The Burnt Toast Podcast

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today my conversation is with Jamilah Lemieux.Jamilah is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and leading voice in digital feminism, known for shaping online conversations around race, gender, and relationship. She writes the Care and Feeding Parenting Advice column for Slate, and her work has appeared in outlets like the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post.Jamilah is also the author of the brand new book, Black. Single. Mother. Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging.I've been a fan of Jamilah from Slate's Care and Feeding Parenting Podcast, where she was a longtime co-host. Today we get into who gets to call themselves a single mom, the kind of social life co-parenting lets you have, the importance of friends, and we ask: Is dating (especially for single moms) a diet?Become a paid subscriber to comment, get episode transcripts, and hear Indulgence Gospel — our new bonus segment, running after every episode!Corinne hops on to debrief with me about my conversation with Jamilah. Indulgence Gospel segments are audio-only so don't miss out! You can listen right here (tap "play" above) or add us to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Another great way to support Burnt Toast is to MAKE SURE you are following us for free in your podcast player! And if you have two more seconds, please leave us a rating and/or review! Just scroll down wherever you're listening and tap the stars, five of them please, and leave a little note about why you love Burnt Toast. Both of these things really help new listeners find conversations like these!BUTTERJamilah: Old Wisconsin Yumbo honey brown sugar turkey sausage stick.Virginia: Kin by Tayari JonesEPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and today we're talking about PEPTIDES. This new diet trend is the cursed love child of the protein bros and the RFK stans, and it's supposed to make you thin, tan, and maybe horny. What could go wrong?!We're getting into:⭐️ What the heck is a peptide? Why would one stack them?⭐️ Clavicular, the 20-year-old looksmaxxer extraordinaire.⭐️ Why Bro Science is exhausting and deliberately hard to fact-check. ⭐️ Why are so many peptide fans... also anti-vax?We also have a new Indulgence Gospel for you, with a few unfiltered life updates plus a rundown of what we've been reading!To hear that bonus segment, read the transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.ButterVirginia: toe spreaders, Petra FisherCorinne: Instant Glow SerumEPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Emma Copley Eisenberg.Emma is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Housemates and the story collection Fat Swim. Her essays, literary criticism and reporting have appeared in The New Republic, Granta, and Esquire among others, and she writes the Substack newsletter Frump Feelings. She lives in Philadelphia.Emma joined me to chat about her new short story collection Fat Swim, fat characters in fiction, what thin authors get wrong, why we’re over Jonathan Franzen and so much more.And become a paid subscriber to get Indulgence Gospel — our new bonus segment, running after every episode!Corinne is going to hop on to debrief this interview with me. We're talking about fat kids in fiction, our Default Outfits and MORE! Paid subscribers all get commenting privileges and a full episode transcript. JOIN US HERE. Photo by Kenzi CrashEPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

In the original episode, we asked, "Is Mel Robbins a Diet?"Plot Twist (or is it?): Mel is now selling nutritional supplements. Protein shots, to be exact—so we decided to give them a try.Paid subscribers can listen or WATCH Corinne try Mel Robbins' Pure Genius protein shot and give us her honest review. 👀Free list: You won't want to miss this! Subscribe here. EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your April Just Toast episode!This is a special episode because we recorded in person! I traveled to New Mexico to see Corinne, have new Burnt Toast headshots taken and visit Meow Wolf with my kiddo and my boyfriend. It was a glorious trip and I'm excited to share some of the behind the scenes with you today.In this episode we're talking about: ⭐️ Why it's so hard to have your photo taken.⭐️ Thin friends not putting their fat friends on the grid.⭐️ The art of a good selfie.One audio note: our Airbnb in Santa Fe was an acoustical odyssey, so please bear with us on the sound quality. You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Sign up for just $5!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 241 TranscriptVirginiaWe're recording in person from an Airbnb in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If the audio is not perfect today, it's not Tommy's fault. It's that we're doing it in an adobe room and that creates some echoes.CorinneWe have covered the floors with soft things, but it's still very echo-y.VirginiaSo bear with us. This is only our second ever in person episode, so it's going to be a really fun one.This is a Just Toast episode. As we explained on our previous Extra Butter episode, we're no longer calling it the Indulgence Gospel, although we always will in my heart.We're trying to make it clear what kind of episode you're listening to. So if you are listening to this whole episode right now, you are a Just Toast subscriber, which means you are a regular paid subscriber tier. There's also our premium tier, Extra Butter, for a little more money where you can get behind every single paywall. Whichever tier you are, we're very happy you're here.CorinneWe're going to talk about something we did yesterday.VirginiaCorinne and I did something together for the first time.CorinneIf you're a longtime listener subscriber, you may have noticed that we have no photos together.VirginiaExcept one we took in a hot tub two years in Hot Springs.CorinneYesterday, while Virginia is here in New Mexico, we got some photos taken by a photographer named Molly Haley.VirginiaWho is an old friend of yours.CorinneWe went to middle school and high school together.VirginiaSince we were doing a photo shoot, we thought, well, we've got to talk about photos on the podcast because it's a whole thing.CorinnePhotos can be hard!VirginiaI would amend that sentence and say photos are hard.CorinneAlthough your child would disagree.VirginiaMy 8-year-old keeps telling us that that's a silly thing to think and photos are great and they love having their photo taken.CorinneThey're not wrong.VirginiaNo, it's a lot of stuff. A lot of diet culture noise. It's a lot of being seen, I think. Being perceived.CorinneWould you say that you've struggled with photos?

You are listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole Smith. Today my conversation is with Keri Harvey. Keri is an NASM certified personal trainer and a pain-free performance specialist specializing in beginner strength. She's a part owner of Form Fitness Brooklyn and has recently gotten into powerlifting. She just competed in her first sanctioned meet and won first place in her weight class. Keri began her career in personal training after her own fitness journey transformed from aesthetic focused to working on feeling strong and capable in everyday life, a very Burnt Toast trajectory. Her training style involves feeling less focused on the number on the scale and more on how people feel. She's a firm believer in setting performance-related goals, such as feeling less winded after the dreaded subway station steps. Keri was featured as one of Self magazine’s Everyday Athletes and collaborated as a fitness expert in Shape, Self, Livestrong, and Women’s Health magazines. Her ultimate goal is to help cultivate an inclusive and welcoming environment in the gym, and for all of her clients to leave each session feeling strong and powerful. Keri is hosting a pop-up strength class called Strong on Purpose in Houston, Texas on April 11th.Keri joined me to chat about her relationship to fitness and movement, getting stitched by toxic gym bros on TikTok, misconceptions about fat personal trainers and so much more. We've also got answers to some of your listener questions. This is a great episode. I think you're going to get so much out of it.Here is Keri.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 240 TranscriptVirginia We are really big fans of yours here at Burnt Toast. For anyone who doesn't already follow you on Instagram or TikTok, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your work and your relationship with fitness and movement?Keri I am a certified personal trainer. I currently am a part owner at a gym called Form Fitness Brooklyn, which is a personal training studio. The reason that I'm here and the reason that I exist in this field is because there's not a lot of body diversity in the fitness industry. I wanted to be a part of helping other people feel seen.I live in a larger body and I show up every day in this body and do a lot of really cool things with it because I want to and because I want other people to feel like they can, as well. My relationship with fitness is one of exploration, being curious about what I can do and trying to approach it from a viewpoint of being balanced in acknowledging the fact that no one is ever at one hundred percent. I'm trying to make sure that I don't stress myself out too much trying to be perfect and just focusing on showing up as me and seeing what I can do. It has done wonders for my mental health and my physical health, because I'm showing up consistently.Virginia I love that. I was just watching a reel you did about working out with a migraine, which as a fellow migraine girlie, I found deeply relatable. That feeling of, This isn't going to be the best, but it's probably going to make me feel a little bit better. And I'm annoyed about it, but I'm here anyway.Immediately, I'm like, Why don't I live in Brooklyn so I can come to your gym? We need more body diversity. We need more of this whole ethos in the fitness space, for sure.Keri Absolutely.Virginia If I remember correctly, you went viral on TikTok. Some gym bro ... Oh, the gym bros of TikTok. I could do a whole podcast just on that, but we'll move on. A gym bro stitched you as an example of who not to hire as a fitness trainer - sorry, I can't even say that without laughing - then another less gym bro stitched him and schooled him on anti-fat bias. Then you made a response video. Am I remembering that narrative correctly?Keri That's absolutely how it went.Virginia How did you feel about all of that? Did you feel supported in that moment by the other guy's response?Keri That's such a loaded question. I did feel supported, and at the same time, it is a little strange having people stitch your videos, whether it's to be positive or negative, and not reach out and tell you that they're doing it.Virginia That feels like an etiquette breach, for sure.Keri It feels like people are talking about you behind your back, whether it's positive or negative. So that was a little bit weird. However, I did feel supported in knowing that there are people in this industry who are not poisoned by the idea that the way someone's body looks tells you about them as a person, or that there is something wrong with the way that someone's body looks.One person who stitched my video and had positive things to say, his statement really stuck with me. He said that 'The world is really big and there are people with all kinds of goals. And so Keri may be right for someone, even if she's not right for you.' I've really taken that with me because that's the truth.Everyone has different goals fitness-wise, and you should have your own personal goals. But the world is very big and just because one trainer is not right for you doesn't mean they're not right for someone else and vice versa.Virginia I've been on the receiving end of some gym bro critiques. I always think, Sir, I'm not for you. You are not for me. Why are you spending your time on this? How much am I bugging you just by existing that you needed to spend this time to make this video?I'm not going to lie, there's something a little satisfying about the idea that I'm not thinking about him at all, but he is so annoyed he has to make a video about us. That feels like a little bit of a win maybe.Keri Absolutely. I always think about like the fact that they're raising their blood pressure arguing with their phone because I'm not wasting my time arguing back.Virginia And you know they're so careful with their macros and everything, and yet to risk it.Keri Don't risk it. You're going to pass out. You should calm down.Virginia We love your content. You make really great videos. I used to do a lot of video making. I took a long break from it. Getting back in the game is not easy. There is a lot of work that goes into making Instagram content and TikTok content. I don't think people understand that.I wonder how you think about the importance of showing yourself working out in a gym because that representation, like you were saying, matters so much.Keri I am very, I think the word that I want to use here is purposeful, about the way I show up in the gym and the way I show myself on social media inside of a gym. Because I have Form Fitness, I don't have to go to a big box gym and workout. However, I do - one, because I like to get out of the space. And two, because I want to know what it's like for my client who's like, 'Listen, I'm really nervous about walking into this gym because I don't know what that's like if I'm just in this small room where I know that everyone views fitness and bodies the way that I do.' I walk into spaces that make me uncomfortable so that I can feel what my clients feel. Then when I'm filming content, I'm also really not worried about "Can you see my belly outline?" "Is my arm fat hanging out of the bra behind me?" Because that's just bodies. They move and jiggle because you are moving. That's how that works. I really try to make sure that when I'm posting online, I'm showing you that too because not a single person stops me in the gym and says, "Hey, your belly." No one would ever do that, and I want you to know that.Virginia It's a lot like going to a public swimming pool in the summer and being like, Oh wait, it's just bodies. Everything we see online about getting in a swimsuit is actually bullshit because everyone's here just to cool off.Keri The more that I have found freedom in that, the more I realize bodies are so beautiful because they're different. That's what makes them so beautiful. Why would I be worried about looking like someone else? There's so much beauty in my body.The other thing that I was going to say about filming at the gym is my consistent showing up there has helped me make friends with people who don't look anything like me and have different goals than me. I posted a video about that a little while after the internet trolls started coming, about the fact that the people on the internet are not the same people who are inside the gym. The ones who are doing the work, who are showing up every day - they don't think anything like those trolls on the internet. I have a lot of really cool relationships with people who look nothing like me and have different goals than me, but we're there and we're working hard. You can work on your stuff. I'm going to work on my stuff and no one is rude or nasty in any way. The gym can be a safe place and I want people to see that.VirginiaI really need to hear this. I am a longtime home weightlifter and I definitely am getting to the point where the amount of weights I would need to buy at home is like, you know, the math is starting to not math. As a fat woman, I have a lot of gym fear. As a formerly very un-athletic child, all my physical education trauma kicks in. It's so real. I have had some not great experiences in gyms, although as we're talking about this, I'm realizing I've had those experiences fat and I've had them thin. Some of it is just being a woman in a male-dominated space. Anyone listening who feels similarly terrified of the gym, I really get it. It's so real. What you're saying is really helpful.Keri I'm glad. At the end of the day, just walking outside, unfortunately we encounter some characters, but I think that when you feel comfortable in a space because you know that you belong there, you're able to focus on you. For the most part, that's what everybody else in the gym is doing, too.If they're not, then that's a huge issue that has absolutely nothing to do with you. But if you are able to show up enough times to start feeling a little more comfortable there, then you won't be as worried about what other people around you are thinking, because nine times out of 10, they're only thinking, 'How many reps did I just do?' and 'Is my form right?'Virginia 'When do I have to leave to pick up my kid?' It's so true.It is the deep irony of fatphobia that all the trolls are like, 'We're so concerned for your health, we're so concerned for your health.' And yet also fat people are made to feel uncomfortable in health-promoting spaces. Which is it guys?Keri I had that happen literally today. I opened my Instagram and someone had commented on a video, "You're saying this is your favorite workout, but you're still fat." Yes. This is the body I live in. And yes this is my favorite workout. You literally just repeated what I said to you.But that's the thing, right? You're complaining that I'm not moving my body, and yet I'm showing you that I am.Virginia Literally right in front of you. It's just a reminder yet again that you'll never get anywhere with internet trolls, and that's not who we do any of this for.Keri Absolutely. That's right.Virginia On a related note to just all the things you are doing in the gym, I think thin people don't always realize, but fat people are very strong. I feel like often people would look at me and not realize how strong I am, but I can carry the 20 pound bag of cat litter down the stairs to the basement. I can carry my third grader up to bed, which is a real accomplishment at this point. What other misconceptions do you find people have about what fat people can and can't do, especially in fitness spaces?KeriIn general, there's a lot of people with the idea that fat people just aren't athletic, don't have the ability to be athletic. I'm in the same boat as you. I did not grow up as an athletic kid. I did whatever I could to avoid P.E.When we look at sports, and even the Olympics, when we see all of these bodies, some are fat bodies, some are smaller bodies, and they're all able to do all these amazing things. It's a reminder that the size of someone's body has nothing to do with their abilities. I think there are a lot of people who still don't realize that.Virginia I think gracefulness is another one. People don't think fat people can be graceful in the same way or coordinated in the same way. Something I've really appreciated about your content is I think you move really gracefully. I think it's a narrative that we're sometimes in our heads about, especially forms of fitness that require faster movements or things along those lines.Keri I'm thinking about jumping right now. That's a big one.Virginia People have a lot of fear of jumping.Keri Absolutely. And, you know, there are people in all sizes of bodies who experience joint pain. That's a thing that no one is exempt from. However, I think that when you learn what things your body likes and what things it doesn't, that's great because there are some forms of movement that you may choose to not participate in. I never want anyone to just assume that they can't do certain things. You don't know until you try. When you try, you also need to be able to learn how to scale up, scale back and figure out what feels right.Virginia You have a great reel about making child's pose work in a bigger body. Sometimes this assumption of, 'I can't do this type of movement.' It's like, 'Well, maybe that's because you've only seen