any direction. It’s that my experiences are influenced by various systems. When you change who the bad guy is, it’s just a much more helpful way of seeing things. Understanding that my difficulty with my body image throughout my life, my struggles with an eating disorder—understanding that these things were symptoms of much bigger problems that aren’t so personal, helps me move my energy towards understanding that, as opposed to trying to change myself.So perfectionism comes under this to me. Perfectionism, I think is, one of the most annoying parts of white supremacy. It seeps in in all these different ways. And we see it in our personal lives. The social media example, like whether it’s a photograph of something you ate, or it’s a photograph of someone’s vacation or the car they’re driving, whatever it might be. This idea that there is more to strive for. This constant striving, striving, striving, and feeling like there’s only room for one person at the top. That scarcity mentality, that is perfectionism. Feeling like there’s a right way to do anything is perfectionism. I see perfectionism as a tool of white supremacy to kind of bolster itself. And it’s a definitely a big tool of fatphobia of anti-fat bias and of eating disorders. Eating disorders are such a clear example of perfectionism, like striving to have a certain weight, a certain body, a certain look, whatever it might be, and doing things to achieve that that are incredibly harmful.VirginiaYou had some interesting examples of perfectionism in the food industry. Julia I think anytime in like a food magazine or in a cookbook—again, I’m guilty of this—where you see anything labeled as “the best whatever.”Virginia“The Best Roast Chicken.”JuliaExactly. The idea that there’s a best way to roast a chicken. They’re in classes where they’re most likely being taught this is the best way to do this, this is the “right” way to do this, this is the proper way to do this. There are a lot of ways to cook a chicken. A lot of them are really good. I think it’s helpful to think about that. There are people all over the world putting a chicken or any thing they’re going to eat into a hot oven, pulling it out a little bit later. And they’re gonna have a good meal. It just doesn’t have to be this complicated. VirginiaOften “best” is equal to hardest to execute, right? Like, this has the most steps, or it has the most components from scratch.Julia This idea that everything has to be made from scratch or be homemade to be better, to be best. I think we see it in the restaurant industry, just in the way many professional kitchens are structured. I feel like a lot of us have been watching The Bear, and just that brigade system that’s in place. There’s one person at the top. It’s a hierarchical system. Perfectionism comes in everywhere, you know? There’s a perfect way to make that sandwich. There’s a perfect way to make those donuts. All of that is really seductive. You feel like you have a purpose when you’re striving for perfection. And in a world that can feel really challenging, it’s really seductive to feel like there’s a purpose there. But I think when we make our purpose perfectionism, we’re just forever disappointed. And that just sucks.VirginiaThis is such a hard concept for me also, as a recovering perfectionist. Because a part of me, even as you’re talking, is saying, but shouldn’t we want to work hard? I don’t even know what voice that is. Is it my dad? Saying like, but shouldn’t we want to do the best we can at these things? And is that so wrong? But I’m also aware, there’s this cost that comes with it.JuliaI think it’s such a “yes, and…” I enjoy working hard. I enjoy challenging myself, whether it’s physically or mentally. I do a lot of writing. I also have had experiences farming. I think working really hard can feel really good. I think, at least for me personally, it can make me really happy. It’s just understanding what’s the goal of that? What am I trying to get out of that? What am I trying to prove with that? Asking myself these types of questions is really helpful. And again, just following those thoughts to understand where they’re coming from helps me see those systems. Like in your question about perfectionism in the restaurant industry, I think another just great example that many people can identify with just as customers is how, at least in American restaurants, how tipping continues to be the norm. VirginiaGreat example. Julia Understanding that the American restaurant system is rooted in slavery. It’s rooted in unpaid labor. It’s rooted in people not making any money for the work they’re doing. So tipping comes in, in this way that’s actually incredibly terrible. I’m not an expert on this by any means, but I feel like laws are bent to allow people to work incredibly hard and not even make minimum wage because they’re entitled to tips, which is just this totally unstable way of living.It also causes all sorts of tension within communities that work together. Not everyone in the restaurant is necessarily entitled to those same tips. It allows the customer to have this power dynamic that is also just, just terrible. And the way people treat people who work in restaurants can be just so awful. And you know, you’re holding 20 percent, often less, above people in this way that is just really mean and doesn’t really serve anyone.Virginia Yeah, it trains us to think that we’re allowed to grade people’s performance. Even people who I think of being super liberal, I’ll be surprised when I go to dinner with them, how harsh they are if the service isn’t absolutely impeccable. They’ll say things like, “well, they lost their tip.” Do you not realize that you’re being so Marie Antoinette? It’s this weird class power thing that you are deciding whether someone’s worthy. It’s creepy. JuliaIt’s archaic. VirginiaYeah. Bottom line: if you go to restaurants, you need to tip until we actually pay restaurant workers a fair wage. You just have to tip well, I don’t care how bad the service was. It’s the cost of being there.JuliaThat’s their salary. VirginiaIt’s completely wild.I’m also thinking how all of this perfectionism and urgency stuff gets in the way of enjoying food for those of us who are just home cooks. Like, this just makes me think about all the pressure I’ve put on myself over the years for dinner parties to be executed in a certain way, or even just regular dinner with my family to be executed in a certain way. And how much letting go of that is important. And understanding when it’s like, oh, it’s a Sunday, and I have time to mess around with the soup recipe and that seems like a fun way to spend the afternoon, even if it becomes labor intensive, versus I am holding myself to some artificial standard about what what our food needs to look like on a daily basis.JuliaI think one of the ways that is really harmful to all of us is that it makes it harder to actually connect with the people you’re eating with and to enjoy the company you’ve had in your home. Or, for you, if it’s just with your kids, your husband, whatever it is. Because I think when we’re holding ourselves to these standards, where we have this idea of perfectionism and urgency in our home cooking, when we’re reaching for a standard that is just impossible, and then we’re thinking about all these ways we could have done it better or things will change next time. Every time someone apologizes for not getting it perfect, you are just creating more and more disconnection. It’s another chance to just feel isolated, which again, to me is just a tool of these horrific systems.Okay, my dogs are going crazy.VirginiaThey’re just joining you.Julia They hate perfectionism.VirginiaThey want everyone to tip. It’s totally fine.JuliaI imagine there’s probably a package being left on our door. Also I’m like a floor away and the door is closed.VirginiaThey’re just so good at making themselves heard! There’s a lesson there. They’re unafraid to take up space.I also was curious to talk a little bit about what changes you could see being made in the food industry, whether that’s restaurants or grocery stores or food media, like cookbooks? Since I know that’s sort of where more of where you’ve spent your time, what would it look like if we made these spaces fat positive and anti-diet? What would happen?JuliaI have a few ideas. I’m curious, too, what