a thin body do it.' Actually, you totally can. It just looks different for your body.Keri I love being the first person to show someone that a squat can be wider if you need some room for your belly because it's always such a light bulb moment. I'm sure it was the same for me when I first was starting out, but then when I actually widened my stance and was able to sit into it, it was like, Ah. It was amazing.Virginia It feels so good.Keri The realization that there's nothing wrong with your body. You just need to adjust.Virginia On the flip side, what you were just saying about joint pain is making me think how sometimes we assume body size is the reason we won't be good at something. It's actually nothing to do with the body size. You're stiff, but thin people are also stiff. There are other examples of that too, right?KeriAbsolutely. A lot of us are sitting at a desk all day long. We're hunched over a computer, hunched over our phone. All of these things create stiffness. All of these things result in maybe a little bit of joint pain for some people. There's also the genetic side of things and medications. This has nothing to do with the size of your body. It's depends on the person type of situation.VirginiaThat's really helpful for people to keep in mind. We're going to get into some listener questions, but before we do, I want to make sure we talk a little bit about rest, both literally and figuratively. Obviously, your body needs rest in between workouts, but in the world, especially right now, our hearts need rest, like we need rest. What is your relationship to rest like right now?Keri I do not play about my rest. As someone in a field where I'm constantly people-facing and every hour that I spend with my clients is one where I want to know what's going on with you, I want to be there for you both in the workout and also just in life in general, so I feel like I'm giving a lot. I'm happy to do it, but I also need a moment to refill the cup.I don't play about my sleep. I am asleep at about the same time every night. If there are times when I feel like I need to take more time for myself, I need a slower morning or I need to cancel some plans with a friend because I really need to be by myself, I do those things. I honor those things because I know that if my body is saying it, it probably means that it's been feeling that way for a little while, and now here's the little alert.Virginia It's so important to listen to those alerts and give ourselves permission. I have a 7th grader and we're getting to those years in school where the schedule is getting really busy with play rehearsal and activities. She came home yesterday after a super long day. I know she'd had a test she wasn't quite ready for, she'd had rehearsal and I just looked at her and asked, "Do you want dinner on a tray in your room in your bed so you don't have to talk to anyone right now?" And she was like, "Oh my God, yes." And I was like, yeah, you need like no people time. You need total chill time for an hour and we'll see you in a bit. Not that like my parents wouldn't have done that for me, but I just thought I like that I'm showing her, You pushed hard today. You didn't feel like going to school in the morning. You got there, you did the test, you did the stuff, but then you come home and you get to really prioritize rest as well.Keri I want to circle back to what we were talking about at the very beginning when you mentioned that post where I went to workout, even though I had a migraine. I'm definitely learning how to honor when my body needs rest. I think that rest is just as important as movement. There are some days where I have migraines and I decide I need to stay in bed. I need to put my headache cap on and no lights, everything's turned off. Then there are some days where I don't feel great, but I know that if I just go and I move slowly and I pay attention to what feels doable today and what doesn't, I feel a little better. I'm learning to not count the day where I don't go to workout as a failure.That's something that's tough for me, but I'm learning it because I'm honoring the fact that if I don't slow down now, I'm going to burn-out at the end.Virginia Recovering perfectionists unite on that one.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Listener QuestionsVirginia Let's do a couple of listener questions. A few folks in the Burnt Toast Chat had some fitness-related questions and we thought you will have great expert advice. First up, Sarah says:I have started and stopped a mobility exercise program 3 times since November. I get into a groove and I find it really makes my life in my body easier (putting shoes on, easing aches and pains) and then (typically when my PMDD kicks in 😔) I have no energy or drive to do it. It's only 15 minutes 4x a week, purposefully not too taxing a commitment. I have had a poor history with exercise and totally stopped about 10 years ago. But as I approach 50 I feel stiff and sore and everything feels hard. I have a million reasons to keep going but I'm not. Any thoughts on how to stay consistent or weather the ups and downs of motivation? I also notice that when I'm doing it, I'm more aware of my body and thoughts of body dissatisfaction creep in, when otherwise I have become pretty comfortable with my size.So, a lot going on there, but it definitely relates to this conversation we're having about rest and movement and when you need what.Keri I want to talk about the motivation piece for a moment because what we know about motivation is that it comes in waves. I've found there's that initial motivation when I've decided I want to do this thing, I want to move my body more, and then it starts to wane a bit. Then maybe it picks back up when you see the payoff.The payoff in this case being increased mobility. In that moment where you're not motivated anymore, it's really important to signal to our brains that we should still get the thing done. However, you should give yourself permission to scale it back. I think that four times a week for 15 minutes is amazing, but maybe you allow yourself to go for two to three times that week that you're feeling a little bit less motivation. It's important to do the thing because we see that it's making you feel better. However, maybe you're asking for too much in that moment where you're struggling.Virginia I think even if you are like, 'Well, it's only four times a week. It's only 15 minutes. That feels so doable.' Bottom line is it's not feeling doable. Three times, two times, even one time is better than zero times.Keri Absolutely. That's right.Virginia That all or nothing mentality is such a killer with this kind of thing. What are your thoughts about the piece where she says that moving your body more can make you more aware of your body and bring up some of those negative thoughts? I do think a lot of us, as we're working on body neutrality, whatever you want to call it, sometimes the easiest path through is a little bit of disconnection from your body because reconnecting can be painful when you're still working through some of that stuff.Keri What has been helpful for me and several of my clients is to focus on performance-related things. Maybe that means there's a goal you set for yourself, even in the mobility area. Maybe it's "Can I do an extra rep of something?" "Can I work towards doing an extra rep?" "Can I work towards feeling a little less winded after I do a certain exercise?"Paying attention to the progress you're making can be helpful. Sometimes we're only focused on 'This was so tough today,' or 'This was way easier two months ago than it is now, or two years ago than it is now.'I would really encourage Sarah to find ways to pay attention to what her body can do and not what it's not doing.Virginia When the shoes start to be easier to put on, that's a win. Celebrate that win.I'm also rereading your question Sarah and I just want to say that you said you've started and stopped the program three times since November. It's March, so that means for about six months, you've actually been doing more than you're giving yourself credit for. Maybe you took some weeks off, but the fact that you've done it three times since November seems good. It's not nothing.Keri Exactly. I work four days a week and usually those are the days that I work out. However, there are definitely days where the workout doesn't get done and that's just life. When that happens, when you know you've got to take care of the kids, or when work is just so stressful and you run out of time, that's not a failure. That's just life. We show up again the next day. It's never going to be perfect. But I agree with you. I don't want you to discredit yourself and think that you haven't been doing a lot because sounds like you've been working.Virginia Frame it less as quitting and like, this wasn't the week for it and now I'm back to it.Keri We're pausing.Virginia The next question is from Allison, who writes:I'm really struggling in my relationship with movement right now. I feel better when I move. I have more energy and less back pain. I know intellectually that moving my body regularly in some way is beneficial to me and yet I am just really struggling to do it. I started PT in September for my back pain and it went away so quickly once I was regularly moving. Now my PT is winding down and because my work-outs are less frequent, the back pain is back. I am so sick of this discomfort and yet even that physical pain is not enough to motivate me to even go for a walk around the block. I'm a sedentary person. I am content with that, but I also want the longer term benefits of being a person who moves regularly. I really don't know how to just make it happen. Any advice is welcome. What worked? What clicked? Or is this like cooking dinner for my family every night where I have to just do it even though some days I'd rather just walk into the woods and not come back.Very relatable about cooking dinner. I'll say that.Keri What has worked for me has been finding forms of movement that I've enjoyed. I also want to give Allison credit for reaching out to a PT. That's something a lot of people don't think about, but when there is something like back pain and it's affecting your daily life, that is super important.So kudos to you for doing that. I would see if you can explore some other forms of movement that you actually enjoy. Maybe it's dancing, maybe it's swimming, maybe it's yoga. Whatever it is, just finding something that is enjoyable, that really helped me to keep showing up.Then, even when I wasn't motivated, I was still just slightly curious enough about like, What else can my body do? That kept me showing up. We said it a little bit in the last question, but it is annoying and good at the same time that when you start moving your body and learning how to listen to it, it talks to you a lot.It starts speaking to you and emphasizing that we need rest and we need movement almost all the time. But like the whole cooking dinner for your family every night type of situation, every once in a while you're rewarded with the family sitting at the table and the meal's really good and the shoulders are bouncing as you're eating. That happens with our workouts, too. It's not every workout, but every once in a while you have a really good one where every once in a while you're kind of excited to go do it, and that is really what kind of has to tide us over until the next time we have a workout like that.Virginia It's so interesting how, I think maybe because of social media or different narratives we get, we expect every workout to be like a Rocky montage of huge accomplishment and triumph. It's like, no, it's just Tuesday morning. Like, I'm just doing this and then I've got to get on a work call.Keri Which is why it is important to try to find what you enjoy doing because most of them are definitely like, Let me just get this thing over with. I'm huffing and puffing and breathing hard.Virginia I was going to also add that I think PT is amazing, and I think it's very normal to get bored with it because they are very repetitive exercises. Trying something really different might be fun and invigorating. If you can combine it with being with a friend. For some of us, joy in the movement itself is difficult, but you can pair movement with something joyful, if that makes sense. That can be super helpful. I have a standing weekly walk date with a friend of mine and even if I don't really feel like moving, I want to see her. I'm going to show up.Keri I love that.Virginia It is a tricky thing. I think both these questions really underscore this idea we have that once you figure out fitness, you're going to do that fitness forever. There should be a set it and forget it option, and that just really isn't the case with bodies.Keri Not at all. Bodies require different things at different times. Also, our brains want different stimulation. It's ok to move around and find new things you enjoy. It's ok to be a beginner at said thing. It's ok to be bad at it, because as long as you are trying, that's really all that matters.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginia We end every episode of Burnt Toast with Butter, which is what I call our recommendation segment. I would love to know, Keri, what is your Butter right now?Keri It's women's sports. That's my Butter right now, in every form of it. I feel like we're seeing a lot more of women's sports being supported, which is so beautiful and it's so important, especially for young ones. I feel like if I had seen more women's sports being supported and spoken about when I was a kid, and seen all of the different body types playing all of these sports, I would've felt like I might've had a better relationship with fitness at that age, and also, more comfortable in my body at that age. It's so important to be seeing this right now.Virginia Who's your favorite athlete?Keri I love Ilona Maher. I'm also a huge basketball fan, so I'm loving everything women's basketball.Virginia You and my mom. My mom's hardcore. I like it too, but she's all in, except she can't watch games live. She's a Huskies fan and she gets too worried, so she checks the score and then she watches it later, if they win by enough.Keri I love that. I love that she knows herself.Virginia It's too much pressure. She can only watch if she knows they're up by 50 points.Keri Which is not hard for them.Virginia Exactly. Huskies, they're doing fine.My Butter, since we talked quite a bit about migraines, and you reminded me, I don't think I've talked about my migraine cap on this podcast yet. I have this - it's the dorkiest thing, but it's so great. It's this like black, thick, neoprene kind of fabric and it somehow stays cold, so you put it over your head and it covers your eyes. It stays cold and feels so good.Keri It's so amazing.Virginia They're game changing. They really are. I've had migraines since the '90s and I just got one of these last year, and I'm like, Where has this been all my life?Keri A client of mine gifted me one, and it does look so funny. It is a very funny looking thing, but I put it on, I put on an audiobook and I was just knocked out and it was wonderful.Virginia I often am like woken up by bad headaches, like early morning and I still want to get back to sleep, so I put that on and then I can like get another hour of sleep. It's good stuff.Keri, thank you so much. This was such a delight. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support your work, even if we're not in Brooklyn, although I might need to make a field trip.Keri I think you should visit. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at kharveyfit. You can also find me on the Form Fitness Brooklyn app, which we just launched a couple months ago. It's a strength training app that has workouts for three times a week. It's body diverse, so you get to see all of us doing the exercises that we're asking you to do, which is really cool.Virginia I'm downloading it immediately.Thank you so much for doing this. This was great.Keri Thank you. I appreciate it.Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at BurntToastPodcast.com.Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram and Threads at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your April Extra Butter episode!This normally where we would say "Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark, " but today we're saying, "Welcome to Extra Butter." Longtime listeners know that we used to call the Virginia and Corinne episodes "Indulgence Gospel" in honor of a troll comment. We still love the name and are having a hard time letting it go, but we wanted to make it easier to know what kind of episode you're listening to when you listen to Burnt Toast.Burnt Toast has three membership tiers:Burnt Toast free member 💛 (Free!)Just Toast member 🍞 ($5/month or $50 annually)Extra Butter member 🧈 ($10/month or $100 annually)And Today we have an Extra Butter Episode! If you're listening to this episode, you're part of the premium tier, which means you're one of our favorite Burnt Toasties. You can get behind every paywall! Your support makes all our work possible and keeps Burnt Toast and ad and sponsor free space. Today we are talking about:⭐️ Fat fashion. Is it getting harder to shop?⭐️ Virginia's bad boyfriend (J. Crew).⭐️ How the oversized fashion trend leaves out fat people.We're also answering listener questions about:⭐️ Skinny jeans, yay or nay?⭐️ Managing a wardrobe to fit weight fluctuations.⭐️ How are we wearing layers during perimenopause?To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Who doesn't want extra butter on their toast?Join Extra Butter!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 239 TranscriptCorinne: Today we have a very exciting (for me) topic, which is we're going to talk about fat fashion, spring edition.Virginia: Is it getting harder to shop?Corinne: I mean, quick answer: yes.Virginia: Absolutely. It's terrible out there. Is it the state of the world, is it retail, or is it both? We're going to get into how it's feeling like there are fewer plus-size options, and we're going to get into some of your practical questions.

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your March Just Toast episode!Today we are talking about:⭐️ The new, skinny American Girl dolls⭐️ Does taking a GLP-1 make you a better parent?We're also answering listener questions about:⭐️ The diet culture voice in your head⭐️ Colonoscopy prep and the feelings it brings up⭐️ Virginia's review of the Heated Rivalry booksYou need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Sign up for just $5!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 238 TranscriptVirginiaToday we are catching up on some things we are mad about in March.CorinneSome people have been annoying us.VirginiaWe have a list, and you may or may not be on the list. First up is ...

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala Nolan.Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala. In part one, we talked about bodies, race and gender. Today in part two, we're getting into sex, divorce and classy and trashy Butters. This conversation is for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one.One last thing! If you order Good Woman from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.Here's Savala.You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 237 TranscriptVirginia All right, we've got to talk about men a little bit.Savala  Do we have to? No, I'm kidding. I love them.Virginia  I really questioned whether we did. You write really well about men in this book. You articulate a lot about a certain kind of man that is going to be very familiar to a lot of our listeners. You call him the "voting booth feminist." Define voting booth feminist and tell us how that particular type of man, perhaps without realizing it, contributes to this narrative about what a "good woman" should be.Savala  Well, the voting booth feminist is alive and well, Virginia. I was married to one.