you think. But I think in terms of anything that has writing on it, so cookbooks, but also restaurant menus, advertisements for all these things. I think just being aware of our language, because language has a really powerful effect on culture. So just being mindful of the words we use to describe food. When we describe any type of food as like “junk,” or “garbage,” or on the flip side of that, but equally, in my opinion, terrible, when we describe food as “clean,” or any of that kind of stuff. When we’re adding these types of moralizing adjectives to what people are eating, I think it would be great if we could stop doing that. There’s a lot of ways, honestly, a lot of very easy ways to change stuff. Just changing that word would make a really big difference or just leaving the word out. I think also pseudo medical terms that don’t really mean anything. For example: Detox, that kind of thing. I think getting rid of that would be awesome. And I think physical spaces where food is either like purchased or consumed—and again, I’m not an expert on this. A lot of people are paying more attention to this than I do. But in my observer opinion, I think a lot of decisions are made that makes spaces, physical spaces, incredibly fatphobic. And I think those decisions are made, really from a place of just capitalism. I don’t know that they’re made out of just hatred for fat people. But I think the effect they have on people—and not just fat people, but also people with physical disabilities—is just really, really harmful. Things like squeezing as many tables and chairs into a restaurant as possible. Like, I get it. You’re trying to get as many customers as possible. But you’re making this space just so incredibly inaccessible.A lot of the issues that come up in grocery stores have to do, again, with with words and language and marketing, and how food is advertised. And where things are displayed. And, if I could just wave my magic wand, I would also be able to change the prices on things and make things more affordable, but also be able to pay the people who produce the food in the first place a lot better and all that. It’s just a huge, huge topic.VirginiaOne thing I think about a lot in grocery stores is how we’ve all heard that diet culture advice of “only shop the perimeter and avoid the aisles where all the processed food is.” I would just love someone to reorganize the grocery store and put the fresh fruit in the middle and the other stuff on the perimeter. The way we talk about eating has trained us to think of the grocery store as having good and bad aisles.JuliaEven in general like the way we think about things like processed food and frozen food, stuff that’s incredibly helpful for so many people for a variety of reasons. Just not demonizing any of these choices.VirginiaAnd recognizing they can play a really useful role in people’s lives. They can also just be delicious. I am so glad you did this talk at that place. I feel the way I feel whenever I hear someone doing this kind of thing in a med school, where I’m like, this is what we need. We need this next generation of food industry people, of doctors, of health care providers, thinking about this differently, like, you know, and starting to challenge this because that’s what hasn’t happened for so long. JuliaI can’t remember like the study off the top my head, but I remember learning in Aubrey Gordon’s book, there was something about with medical students. Like, there was some study that I think it was like a 15 minute talk about this, like the effect that had just to let people know about this, totally changed the way they view their patients and interact with them. And you think about how many hours medical school is, how many years. And so you think like, if someone takes 15 minutes to just break this down in a way that is understandable and maybe not judgmental, not moralizing, like the impact that can have. So yeah, I think we need to do this in every industry, because it happens everywhere.VirginiaIt really does. Journalism for sure needs this kind of anti-bias training. I see this all the time in science and health journalism, where again, the premise was not questioned. You went into the reporting on the study or the whatever with all these assumptions intact. And so of course, the headline you’re giving us is just reiterating fatphobia all over again. So I agree. We need it everywhere. And I am grateful that you are doing the work. I’m grateful to be doing the work with you.Julia  I mean, ditto. Totally Ditto. Butter for Your Burnt ToastJuliaI will just have to shout out the Body Liberation Hiking Club. It was formerly called the Plus Size Hikers of the Hudson Valley. Alexa, who’s wonderful, who runs the group, recently changed the name again to just make that umbrella a little bit bigger. I know that everyone listening to your podcast probably doesn’t necessarily live in the Hudson Valley, as both you and I do. So this is a local group. It’s awesome. You can find them on Instagram and Facebook. We go for hikes all the time, and it’s so non-judgmental, come as you are. We go slowly. It’s great. It’s changed my life.But I also wanted to mention it because even if you can’t come to this particular group—groups like this exist. And if you live somewhere where you can’t find that group, you can just start that group. You can just like put it up on social media or whatever, tell your book club, the PTA, I don’t know, wherever people find out about things. And I just really encourage people to do whatever version of that makes sense. I mean, being outside and hiking isn’t for everyone. But it’s available for anyone who wants and being with this group has been just one of the most positive additions to my life and has helped me in all the things we’re talking about today. So I just definitely have to shout them out.VirginiaI’m so here for this. My fall goal is to come on a hike. I follow and I’m always like, “Oh man, I missed another good hike.” Once I get these book revisions done, my fall goal is to come on one of these hikes because it just looks delightful. JuliaAnd no rush. No worries. It will be great whenever you join me. I always bring extra snacks, so if you forget yours, I have some.VirginiaThe odds of me forgetting to pack a snack are like… I mean, I was thinking of our conversations about unapologetic hunger. I don’t know if you saw that meme going around that was like, I don’t understand people who forget to eat, because I immediately forget my own name.JuliaThat’s just never happened to me. I don’t get it. VirginiaDan sent it to me because it was something like “I’m turning on family members.” And that’s what happens if we’re 30 minutes past dinner time. So yeah, I remember snacks. Always have extra snacks. It’s very important. I love that.And speaking of snacks, my Butter this week is the tip you gave me about when you have a party and you are serving a cheese plate. And you get sad because people don’t eat the cheese. And a lot of times it’s because of diet culture reasons that they don’t eat the cheese. But a practical way to make it easier is to cut up the cheese for the cheese plate. And I did this for a dinner party we had and then also for my book club last week, and people ate so much more cheese, Julia! I’m so happy.JuliaI’m so glad! I saw you posted something about that on Instagram. And it just made me smile. Just, just the biggest smile.VirginiaIt is such a good tip. JuliaIt’s simple, right? I believe in big systemic changes and love imagining that. And I also believe so much in the power of these tiny moments, like for example, cutting up the block of cheese instead of just waiting for someone to start because then everyone just enjoys it.VirginiaYeah. And it made me realize the reason I wasn’t doing it more often it was totally a perfectionist/diet culture thing of wanting the cheese plate to look like a magazine photo shoot. Like, there’s those very artistic cheese plates you see where they don’t cut up the cheese because it’s more—I don’t even know what the aesthetic is that I was striving for. But I was like, this is so dumb.JuliaSliced cheese can be beautiful. Crumbled cheese can be beautiful. VirginiaIt can absolutely be beautiful. There was no reason to not be cutting up the cheese other than I had some arbitrary aesthetic I was applying to my cheese platter that I have released myself from.Julia Yes, I’m so thrilled you’ve broken free of this. Life is what happens next to the Instagram picture.VirginiaIt really is. It was also this ripple effect, where I started thinking about a lot of the ways I let perfectionism and these sort of aesthetic goals get in the way of enjoying food experiences. I was like, oh, it’s okay, if I don’t have everything laid out the second people arrive. We could go down a lot of rabbit holes of where these rules about entertaining had started to take up space in my brain. Obviously then with COVID, there was a long period of no entertaining now that we’re doing more—all outdoors I should note—I’ve been realizing, like coming back to it. I can let go of the pieces of it that weren’t fun for me in the past because I was making it too hard.JuliaTotally. Friday night, my parents came to spend the night and—we all took COVID tests, I just want to be clear—I was making dinner. I usually in the past have always, whenever anyone comes to our house, I’ve always had everything ready when they come. It’s been way less than the past few years, but now that I’m sort of getting back into it with family and stuff, I didn’t have everything ready when they came. Like I knew what I was gonna make, but I was doing other stuff. And I was like, they’re coming here at four o’clock. Dinner doesn’t need to be ready at four o’clock. I mean we’re early birds, but, you know. So I was making dinner while they were here, which was actually really fun. And then I had stuff in the mixing bowls I had mixed it in, that kind of thing. And I made these ribs and I had them on the sheet pan. I brought them from the grill on. And then I took out all these serving platters. And I was about to decant everything. And then I was like, What are we doing? You don’t need to wash double the dishes, right? We don’t need to take a photograph of this to put anywhere. I’m just having dinner with my family. I just threw the sheet pan on the table. You know, the metal mixing bowl. And it was great. It was just like this kind of moment of like, why am I making more work? Why am I making more labor? Like, let’s just enjoy this food.VirginiaI have to say shout out to Dan, because he has been anti-serving bowls for all of our relationship. He will be feeling very seen by that. He’s always like, can’t you just put it out? And you know, there are times where I just can’t. I’m like, No, I’m sorry. I need it to be pretty and I’m gonna use serving bowls.JuliaWe can have both.VirginiaIt’s nice to recognize when this is not actually something you care about and you can just let it go.JuliaTotally.VirginiaJulia, thank you so much. I could talk to you for many more hours, but we should wrap up. Well, we’ll do it again some time. Just to remind folks where they can find you and support your work.JuliaSure. My Instagram handle is just my last name, @Turshen. My website is just my name, JuliaTurshen.com. That has everything about my cookbooks, my cooking classes I teach, which I do every Sunday. All that kind of stuff, my podcasts, everything is there.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much!

You're listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. Today I am chatting once again with the fantastic Mia O'Malley. Mia is content creator on Instagram and Tiktok (@MiaOMalley and @plussizebabywearing). Mia has been on the show before, so you’re probably already a big fan. I asked her back today because we needed to have a deep dive conversation about everything happening at Old Navy with plus size clothing.Episode 55 TranscriptVirginiaHi Mia. So we'll start by reminding listeners who you are and what you do.MiaI'm Mia O'Malley. I'm a content creator on Instagram. I have my account @MiaOMalley where I share a lot of resources for fat and plus sized people and some of my own style and life. And then I have an account called @plussizebabywearing on Instagram and I'm @plussizebabywearing on TikTok.VirginiaLast time, we had a pretty wide-ranging conversation where we talked about the intersection of fat activism and momfluencing, about finding a fat-friendly health care provider—all sorts of stuff. But this time, we have a very specific mission. When this news story broke, I was in the middle of writing my book, and I had no time to think about it, but you were on it. Your Instagram is this amazing resource. And I was like, Thank God, Mia will come on and explain to us what is happening with Old Navy and plus size clothing. I mean, it's a mess. How did this all start? MiaSo in August of 2021, old Navy launched what they called BODEQUALITY, and it was like, “the democracy of style.” They were going to offer sizes 0 to 30 and XS to 4x at the same price and then they would have it in 1200 stores. And they would be rolling out sizes 0 to 28 with no special plus size section. They also wanted us to know that there were going to be mannequins size 12 and 18. The CEO of Old Navy said, “It's not a one time campaign. It's a full transformation of our business and service to our customers, based on years of working closely with them to research their needs.” The marketing campaign included a TV commercial with Aidy Bryant from SNL and Shrill.VirginiaSo, none of this was subtle. This was a very full-throated, “We are here for plus sizes.”MiaWell, yes and no. The campaign was not subtle, but the campaign was also confusing. So many people did not even realize what BODEQUALITY meant.VirginiaWell, they made up that word. MiaAnd they made sure to include all diverse body types which, in general, is great. But it's part of a watered down body positivity, where we're not really getting to the heart of the matter and helping the people that are marginalized, that need to be helped and need to be lifted up. A lot of people did not recognize that this campaign meant that plus sizes were being carried in stores. It included people of “diverse body types,” it said “democracy of fashion.” But what does this really mean to someone? Does this mean that I can get my size in your store? It's not really clear. This is me editorializing, but I just think: We couldn't have a campaign that was just for fat people. We have to do it adjacent to thin people.VirginiaIt gives them this cover, because they're using this aspirational rhetoric, instead of saying explicitly, “We have screwed over fat customers.” MiaExactly. It just was not clear enough to the fat consumer that they were going to be able to access their clothes in store. It was muddled in the same way that body positivity gets muddled when we don't talk about the people that really should be centered in the movement. But as someone who has been critical of Old Navy in the past, even I wanted BODEQUALITY to work. We wanted it to be an example for other retailers and brands, that that this could be something they could do. Even though I had messages in my DMs talking about issues folks were seeing, I didn't really want to talk about it at first, because I wanted to see how far it would go. Well, less than a year later the Wall Street Journal reported that Old Navy would be pulling extended sizes from their stores. That article is a whole other thing that we can get into, too, because it's its own beast. VirginiaYeah, so that's what just happened, which blew this all up. It looked like they were blaming their sales dropping on the fact that they had added more plus sizes to the stores. That was the story out there, right?MiaYes, that's right. Suzanne Kapner—she wrote the article called “Old Navy Made Clothing Sizes for Everyone. It Backfired.” VirginiaI will say quickly, as a journalist, the headline is not Suzanne's fault. We never get to pick our headlines. However, the article itself is also problematic as you can now explain.MiaThere are a few issues with the article. Most specifically, it doesn't include comments from anyone in Old Navy corporate. They took quotes from other interviews that they had done, but Old Navy didn't comment on this article itself. So a lot of what they had was attributions to someone who worked in the store, a PR person, a city analyst—different things. They also have this quote from Diane Von Furstenberg, who spoke at the the Future of Everything Festival and they put that front and center. VirginiaSo all we really know is that Old Navy sales dropped, right? We don't