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with none other than the beloved, the brilliant, Lindy West. Lindy is the author of four books, The New York Times bestselling memoir, Shrill, as well as the essay collections, The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually, and her brand new memoir Adult Braces, out now.Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel and many others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast, Text Me Back!!! and the author of the newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film, Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state. Lindy joined me to chat about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces. We get into her relationship to fatness, having people comment rather relentlessly on her marriage, why more best friends should start podcasts and so much more—including a quesadilla she invents in real time while we recorded. You are going to love this one. This conversation with Lindy is so juicy that we're breaking it up into two episodes! In Part 1 we’re talking about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces, as well as her eating disorder therapy, being a public fat person and having people comment on her body and her marriage.In Part 2, we're getting into non-monogamy, the benefits of being in a throuple, podcasting and so much more! If you're already a paid subscriber, you've got both parts of the episode right here, right now in your inbox! Everyone else: Join Burnt Toast today to hear the whole thing! Membership starts at just $5 per month and also gets you commenting privileges.One last thing! You will want to read Adult Braces after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.Here's Lindy West.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Virginia We are here to talk about your new memoir, Adult Braces. My producer Kim and I both read it. We loved it. Like, crying laughing, full body experience reading this book. LindyThank you so much!VirginiaDo you want to give us a brief summary of what the book is about?Lindy  The book is about a road trip that I took in 2021 from Seattle to Key West and back, which I decided to do when I was having a crisis in my life. I needed to get away from my house, and I needed to get away from my family and my responsibilities.I had found out a couple years earlier that my husband had a secret girlfriend, which was sort of illegal in our relationship, sort of not. That was quite a topic of conversation for several years, and we eventually figured it out. But then I was exhausted from a year of COVID and three years of non-stop couples therapy. I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left and I drove to Florida in a van that I rented. I slept in the van. I just wanted to be out in the world and be brave and alive. The road trip stories are interspersed with chapters about my life before. A big message, at least for me, is that it's really easy to read my crisis as this monogamy/polyamory conversation, but when I think back on it, everything about my life was messed up before that. I had so many other problems, in my mental health, in the way that I managed my career, my life and my brain chemicals. I wanted to build a full picture of that, because I think the easy story is like, 'Oh, no good husband.' But it was a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of it stemmed from work that I had to do on myself, which is ultimately the only work that I can do. I can't do work on my husband.Virginia Nope. A lot of us learned that the hard way.Lindy  Right! That was actually one of my problems. I was constantly waiting for my husband to transform into the person that I had imagined would be my husband, and that's not how people work.Virginia It's annoying, but true. Lindy  It's very annoying. The book is about all of those figurative journeys happening at once, and also my literal journey. Virginia It's spectacular. The van alone. I'm obsessed with the van. There's a mural on the outside of the van. It's incredible.Lindy  The van has a big, scary rabbit on one side and then a big, anxious sheep on the other side. The van was named BAAA, like the noise a sheep makes. I think I'm going to make some social media content out of this. I'm trying to be an influencer in order to promote this book. I want the van. I want that van. I want it in my possession.VirginiaI was sad when you gave it back. LindyI know! Me too, and now the company has gone out of business. I tried to rent the van for my book tour and they don't exist anymore. Someone has that van. I think I'm going to do a social media campaign called "Help me find my van," so that I can buy it.Virginia Burnt Toast listeners, if any of you have a van with a rabbit on one side and a sheep on the other, hit us up. Even if it's a different van with that art, I think Lindy would be interested.LindyYes. I will pay upwards of $1,000.Virginia To get that van back. It was a sad moment. It was like the end of those movies with a person on a journey with an animal, and they say goodbye. It was like the volleyball in that Tom Hanks movie.Lindy  Oh, my God, yeah. I had to watch BAAA float away on the ocean. BAAA had really been there for me. BAAA is an old lady now. Maybe she doesn't exist anymore, because she already had 250,000 miles on her and then I drove her another 50,000.VirginiaShe was in her golden years. LindyShe was in her golden years. But I think those Ford Transit vans are built to last, so I think someone has her. It turns out all the van companies are going out of business because I had a really hard time finding a van. I called three different companies that had all recently gone out of business, because #vanlife is not that popular anymore now that people have #donthavetowearamasklife.Virginia They had a little Renaissance moment there.Lindy  I called this other company that was going out of business, and I was like, "Well, what are you doing with your fleet?" I know the all the terms now. I was like, "What's happening to your fleet? Can I buy one of your vans?" And he was like, "Yeah, they're $90,000." Sorry, excuse me?Virginia It doesn't even have a rabbit on it, sir.Lindy  This van is blank. I think that if there's any hope for me getting a van, it's got to be old lady BAAA. If you're listening and you know where BAAA ended up, please call me.Virginia I mean, I'm now picturing that BAAA probably has a new owner who also really loves her. There's going to be a complicated journey to restore BAAA to her rightful owner, which is you, but ...Lindy  Ok, now that you said that I don't want to take BAAA away from her new family.Virginia Well, maybe it could be a joint custody situation, you know? Let's be open-minded to different family structures.Lindy  That's true. You're so right. God, that was very regressive of me.Virginia But yes, I hope that you can be reunited. LindyThank you.VirginiaAlong with the story of BAAA, you talk about many vulnerable things in the book. One of them that I know our listeners will be really moved by is your exploration of having an eating disorder and starting treatment for that. It was just so relatable. Like when you wrote about reading through the list of nutritionists from your doctor, and only one doesn't mention weight loss. When you're looking for eating disorder treatment! Lindy  It's a snapshot of what most people are going to the nutritionist for: weight loss. That's what everyone's looking for, in every direction. So, I get it, but it was very frustrating. Luckily, the one lady that wasn't weight loss focused is the best person I've ever met, so it all worked out.Virginia What was it like working with someone who was like, "Actually, you don't need to lose weight. You need to eat more food?"Lindy  It's been amazing. I mean, it's frustrating, because you still have the diet culture voice inside your head, even if you've done as much healing as you thought was humanly possible. I realized once I started working with her that some tiny part of my brain had been like, Once you see the nutritionist, maybe you will lose weight. Not that that was my goal. But there's always this little, dee de dee dee, then your life will be perfect. It's really hard to deprogram that. Grace, my now therapist, just kept being like, "Your job is to eat whatever you want all the time." And I'd be like, "Yeah, but what if I want vegetables?" She was like, "That's fine, but you're not allowed to not eat candy." And I was like, "But don't you want to give me some kind of guideline for how to be perfect?" And she was like, "No, that's disordered."Virginia That’s the opposite of what we're doing now.Lindy  I find myself still searching for someone to tell me how to live so that I don't have to figure it out. Unfortunately, the answer is listening to your body and learning how to know yourself. So I'm doing that instead. VirginiaShe said joyfully.LindyAgain, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm not on a weight loss journey. I think after so many years of living untreated in diet culture, I don't have any kind of a natural relationship with food. And it is a lot of work to figure out how to listen to my body. So even from a non-diet culture perspective, I was hoping that some part of this therapy was going to be her handing me a worksheet. Even if the worksheet said "One piece of cake for breakfast, one piece of cake for lunch, one piece of cake for dinner." I just was like, Making the choices is triggering to me.Virginia The decision fatigue! It's a lot of work, every meal. I have to, again, make the decision to eat and what to eat and how. All day long we do this??Lindy  I have to do the grocery shopping?Also, when you've been shamed your whole life for those choices, making the choices is stressful. Now I feel like, either direction, I'm doing something bad. I'm either doing diet culture by choosing to have a salad, even if I want one. I still am like, Am I betraying myself? Or the opposite, if I choose to eat something sort of indulgent or whatever, then I'm doing fat person. Which is fine.Virginia You have to negotiate it in both directions.Lindy  Yes! Except then I'm like, Well, but if I'm eating something decadent, is that just reactionary? Because I know I'm not supposed to do diet culture. So then do I even want this ice cream? I'm still, to this day, fairly lost. I'm way better than I was five years ago, and I've definitely figured some stuff out, which is just having routines. It's like, I have oatmeal. Done.Virginia One less decision.Lindy  In the morning, I have oatmeal, and then I have certain staple things I keep around. I'm so angry that my head has been messed with to this degree. You know what I mean? Virginia Yes. And you were trying to navigate recovery as a public fat person, which brings a whole other layer. I have had a tiny fraction of what you experience, and it's bananas. The amount the world feels like they can engage with our bodies and have opinions and theories and comments and all of that. You doing it, especially when you first started doing it, was such a gift to the rest of us. You were really on the front lines. Lindy  It's really hard, and that's the thing that I write about in the book. Obviously, the mean people are the worst. But there's a way that my fans feel an ownership over me that is a little bit ... not claustrophobic - I appreciate it, it's very loving - but also, I feel surveilled. I'm definitely being watched. People notice if my body changes, and that is confining in a certain way. It's hard to navigate, because you don't get to just have a private relationship with your body, which, to be fair, I voluntarily gave up because I said "I'm going to present my body for public conversation," basically.Virginia I don't know that we ever have informed consent around that though. I don't think you could have known when you decided to publish that first essay in The Stranger what this would be like. You know what I mean? I don't think you could wrap your head around where it would have gone.Lindy  I can't blame the fans, especially since so much of this stuff was grassroots on the Internet. I used to be a fat girl lurking on Tumblr, taking from other fat people who came before me. I don't want to build a wall around myself and say, "No, you can't look at me, and you can't feel anything about my body, and you can't have any opinions or connection to it," because I did the same thing. But navigating of it is hard, and complicated.Virginia It is complicated. I can understand, especially when navigating your own recovery and wanting to make choices for yourself, but feeling like people will feel let down. It's complicated. We all do it with other public figures all the time. Lindy  Oh, I don't like it when famous fat people lose weight. I don't trust it at all, but I don't say anything about it. You know what I mean?Virginia At least, not super publicly. Maybe in my own head.Lindy  Just to the group chat. "Oh, ozempic, got another one?" I'll send that text. I do have this fear that if eating disorder treatment and recovery did cause me to lose weight, because I changed my relationship with food in such a way that my body changes—which I don't know if that would happen or not, there's no way to know, probably not—but if it did happen, it's so scary to think that I could be perceived as having betrayed people, or that I'm one of those people that I look at and send to the group chat and say, "Oh boy." Which is why I shouldn't do that.Virginia Sure, fine. Now that you're putting it that way, I suppose.Lindy  It depends on the person. Look, just don't take me on your weight loss journey. I don't need to hear about your journey.Virginia That's really the key to me. People do what they do with their bodies, and that's fine, but I really appreciate it when a celebrity says nothing. If you start justifying and explaining it, odds are that you're causing harm to somebody.LindyIt's not that hard to not say anything.Virginia Yeah, just have your body. That's fine. You do you.Related to people dissecting your body online, another experience we unfortunately share is having our personal lives written about and commented on online, particularly in regards to marriage. In my case, my divorce. It made the Daily Mail, which is a real point of pride for me. You write really candidly about your marriage with Aham in this book and there are many difficult parts. Did it feel like you were taking some control back over the narrative to write about it? How do you feel about how people might react once they read what you've written?Lindy  I wanted to take control of the narrative. People react so intensely to non-monogamy. It's very scary to a lot of people, and I get it. You're sort of promised an equation for happiness, which is one person loving you obsessively for the rest of your life until you die. Just the idea that some people might choose a slight variation on that —it's threatening. And it's a slight variation. I am married to two people. It's just one extra person! There's just one extra. It's not really that different. If you think about it, being single is only one person away from being two people. Just one less.Virginia Right. Every single person is basically married. And every married person is basically in a throuple.Lindy  Is it that weird? People find it very weird. There was so much backlash, particularly directed at Aham, but also at me. My body was a big factor in it. The way that people perceive our relationship is never disconnected from the way people look at my body. So when people started to clock that we had a third person in our marriage—my partner, Roya. I shouldn't just talk about her like she's a mysterious, shadowy figure—so much of the response was, "Oh, we see what's going on here. You're fat and ugly and gross, so he doesn't like you. He needed a thin woman so that he can actually be happy."Virginia He had to trade up in some way. Lindy  He had to upgrade, as any man would, because, "Unfortunately, you're disgusting, and that's why we're here to defend you against this evil man."Virginia Yes, defend you —because this is from people who were your fans. That was what blew my mind [when you first came out]. I was like, But wait, you're a pro-Lindy person drawing these conclusions about her life. That doesn't make sense.LindyWhy are you being so mean to me?Virginia You're so mad on her behalf. But she didn't ask you to do that.Lindy  Right? And you know who's not saying anything mean to me? Aham. You guys are being way meaner. So, I don't know. It just felt like I wanted to get some definitive version down on paper, even though people are still going to do the same thing: take it and run with it, fill in the blanks. Everyone became a body language expert. People are obsessed with being the genius who read between the lines and could figure out what wasn't being said. We're in the age of conspiracy. I get it. But you can't actually just look at a picture of some people on the Internet and figure out what isn't being said. I couldn't even capture it in the book, because part of it is me and Aham sitting at the dining room table doing couples therapy over Zoom every week for three years. How do I put that in the book? It's so much work. People keep asking me, "Why are you so hard on yourself in this book?" Some people think I'm too easy on Aham. People keep telling me what my feelings are, and that I'm this naive person who's been duped. Or that I don't really understand, I can't really see, what's been done to me. I wanted to get my feelings down in hard copy. I can't excavate Aham’s feelings in my book. When I tried to, I cut it because it sounded like I'm begging the audience to co-sign that it was ok for me to stay, that I'm allowed to stay in my marriage. It feels like rationalization, and I don't want to do that. VirginiaYou don't actually need our permission. LindyI don't actually need anyone's permission. But what I can do, and what I have the authority and right to do, is put down in excruciating detail my process and the things that I came to realize about myself, and the ways that I had been a part of the toxicity in our marriage. The ways that I had been in denial, and the ways that I had not been taking care of myself, emotionally, psychologically and in a million different ways. That's what I have to work with. I'm also, in my personal life, a passive, shy person. I have this childhood wound of being talked over and not given the authority to speak on my own experiences, and not feeling capable of asserting myself. That's a lot of what this book is. I'm hard on myself because I found it fascinating. I found it so illuminating to realize all of these ways that my brain had been warped, and I thought it was rational. How interesting to come to a realization that these things that you thought were a given actually, maybe you were wrong. People read it as me being really cruel to myself, but to me, it felt really healing to excavate all those things and figure them out. I hope it's not a grind to read.Virginia No, it's definitely not. I found it more healing than you being hard on yourself. I mean, there are moments—and I think this is, you know, this is me being a fan for a moment—like we love you Lindy. We've been rooting for you for a long time. There are moments where I would think, Oh no, Lindy. I want to protect you. I don't like this. But then you would have this breathtaking insight about yourself, and I'd be like, Oh, shit. Ok, well, that makes sense. That was my experience of reading the book. These moments of feeling defensive or protective, and then being like, Oh, mind blown. Lindy  Thank you. I was just going to say, I do keep having this little feeling of, if you read the book and you're like, I can't relate to this because she's so hard on herself, well ... it sounds like you've never been fat.Virginia Or in therapy of any kind.Lindy  Congratulations on never having low self-esteem?Virginia Must be neat to always be so sure. Are you maybe a narcissist? A lot of what I saw in that narrative of "Lindy's the victim. He's trading up for the thin woman." is that this is so many fat women's core fear, right? So this was people projecting their own stuff of,  'This is what's going to happen to me. My husband's going to leave me for a younger, thinner woman.'Lindy  And that's rational, of course. That's what they do! I get it, because that was my fear. That's why I didn't want to do it. I was like, I know you're just waiting to upgrade. But in retrospect, it doesn't make sense. If what you were waiting to do was upgrade, why would you not just leave me? People talk to me as though, I'm still, to this day, being victimized. But to me, it was so healing to be brave and step through this veil into this other relationship structure and discover that Aham does not love me less. He didn't leave. I don't have less of him. He was telling the truth about, at least, how he feels about me. I was always so paranoid about that, and I always had so much doubt about it. People read it, and I get it, of course. Most people feel like they are barely holding their husband back from running off and being evil.Virginia But if that's the case, there is divorce. I just want to say to everyone in that box, there is this other path. You don't have to stay with that guy.Lindy  If you're worried about that, please get a divorce. You will love it. Virginia It's so great. It's real rad. Lindy  Look, I don't trust men either. I get it. I have the same wounds and the same anxieties. That's why I resisted so hard for so long. But I also didn't want to not be with Aham, because we have a really, really special relationship and I couldn't imagine ... I mean, I did eventually imagine, actually, there's a chapter cut from the book called "If I'd Left" about all the stuff I would have done. VirginiaOoh, I am intrigued. LindyI'll tell you about it, but mostly it was a list of the different animals that I would acquire. A big part of this whole journey—I've said "journey" so many times—Aham tried to do it right. He brought it up day one. He said, "This is non-negotiable if we're going to be together." I said, "Ok, sure." He tried to talk to me about it over the years. I avoided the conversation. I would throw a fit and cry and hyperventilate. I could not handle it. When I found out that he was seeing someone else, he said, "I think we want different things, and if that's the case, we need to not be together."🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Part 2 is for paid subscribers only. To hear the rest of our conversation with Lindy West, go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith and join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You don't want to miss this the second part of this conversation.Join here for just $5 per monthJoin Just Toast!Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with the brilliant Savala Nolan. Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together. This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read.There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one. One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Savala.