really know why, or whether it is reasonable to blame that on plus sizes.MiaCorrect. First of all, they did not give this even a year to work. The CEO, Sonya Syngal, said on an earnings call that they “overestimated demand in stores” and they launched too broadly. They "over-planned larger sizes, with customer demand under-pacing supply. Someone else in Old Navy corporate said it was “a realigning of store inventory.” Which is not at all what the article says but sort of points to, they had an inventory problem. VirginiaWhich, it's been a pandemic! Everyone shifted to online shopping. They haven't yet gotten the customers back in the stores, period. Getting inventory right, regardless of sizing, is sort of a moving target right now. MiaWhat we're hearing from customers at Old Navy though, is they weren't even aware that plus sizes were in stores. That’s possibly because of the way that these stores are laid out. They took away or they didn't have a plus size section for a long time. But the plus size shopper is used to going to a specific section for their clothing. In this “democratizing of fashion,” Old Navy put everything together. And in some cases that made it harder for people to actually find their size. You had a lot of packed racks. You've had people struggling to find their sizes across the board. I'm also hearing that although Old Navy says that they went to great lengths to look at their fit when they did this inclusive sizing, that the fits are completely off for many, many items. So, Old Navy denim that people were used to buying for years, totally changed. People's sizes completely changed. Rockstar jeans, which they had been buying for over a decade, are now a completely different size. And in many cases, people were having to size up two or three sizes thinking that their body has changed in some drastic way, when really Old Navy sizing, completely changed in many items. VirginiaThat makes me wonder how inclusive they really intended to be. Because if I'm someone who normally wears a 1x and now I'm buying the 3x, the fact that you're stocking the 3x has not made your clothing any more accessible to bigger people, right? Like someone who wears a 3x in another store would need a 5x here and you're not carrying a 5x. Mia Correct. VirginiaI mean, we've seen this. Many companies do this. This is not a new tactic. But it is one of the most insidious tactics for brands, claiming size inclusivity but not actually executing it. Just changing the numbers on the clothes does not equal size inclusivity.MiaCorrect. And although Old Navy stated that they had had done digital avatars for 389 types of women, something is not clicking because across the board, you're hearing people coming back saying the size has totally changed. I don't even know what size I am. You know, the shorts are kind of all over the place. I was always fielding DMs from people and I'm certainly not the only creator who's been talking about this. I just want to point out MightyMurphinFashion on Tiktok has been covering this subject. She's very detail oriented and I highly recommend people go check her out if you want to hear more about the situation. But yeah, sizing has been all over the place. I have a highlight with people sharing their feedback on Old Navy sizing since the change. And every time I do talk about BODEQUALITY people are like, “Oh, I didn't even know.”VirginiaI want to talk more about this question of the plus size section, too. On the one hand, I think it's really stigmatizing to have plus size as its own little section. Often, it's not given as much square footage in stores. If you're in a department store, it can be like on a different floor. It has been a way to silo us and put us in like a little corner and have less attention given to plus fashion, which is ridiculous since the majority of people buying clothes are buying clothes from that section. But I'm understanding what you're saying, that for Old Navy to pull out the plus section and throw everything on the rack with everything else, especially without good communication around that decision, is perhaps even more frustrating. Especially because clothing stores always do that annoying thing of putting the smallest sizes in the front. So you always have to go reaching to the back of the rod to find that. I can definitely see how that is maddening. Do you want to see brands doing better plus size sections? Or do you want to see no more barriers between the sizes?MiaI mean, I would like to see no more barriers between the sizes. But I think when you are launching such a transformative campaign that wants to change the way people shop and you have a consumer that has been basically trained that they only have their sizes online, you have to do something to make sure that those clothes are super accessible for them. And again, the same issue with the marketing of the campaign, put those sizes as front and center as possible to raise awareness with that consumer that they could get used to and they can get comfortable shopping for their sizes in stores.VirginiaThats a great point. They didn't really spend any time on the emotional piece of this and the trauma that a lot of people have about trying to shop in stores. So if you're used to not even thinking of the store as a place you go, or you only go in to buy swimsuit for your kid, they needed to actually welcome in fat folks and say, “We are excited you're here. This is no longer place where you’re going to be  be discriminated against.”MiaIt's not only an awareness thing, but it's also just a practical marketing thing that we need. They needed to see their clothes front and center. And while I think overall, we should have all of our sizes together and be able to shop together, I think there needs to be a transition process when you are raising awareness with the consumer and that consumer is learning new habits, and saying “I can get comfortable in the store.” We've seen it happen with other retailers, where there's just not enough done to make sure that that consumer knows that this is a new habit. And a lot of times, the plus size consumer does not want to go in a store and ask those questions and be turned away, because we've all been through it.VirginiaIt feels miserable. MiaOld Navy introduced plus sizes in 2004. They had them in stores for a bit. They pulled them out in 2007. Then they launched this campaign in 2018. Called “Size Yes” and that went in a bunch of stores. They pulled them out again. So now they're coming back with BODEQUALITY and then they're pulling out of what they say is 75 stores.VirginiaYeah, it's feeling a lot like a bad relationship. It's not a great cycle we're in with that brand. But as you're pointing out, it's not just Old Navy. Should we talk a little more broadly about other companies that have sort of done similar things?MiaThe one example that garnered a lot of attention, and also was really sad, was Loft pulled plus sizes in 2018. And they had no announcement. Someone on Twitter just @’ed them and was like, “Hey, are you pulling plus sizes?” And they're like, “yeah, basically.”Again, I don't think that Loft did enough to work with fit models to get sizing right. They also didn't market it really. But a lot of people did rely on Loft for great plus size workwear and then that got pulled and just sort of vanished from stores and and online and and they completely discontinued it.It's also the way they do it, without announcement. I think that was why that Wall Street Journal article got so much attention, too. They were going to try to, I imagine, go a little under the radar about pulling it from the stores. Then American Eagle did something similar. I believe this was in 2016, they rolled out a 00 to 24 for all their denim, they were going to carry all the sizes in stores. They had some signage in stores that “we've got your size,” but a campaign was needed to let consumers know who were used to shopping online for their size, that they would be able to go in store in and show those sales. And then not only did they pull them out of stores, but they just stopped making over a size 20. VirginiaI get why brands pull it quietly because they're hoping not to have the PR nightmare that inevitably results. But why do you think they don't communicate it better from the start? Why aren't they saying, “we are so happy