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 235 TranscriptVirginia Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?Savala  I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness. So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better. I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt. I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write about in Good Woman, stems from that experience of dieting, and then breaking free from dieting in my thirties.Virginia  That is the best intro I think anyone's ever given themselves on the podcast. SavalaOh, stop. VirginiaNo, really. I love that you are like, 'Let me own this part of my story. This is the origin point. And then now let's get into the conversation.' That's fantastic. We are here to talk about your exquisite new book Good Woman: A Reckoning. It is a collection of 12 essays about what it means to be a woman. It's this incredible blend of memoir, reporting and history. I would love you to read us the first paragraph, just to set the stage for everything we're going to talk about.SavalaI'll just take a quick second to set it up a little bit.I'm trying to take a critical and very skeptical eye to all the ways that women and girls are socialized to be good. Almost from birth, right? In our particular culture, good means agreeable, quiet, serving of others, all the things that probably would pop into any woman's head when she hears the idea of a "good woman" or a "good girl." I'm trying to unpack and destroy some of that socialization in my own life, and think about what lies beyond it. To kick the book off, there's this very short essay that's sort of a manifesto. I think of it as a huge bell that rings to open the book. Here's the first paragraph.I refuse to be good. This is a matter of survival, not inclination or mood. I refuse to be easy and I refuse others preferences. I refuse to be amicable and I refuse to appease. I refuse to go along and I refuse to agree. I refuse to do what I was trained to do. Instead, I choose whatever lies beyond my social conditioning, even if I'm still looking for it, still spurring it into being. This is work of the mind, cerebral and tough. This is work of new language, new concepts, new intonations and my thinking must expand to fit the scale of all existence. It is also body work, work that is nailed to my flesh. It is gestating of new bones, an anointing of muscle and fat. It is passing through the stomatous black opening of my own cervix to the bright field, waiting on the other side in the wilderness. It is a lot to take on. But I welcome the challenge and the mystery and the darkness. It was in darkness that the universe was made. It is in darkness that each day is made new.Virginia  Thank you. That was incredible. Really, it was.SavalaThank you. Virginia  I loved how you opened the book because it encapsulates so many of the themes that you then go deeper in in every chapter. One of the biggest themes of refusal in the book is around the body. You write about how Black women's bodies in particular are constrained, controlled and made not their own. I really, really want people to read this because we don't have time to talk about all the history you go through and it's so well done. You trace this narrative from Sarah Baartman and Sally Hemings all the way to Nicki Minaj, connecting so many dots. It's really powerful. What has and what hasn't changed when it comes to how Blackness and fatness are policed for women?Savala  I love this question. We could probably write a doctoral thesis or dissertation on this question alone. So I'll just sort of share what comes to mind, a sort of smorgasbord of thoughts that come to mind when you ask this question. The first thing is, there's an overlap when we talk about Blackness and fatness in this culture. The very first point to make is that everything here is cultural. Not all cultures treat women's bodies, Blackness and fatness the way we do. That's the page on which everything else is written. It's interesting to me that when we talk about Blackness and fatness, the stereotypes overlap, right? Both fat people and Black people are viewed in this culture as out of control, lazy, kind of greedy, having a hyper appetite. Either being hyper-sexualized or de-sexualized. You either have the kind of va-va-voom, or the 'friend, never the leading lady' when it comes to fatness. With Blackness, it's the same thing. You either have the video vixen - this kind of hyper-sexual Black woman in a music video - or the mammy.It's interesting to me that the stereotypes overlap so much, and maybe the most powerful way they overlap is that they're both undesirable. They're both things in our culture that you should try to get away from if you can. You should try not to be too Black or too fat in our culture. So to me, as a woman who's fat and Black, it's kind of a one-two punch. They work together. The stereotypes overlapping tells you there's some relationship in our culture between these two things. And as you say, it goes way, way, way, way back in this country. It goes to chattel slavery, where Blackness and fatness started to be policed together and associated together, very literally. I talk about this in the book - there's a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, which you might consider the Vogue or Good Housekeeping of today. Sort of fashion, but also home-y stuff. It was the biggest magazine in the antebellum country. And they talked all the time about how white women should stay thin or else they might start to be Black, like they might start to be looked on as if they're Black. There's another article from that magazine that says, "If a white woman gets fat, she might as well put herself in Black face."You can't see it if you're listening, but there's a lovely eye roll from Virginia. Our culture has long braided these things together. That's the history when you think about what hasn't changed. I think they are still braided together. When we think about what has changed, from my vantage point, there was maybe five or 10 years where it felt more ok to be fat, and more ok to be Black. It was the like ascendance of Lizzo, you know?VirginiaA brief shining moment. SavalaIt was a shining moment. There was also the George Floyd moment. There was a political reckoning with Blackness that was refreshing. I guess maybe it wasn't even five years. It was a brief window. Now it feels like we're in a backlash. It feels a little bit like the more things change, the more they stay the same. We had this moment of a collective leap towards something like liberation. Because of politics and because of the capitalistic nature of the pharmaceutical industry in this country and GLP-1s being so, for now anyway, profitable, we're seeing a real backlash to both fatness and Blackness. That lands on women really hard, because of how women are tied to our bodies in this culture in a particular way. So I guess I would say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The silver lining being that because we did have these few years of something like enlightenment, the first sun rays coming over the mountain, there are a lot of people who have a much higher capacity to talk about what our culture does to fatness and Blackness than there were 20 years ago, right? So that's a silver lining, I think. VirginiaYes, I agree with that.We see these moments of women claiming their bodies and claiming control over their bodies, and then facing tremendous backlash. You talk about the Nicki Minaj album cover that she was taken to task for being too sexual, too graphic, etc.. She was like, 'It's my body.' Savala  'It’s my body.' Also, it's no worse than a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and everybody likes those. VirginiaYes, they sure do. But those are skinny white lady bodies. SavalaThose are skinny white ladies, not voluptuous Black women.Virginia  There are these moments where we have the conversation. Whereas if she hadn't had the album cover, we wouldn't have had the conversation. But I'm with you on how it's not enough. The backlash feels so brutal right now. But I do hang on to those moments.Savala  I do, as well. The comfort of a backlash is that you know you were doing something right. You can't make a quilt with one stitch. You have to put a lot of stitches in. So we have to keep stitching as far as our own liberation goes. The backlashes will come periodically, the tide comes in and out, you just try to keep inching it forward. I'm hopeful that we will continue, ultimately, to do that.Virginia  And keep reminding people where we've been. I really appreciated your post on Instagram this week. There's been so much talk about ICE as the gestapo and you were like, 'Guys, it's not the gestapo, it's slave patrols.' It's our own country. It's our own history that's coming up again here. I should note for listeners, you're hearing this in March, but we recording this at the end of January, right after all of the violence and murders in Minneapolis. Savala  I understand the urge to look to other countries and the violence in other places, and it's gestapo-like, you know. It's certainly fair to think about a comparison. But to completely ignore the fact that we actually invented this stuff.Virginia  That the gestapo guys learned it from us.SavalaOne hundred percent. Exactly.VirginiaThey've been watching what America was doing.Savala  Yes, and it's sad to own it, but it's a necessary step, and managing it and moving beyond it is to hold it close and see that it's our own stuff. It's like an individual who wants to grow and improve. They have to own their shit. 'Oh, this is my shit. I have to work on it.' It's the same. It's just at the level of culture.Virginia  As a country, we have to own our shit, and some of us are doing more of that than others. Well, on the level of the individual, you write a lot in the book about growing up as a fat little girl, being put on diets so heartbreakingly early and then continuing to pursue thinness throughout college and early adulthood. Now that you're on the other side of that, you write about how abandoning the pursuit of thinness feels like becoming a non-woman. I really was interested in this idea of the non-woman. I would love to talk about that a little.SavalaThere's a quote I love from a scholar, Sander Gilman, who studies fatness and gender. You might know this quote Virginia, some of your listeners might, too. He writes that dieting is a way that women show they understand their role in society. Part of the way that women remain and become legible in our culture is by practicing and performing privately and publicly dissatisfaction with their bodies and the pursuit of a better body, which generally means a thinner body, a more toned body, or a "healthier body."When you do those things as a woman, people get it. They understand you. They don't have to make any inferences. They don't have to wonder what you're doing. It's instantly obvious. When I talk about how much people rely on that sort of vocabulary to understand women. When I talk publicly at schools about this, one of the first things I do in my talks is post a before and after photo without the words "before" and "after." I ask people to raise their hands if they know what it is. The room could have 300 people in it and everybody raises their hands. They know exactly what they're seeing. That's what I mean when I say that the performance of dieting, or body improvement, or body shame, publicly and also privately, makes you readable as a woman to the culture. People can literally read it instantly, the way you can read a stop sign. When you stop doing that, when you stop dieting, exercising in ways that are meant to control the shape of your body, the weight of your body, all that stuff. When you stop using that vocabulary to bond with other women, when you stop policing what other people eat. When you stop doing those things, people don't get it. There's some level on which you're no longer performing the role of a woman. That's what I mean when I say that you become a non-woman. You become this other entity, that, let's be clear, exists in other cultures. It has existed in this culture to some extent, in various pockets of it, but that's what I mean. You step outside of the mold, and then people aren't quite sure what to do with you. Can I give a quick example? VirginiaYeah, please. SavalaI work with a fabulous team of people I love and adore at UC Berkeley. One of them had a birthday, so to celebrate, I brought in a box of fabulous French pastries. We have a little birthday party and we invite lots of people to come by and pick something up if they want to. Every single person, every person, who came in the room said something, and they all happen to be women, something like, 'Ooh, I worked out this morning. That's how I that's how I earned this.' Some version of, 'Oh, God, I shouldn't. I had a bagel for breakfast,' or, 'I'm gonna cut it in half because I think I'm gonna have a big dinner tonight.' I was the only one who didn't. At some point I said, "Come on, guys. Let's just let the food be food. We don't have to earn our food here."Virginia  You don’t actually have to publicly perform. Savala  You could have heard a pin drop, Virginia. VirginiaOh, I'm sure.SavalaIt was like I said something in a different language. People don't know how to read the moment anymore. They don't know how to read me anymore. It's so disruptive. So that's what I mean about becoming the non-woman. In that essay, I then go on to talk about the joy of being a non-woman. I don't mean this in the sense of gender identity, I mean it in a more metaphorical, philosophical way. I very much identify as a woman.Virginia  Right, but you're rejecting these expectations and this narrow definition of womanhood.Savala  One hundred percent. It's a little experiment. If listeners want to try that, I'm sure most of your listeners are already at least one foot in the door of not dieting anymore, but if they want to try performing something else and seeing how they become no longer instantly readable in the space, they'll know what I mean.Virginia  It's interesting because it's about how you simultaneously become more visible because you're doing this uncomfortable thing no one knows what to do with, and you're rendering yourself more invisible because you're no longer saying Yes, you can identify me as a sex object. Yes, you can identify me as young and thin and pretty and all the you know. So then it's like, 'Oh, we don't know what to do with her.'Savala  Totally. It's a spotlight. It's like, what's that? There's some rubbernecking that happens and you can be in the mood to deal with it or not. It's not like I always will say something when I'm around little pockets of diet culture. But in that moment, there were 12 or 15 people who came through and it was every single one. Virginia  Can we not just eat the pastries?Savala  Yeah. And if you don't want one for whatever reason, that's ok. Virginia  Don't tell us why. Just don't eat it. It's fine.Well, that's a great example too, because that's also the kind of modeling that I'm sure you're conscious of doing in front of your kiddo. There's a line in the book I really loved where you write:My child is my child, carrier of my histories, and I worry she'll be particularly vulnerable to dieting. In order to fortify her, I build a home life free from diet culture. This is, of course, a huge focus of my work. It's why I wrote Fat Talk.SavalaIt's the bread and butter, if you will.Virginia  It is the bread, yes. We'll get to the butter, but it's definitely the foundation of Burnt Toast. Deliberately, I'm more likely to say, 'Let's just eat the cake,' or 'Eat the dessert' when I know my kids are listening, because I've got to model the other way. I've got to model the non-woman for them.I would love to know what are some of the little things you do to get the anti-diet, parenting stuff in?Savala  Well, the number one thing, and this will be very familiar to the Burnt Toast crew, is I, myself don't diet. That's number one. I don't pursue intentional weight loss, and I haven't since my daughter was about six months old. That was breaking point when I started to look for a different kind of life. Not only do I not diet or pursue intentional weight loss, I never, not once, have ever spoken ill of my body or complained about my body in front of my daughter. It's funny when you're raising a girl because on the one hand, I want my daughter to feel beautiful and I want to speak a sense of beauty into her. "Oh, you're so beautiful." And I want to talk about myself through the lens of beauty for that reason, too. On the other hand, you don't want to over emphasize beauty and teach them that that is a super meaningful currency that they have to ... you know what I mean? Virginia  It's like, 'You are beautiful and it's the least interesting thing about you.' You're holding both of those with both hands all the time.Savala  All the time. So I speak well of my body, but try not to do it in a way that feels too "cover of a magazine" oriented. There are other little things like, we decant food in our house so most of it is not associated with "nutrition information."And we talk about nutrition information, because she picks it up in the world. But in our house, it's just in the container. I make a point of letting her choose how much she eats. I tend to take on the responsibility of picking what's on offer, and then she chooses how much. But we've mix that up as she's gotten older.I fill my home with physical media, like figurines, statues, posters, books that have all kinds of bodies, especially fat bodies, because I want that to feel normal and celebrated for her. I want her to see fat bodies depicted as beautiful, wonderful things, not just as things we try to move away from or punish. It's good for me, too. Almost anything that I practice for myself, I practice for her, in an age appropriate way. Including being really playful. It doesn't all have to be political. I talk in the book about this one episode where my daughter was probably about four or five years old, and she wanted some chocolate chips after she had already had dessert. Initially, I was like, "No, you had your ice cream. We'll have chocolate chips another time." And then I was like, I want some chocolate chips. I said, "Actually, yeah, let's have some chocolate chips." We each had a little handful, and she said, "I wish I could have more." And I was like, "I think one is enough." And then I was like, "Actually, let's have more." And we sort of did that playfully a few times. She still loves it. She remembers it was such joy. My goal there was to have a little fun, but also to celebrate appetite, and take this moment that we often are taught to read as personal failure - going back for a little more - and change it into something that was fun and goofy and totally fine.Virginia  Celebrating pleasure. Yeah, let's have more. It tastes good tonight. Let's do it and not feel like we have to put guardrails around that.Savala  Exactly. I look for moments like that, and I'll say, who knows what the future brings, but my kid has a really joyful, non self-conscious relationship with food that involves eating all kinds of things, including broccoli and kale, and with her body. Who knows what the world brings? Well, we do know what the world brings. We know what's coming, but she has a foundation that's much better than mine was.Virginia  Yeah, such a different foundation than what you had. And that has to do something. I have to believe that.Savala  Yeah, it has to. It has to. And I must say, obviously, your book inspired me and was part of my inspiration in how I approached feeding my kiddo.Virginia  I'm so glad it's helpful. Yeah, I mean, it's always a work in progress, but it is really rewarding when you see kids having that ease and not overthinking and not getting caught in those in those traps that we do. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterEditor's note: We're splitting Savala's interview into two episodes, so tune in to part two on March 19 to hear Savala's "classy and trashy" butters. Part two will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this the second part of this conversation.Join here for just $5 per monthJoin Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈VirginiaAll right. Well, this was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Just tell folks where we find you and how we support your work.SavalaOh, it's been a serious joy to be here. I could do it all again. The best way to support my work is, of course, to buy Good Woman: A Reckoning and share it with the women in your life that you love, and maybe even the the men in your life that you love.VirginiaI agree with that. SavalaIf you can't buy it, you can get it at libraries, or borrow it from a friend. Obviously, as an author, I'm interested in book sales, but mostly I'm interested in the ideas in the book doing good in the world. So read Good Woman. If people want to hang out a little bit, I'm on Instagram at savalanolan. SavalaNolan.com is my website, which is another way to get in touch with me. I totally welcome that. I love doing book clubs, talking to readers, all that stuff, so if folks are interested, they should reach out.Virginia  Thank you, Savala. This was such a joy.SavalaThank you, Virginia. The pleasure was mine.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel!Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!) We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team.Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday.Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 233 TranscriptVirginiaWe have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin. KimHi, hi, hi. VirginiaWe are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting.Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her.Kim  I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions. VirginiaTruly harrowing.KimI'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet.Virginia  Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced?Kim230,000.Virginia230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you. Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions?Corinne  My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work?Kim  When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now. That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?"So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise.Virginia  Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive.Kim  When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff. That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life.Virginia  That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this.Corinne  Yeah. I was a regular listener.Virginia  Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people.I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space?Kim  For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on. And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was. And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing.Virginia  She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine.KimOh right. I forgot about that, her original handle.VirginiaDances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix. Kim  There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people.Virginia  Yeah, it's so true.Corinne  Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from? Kim  Oh, this question.CorinneIf you want to skip it ...KimIt brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it. VirginiaIt's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory.KimIn 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me. Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore.Virginia  A blonde-ish mule.Corinne  I would consider you blonde. Virginia  I still would consider you blonde. CorinneAlso Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus?VirginiaI am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn.CorinneThis is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn.KimJohn, my husband, is a Capricorn.Virginia  I don't know what that means. KimWe're very compatible.Corinne  Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon.Virginia  Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology. But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is. The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you.Kim  There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name.Virginia  I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure. Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore have any pets?Kim  The bookstore has so many pets. We have shop dogs. Ann famously has a dog, Nemo. He appears in most of the videos. Before Nemo she had a cute little guy named Sparky, who I loved so much. There's a back office staff and they almost all have dogs and bring their dogs to work. VirginiaLove this. KimThere's one bookseller who has a dog, but she's on maternity leave, so we're a little bit short on dogs that are out on the floor, but in the back office, it's dog central. This is my second time working there. I worked there in 2019. I've mostly been self-employed and worked from home for a really long time. My mood was starting to get dark and my therapist suggested it would be nice to have some socialization and to leave my house one or two days a week. I was friendly with Parnassus, so I asked, "Is this a thing?" And they were excited, so they hired me to be a part-time bookseller back in 2019. Then the pandemic hit and they closed for a long time and it just didn't make sense anymore. I went and did a whole other job for a few years and left that job last year and went back to the bookstore. Same thing. I still work from home and I work at the bookstore one or two days a week. I do actually love a million things about it, but my favorite thing this round is everyone I work with is 24 years old, give or take. I love them so much. It is so invigorating to be around a whole staff of 24 year olds. They all love their parents. They have really good parents. They're mostly queer, which makes it extra nice that none of their parents were bad. Their parents are super accepting. They're all really smart and they're all funny. The things that are funny to them are so strange. There are all these long running jokes about, like, which Muppet are you? That's a fun thing for Gen Z.Virginia  That sounds delightful. I mean, I think bookstore people are just the best people and the most charming weirdos. And I love hearing that 24 year olds love their parents. Because even though my oldest kid is 12, and we have a ways to go, fingers crossed we'll get there.Kim  Yeah. Our generation, not so much.Virginia  It's not a given. Let's put it that way. It's not a given.We're going to do a lightning round of fun, goofy questions so we can all get to know you better. Corinne, why don't you kick it off?Corinne  All right, first question. Tell us about your pets.Kim  Ooh, I have two official pets. I have two cats. They came in at different times. They're both street cats. One is Nomi. He's kind of a Siamese cat. The other one is your regular striped street cat. His name is Benny.VirginiaAnd you have an owl in your backyard. KimI have an owl. I live in the country, so we have deer, turkey, owls, hawks, a skunk and a lot of snakes.Virginia  Nice. Favorite hobbies? I know from Instagram you are into collage making and you are into puzzles and I'm here for both of them.Kim  Yes, you are part of my puzzle journey. I knew that you got that table and you were doing them, and I thought, Ooh, that seems relaxing. We moved into this house last year, and I thought, Who am I going to be in the country? I'm going to be someone who does puzzles, and I'm going to get a puzzle table. And I did.Virginia  It's so relaxing. The best.Kim  The collage thing is new. I went to a divorce party and we were doing blackout poetry collages. I had never heard of any of this. I had the time of my life and my friend was like, You can just do this at home. And so now I do.Virginia  Corinne was nodding because Corinne is cooler and of course she knows what black out poetry collages are. I do not. CorinneI think you do, as well. VirginiaIs it like what Kate Baer writes? Like blacked out words? Okay, that is cool. I love that.Corinne  Kim, tell us your favorite comfort food or snacks.Kim  I've needed a lot of comfort this week. My go-to is chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. You do need carbs when you're this stressed out because your body's trying to slow you down and get you to rest and sleep. So there's been a lot of tendies in my life.Corinne  Are these from a specific restaurant? Or the freezer section?Kim  This week they're from a grocery store. There's a proliferation of chicken stuff here - the Nashville hot chicken. Truly, everywhere you go, there's hot chicken and there's tenders. The driving force of Nashville is chicken tenders.CorinneSounds like heaven.VirginiaBurnt Toast retreat in Nashville?? We just eat chicken tenders for three days? Start planning it now. That sounds great. Favorite thing you wore recently, and what makes it your favorite?Kim  Let's talk about jeans. I don't know what we're supposed to be wearing anymore. I am still comfortable in skinny jeans. VirginiaIt's okay. This is a jeans safe space.KimI'm locked and loaded in those high-rise, skinny jeans. But that is not what we're supposed to be wearing anymore.Virginia  They're real mad at us for still wanting to wear them.Kim  Let me tell you what the people I work with wear. It looks like I work with the Insane Clown Posse. They are wearing jeans so big and baggy it blows my mind. So I thought, Let me try. I bought a pair of - everything comes from Big Undies - I bought these Old Navy barrel jeans and I feel nuts in them. But I wore them to work and everyone was like, That's what you're supposed to look like! I've never been more uncomfortable in my life than when I wear these jeans. Corinne  You realize you're going to have to send us photos, right? We're going to be texting your co-workers to take secret photos of you. KimOh, my God.Virginia  We're going to need a photo.Kim  I went to a museum recently and wore those Old Navy barrel jeans - light wash, I will add - very uncomfortable.Virginia  You went right into the deep end of that swimming pool.Kim  I went in. And then I have this Universal Standard shirtdress. They have them in white and black. It's just a button up, floor length thing. I wore that, obviously unbuttoned from the waist down, and then I have those Crocs Dylan platform clogs.Corinne  My God, this is very chic outfit. KimI have the ones that are like clown shoes.CorinneThey're platform Crocs. Kim  I wore that to the museum and I think it's the coolest I've ever looked, but it's the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life.Virginia  So cool though.Corinne  Dying to see it. KimIt's my only outfit. Everything else is workout clothes.Virginia  You have one outfit. You're set. I mean, jeans are a whole conversation. That silhouette and changing from how we've been programmed, I feel you. But even wearing something where you're like, I know this is cool, but it feels so different from what I like. The way the trends have changed. I do feel like that is one of the oddest things about getting older - suddenly realizing the clothes are so unfamiliar. Corinne is the baby of the podcast, so she might not be able to relate to that.Corinne  Kim, how old are you?KimI'm 49. I turn 50 this year.Virginia  Ooh, exciting. When's your birthday? KimIt’s a whole thing. I'm working through it.Corinne  Wait, what if you guys have the same birthday?Kim  I'm May 20. VirginiaI'm April 30. KimOh, you're an April Taurus.Virginia  And that means a thing?I feel that it is a whole thing about clothes. You're just like, It's making less and less sense. I'm trying, but I don't know.Kim  It's hard. I think we're just supposed to feel stupid.Corinne  Well, not to change the subject, but how do you feel about brownies? Are you an edge, corner or center of the pan person? KimCenter. I can't deal with the edges.Virginia  Same. KimIt needs to all be the same texture.Virginia  You've got to pair up with your edge people so that you can get the brownies you want.Corinne  Following up that groundbreaking question, peanut butter in the fridge or pantry?Kim  Pantry. I didn't know anyone put it in the fridge. But during the storm, we stayed at a hotel for eight days, and then we moved into someone's empty house, and they had their peanut butter in the fridge. I was like, are we supposed to be doing this?Virginia  Yes, that's what the Lord intended. I am.Corinne  I am also a fridge peanut butter person.KimAre you supposed to?Virginia  Not from a food safety perspective, but it spiritually feels correct to me. It feels like it should be cold. I threw this in here because it was a recent poll on Burnt Toast and the people were against me on this. CorinneOh, wow. VirginiaWhen my boyfriend moved in, he was like, Why is the peanut butter in the fridge? What's happening? You're insane. And I was like, well, let's check with the public, assuming that my Burnt Toasties would rally around me. Instead they were all like, What are you doing? Corinne  The only open stuff in my pantry is crackers and cookies. Open stuff goes in the fridge. VirginiaIf it has a lid, it needs to be cold.KimBut what about hot sauce?CorinneFridge.Virginia  Yeah, in the fridge.KimWe do, too. But I have started to think i'm not supposed to because, at restaurants, it's just on the table. CorinneThis is true. Virginia  You have a good point. I'm not saying it's correct, but I'm saying it's correct. Another favorite Burnt Toast question that a reader submitted that we think is very fun to ask people is, which liquids would you want shooting out of your fingers? If you could have fingers that shoot liquids.Corinne  Each finger can be a separate liquid.Virginia  But also, if you don't want to think of five, it's fine. If you're like, I just want a Coke finger. That's all I need.Corinne  It could also be a liquid that's not something you drink.Kim  Like what?CorinneGasoline. That's my new best answer. I would want gas to be able to shoot out of my finger.Kim  I did just had to buy a generator. I hope this episode doesn't give me PTSD when I listen to it in a month and remember how traumatized I am from the storm. I'll be like, Why did I keep mentioning generators and hotels? Ok, I think it would be iced coffee, like a cold brew; Pamplemousse La Croix; honestly, orange juice. Love orange juice. Love an acid. That's it. Those are my three. I'm not a soft drink person.Corinne  Well, are you an electrolyte person?Kim  Oh, my God. I've been dying to talk to you about this. No, they're fake science, Corinne.Corinne  Well, fake science works for me.KimNo, I'm not. I used to be.Corinne  Talk to me when you come to high elevation.Kim  You know what? Honestly, that's fair. I have been in your part of the country a lot the last few years. We have to go to L.A. a few times a year. During COVID we couldn't fly, so we started driving, and now we are obsessed with driving cross-country.Corinne  Oh, wow. We really should talk.Kim  I didn't know you yet, but the last time we were in Albuquerque I told Virginia I wanted your phone number to ask you where to get a breakfast burrito. CorinneOh, my God! Yeah, you should have!Virginia  Corinne always has that intel.Kim  But no, the high altitude, that's legit.Virginia  I'm excited to have another electrolyte skeptic in the podcast. That's going to be helpful for me.Virginia  The beverage I will never be needing less of is Diet Coke. Are you pro or con Diet Coke, and if you are not pro Diet Coke, what do you drink?Kim  I'm pro Diet Coke, especially with pizza. I drink one on the days I'm at the bookstore. I just need one halfway through to keep going. I do love Diet Coke. I just wake up and drink coffee. That's typically it for the day, but if I'm out to eat or if I'm at work, I drink a Diet Coke. VirginiaYeah, it's a nice little treat.Corinne  I just learned that there's a difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero.Virginia  Obviously! There's a huge difference!CorinneBut what is it? No one can really articulate it.VirginiaThe taste.Corinne  But why are they making two zero calorie Cokes?Virginia  Diet culture.Kim  I think it's gender. I think they think women want Diet Coke and men do not.Virginia  Men are drinking a manly Coke Zero? That doesn’t sound more masculine.Corinne  But what is the difference? Is it different sweeteners?Virginia  I am Googling it to get to the bottom of this. "Coke Zero aims to replicate the classic Coke taste using a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium." Diet Coke uses only aspartame.Corinne  So it is the sweeteners. They both have caffeine?Virginia  They both have caffeine. They both are calorie-free and sugar-free. Diet Coke is where you want to go for that pure aspartame hit, which is what I'm looking for. Corinne  Speaking of Diet Coke, any other diet-y foods or habits that you've reclaimed?Kim  Recently, I've started eating Uncrustables, which I hadn't had for a long time. When I was doing Iron Man training, that was what you'd take on a long bike ride. So I've associated that with needing to refuel during workouts. But I've started eating them again.Virginia  They're so good. A great purse snack. I like to have one for errand running.Kim  I've also started doing that. I just throw them in there. They're great because the purse thaws it out.Virginia  Yes, exactly. I put it between my sunglasses case and my wallet. It gets nice and toasty.Kim  And honestly? Yogurt. I quit eating yogurt for a long time, but it turns out you can have yogurt for fun.CorinneYogurt is good.Virginia  Especially if you can have the full fat yogurt.KimOh, my God. Game changer. I bought it on accident because they were out of the one I buy. I was like, Oh, it never occurred to me to switch.Virginia  The one thing RFK, Jr. and I agree on is full fat yogurt. The one overlap in our otherwise completely disparate Venn diagram circles.KimThat disgusting, broken clock of a man.Virginia  Any diet-y foods or habits that you'll never touch again that you're like, Nope, that ship has sailed?Kim   Turkey bacon and turkey sausage. VirginiaLet that go. Just, why?KimI'm just going to eat pork if I'm going to eat pork. Oh, Lean Cuisine. Never bringing that back. All kinds of snacks. I could never eat a pretzel again for the rest of my life.Corinne  Oh, wow. I love pretzels.Kim  Or unbuttered popcorn. All those zero point foods.Virginia  The ones that I hear people fully reclaim are cottage cheese, but again, pivoting to full fat cottage cheese. Rice cakes surprisingly have a lot of devotees. That's one where I'm like, No thanks. People like the crunch. I don't know.Kim  The exercise stuff I remember more. All of that has just gone away. Corinne  Never going to do another Iron Man? KimNo, I am not. I just take little walks.Virginia  So much better.Corinne  Do you have any current favorite TV shows?Kim  Oh, my God. My favorite topic is television!I am watching The Wire for the first time. I watched season one and I'm obsessed with it. I'm going to start season two as soon as I have internet in my house again. I am a middle-aged white woman, so I love RuPaul's Drag Race. I am its main demographic. I'm watching that right now. There's a new season. And I'm watching The Pitt.Virginia  I can't watch The Pitt because of medical trauma, but I do think I would like it. I need a website that gives me spoilers, so I can pick and choose which episodes, then I can do it.Corinne  Our last question is what are you reading right now?Kim  Ooh, I'm reading Lindy West's next memoir that's about to come out in March. It's called Adult Braces.Virginia  🎉 Spoiler, but Kim did get Lindy to come on the pod soon. So get excited, folks!Kim  I've read all of her books. I think this is her fourth book and second memoir. Man, it's blowing me away. I love her writing, and this is beyond anything she's written before, not to disparage her other books, but this is a whole new level of vulnerability. It's so good. I'm reading Heated Rivalry, also. CorinneOh, fun!Virginia  I have both of those on tap to start as soon as I finish what I'm reading right now. I can't wait to read Lindy, and I can't wait to read the Heated Rivalry books, which I ordered from your friend's bookstore, Tropes & Trifles. Kim  That's awesome. My friend Lauren owns that bookstore. She's great. Her bookstore is great.Virginia  It felt like a really good way to support Minnesota, and also my own need for more gay hockey after Corinne got me into Heated Rivalry.Corinne  Finally! It took so long. Virginia  It did. People were so mad.KimIt took longer than it needed to.VirginiaI know. I just missed it somehow. And then I was like, Okay, I'm here. I get it.Kim  I'm in a romance group chat. One of the people in the group chat is Lauren, who owns Tropes & Trifles. The first episode hit HBO, the group chat lit up. They all just said, "All of you, watch it now."Virginia  Like, just stop what you’re doing.KimWe have to talk about this collectively. So I watched it in real time. It was a mandate.CorinneAmazing.VirginiaDelightful.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginia  Well, this was so fun. I'm glad we got to chat with you more. Before we wrap up, of course, we have to get you to give us some butter. What do you have for us?(Editor's note: my mind went blank, so we skipped to Corinne and then came back to me.)Corinne  I'm going to recommend a book that I'm reading right now and really enjoying. It's called Long Bright River, and it's by Liz Moore, who wrote God Of the Woods that a lot of people read last year. I've been listening to the audiobook version and it's great. It's kind of a detective/crime situation, but there's a lot of twists and turns, and finding out things about the main character that you didn't know at the beginning. I'm really enjoying it. I'm also not quite done, so if something crazy happens at the end, don't blame me. I think I have only an hour left, so I feel pretty confident recommending it.KimDo you know it's a TV show, too?Corinne  Oh no, I didn't, but that makes so much sense. I was listening to it and thinking it would make a great show. What is the show?Kim  Same name. It has Amanda Seyfried in it.VirginiaOh, I love her. KimIt's a great cast. It's actually a great show.Corinne  I'll have to check that out.Virginia  I love that book. Kim, do you want to go next?Kim  My butter is boba. I somehow had never had it even though there are great places all over Nashville that have it. But back to chicken tenders, near the place I live now, there's a little strip mall and it has a chicken tenders restaurant and a boba place. They're the only two things there. I went over there and they were so nice. They had me taste a bunch of stuff and they made me an iced coffee boba with a brown sugar top off. I'm obsessed with it. Anytime I'm there - it's actually across the street from where I am right now. Will I get one today? Yes, I will.Virginia  I think you need one after our morning.Kim  Why did I wait so long for boba? It's so fun and delicious.Virginia  I have to confess, I don't think I've ever had it.Corinne  This reminds me that there's an amazing TikTok of some guy trying boba for the first time. Virginia  I will endorse an item of clothing. It's fast fashion, which we know makes for a problematic butter, but I know I'm going to stand by this one because it is the third time I've bought this cardigan. It is the pranayama wrap from Athleta. I wear the 2x. It's roomy on me, but it only goes up to 3x. It's not a super size inclusive brand, but Corinne just said she doesn't care.Corinne  I never said that. I feel like a wrap is a flexibly sized item of clothing.Virginia  I agree. Athleta is a brand that frequently makes me mad because Old Navy is making plus sizes. You're the same company. The same as with Gap! I am at the point in winter where my perimenopausal self is cold and hot at the same time, and I can't wear my sweaters because I'm so sweaty. It's a real thing. You just get to a point where your sweaters are too warm, but it's still cold, and what are you going to wear?I've been getting more into the sweatshirt space, but even some of them are too heavy. This wrap is a really good one. It's lightweight, but it's warm, and it comes in different colors. I got this purplish-blue color on sale and I'm living in it. My butter is a layer that you can actually be warm, but not die in.CorinneAmazing.KimI support that. Virginia  Thank you, but I do acknowledge that it is not a great brand, and I would like them to make larger sizes. Kim, this was a delight! Tell folks where they can follow you, at your website and the name you don't like.Kim  The Blonde Mule everywhere is me. As I mentioned, I bought that name.Virginia  She owns it.Kim It’s easy to find me. TheBlondeMule.com is my newsletter where I write about books and pop culture. When I've got the bandwidth, I write essays. And then @TheBlondeMule on all the platforms.Virginia  You'll also find her in the Burnt Toast comments and Big Undies comments. And know that she is working a lot of magic behind the scenes here. You'll probably hear from her more every now and then, as well. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode! Listen to hear about:⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole lifePlus, serious stuff, like:⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse ⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for FebruaryTo hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.Join Extra Butter!