to have fat customers? We are so happy to center you in the store?”MiaI think one, they're dealing with a consumer that they've never marketed to before. And they don't really have the tools to do that. They don't know what's going to speak to that consumer. It's also fatphobia, right? The brand doesn't want to center fat people as their customer. They have to put everybody together in order for it to be okay. Otherwise they’re associated with just plus sized clothing. That's like this whole other beast, right? It's not an intense fatphobia, but it's just this general marketing fatphobia, right? That we can't have just fat people on signage. We can't just talk about plus sizes. We have to bring everybody in because we don't want our brand to be just about plus sizes.VirginiaI think it speaks to how much we need thin allies speaking up, because I think they're doing this because they think their thin customers don't want to shop in the same place as the fat ladies. I remember talking to someone who's in that middle ground space (high end of straight sizes low end of plus sizes) and she was asking for advice on where to shop. I suggested a couple of brands like Eloquii or a couple of brands like that, that are primarily plus sizes, and she was so offended. She was like, “I don't need to shop in those kinds of stores. I haven't let myself go that much yet.” Which is overt fatphobia, but I think that psychology is something the fashion industry has taught us and it's something that consumers perpetuate. That feeds into these decisions on how they communicate stuff about sizing.MiaCan I share a little story about Madewell and Abercrombie and Fitch—a little comparison? So, Madewell, almost all of their styles of denim used to go to their size 37 and that was equivalent to let's say, about a woman's 24. And you could go and search their jeans, and put in your size, and you could shop that denim online. They didn't have extended sizes in stores, but you could go online and find almost any style of jean in plus size in there.Then they pulled the plus sizes off online without any announcement. So you would just go and not see it, right? Other influencers picked up on this, and people were talking about it. And they came out and apologized for not having announced this, but said they were going to be launching a specific plus size line that was going to be a better fit. Okay, so we waited. They came out with their plus sizes. And you know, some some styles are great, but the denim is really different. It's a totally different fit, not necessarily a great fit. There are some people that are happy with that. But there are some people that are not quite happy with it. I was personally not happy with it, and I used to buy Madewell denim all the time. And now you'll find one or two different styles that are plus size, many times they're sold out. So that's a situation where they actually tried to market it directly to the plus size consumer. But the fits are a little off, and you can see this on their reviews of their denim. But it's interesting that they're trying to do something good there. [Virginia’s Note: For more on why and how Madewell denim has gone wrong, see Jeans Science Part 3.]On the on the other side is Abercrombie. And I know a lot of fat people have a problem with Abercrombie because of terrible stuff in their past. But they now have every pair of denim up to a size 37. Again, not in stores! But it's a much easier shopping experience online than going to a separate section of an online retailer and looking for a particular style. I think most retailers just don't really know what to do. And none of them are doing it very well.VirginiaI'm glad to know Abercrombie is an option people can be aware of because it’s certainly a brand I had written off years ago due to extreme body toxicity.But it's good to know when your shopping options are so limited. I wrote a bit about the Madewell saga in my jeans science series last year that I'll link to because that used to be my go-to brand for years. As soon as I crossed over to a 34 it all changed. Nothing fit right. It was shocking to have experienced buying the same style of jeans for so long, and then to go one size up and find it was much worse. Lower quality, fell apart, everything was wrong with it. And it fit worse. It was really stark. So, it's a mess everywhere.How are you thinking about that fashion activism now? Have we learned anything from this Old Navy saga? Or is it just like, yep, we knew clothes are tough?Mia I didn't have a lot of brand trust with Old Navy. They also excluded plus from sales and promotions.VirginiaThat feels like it shouldn't be legal, but okay. MiaRight. So they are saying now that even when there's in-store sales, that the promotions will still apply to the extended sizes, even though you can't actually get them in some of their stores. It's very confusing. I continue to watch Old Navy and wait for them to do better, as they've made so much money off the plus size consumer for so many years. I'm old enough to remember that and so they've made a lot of money off of the fat consumer, and they should know better what we need, because they have all the data.So I think that fat activism and fashion means continuing to demand that stores extend their sizes, that they put us on the rack. And that they do better marketing and outreach to the plus sized consumer.VirginiaI’ll also make a plug for thin listeners: This is a topic we really need allyship on. They need to stop thinking they're gonna scare off their thin customers by supporting fat customers. So thin people can be asking brands for this, too. You can say this is informing your decision to support a brand or not. Because I think that is a huge hurdle we need to get the industry over. MiaIt's going to take years, but there's already been some shifts so we just need to keep pushing and keep being vocal about it and keep asking questions because the demand is there. The average size of the American woman is a size 16. So we need to keep being vocal about that. They need to keep extending the sizes.VirginiaOh, one brand I wanted to ask you about, just quickly—I feel like Target is doing a better job lately? I'm not hearing as much discussion of this, but I am exclusively shopping at Target these days, in the plus section.MiaI'm so glad you mentioned this because I just got information that Knox Rose and Universal Thread are now providing extended sizing in stores. So keep a lookout for that. I haven't seen anything official announced and it's certainly not in all Targets but yeah I'm looking forward to seeing more. I also have seen their plus size sections expand in multiple places whereas I saw them shrinking before. I see them expanding now, but I haven't seen anything official on that.VirginiaI think it's totally hit or miss store by store. So, it's a maybe to keep an eye on. I'm not giving any brands a standing ovation, but…MiaNo, no. I also don't want to put all of it on the plus size consumer—and I hope that I'm not making anybody feel like that. But if you do see brands introducing extended sizes, give it a try! Like, absolutely give it a try. We have to try other things in order to get them to keep those extended sizes.There are a lot of reasons why people don't want to try new things.  Financially, it's not always possible, especially when you don't have anywhere to try something on. But I would encourage those who are kind of curious when a brand rolls out extended sizes to check those out. We're not used to having so much variety, but if we don't shop the stuff, it's not going to stay.VirginiaIt's true.Well, I am so grateful that you are doing this. Mia’s Instagram stories are just a wealth of information, really intensive reporting and collecting of stories and data points. It's a ton of work. It's a ton of work that you're doing on this. It's really appreciated by the community. So I'm really glad to have you here to explain all of this to us.Butter for Your Burnt ToastMiaOkay, so I have never had very good luck with tinted SPF. Although I really like wearing a tinted mineral SPF. I find I'm 37 And my skin is textured. I have redness and discoloration, things like that. So I like a little tinted moisturizer, but it doesn't always look the best on me. And this primer, the silicone-free priming moisturizer from Good Molecules is $12 and it feels amazing on your face. To begin with, you just leave this on, let it dry, then apply the tinted SPF with a beauty blender. I think you'll see a much better application for that that tinted SPF and it'll it'll stay in place. It won't become an oil slick. I just can't recommend this enough. And it's $12!VirginiaI am going to recommend a fun summer beach read. My friend KJ Dell’Antonia has a new novel out. It's called In Her Boots. It is such a fun read. It's about a woman whose life has blown up in various ways. And she's coming back to her hometown to try to put it back together. There are many great side characters. If you like quirky, small town life type of novels, this is a really fun one.And KJ actually reached out to me last year when she was finishing up her edits, and asked me to do a sensitivity read on the manuscript because there is one character who is struggling with diet culture, and some disordered eating themes. And KJ has thin privilege. She was like, “This is not my world and I want to know if I'm getting this right or wrong.” She had done a beautiful job. I gave her a few notes, but you know, it was 90% there. And I love to see that from a very mainstream commercial fiction writer who's not deliberately saying this is a story about this issue, but just thinking “I've got this in the background, how am I handling it?” Just to know that someone took that care is lovely, I think.It's also a really fun book and she does feature an amazing pair of cowboy boots and KJ has gotten the real boots and has been wearing them on her book tour. So if you're a cowboy boots fan or fun beach read fan check out In Her Boots by KJ Dell’Antonia.Well, thank you again, Mia! Remind listeners where they can find you and support your work because this is a ton of labor you are doing to research all of this for us.MiaThank you and it's a lot of labor of my audience who I crowdsource from. So come and join the conversation @MiaO'Malley on Instagram and we we share a lot of things and I do my best to give everybody all the info and they can make their own choices.VirginiaI mean, you were just covering pool floats for bigger bodies. You really run the gamut.

I think it's important for people to recognize that no matter how fascinated you might be by a Black person’s hair, we are not an exhibit or curiosity.You're listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.Today I am speaking with anti-racism activist, writer, and educator Sharon Hurley Hall. Sharon is firmly committed to doing her part to eliminate racism as the founder and curator in chief of Sharon's Anti-Racism Newsletter, one of my favorite Substacks. Sharon writes about existing while Black in majority white spaces and amplifies the voices of other anti-racism activists. Sharon is also the head of anti-racism and a special advisor for the Diverse Leaders Group. I asked Sharon to come on the podcast to talk about a piece she wrote on the newsletter a few weeks ago about the CROWN act, Black hair, and the ways in which white people perpetrate racism against Black people for their hair. We also get into how to talk about hair and skin color differences with your kids, which I found super, super helpful and I think you will, too. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! It’s free and a great way to help more folks find the show.And! It’s time to decide what we should read for the next Burnt Toast Book Club! I’ve culled through all of your suggestions and narrowed it down to these five (mostly because the Substack poll-maker limits me to five choices). I was going to stick with fiction because it’s summer and I’m in beach read mode, but I made an exception for Angela Garbes because, it’s Angela Garbes. (Which is to say, if we don’t pick her for August, we’ll do it for September or October!) You have until the end of this week to vote. I’ll announce the pick on Tuesday. (The discussion thread will go live Wednesday, August 31 at 12pm Eastern!) Episode 54 TranscriptVirginiaHi Sharon! Why don't we start by having you tell my listeners a little more about yourself and your work?SharonOkay, so I am an anti-racism writer and educator, a former journalist, and I have been writing about anti-racism-related stuff for longer than it appears. I actually wrote my first article in 2016, but I wasn't doing it consistently. I launched an anti-racism newsletter in 2020. So it's just been going for just about two years now. In it, I share my perspectives as a global citizen. I was born in England, I grew up in the Caribbean, I lived in England as an adult. I visited the US. I lived in France. I've been in a lot of places, and I've experienced racism everywhere. And so I bring that lens to what I write about. You know, quite often we think what we're experiencing is the only way it's being experienced or is unique to the location that we're in. And my experience is that there's a lot of commonality in how these things operate in different places. VirginiaOh, that's so interesting. I have British and American citizenship, but I've lived my whole life in America. And I definitely tend to think of racism as this very American issue. But as you're saying that, I'm realizing how incredibly reductive that is. Although Americans certainly are a big part of the problem. SharonYes, but—or yes and, I suppose. Let's not forget that all of this started with the British people—well, British and Europeans—who colonized everywhere.VirginiaSure did. Yup. Absolutely. SharonThere are many places besides the USA that share this history of enslavement. Barbados and the Caribbean being among those places. So there are similarities, there are commonalities, I think. It operates in a particularly American way, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in other places. Because it does. It's sometimes less visible. And of course, because so many other places don't have a gun culture, you're less likely to end up dead as a Black person, even if people are being racist towards you. VirginiaYes. We add that extra layer of things. Well, I am having you here today to talk about a piece of American legislation because you wrote a really excellent piece for your newsletter. I want everyone to subscribe to your newsletter and to be supporting your work. Often you're putting things on my radar that I have missed and I just really appreciate the education that you do. This was a piece you wrote recently on the CROWN Act, which I have to admit I wasn't even aware of as something that was happening. So for starters, for folks who aren't who aren't familiar with this, can you tell us a little bit about what the CROWN act is and what inspired it? SharonThe CROWN Act stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural hair. I believe it was (first) sponsored by State Senator Holly Mitchell from California. And then other states have since passed similar laws. There is also a federal act, which was passed by the House earlier this year. The idea is that Black people should be able to wear their natural hair, and not have it be a problem. In all post-enslavement societies, in all post-colonial societies, in many white majority places, the way that our hair grows out of our head is a problem for people. It can be seen as not professional. There are all sorts of ancient ideas about what Black people's hair is and isn't, that play into the way that it is treated. It's not just about being able to wear your hair, the respect piece is important as well. Because you'd be surprised how often—I mean, I worked in England for 15 years and there were people that would come and say, “Ooh, your hair! Let me…” (For those listening, I am running my hands through my hair.) “Your hair,” you know, “It feels so different. Let me…” VirginiaLike it’s okay to touch you. SharonIt's okay to just touch my hair. So there has historically been this thing where Black people's natural hair, and all the various styles that we put our hair in, were not seen as worthy of respect, were not seen as professional, were not seen as acceptable. All of that comes out of that whole white supremacist ideology.VirginiaWhat I really appreciated in your piece is you explain why the ability to have legal redress for microaggressions is obviously really important, given this really problematic history that you've just sketched out