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Dr. Lauren Muhlheim. Lauren is a psychologist, a fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a certified eating disorder specialist and approved consultant for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She's also a Certified Body Trust Provider and directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA, a group practice in Los Angeles. Lauren is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder and a co-author of the brand new The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Lauren joined me to chat about how she and her colleagues have been working to make eating disorder treatment less fatphobic, because, yes, that really needed to happen. We also get into why it's feeling harder than ever to treat eating disorders, or live with one, in this era of RFK, Jr., MAHA and GLP-1s. Plus what to do if your child is hiding food, lying or otherwise showing signs of developing an eating disorder. When do you intervene? And how do you do so in the most supportive way possible?If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscriiption is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 231 TranscriptVirginiaI am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time.LaurenComrades, for sure. VirginiaI've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions.LaurenI should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating. Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied. But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments. So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive. We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work.VirginiaCan you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in eating disorder treatment, or just don't know the world well, it's like, 'What do you mean eating disorder treatments are not weight inclusive? Isn't that where you go to feel better about your body?' Give an example of what CBT used to do that was harmful, and how you've updated it.LaurenWhen I was trained in CBT, I always thought it was a non-diet approach, because the focus is on regular eating and including all foods. So the center of the model is still good. But some of the fatphobic elements that were in the original treatment were - one was this insistence on regular weekly weighing and the client knowing their weight. And that if the therapist refused to weigh the client weekly, it was the therapist's own anxiety and avoidance of tolerating the client's distress over being weighed. But if you're in a bigger body, being weighed is more than just exposure. It can be traumatic. VirginiaYeah. LaurenWe don't need to put people through that, where every week they see their weight. So that's one of the first things that we eliminated. The other thing, there's behavioral experiments with a focus on challenging what they call the broken cognition. The broken cognition is this belief, and again, this was developed on primarily thin, white women who had the belief that if 'I eat a cupcake, I'll gain five pounds.' The behavioral experiment was to have them eat a cupcake, weigh them before and weigh them the following week, and prove that they didn't gain five pounds, but that's also hugely fatphobic. Because you're trying to prove to people that it's all in their heads, that weight stigma is not a thing.VirginiaWell, and you're saying, 'Look, the scary, terrible thing didn't happen.'LaurenWhich reinforces that that's the scariest thing.VirginiaEven what you're saying, weighing folks in bigger bodies can be traumatic, not because inherently it's bad to be in a bigger body, but because if you're in a bigger body and you've been weighed in medical settings, you've had that number weaponized against you for so long. That's the trauma you're alluding to. LaurenYes, exactly.VirginiaI see, so it was a lot of methodology around weight numbers meant to reassure thin women that 'Don't worry, you won't get fat.'LaurenExactly.VirginiaWhich really leaves out any fat person with an eating disorder, and doesn't really do the thin women any favors either.LaurenRight. Because it just reinforces this fear that weight gain is the worst thing that could happen to somebody.VirginiaThat's fascinating. It sounds like a lot of very much needed updates and a really terrific resource for folks. I saw in the back of the workbook under Resources, you listed Burnt Toast as one of the newsletters with an online community dialogue. It means a lot to have us spotlighted in this way. We do work hard to have our chat rooms and safe spaces in the comment section for folks coming for support. You also listed a lot of folks that we love and look to as leaders in this space: Christy Harrison, Ragen Chastain, Rachel Milner, Sabrina Strings, Bree Campos, Chrissy King, etc. How do you think about the importance of community in the work you do with your clients as you've been reframing CBT in this way?LaurenWe are big fans of yours and all the people you've named, and it was really important to us because here we are, three white women with privilege doing the updating of CBT and we wanted to take it further. It was really important to us that we learned from people with more marginalized identities. We negotiated with our editor to have sensitivity readers and we had people advising us on some of the things that we might not have been as aware of, like food insecurity, gender considerations, and the experience of people in larger bodies. As references, we tried to include some of the thought leaders that we've really learned from. Community is super important in this work because we're asking people to go against the grain of society. Many of the people that come to us for help with eating disorders are people in larger bodies who have been told by medical doctors and people in their lives to lose weight. And then they come to us and we say, 'Well, you're not eating enough.' And they think we're kind of crazy to say that. It really helps when you're asking people to do this work, which is so hard, to have other people in their lives who are supporting this. Many people don't have people in their personal lives who are anti-diet. Where do you find those people? A lot of it is online and in podcasts. I always tell people it helps, even if it's you and me and the person listening to the podcast. They're hearing the interviewer and the guest and there's two other people who are in this world with you. VirginiaThat's right.LaurenIt helps a lot. And I do think that is the missing piece for people in bigger bodies who experience disordered eating - they don't have the support.VirginiaEspecially right now. We're in a really dark cultural moment. You know, just like a swirling vortex of badness in a lot of ways. So it feels even harder, because what the federal government is telling us, what we're seeing in the news, etc, etc, is also running counter to what will actually promote healing. To that end, I'd love if we could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your work in this dark time. We just had RFK’s latest USDA dietary guidelines come out. Lauren, how are you feeling about the new food pyramid?LaurenSadly, I feel like I am not going to be able to retire anytime soon. The culture just propagates and perpetuates disordered eating in so many ways. Obviously eating is so much more individualized than just following a guideline, but what I can say is that I have never seen a person with binge eating who was not restricting their carbs. VirginiaThat’s really interesting.LaurenCarbs are basically the building blocks of what we eat, and they should be. A lot of the people who complain of what has now been popularized as the term "food noise," are not eating enough, and especially not eating enough carbs or starches. I expect that we'll see many more people coming in saying, 'I'm preoccupied with thoughts of food,' or 'I'm bingeing,' or 'I'm emotionally eating.' In our work, and what our workbook focuses on, is 'Are you eating enough regularly throughout the day? Are you including the various food groups? Are you eating enough starches and fats?' That's the mainstay of recovering from an eating disorder.VirginiaFeeding your brain.LaurenYour brain needs glucose to think logically.VirginiaYeah, and not just at the tiny bottom point of the pyramid, but throughout the day. This is something I've learned from you that I want to make sure we say really clearly, because I think it's something people know but lose track of in their own work on these issues. Often folks come to you and say, 'I binge eat. I'm out of control with food.' When you start working with them your take is quite different.LaurenRight. All the eating disorders are really driven by restriction or not eating enough, and it's true that most people come to us and think they're eating too much. They're complaining about emotional eating or binge eating. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, one of the things that CBT therapists do is ask people to keep records. Early on I was taught to have people record what they're eating, and that really offers an insight into what's going on. In my group practice, we do a lot of training of more junior clinicians, including graduate students. It's really exciting to me when I have a graduate student who's been with me for a couple months, and I say, "Well, what do you think the diagnosis is?" And they'll say to me, "Well, I'm waiting to see the food records because the person's complaining that they're eating too much." But they know from having been through this a few times, that when you see what someone's eating, you see a lot of restriction, a lot of skipped meals, a lot of very sparse meals. People really do think they're eating so much because the culture is so focused on eating these very low intakes, and that's been kind of normalized on social media by wellness culture. People are really shocked when we tell them that they need to eat more, and that is the biggest part of it. Regular eating is kind of the antidote to all disordered eating. In our workbook, we're always like, 'Are you sure you're eating enough?' And I don't want to reinforce dieting by teaching someone strategies to prevent binge eating when they're not eating enough because I'm not going to be successful at that. Because that's the hunger drive and that's what keeps us alive. People may have short term strategies that work, but I definitely don't work on stopping the binge eating or the emotional eating until someone is really eating enough.VirginiaEating enough to support the idea that you would eat less at this one point in the day.LaurenAnd then most often, a lot of the binge eating and emotional eating decreases once people start to eat more regularly at meals and snacks. The food noise goes down.VirginiaLet's talk about food noise. The rise of GLP-1s has really popularized that concept, but also, I would say, as you noted, misdefined it in many situations. How is all of that discourse impacting your work with your clients right now?LaurenIt's definitely impacting us. We are seeing a lot of people coming in on GLP-1s, or contemplating GLP-1s. We always need to distinguish people who are on GLP-1s for medical conditions versus people on them solely for weight loss. One of the problems with being on them for weight loss is that they're on higher dosages, and that's where you get more side effects. We do get some people who come in complaining of binge eating or emotional eating, and then they're on a GLP-1 and they suddenly have no appetite. It's harder to get them to eat enough throughout the day.VirginiaRight. If you're trying to go back and say, 'Wait, let's look at where you're restricting,' and now they can't access any appetite to eat.LaurenOr they're nauseous and throwing up. VirginiaOh, God.LaurenWe have been successful in a number of cases in helping our clients advocate for their doctors to actually lower their doses. Sometimes that helps, but there's a lot of nuance, right? I think we don't know enough about the full impact of these medications. Might there be some benefit for people with eating disorders in certain circumstances? Maybe. But it's a scary thing, and it definitely makes our work harder when we're focused on trying to get people to eat regularly throughout the day.VirginiaThat concept's been getting a lot of media attention, GLP-1s as an eating disorder treatment. But it sounds like you have major reservations about that idea.LaurenBecause it does the opposite of the work we're trying to get people to do. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the best validated treatment. It was developed in the '90s and there's a lot of research to support it. The model is regular eating, including all foods, not being restrictive. And symptoms typically get better. We know that with weight loss, most people don't keep weight off long term.VirginiaRight, and most people aren't able to stay on these drugs long term is also what we're seeing in a lot of research now.LaurenWe do see some people who have been on GLP-1s and then they go off them and their weight is increasing and maybe the binge eating is coming back and starting again. It's a bit of a quick fix. That doesn't solve the problem.VirginiaIt's just rooted in that old thinking of binge eaters must eat too much, take away their appetite, solve binge eating, as opposed to what you've been steadily making the case for. And all the evidence is showing binge eaters are responding to restriction. And so a drug that encourages more restriction, how would that long term solve binge eating? I would love to also talk a little bit about managing eating disorders and disordered eating in kids. You specialize in teenagers. Whenever I have a reader or a friend, as I now parent a middle schooler, reach out with concerns. I'm always like, 'Check out. Dr. Mulheim's work. This is your first stop.' You're a big proponent of Family Based Treatment, FBT, for adolescent eating disorders. On your website you wrote, "I do not believe that parents cause eating disorders, but I know they can be an important part of the solution. Hence, I'm an advocate for the inclusion of parents in the treatment of their children."Let's talk a little bit about how parents can help. What behaviors and symptoms do you take seriously? How do you be part of that solution?LaurenThe first thing is that eating disorders in children and teens is harder to spot than you think. My advice to parents is, if you have concerns, definitely check them out. Some of the signs we see are stopping eating certain foods, eliminating dessert or not eating meals and saying they've already eaten. We may not see weight loss in in a child or a teen. They may just fail to gain, because remember, they're supposed to be gaining over time. Sometimes they're growing and they're not gaining, and that's the equivalent to weight loss in an adult. We also see things like social withdrawal. What looks like depression, poor sleep, or loss of interest in activities. It can look like depression or anxiety. Or complaints of stomach aches. A lot of parents go down the gastrointestinal route, trying to figure out what's going on. It can be very confusing. Family based treatment is a wonderful evidence based treatment. It was developed at Stanford and it's a manualized treatment that basically allows teens to recover in the home. Because traditionally, teens were pulled out of the home. Parents were blamed. There was this saying about how it was always the mother's fault.VirginiaOf course. Clearly.LaurenClearly following on the trend of the schizophrenogenic mother, the autistic mother.VirginiaWe cause autism. We cause eating disorders. LaurenThat has really perpetuated. I still meet people who say it must be the parents. I try to remember we're all in this culture and parents are doing their best. Parents are getting diet messages from all these other health professionals in our culture. I try to remember that they become the messengers of the cultural message. There is often dieting in the home, but does that cause eating disorders in itself? No. And we see that because not all siblings develop an eating disorder. A lot of parents diet and their kids don't develop eating disorders. We have to give parents a chance. The great thing about FBT is it's done through family meals and normalizing eating all foods. It's a great chance for families to come together. I find it very powerful when the parents are unlearning their diet culture with their teens. They're able to do that. Sometimes it's a little bit of a hard wake up call, but most parents can get on board pretty quickly. It's really powerful when you see a whole family change the way they've been eating. It gives the parents a chance to learn the information. Whereas if the teen goes off to residential, the family doesn't come along and then the teen goes back into that home, so it's challenging. It's a lot of work for parents because they become the treatment team. VirginiaIt is a lot of sitting at the table with a kid who doesn't want to eat, which, any parent, regardless of whether they've managed an eating disorder, can tell you that's a nightmare. That's really hard to do and often it can feel counter to some of the other messages we get. If you're looking at the Ellen Satter model of feeding kids, it will be very much not forcing kids to take bites, and in FBT, when you have a kid refeeding after a lot of restriction, you do have to require them to eat. And that feels really strange. Some of the interviews I've done with families who've done this, it is so moving to hear the parents work through their own stuff and come together in a different way to support the child. It's pretty transformative. For parents who are noticing some of the early symptoms, like hiding food, or kids may be lying about what they're eating, how do you recommend parents manage things in those stages? Like, okay, I'm keeping an eye. I'm probably going to talk to the pediatrician. Probably going to, you know, do I need to level this up? And also, how do I react in the moment to some of this stuff?LaurenWith as much compassion as they can, and in a non-shaming way. If you think that you know your kids are lying about what they're eating or hiding food, we really want to just encourage them to eat more with you. Which, again, this comes back to all eating disorders require people to eat more. If someone's hiding food, maybe they're not getting enough at meals. If someone is refusing to eat meals, they're not getting enough at meals. It's a good chance for parents to be more watchful, to try to make sure that meals are eaten and that teens and children have access to a variety of foods. That they're getting their nutritional needs met. A lot of parents, again, because the cultural messaging is so intense, think people should be eating less. If you've taken care of a growing teen, you see how much they need.VirginiaHow much your grocery bill has increased.LaurenParents may not be aware that their teens are supposed to be going through growth spurts. I do some trainings with Rebecca Peebles, who's an amazing pediatrician, and she emphasizes how teens are supposed to gain about 50 pounds as they go through puberty. Where are you going to get that weight if you're not eating enough. The growth pattern for a lot of kids is to grow out before they grow up. There's supposed to be this weight gain. We observe teens who are starting to gain weight to fuel this growth, and then someone panics, whether it's the pediatrician or a parent or the child themselves, and they start to restrict. That's the prime time for when anorexia can strike. If they had been left alone, they would have just gained and grown. Now you have to do all this work to get them back to that weight so that they can start to grow again. VirginiaI think that's so helpful to normalize. This is what we want our kids to be doing. I'm parenting middle schoolers and I am shocked sometimes how fast a group of 12 year olds can empty the snack cabinet or the ice cream freezer, but this is what we want them to be doing right now. When you see that hiding food behavior, parents often think they need to correct that behavior, instead of stepping back and thinking about what led to the hiding. And is this a food that you've given a message they shouldn't have as much of? Or as you're saying, are there other parts in the day where they're not getting enough? I also think a lot about the schedules these kids are under. They're at school all day, then they're going to sports or play rehearsal. My kid was out of the house for 12 hours yesterday. She was starving when she got home, and if you are coming with a diet mindset, you might be alarmed by that. But it completely makes sense that she didn't have enough time to eat during her school day and needed to make up for it. LaurenYeah. VirginiaWell, this is so helpful. Your work is reassuring and grounded. Whether folks are dealing with an active eating disorder or not, if you're parenting teens, if you're working on your own stuff with food, Lauren's work is an incredible resource. The workbook is really great, so thank you for that.LaurenThank you. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginiaSo we wrap up every episode of Burnt Toast with butter, which is our recommendation segment. Do you have any butter for us today?LaurenI've been having a lot of fun with gardening fruit trees in Los Angeles. It's been really fun. I just recently pruned a peach tree to get it ready to hopefully bud and produce fruit. Peach trees have to be shaped in a certain way. You don't want the central leader you've got to have key branches. So I studied, and then you have to reduce the fruit, which is very sad.VirginiaOh, you have to cut off baby fruit. LaurenYou have to cut off baby fruit because otherwise it just produces too much. You want to select which peaches are going to get bigger. That's been fun. And I'm growing an avocado tree. Pretty soon I have to go outside and spray it with sugar water to encourage the bees.VirginiaAmazing.LaurenTo hopefully pollinate it. I love that. I've been hand pollinating my passion fruit vine, which is a whole other thing.VirginiaI am so jealous that you can do all of this outside. I am currently raising a indoor orange tree because I live in New York and it is 20 degrees today. It is stressful. I have to tell you, Lauren, I don't think she's living her best life right now. I mean, who among us is in this time of year, but I just added a humidifier because I got a hygrometer. She was starting to lose leaves and her humidity was only 22% because it's so cold, even inside my heated house. It's so cold and dry. So my butter is going to be my humidifier for my orange tree. I'm hopeful, because she's got fruit on her, and it's starting to ripen, but she's dropping leaves because the air is too dry. It's high stakes over here right now with the orange tree.LaurenBeing able to grow outside. VIrginiaIt's more logical than what I'm doing, but I just love the idea of fruit trees. We do have, in my garden outside, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, all that stuff. But I wanted year round joy.LaurenIn California we have to get the no freeze hours berries.VirginiaIt's a whole different world over there. Fascinating. Well, yay! Here's for fruit trees for everybody! I don't know if I want to recommend everybody get an indoor fruit tree, because it is quite a project, but she is bringing me a lot of joy, as well as I'm stressing and over there filling her humidifier twice a day.LaurenRight? It’s a lot of work to take care of these trees.VirginiaBut I'm on it.LaurenI'll be back spraying my avocado tree with sugar to invite the bees.VirginiaYou know what? There's also something to be said for an obsessive hobby right now to just give you a little thing to focus on. I can do this. I can spray this tree with sugar water. Because there's a lot we can't control. So you know what? Fruit tree farming seems like a great use of energy. LaurenAnd then you get to eat them. VirginiaYes, exactly, and that's what I'm really excited for. And make delicious beverages and whatnot. Lauren, tell folks where we can find you. How we can support your work.LaurenMy website is https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/. That's where my group practice information is, and my books are listed there. I have blog with a lot of resources for people with eating disorders, and for parents. My books are available wherever you buy books. They're both by New Harbinger Publications and The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders is available now.VirginiaAmazing. We'll link to all of that. Thank you for being here.LaurenThank you so much for having me.Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these. The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies. This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for a BONUS January Indulgence Gospel!This episode is free for everyone. If you enjoy it, consider a paid subscription to Burnt Toast! It's the best way to support our work and keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space. You'll also get behind some of our most popular paywalled episodes like: 🧈 Why is Katie Sturino Working for Weight Watchers?🧈Don't Go On the Pete Wells Diet🧈The Mel Robbins Cult of High FivesAnd more! (Find every Indulgence Gospel episode here.) Never miss another episode! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 230 TranscriptVirginiaSo today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions. CorinneThis is kind of my favorite type of episode, VirginiaSame. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news? CorinneOne thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry. VirginiaI haven't watched it. CorinneOkay, but do you know what I'm talking about?VirginiaWell, I'm just going to Google it real quick.CorinneOh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend. Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly.VirginiaOh come on, it’s a sports thing! CorinneThere is so little sports. Let me just tell you.VirginiaOkay...CorinneIf you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn. VirginiaOh! Okay. CorinneIt's based on, like, gay romance novels.VirginiaOhhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend. CorinneAnd I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together. VirginiaObviously.CorinneIt's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie.VirginiaSo okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters? CorinneI'm invested. VirginiaYou're invested.CorinneIt's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry. And you see their butts a lot.VirginiaWell, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay.  CorinneThen you've probably read the novels.VirginiaI may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me. CorinneThere's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey.Virginia You have learned nothing.Corinne There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know.VirginiaOh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup?CorinneI don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever.VirginiaDelightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight. I really do feel like you maybe need to consider a Buffy watch at some point.CorinneNext time I have 47 hours unscheduled weeks.VirginiaI mean, you can chip away at it too. It's on Disney Plus! Oh wait, you probably don't have Disney Plus. CorinneMy bad. VirginiaNo that's fair. Well, it's been very fun we're in season four now for the Buffy fans in the audience. And it's going to start getting a little more violent. I'll have to feel it out. But I think we're, at the point of no return. That's a good TV update. Have you been reading anything good? I read a book that I think you liked, and I don't think I liked it. But I think I'm in the minority. CorinneWhich book?VirginiaHeart The Lover by Lily King.CorinneOh, my God, you didn't like it?!VirginiaNo. What am I missing? CorinneWhat didn't you like? VirginiaI felt like they were all so annoying and pretentious. Is it because I was an English major, so I don't like English majors? We're just pretty annoying, with all the literary references. Okay, we get it. You are boys who read books. I was just like, why would you sleep with either one of them? I don't get it.CorinneOh, fascinating. I mean, I was just sobbing for the entire second half.VirginiaIt does get sad in the second half, but I didn't like him, so I didn't care?CorinneYou weren't invested.VirginiaAnd it's not hard to get me invested in a health journey of any sort! I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but—okay, spoiler alert! We're going to talk about it with spoilers, so that we can really get into it. If you didn't read that book, you'll want to skip ahead about a minute and a half. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈SCROLL TO NEXT SET OF BUTTER EMOJIS TO AVOID SPOILERS!Okay, I thought it was real weird that she gave a kid up for adoption, and then was just like, "But I know she's fine. It's fine. It's all fine." And yet she was so worried about the kid she did have who had health issues. I mean, of course she was worried about him— but she had just mentally been like, that one's fine. I picked good people. They had a nice photo. So I know she's having a great childhood. That was really weird to me. CorinneI mean, I felt like that seemed like the decision of a young, stressed out person,VirginiaYeah, maybe. And how she keeps talking about it is meant to be a trauma response?CorinneIt was a questionable young person decision.VirginiaYes, definitely. But it felt weird that she would never reflect further upon it as she got into her own motherhood. I'm not saying she was wrong to give the baby up for her adoption. I also think abortion exists, and that would have made sense. But I'm not saying she should have kept the child. I just thought, don't you think you would have gotten any more nuanced in your feelings about it as the years went on?CorinneThe book is her getting more nuanced about it. Right?VirginiaNot really! Not about the baby. She's like, Yeah, she's fine. I mean, she finally tells him about it, but.CorinneI don't know. I think she was kind of in denial about it, or just avoiding it, and then the book is her coming to terms with it. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈END OF SPOILERSVirginiaWell, I just felt like everyone was pretentious and unlikable. And it feels like everyone loves this book so much, and I don't know what I missed. CorinneHave you read her other books? VirginiaNo, this was my first Lily King, CorinneOkay, because there's also, like a connection to one of the other books. VirginiaWell, I'm not going to read it because I didn't like any of these people. But Corinne loved it, guys, so if you love it, if you've read it, let us know in the comments! I was just surprised. This is the first time I've ever not liked one of your book recs.CorinneI am a little surprised, but I think maybe I'm primed to like those college, academic group of kids books. That's a genre I really like. Virginia I think it's a genre I don't like. I think I actively dislike reading about people in college.CorinneYeah, it's interesting, because I'm not like, looking back fondly on my own experience at that time. Yeah. I think I just like, enjoy the dynamics. Did you read A Secret History? VirginiaNo, CorinneI love that book. So I feel like, this was maybe tapping into that.VirginiaI think I just think academia is very pretentious? CorinneIsn't one of your parents a professor? VirginiaYes I was raised by professors. CorinneSo maybe there's something there. VirginiaThree out of four of my parents have worked as professors. So yes. I grew up in academia. CorinneOkay, well, none of mine have. VirginiaWell, I am now reading The Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's about this woman, who's sort of lost  in her life and moves into a convent. And I keep thinking "Corinne would really like this book." CorinneIt does sound good to me. Virginia I don't know if I like it, but I do think you would really like it. Usually I'm a big do not finisher if I don't like a book. And I will say Heart The Lover was a snappy read. So I kept going. Because I was like, well, Corinne loved this book, so I'll keep reading to find out when I'll love it. And that was never, but it was a fast read, and this one is too. I'm moving through it quickly, but I think I do need to really root for the characters.CorinneThat's funny. I have a conversation like this a lot with my mom, because she doesn't like books where the characters are too flawed. We always say it like, if she doesn't like them, she, doesn't want to read it.VirginiaI am okay with flawed, but they have to be flawed and likable.CorinneThey have to have redeeming qualities,VirginiaAnd maybe some awareness of their flawedness in a interesting way?. I don't know. I don't need them to be good people, but I guess, endearing? And in these two books, I'm not finding anyone that endearing. But they are interesting, all right. CorinneWell I'm also extremely curious to hear about your 30 Day Strength Challenge.VirginiaOkay, yes! So despite the fact that in our New Year's Day episode, I was like, "We're not doing any January fitness challenges!" Three days later, I was like, Oh, I'm doing a fitness challenge. It's a challenge created by friend of the show, beloved podcast guest, Anna Maltby, who writes the How to Move newsletter. And she has a 30 day strength training challenge going on this month. And I saw it, and I love Anna, but I wasn't going to do it. Because I was just like, oh, I'm not going to do that. And then my friend Mary texted a bunch of us and was like, "I really want to do the strength training challenge. Who's in?" and I was like, "Oh, all right, sure, I'll do it with you!" And, it's very fun. It's getting me to work out consistently five days a week, which I never do! Oh, let me pause and say, we're going to talk some specifics on weights. If you don't want to hear numbers, skip ahead. Man, I'm just getting people to fast forward through this whole episode! We're done with book spoilers, but we might mention weight numbers. So if you don't want that... skip ahead again.CorinneAnd just to clarify, you mean weight lifting numbers. Not body weight numbers. BUTTER EMOJIS AROUND WEIGHT TALK🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈VirginiaNo, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with body weight. I am not doing this to lose weight. I am doing this to support my friend who wants to do the challenge, and because I kind of liked the idea of seeing what it would feel like to increase my weight training for a month. CorinneSo, my question is: It's a 30 day challenge, but you're not doing strength workouts every day for 30 days, right? VirginiaNo, Anna makes her programs very customizable, so you could really do anything. You could do one workout a week and be like, "This is my 30 day challenge." She lets you make your own plan. She does include a suggested schedule, which is six workouts a week, but only three of them are weights. It's three days of weights, two days of cardio and then a Pilates day. I'm trimming it down to five days. [Post-recording correction: It's actually 2 days of weights, plus a "core and conditioning" HIIT workout where only one move involves a weight. Plus 3 suggested cardio and Pilates days.]And my main goal for this is to see: Is this helping me reliably carve out a few more workout windows in my week? It's getting me to try out days when I wouldn't normally do a workout., and see, does it make sense with the schedule? If so, when I'm done with this challenge, then I'll reflect on, do I want to keep this schedule? Do I want to do go back to two days of weights but do a little more cardio? I'm kind of just using it as, a see how it feels to do more weights and more workouts. To see how it feels to do more movement, and then think about what kind of movement I think I want to keep doing. CorinneCool.Virginia Yeah. it's been fun so far. I did print out the little calendar and write down my plan, and I've been giving myself little stickers. So we love that. I'm only a week into it at this point, so it could all fall apart. But I think Anna's so good at creating challenges that aren't about losing weight. She says this is more prescriptive than her usual work. She is encouraging you to make a schedule and stick to a schedule, to give yourself some accountability, which I think can be interesting. But there's no weight loss goal. She really wants people to feel empowered to develop weightlifting workouts they do on their own, not with the aid of a video. And I love you Anna, but I'm not going to do that. I just want you to tell me what to do all the time. CorinneTotally. VirginiaI don't want fitness mental load, but I am following her advice to, keep track of how much weight I'm lifting. And then to see over the course of the month, if I can increase that weight. So right now there are some moves where I only use 10 or 15 lb weights. Can we go up to 20 or 30? We'll see! CorinneI spoke to someone else who is doing this challenge. They were very sore!VirginiaYeah, I'm pretty sore. Yesterday, we did a weights workout, and there was one move that required bands, and we didn't have bands. And two of my friends came to do it with me. So we substituted side planks for those moves, and it turned out to be quite a lot of side planks, and my obliques are real unhappy, But, you know, it's like, the good kind of sore where you're like, Oh, I did a thing, yay. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈WEIGHT LIFTING TALK OVERWhat about you? How's power lifting going these days?Corinneit's going good. I kind of haven't been going very much, because it was just December. Like, did I go at all in December? I feel like maybe just the first week or two.Virginiabut then you were driving to Oregon and back.CorinneYes, my mom was here and we traveled. So I'm kind of, getting back into it after a little break. And that's always a little hard. For the first couple workouts back, you're like, Oh, I'm weak. VirginiaOr I like to reframe it as, Wow, I can really feel like I got a hard workout without doing too much.CorinneSo that's where I'm at. Beginning again! VirginiaWell, it is the time of year for that. And also, I support everyone not doing workout challenges. One of my friends who's doing this challenge, as of this recording, has yet to do a workout even though we're six days in because she has Covid, poor thing. So I think it's really good to do these things, but not do them in a overly obsessive way. Oh and I have a low key goal for myself this year of improving my flexibility. I really would like to have an easier time getting off of the floor. CorinneIs that related to flexibility or not? VirginiaI think it's a combination of flexibility and strength. If I think more about my glute muscles, I can get off the floor more easily. But there is also some reaching involved, and I don't know there's mobility, for sure. And I feel like as I've been getting stronger, I've also been getting a little stiffer. And getting off the floor is hard. CorinneYeah, it is.VirginiaAnd it's not a moral imperative, but I end up on the floor a lot because I have kids, so I would like it to be easier to get out of that position. CorinneMaybe you need to get rid of all your furniture.VirginiaThat's the thing. That's what we'll do. CorinneBecause sometimes I sit on the floor when I'm watching TV. I don't know why. I'm just more comfortable. So maybe I should just get rid of all my furniture.VirginiaProbably that's the next logical step. CorinneI am not sitting on the couch while I watch TV. VirginiaBut make sure to keep it in your neighbor's house or your in-laws house. CorinneMy auxiliary house. VirginiaSo you can go work on it during the day. For folks who are like, what are they talking about? This is a reference to an episode we did where we looked at is everything a diet, and we looked at an article from Dwell by a man who had given up all of his furniture in service of his family's health. And we're here to say you don't have to do that. Chairs are great.Okay. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is my new orange tree.CorinneWow. This is an indoor tree.VirginiaIt's an indoor tree. It's my favorite thing I got for Christmas. My mom got me an orange tree, and my eight year old has named it Olive Piper. So it is Olive Piper, the tree. CorinneOlive the orange tree. VirginiaDon't overthink it. But it has two oranges on it! They're green, but I'm tracking them turning orange. My mom has an orange tree, and she's been getting lots of oranges off it. And I think she has better light than I do, but I'm really optimistic. It's an exciting new thing to obsess over.Corinne That's really exciting.VirginiaAnd if we do get oranges, how thrilling will it be?CorinneIt seems like an orange tree would smell good.VirginiaIt doesn't smell like anything right now, but I think maybe once the fruit ripens. CorinneOr I guess I was thinking of flowers,VirginiaOh yes, Well if anyone does indoor citrus, hit me up with your tips. Because I don't know a lot about it's life cycle, I'm worried about how much to water it, all that kind of stuff.CorinneI wonder if in the summer, you can put it outside.VirginiaWell, my mom strongly advised against it. She tried that and it was like an orange tree crisis. I guess citrus trees are prone to bugs and funguses and so if it's happy, just keep it where it is, just keep it happy. It's pretty big, too. CorinneShould we do some questions?VirginiaLet's do some listener questions.CorinneAll right. The first one is, What should I say to a friend when they are complaining about their own body?VirginiaOh, these are always such annoying moments. Truly, just annoyed for you. CorinneI think there are two sides here. One side is: It's clearly bothering you. And the other side is: Can you empathize with your friend who's clearly having a hard time. So I think you kind of need to balance how much it's bothering with you, with, how much it's bothering them. Do you want to just set a hard boundary? Like, "I'd rather not talk about this." Or do you want to be like, "That's really hard, my body bothers me sometimes too." VirginiaHow much do you think the relative body sizes of the friends matters here?CorinneI think if it's someone smaller than you, it might be triggering to you in a different way. And you might want to just set a boundary, versus if it's someone who's bigger than you complaining about their body. VirginiaYeah, I think it does matter. I think if it's someone smaller than you, it's okay to say, Hey, I'm sorry you're having a hard time, but I am not the person for this conversation. Wish you well with that, but I'm not the person for this. If it's someone bigger than you—I don't want to invalidate your own struggles with your body, but can you understand it more from the perspective of they experience bias and stigma that you don't deal with, and find empathy for it is harder for them to navigate seating or doctors or clothing access, etc. I think that has to play into it.CorinneThere's also layers of privilege with this stuff though, that you might not know about. Like a thinner person could also be more disabled, or a transgender person or a person of color. VirginiaGood point. CorinneAlso, there are no details in this question. Like, what are they complaining about? VirginiaI assume weight, if they sent it to us! CorinneYes, but maybe they're complaining about, my butt is too big for this chair, or people stare at me when I do XYZ thing, versus, just like I have flabby muffin top, right?VirginiaThat's interesting. I think if someone is just denigrating their body, that is harder to absorb as a friend than someone who's like, "I'm talking about what's difficult in my lived experience of my body." CorinneTotally,VirginiaBut on the other hand, of course, people do really struggle emotionally with feeling negative about how their body looks. So I'm not saying they don't deserve a place to vent about that. But if they're venting requires the use of anti-fat language, that's a problem. If your best friend is New York Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells, I think you should set a boundary and say, "Pete, I don't want to hear about how you lost the weight of a basset hound." If the only way they can talk about their struggle is to invoke anti-fat rhetoric and language, I think you should set a boundary. CorinneI think that's a good way of talking about it. Like, what are they complaining about? Is it anti-fatness, or is it something else.VirginiaThe next question is a very fun one. Please tell us about your pets, including their names and origin stories.CorinneI'll go first because I only have one pet.  I have a dog named Bunny. I've had her for almost 10 years, and she's around 11. I got her from a shelter in Albuquerque when I moved here, or not long after I moved here. I had been knowing I wanted a dog, and I was living in a bunch of situations where I was not allowed to have a dog. So as soon as I entered a situation where I was, I got a dog. She's a pit bull. She was a scrawny little shelter dog. And now she's kind of entering her old ladyhood.Virginia11. Wow.Corinne I love her. She's also kind of bad. She's, not great with other dogs, not great with, like, smaller creatures in general. But yeah, she's my dog, so! VirginiaShe's allowed to have preferences and feelings about the world. I admire Bunny from afar. When Corinne drives to Maine, and I'm always like,"Come and stay on your way to Maine in New York!" She's like, our dogs can't be friends. So we haven't figured that out yet.CorinneAlso, also chickens. VirginiaWell, the chickens are in a coop. I mean, it's easy to keep Bunny away from the chickens. I promise, okay. Speaking of, yes, I have chickens.CorinneHow many pets do you have? Would you say?VirginiaI currently oversee? Manage? I manage a flock of 13 animals. CorinneWow. Does that include the chickens?Virginia That includes eight chickens. I would like to underscore that I am a cat person who would be happy owning one cat. One to two cats is, to me, the correct number of pets. I do like dogs. I am much more of a dog person now that I have a dog. But they are so much more work than cats. It's not even funny. It's not the same conversation at all. So if I had a different life, I would be a one to two cat person. However, I have a child who is an animal whisperer. Like truly, that is her love language, that is her passion, that is her whole world. And you're supposed to really try to encourage your children's interests. And so somehow, now I have 1000 pets. When the kids were born, we had, at the time, three old man cats that were dying off in their early childhood. And then once we were down to one cat, we got the dog. So we have a Bernedoodle named Penelope. And at that point, in 2020, we also had the dog, a cat named Walter, and a fish tank. And when we divorced, I said, I will keep the dog and Walter the cat who hates the dog will go to their dad's house and the fish tank went to their dad's house too. Oh, I'm sorry we also had a leopard gecko at that point. So I kept the gecko. And I've talked before on the podcast the story of Blue the gecko. I won't go into it now, but Blue the gecko did disappear for a while. So we adopted a second gecko, and now we have two geckos, Blue and Kat. And the dog, Penelope. CorinneWhat is the lifespan of a gecko?Virginia it's like 25 years. It didn't know that when I got a gecko.CorinneAre you kidding me?VirginiaNo. Blue and Kat and I are in it for the long haul. They can live a really long time. But I will say they are very low maintenance pets. When they're not lost in your house, they just sleep in their tanks all day, and you feed them wax worms every couple of days. It's no work. Compared to a dog, it's fine. They're less work than a cat. So for a while, we were a household of just dog and geckos, and then the kids convinced me to adopt two kittens, so we added Licorice and Cheese, our two cats. And Cheese is my favorite of all of the pets. And I tell all the other pets this all the time, because I'm always hoping to inspire them to be more like Cheese. Cheese is the most laid back cat. He's like, You do you. I'm fine. I'll come and curl up next to you, but I'm not in your business. I don't create drama. I don't create interspecies drama. Like Penelope and Licorice are always working stuff out. Cheese is my favorite child. Everyone knows this. And then after we were really at indoor pet capacity, I would say, with the two geckos, the two cats and the dog, Jack, came into our lives, and he really encouraged my 12 year old's passion for chickens, and now we have the eight chickens. CorinneWow. VirginiaAnd the chickens do have names. Let me see if I can do it. Pom Pom, Turkey, Shiva the destroyer, Lord Peanut of Doom, Peggy, Alex, Lily and somebody else. Oh, Thomas J Finnegans. CorinneWill you be getting any other animals. VirginiaNo. CorinneAsk your children.VirginiaI say no, okay, but I cannot with confidence. I mean, for sure, if we have a casualty, there will be a strong argument for replacement. I have held firm on no second dog, because as much as I love Penelope, they are so much work. Dogs are like adding another child to your home. And I don't want that. And I don't think anyone wants another cat, because, I mean, we make Jack do the cat litter now that he's here but none of us were real enthusiastic about litter box cleaning. So that’s the one downside of cats. And for anyone whose kids are pet curious: I don't think reptiles are actually great pets, because they are not very interactive or interesting. This is an unpopular position, but I think if you're inclined to go reptile and you live in a neighborhood where you can do it, chickens are a better option. They are also tiny dinosaurs and you get eggs, and they're more fun and interactive, CorinneThat makes sense. VirginiaAnd it's about the same work wise. They're not a ton of work. Also, just be a cat person, though. I mean, it's fine, nobody needs this many pets. But they do bring us a lot of joy.CorinneAll right. Well, on to the next topic. Question, do I need to buy a sex pillow? Instagram keeps making me think I do not sure if they are size inclusive.VirginiaI think you do. You don't need to buy one off Instagram. But we learned from Brianna Campos, when she came on to do our fat sex episode, that they are definitely size inclusive and, a really good option for fat sex. CorinneI feel like, if you're wondering about it, why not? At the very least, you have something to try out.VirginiaSee if you're into it. I wonder if Instagram keeps sending this person the same one they send me, which is like a very high end linen sex pillow. CorinneOh, wow. VirginiaCalled Tabu. CorinneI'm not getting advertised this. VirginiaWell, you will now. I've been curious about it. I've been, seeing the ads.CorinneI would definitely look into whether it's size inclusive. Maybe see if there are reviews from anyone? Or how strong the foam is? VirginiaAre we worried about it getting flattened? Are we worried about width? Like, you don't want to feel like something's narrow? You don't want it to feel like a yoga block underneath you? So maybe check some measurements. But I think there's got to be some good, fat-friendly sex pillows out there, because the sex wedge is really helpful for working it out with bodies with bellies. It gives you new angles to get to. We say go for it and report back and let us know. CorinneGo for it. VirginiaOkay, I will read the last question: Hi. I am wondering if you find that personal responsibility vis a vis sustainability to be a diet ever? For example, pledging to do something to help the planet in absolute terms. Like, I will never, ever drink bottled water. I will never buy a new article of clothing, etc. It seems blasphemous to say personal responsibility, efforts towards sustainability is a diet, but I'd be curious to hear your and Corinne's thoughts on it. I do think it's great and necessary to take steps to reduce, reuse, recycle, have a smaller footprint, use resources responsibly and sustainably, but sometimes the rigidity of people's rules around this and the moralizing feel familiar to diet culture.CorinneI do think it can be a diet. it's one of those things where you kind of have to find the sweet spot between it feeling like a restrictive diet, and not being so jaded that you do nothing. So it's not being like, I will never, ever drink bottled water, but also not throwing every plastic bottle you encounter in to the landfill.VirginiaI think anytime we're absolute about something, we start to enter into a perfectionist territory, which goes diet-y, fast—if by diet we mean using a set of external rules to judge yourself, setting high standards that are impossible to achieve, and deciding there's an arbitrary standard of goodness by which to measure yourself. Those are all the main components of how Burnt Toast defines a diet. And I can see them showing up here. But it doesn't mean like you're saying that the actual impetus to want to live more sustainably is problematic. I think it's that we are so used to feeling like if we're doing something, there's one right way to do it. That's how we apply a diet lens to this topic. And it's sort of ironic, right? Because the whole goal is to live more sustainably. And there is nothing less sustainable than a diet.CorinneI've definitely, felt this way about the sustainability fashion conversation sometimes where people are, like, "There's absolutely no excuse for shopping from fast fashion brands." VirginiaBudget, accessibility...come on, guys. CorinneHave you ever been a size 26 and needed a pair of pants immediately.Virginia I can think of so many reasons why folks need to shop fast fashion at least sometimes. And I just think anytime we remove the possibility for gray areas we remove the ability for something to be sustainable, I also think a lot of the steps that people take towards sustainability and get really obsessive about doing "one right way" are not necessarily the things we most need to happen to save the planet.What we really need is, big legislative change, industry regulation—all these big things. And it's not to say that personal choices don't matter, but you becoming overly rigid about bottled water is not going to make or break anything. So how is it useful? How is it getting you towards the goal? And at what cost? If we're always kind of moving the goal post on what's enough here, that's not useful. Which is not to say, don't do some of these things. But the absolutism, I see it all the time, and I think a lot people start those projects and are not able to sustain them. And I say this to someone who regularly feels like she's not doing nearly enough for the planet. So I'm not saying I've got to figured it out. There's certainly more I could be doing. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterCorinneWell, I think we made a podcast.VirginiaI think we did that! What's your Butter today?  CorinneOkay, my Butter is something which I also just recommended on Big Undies, but it is called Ponaris, kind of guessing on how you say it. And it is a nasal emollient. So it is like a little glass bottle with a dropper that is filled with oil and minty herbs or something.Virginia Beef tallow. CorinneAnd you drop it up your nose and it immediately drips down the back of your throat and clears everything out. VirginiaOhhhh....so not beef tallow. CorinneIt feels amazing. Someone recommended it on the Big Undies Fall Must Haves. And last week, I just, reached a tipping point where I was like, my legs are scaly. My sinuses are scaly. VirginiaI am becoming a lizard. It's too dry. CorinneIt was like a desert inside of me. And so I ordered a new lotion and some Ponaris. Anyways, apparently it was developed by NASA for astronauts to use in space as. part of their first aid kit. VirginiaOh, my God. Oh, my God. CorinneSo that’s science, if you've ever heard of it. VirginiaIt's good enough for the astronauts noses, guess it's good enough for my nose! CorinneIt's a little bit weird. But I do feel like it's really making a difference.VirginiaWell I totally want to try it. I also totally want to say that this is your second MAHA-adjacent recommendation.CorinneIs this one MAHA? I was thinking this was more like the solar shield. VirginiaWell it's in the woo, woo supplement territory. CorinneOkay, well, yeah.VirginiaWe're getting into ear candling vibes. People are going to be like, I love ear candling.CorinneIs that MAHA?VirginiaI don't know. CorinneI don't know that it is. Ear candling is, crunchy hippie, right?VirginiaBut it's the crunchy hippie that then circles back around to MAHA. I'm just saying, we're concerned and we're tracking. CorinneThank you for your concern. VirginiaWell, to make you feel better, my Butter is also going to be a weird nasal supplement.CorinneOh, amazing. Wow. We did not plan this. VirginiaIt's also perfect because this is the pets episode! Mine is a weird supplement that I'm giving my cats so I won't be allergic to them.CorinneWhoa, does that work?VirginiaI can't believe I'm saying this, but... yes, it seems to be really working. Question Mark?CorinneWhat is it? VirginiaOkay, it's a brand called Pacagen. It's a chicken flavored powder, and you sprinkle a little on the top of your cat's food. And they claim, I guess this too, is science. Question mark? They claim that it changes the protein in your cat saliva, and that's what we're allergic to. And cats lick their fur everywhere. So that's why you react to cat fur. I, despite being an avowed cat person, am allergic to cats. I live in a lot of denial about it, because I love them and wish to have cats, and don't wish to acknowledge the cat allergy that I live with, but I was reaching a point last fall where I was like, I mean, I am definitely, really allergic to my cats. Every time I pet them, my eyes were streaming and, you know, I wake up with a stuffy nose all the time. Is it sleep apnea? Is it cat allergies? Who knows? Anyway, someone on Instagram influenced me to try this because she claimed it totally worked for her. And I was like, whatever, we'll try it. And both Jack and I, within like, two weeks, were like, oh my god, we're really a lot less allergic, and I can pet the cat now and not have an immediate reaction.CorinneWow, that's amazing. VirginiaNow, couple of caveats.It's quite expensive. I'm locked in now, but it's like 60 bucks a month, or something. Like, it's not nothing, especially because I have two cats, so I need to buy, like, multiple things, and itcomes in these little, teeny bottles. Also, my family, who are all much more cat allergic than me, when they visited for Christmas, were like, You're crazy. We're still allergic to your cats. So I don't know what level of allergy severity it works for. I would have described my allergy as mild to moderate. But also I don't know, maybe they were having colds or something. Nasal stuff is very mysterious. It's very hard to nail down what's causing it. So we don't know. But it's working well enough that I'm going to keep buying it for the lifespan of these cats, I guess, and as long as I feel like it's still working. It's something to try, because otherwise I was like, am I at the allergy shot stage? And that felt like a whole big project. I hope this is helpful information for anyone else whose nose is dry and stuffy. You can put oil in it, and you can feed your cat something weird.CorinneAmazing. VirginiaAll right. Thank you all for listening. We would love to know what is new with you and what you're putting in your nose. Take that in whatever direction you want! Tell us in the comments. Make sure to rate and review us in your podcast player and tell friends where they can listen for breaking news about nasal substances. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies. Our producer is Kim Baldwin who also writes The Blonde Mule. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your January Indulgence Gospel! Today we are talking about former restaurant critic turned diet crusader Pete Wells—and why the New York Times always spends January turning into a women's magazine from hell. CW for discussions of intentional weight loss and lazy fat jokes (from Pete), including some that are offensive to both humans and bassett hounds. You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!Don't want an ongoing commitment? Click "buy for $4!" to listen to just this one.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with the one and only Melani Sanders. Melani is a digital creator and the fearless founder of the We Do Not Care movement. If you are a woman in your 40s, 50s and beyond, you are very likely already in this club. Melani's viral club meeting videos, where she runs down a list of everything "We just do not care about anymore," are the kind of thing that my friends are constantly sharing and dropping in our group chats, and I'm sure it's the same for you. Melani perfectly articulates the pressures we're under, and when she names it, it feels easier to let it go. So I loved this conversation. Welcome to the Burnt Toast chapter of the We Do Not Care Club. Let's get this meeting started.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 228 TranscriptMelaniHello and welcome to all members of the We Do Not Care Club. I started this club for all women in perimenopause, menopause and post menopause. We are putting the world on notice that we simply just do not care much anymore. This is a special body liberation edition. Yay.VirginiaI'm so thrilled to have you here. I just love your work, and I'm a huge fan. So thank you for doing this.MelaniThank you for having me. VirginiaWell, you just kind of exploded into all of our lives in the last year. Where did the We Do Not Care Club come from? What's the origin story?MelaniThis was something that happened by chance. I was at Whole Foods in the parking lot. I was waiting on Whole Foods to open up because I was out of ashwagandha. Ashwagandha has been a huge part of my perimenopause journey. It is my prerequisite to life, that and coffee and a few other things. I got to have that. It helps me to feel more stable. I realized I didn't have any more. I woke up, and I keep it on my nightstand, and I turned the bottle over to look for some. And I pulled the cotton stuff out, and I said, 'Oh, crap.' And it was about seven something in the morning. They weren't open until eight. I was in the parking lot when it opened. When I got back in the car, I popped open my ashwagandha. I took the ashwagandha, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I honestly just didn't care much anymore. I didn't comb my hair. Everything was unstructured. I had on a bra that was half the size of my boobs, and it was, it was all out of order. And I didn't care that I didn't care. And I thought, I'd been a creator for a while, for over four years. And I said, 'You know what? Maybe I could start a club called a We Do Not Care Club.' And I hit record and I asked, "Did anyone else out there feel the way that I did, and if so, join me. Join the club." And sure enough, by the time I got home from hitting that record button, my phone was blowing up. It was blowing up. The notifications: "Absolutely, I want to join, I want to join. I want to join." Yeah, I'm in it, I'm in it.And sure enough, my platform grew to maybe about 500,000. The WDNC is at 6 million now, across all platforms. VirginiaUnbelievable.  MelaniI was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day. VirginiaOh, my God. How are you? Because that's a huge shift in your life.Melani Yes. In the beginning, I was very scared. I've freely shared emotionally what this is doing for me, mentally, all of it. I'm just openly sharing because I'm just a girl in perimenopause, and I hit record as it was happening. I didn't quite understand it, because when you get new followers, it's like, 'Oh, I got 100 new followers. Yay. That video did well.'But when you look and you're gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day, it's like, 'What is going on?' I was trying to be sure, like, did something else come up besides this video? But then, typically, I'll post and I’ll post on several platforms at one time, and they were all going viral. They were just going. So it scared me. And honestly, in the beginning I ran because I wasn't the content creator that showed up every day doing a lot of content. Sometimes I don't post for a week or so. VirginiaYou're living your life. MelaniYeah, I'm living my life. I'm not stuck to my phone or to social media. I got very nervous, because look at me running my big mouth. I started a club and now I'm not even all there. I don't even know who I am most days. So how's this going to work out? I think I've migrated from scary to just a bit nervous. You know, this is the internet, and there are so many things that are so out of the box. It's very surreal. Very surreal.VirginiaWell, I feel like it blew up because you voiced something that so many of us are experiencing and didn't know how to voice. It's a good kind of blowing up. You're giving voice to this thing, women's experiences in our 40s and 50s and beyond are not talked about. It's not made visible at all. But I can imagine it's, yeah, coming with quite a cost to you personally. So thank you for your service on behalf of all of us.MelaniWell, thank you. The one thing I do want to add is that I feel as time has gone on, I've felt like I was meant to do this, if that makes sense. As I cry openly. I cut my computer off for a while. I really just examined everything that was going on in the sisterhood, all of the comments like, what do they see? What do they hear? And to your point, just being able to say things out loud. I'm getting stronger in that. But before this happened, balance was something that I really, really, really tried to master, if that makes sense. And just paying attention to Melani and what it is I need. I was on this journey before WDNC started. So now that I'm here, it's like I can apply all of those things that I have been trying to do to make my life better. I'm able to take that and put it into WDNC.VirginiaOne of the themes of your content that resonates with me really deeply, and I think with the Burnt Toast listeners, something we're always talking about is how to let go of perfectionism and these expectations that are put on us as women, as moms, especially around cooking and other domestic labor. One of my favorite entries on the list recently was 'We do not care if we said we were cooking dinner this morning. That was this morning's energy, and this afternoon is different.' And I was like, yes, that is how I feel today. Thank you. MelaniAbsolutely. That was when the coffee was hot.VirginiaDoes naming these specific things that you want to let go of, does that actually help you let go of those expectations for yourself?MelaniYes. The announcements are comprised of me and my thoughts, but also the sisterhood. I take a lot of the content from that. So collectively, if our sisters don't care about that, then we don't care about it either. And yes, it definitely does. What really helps is just we are all high fiving each other, and it's like, like you just said about the kitchen and cooking and all of that. Yeah, it feels good to know I'm not the only one.VirginiaWe're all not cooking dinner tonight.MelaniIf you're hungry, the kitchen's not locked. Figure it out. Figure it out. We got stuff to figure out.VirginiaThe main thing at Burnt Toast that we don't care about is diet culture. We are trying to make peace with the bodies we have now. We are trying not to keep chasing the dreams of the bodies we maybe used to have, or never had, but thought we should have. What are some of your favorite body related things to stop caring about?MelaniOne, and I speak about this in the book, in The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook, is my arms. It's one thing that I have been so… I've kept my arms covered up, no tank tops, for years. I have a 24 year old, and when I when I got pregnant with him, my body stretched out a lot, and I got a ton of stretch marks on my arms, and then I ended up having surgery some years later, under my arm, so I just felt like it just looked bad. And I covered it up for a very long time. And after starting the We Do Not Care Club, I really just started to take inventory to be sure that I'm living up to what I'm saying. And I said, 'You know what? I'm about to go put on one of them tank tops, and I'm going to go to TJ Maxx.' And so I walked into TJ Maxx with my tank top on, and I looked around, and I'm trying to figure out who you know. I know they're looking, they're judging, and nobody really gave a damn about my arms. I'm the one that cared so much. So now it is what it is, darling.VirginiaEverybody deserves to not be hot and sweaty. Tank tops are great. MelaniEspecially in midlife, tank tops are life. You look at how many years--my son is, 24 years old, and I went through all of this time, and it was in that moment where it's like, 'Girl, don't nobody care. You better show your arms.'VirginiaYou have a right to show your arms. It’s just a body. MelaniIt sounds so easy, but mentally for many of us, it's not. We know we will judge ourselves. We're waiting to be judged. We're comparing ourselves, and it's like the hell with all of that. VirginiaIt's true that there are times body things do get commented on. One of mine is the way I gain weight. I get mistaken for pregnant quite often. I carry my weight in my midsection and it's this awkward moment that for years, I was like, 'Oh God, am I going to look pregnant in this dress? Someone's going to say something. It's going to be this weird conversation.' And then I was like, 'Well, that's on them for saying the rude thing to talk about.' If they feel uncomfortable in that moment that is not my problem to worry about. They're the ones commenting on someone's body when they shouldn't be. And that really turned that around for me.MelaniYeah, exactly. The one thing that I really focus on now as I study the sisterhood is empathy. I have this saying, and the saying is, 'If our sister's coochie is dry, then we all have dry coochie.' And it pretty much means that her story is our story, and not everyone has that quick confidence or that ability to just turn it off. You know how some things just come so easy to some people, and it's like, it sounds so good, but then it's discouraging, because it's like, 'Damn, why can't I just let go of these insecurities?'I'm okay with being vulnerable. I'm okay with it. It's fine, although I still do have my insecurities, such as showing my arms. But I think together, just being able to share this stuff, we get stronger together. You know what I was going to do, and I might still do it. I think I'm going to go live and I'm just going to sit up there and show my arms, my under arms. VirginiaI love that. MelaniYou think? Well, seriously, I think I'm going to do that, and then, or maybe I can start a challenge or something, and it's like, post what you're most embarrassed about? And then I'm normalized, yeah, let's not, let's normalize it. How about it? Yeah, wow. I had coffee earlier, so I'll probably just wear out in a little while. But the inspiration is there now. No, seriously.VirginiaWe're recording at 9 A.M. There are a lot of big dreams.MelaniYeah, by 5 P.M., it's like, 'No, not doing it. Get out my face.'VirginiaDon't want to show the internet my arms today. MelaniThat's dumb.VirginiaBut I love the intention behind it. And you're right. I think it's making space for 'we are allowed to show these parts of our bodies and not feel shame' and not downplaying actually how difficult that is in a world that's been throwing us these messages our whole lives. You didn't think of the idea that you should feel bad about your arms, that's a society wide message that you've been fed since you were a little girl. So it is really hard work to stand up against that, and not every day is a day to challenge the patriarchy in that way.MelaniYeah, exactly. No. I was joking, but I do think I am going to do that. I think I'm going to start a challenge, and I think that that's going to be good.VirginiaI think it's a great idea. So you mentioned the book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook. Would love to hear a little more about this. The main thing I know is that the dedication is to the asshole who told you you had a computer box booty. So I read that and was like, 'Okay, well, I'm ordering it for everyone I know.'MelaniYeah, that was the intention behind it, for sure. And I wanted to preface it with that, we can have some words in it, but it's a bit of fun. It's what Melani is, and what I'm comprised of is there's a very humorous side to me, there's a very serious side to me, and then there's this educational part to it. So I think that we have to be sure, as we're going through this stage of life, in perimenopause and beyond that we can definitely say what we don't care about, but then we also need to have intention about what we do care about. Let's have fun with it. Let's have fun with it and talk about why we do not care what the back of our hair looks like. It's the front that matters. That's what we can see, and being able to be okay with that. But then, we have to still just kind of pay attention to how that affects us mentally. Like, we do not care if our room is junky, but at some point we want to be able to clean up that room and to dive into it a little bit. So it's just bits and pieces of some fun. Some pieces where it's like, 'Come on, girl, let's get up girlfriend.'And I'm sharing this through my own personal journey, from childhood to where I am now, and how I put over the years, a lot of expectations on myself, and now that I've reached midlife, it's like, as we said, the kitchen is not locked. That was a priority when I was raising a family and trying to be that perfect wife and make sure things are together. Now, it's like, 'Baby, I'm in survival mode. I don't give a damn about what y'all have going on over there right now.'Reprioritizing is where we have to be, and be okay with it. We're at capacity. We're at capacity. Don't add anything else to our plate. If anything, take something off. So that is the gist of The We Do Not Care Club Handbook. VirginiaI think a lot of what you're articulating is this larger inequity. I don't see a man launching a We Do Not Care Club. I don't think they need it in the same way. I don't expect a midlife dad to because he's been getting to say 'we do not care' his whole life.MelaniSince birth.VirginiaRight. He's been allowed to not care. And I think what I love about what you're saying there is, like, we're allowed to say we do not care about these expectations. But we can care about ourselves. We can care about our own values. And it'll benefit us to clean up the room at some point. But doing it because people are coming over and they're going to judge us, that's a different conversation.MelaniThat is exactly what the We Do Not Care Club is. Because we just have to come to a reality, you know, and be honest with ourselves. Because the pressure is real. Nine times out of 10, most things that we're doing in life is like, we do it because of what it looks like or feels like to others versus how it looks or feels to ourselves. Just being able to just migrate to that