for us. But you also wrote, “Why the hell do we need to legislate for Black people to enjoy autonomy over our hair?” So, talk a little more about that piece. SharonWhite supremacy has weaponized Black hair in many ways. It's been a matter of control that extended to using hair as evidence of the reasons why Black people deserve to be enslaved, because our hair was seen as like wool, animal-like, somehow bestial, somehow not right. You could think of the Tignon Laws, which I think were in Louisiana, where Black women's hair was supposed to be covered. Because otherwise the white guys would not be able to control themselves. There was this idea of overt sexuality, as well.VirginiaThat being your problem to control as opposed to… SharonYes, our problem that they needed to control. Black women and Black people being what they are, we've made lemonade out of lemons. That's why you get these fabulous headdresses and head ties and so on. They look absolutely wonderful. But you know, the the original idea was to control it, to cover it up, to hide anything that would make us look more human and more beautiful. Often in the past, women have been encouraged to cover themselves up so that they don't get assaulted. This is another facet of that. As I've said, I don't know any Black person who's worked in a white majority space, especially a woman, who has not had some white person in their office space, make free with their hair. And you know, I would not do the same if the situation were reversed. I want to add something here, which is that a lot of white people say, “Oh, I went to a country in Asia, and people were fascinated by my straight blonde hair.” And I say, that is not the same thing, because the history is different. The agency that you have historically had over your own body is different. Coming out of a culture where we have not had that agency, somebody putting their hands in our hair lands very differently. VirginiaYeah, absolutely. It's always going to be a different experience. But you're right, people do make that comparison. I would imagine also there's some comparisons to when you're pregnant and people feel like they can touch your stomach. And that is also very violating. But that's a finite experience. You're only going to be in that mode for nine months. I'm not saying it's okay that it happens, it shouldn't happen. But this is something Black people are being asked to navigate daily, without other people adjusting. SharonI just actually want to address that particular because: Imagine if you're a Black pregnant woman.VirginiaOh god, yes.SharonBecause I was a Black pregnant woman. So people would be putting their hands in my hair, but they'd also be touching my belly. That felt extremely violating. VirginiaYes, it is. I mean, it just is.SharonAnd in a way that I couldn't even fully articulate at the time as to why it bothered me so much. But I know now why it bothered me so much. VirginiaDo you mind sharing a little bit about how you do navigate those moments? SharonAt the time when it used to happen most often, I was not often in a position to navigate that safely. Because people would then regard me as being the problem, regard me as being the angry Black woman, regard me as making something out of nothing. Now I would be in a position to say something like, “Because of the history of enslavement, this does not feel good to me. This feels like a violation.” And I could say it as plainly as that. And I think if you said it like that people would would pause and think about it. I've not often had the chance to do that, but it's definitely something that I would do the next time it happens. And of course, you know, the other weapon is a glare. A glare, the right kind of glare. Sometimes you can see someone coming towards you and you just give them that look and they think better of it. It's the bomb look, the look that you give your kid when they're about to do something that's really problematic and you don't even want to have to talk about it and it stops them in their tracks. Sometimes you need to pull that look out.VirginiaYou need that look. I mean, and again, not to equate the experiences, but I did notice that getting touched while pregnant happened much less the second time. I think because I had learned that look a little. I think I was much clearer with the nope, you're not allowed in this space. I was wondering if we could also talk a bit about texturism, that’s a concept you hit on in that piece as well. How do white people perpetrate this, and also how does it play out within the Black community?SharonOkay, so I'm going to start with the second question first. This is another offshoot of enslavement, of that white supremacist ideal and ideology. The societies that we grew up in that say that “white is right” and that's what you aspire to. And it is true that in those times and even subsequently, if you had lighter skin, if you were closer to looking European, you had more opportunities open to you. One of the ways this revealed itself was in your hair. So you will hear people—I mean, I certainly did when I was growing up. I would hear older people talk about good hair, right? And good hair meant it had a little wave in it, it was closer to what they would think of as European hair. This happens in Black majority Caribbean countries, in Black communities all around the world, and in so many post-colonial spaces. What is also interesting is that many white people feel more comfortable with those people that they see as having more proximity to them, than the people that are darker skinned, that they see as having less proximity to them. I'm not sure they're always consciously aware of it, but I know that it does happen. For example, you can look at things like casting in films and TV series, and who gets what kind of roles. Where are the darker skinned people? What kind of roles do they get? What do the lighter skinned people with the wavy hair get? Who are the people that are representing Black people in the ads? Who are the models? I mean, it's not 100 percent that way, but if you were to look at it, you would see that there's definitely this idea that having that wavy hair texture, and that lighter skin can buy you some additional visibility and acceptability. So, it plays out in what hair is deemed acceptable and professional within the Black community and beyond the Black community. VirginiaI'm thinking, as you mentioned casting, how even when a very dark-skinned Black person is cast in a role, it's then the subject of, “look at how we're breaking ground, look at what a big deal this is.” It has to be this huge conversation because it's so rare. So the assumptions prove the rule here, because you're still in a place where that's news, when that shouldn't be news. I'm hoping we can also talk a little bit about how to navigate this conversation with our kids, because I do think hair—and of course skin color, as well—is often one of those physical differences that little kids—I'm thinking like three, five, seven year olds—will notice and point out about people when they meet them. And often white parents have this instinct to rush in with, “That's not nice, don't say anything.” And, maybe they're speaking in terms of “don't comment on that person's body, because that's rude.” But it also reinforces to white kids, that there's something wrong with Black hair, that this is something we can't talk about, that this is off limits in some way. SharonI remember when I was living in France and I was driving somewhere with a white friend and her kid who was maybe three or four at the time. He was fascinated by the fact that my skin was a different color. So he asked if I'd stayed out in the sun too long. And his mother was absolutely mortified. And I laughed, because, you know, he was three or four, he wasn't coming at it from a hurtful point of view. And I explained that people had different skin color. That's just how we are. I often think when you're dealing with these things, going with the factual is the way to go. A recognition that the differences exist, but no suggestion that they mean something positive or negative in terms of how we interact with those people, you know? You have to, at the same time, avoid suggesting that there's something negative about having darker skin or Black skin, but also avoid suggesting that there's something particularly positive about having white skin. You have to do both things. Because kids are going to notice, kids are going to see it. I think for young, very young kids, that kind of thing doesn't matter to them. We have to not shy away from the fact that there are aspects of society that are going to see these things as major differences and treat people differently. But we can also teach them that this is not something that they themselves have to do or perpetuate. VirginiaSo in that moment, what would you have wished your friend had said to her kid? It sounds like you handled it beautifully, but it shouldn't be your job to handle it. What do you want white parents to be doing?SharonDefinitely not to come down on the kid like a ton of bricks, suggesting that they've done something wrong in even asking the question. Possibly reframing the question. Parents have to educate themselves so that when they get these questions, they have the answers. Because I don't know that that particular parent would have even known what to say or how to explain it. VirginiaI think often, the reason we panic is because we are having our own stuff called out, we're suddenly realizing, Oh, I don't have the right language for this. And that's on me. I should have done that work. SharonIf you're going to raise anti-racist kids, you have to be an anti-racist parent. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to make mistakes. It means that you recognize that this is the route that we have to travel for all our humanity. And for equality and equity for all.VirginiaAnother way I get asked this question often is how to respond if your three year old says, “Why is that lady so fat?” You know, comments on body size, and I always go with something like, “Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes—”Sharon—And colors!VirginiaAnd colors! Hair comes in all different colors and styles and, you know, hair comes in different textures. You can just normalize that without getting into some intense thing about it. SharonEspecially for young kids. You have different conversations with your kids about things like this at different ages. If your kid is three, you don't necessarily have to give them the whole history of colonialism, you know? If your kid is 12, that might be different. VirginiaYou should be doing that, absolutely. SharonExactly. Because we we teach our kids at a very young age about stranger danger and unwanted touching. And it's a good time to say that that also extends to touching people's skin and hair when they have not asked for it. I think that is something that would fit very nicely with that lesson, right? VirginiaYeah, to just say, “No one can touch your body without permission. You don't touch other people's bodies without permission.”SharonExactly. VirginiaAnd fortunately, young children will give you plenty of opportunities to reinforce that.Sharon Because they're curious. They're always, you know, sticking their hands in things. VirginiaBlack hair is obviously such a huge topic. What haven't I asked you that you think is really important for us to be thinking about? SharonI think it's important for people to recognize that no matter how fascinated you might be by a Black person’s hair, we are not an exhibit or curiosity. Just don't touch the hair. You know, just don't touch the hair. Some people are so traumatized by it, even if you asked to touch the hair, they'd still be upset. We're coming out of a history where Black people for centuries had no agency. Where in some countries, we were put on display. And those very features that you now want to treat as a curiosity were the things that were displayed. So, it's not just about it being wrong in this moment, it's all the generational trauma that is awakened by that. So it's really best avoided. Google is available, if you want to find out more. If you have a real Black friend—and I'm not talking about somebody you work with that you don't even sit with at lunchtime. I'm talking about somebody that's actually in your life—then maybe you can have those more in depth conversations with that person. But if we're talking about your colleagues and casual acquaintances, for best results, just keep your hands out of their hair. I was just going to add that from the point of view of your workplace, what you can do is you can look at what your policies say and make sure that they are equitable in terms of what's seen as professional. Do your bit to change things where you are. VirginiaThat's a great idea. And I just wanted to share your rage for a moment that it is 2022 and we are having to say don't touch people's hair. And we are having to pass laws to protect people from this. I mean, it is astounding to me that body autonomy is not more of a—well, I live in the United States where they're taking bodily autonomy away in so many different ways right now. SharonYou know, if you think about how the country started, it started by taking stuff away from the people that were here. It started by taking autonomy away from the Black people they brought in. It started in a time when women didn't have very many rights at all. Yeah, and all of this was still the case at the point when the country became the country.VirginiaRight. SharonSo maybe it's time to rethink what the country is and should be and could be, instead of going back to what was the norm in 1776.Virginia Which protected only one type of person. SharonI mean, exactly, exactly. It's the 21st century, we should be beyond that. VirginiaDefinitely. Well, I so appreciate you giving us this education, taking the time to talk through this issue more. I think it's one that all of us can be doing better on. And encouraging us to think about how it's playing out in our workplaces, and our kids’ schools, all of that. Butter for Your Burnt ToastVirginiaWe wrap up every podcast with my butter for your burnt toast segment. This is where we give a fun recommendation of something we are loving or learning from right now. So Sharon, what's your butter?SharonWell, the funny thing about it, it's a little bit of a self promotion, in a way, because I've just started a new gig at Diverse Leaders Group, a brand new startup as the head of anti-racism. Our aim is to identify development support leaders at all levels. That's anyone wanting to lead the way to equality in their own lives and for their communities. We're starting with anti-racist leaders. So I'm pumped about developing community support and educational resources to help people really live anti-racism and create a more equal world for everybody. VirginiaThat's fantastic. My recommendation, related to our conversation about Black hair, is a kid's book that my both my daughters have really loved over the years called Don't Touch My Hair by Sharee Miller. It is a great story of a Black girl who has amazing hair and everybody when she walks down the street wants to touch it, and she doesn't like it. She uses her voice to tell people to stop and they have to listen. We talked about how with your three year old, you're not gonna explain all of colonialism, but you can start to talk to your three and four year old about how Black kids have to deal with this and your straight hair doesn't attract the same attention. So that was a conversation I wanted to be having with them. But they also relate so deeply to this experience of a kid getting unwanted attention, and how do you sort of say your body is yours, and so there's certainly a universal theme, as well as it being a great way to have this conversation and help kids understand this issue. So I wanted to recommend that. Sharon, tell everyone the name of your newsletter and anything else you want us to be following?. How can we support you? SharonMy newsletter is Sharon's Anti Racism Newsletter. You can support me by taking a paid subscription because one day I would like to run the newsletter full time. And you could also join the Anti-Racist Leaders Association, which I mentioned earlier and take the lead in fighting racism wherever you are. VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much for being here. I really loved this conversation. SharonThank you, Virginia. I enjoyed it, too. Thanks so much for inviting me.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast! If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism.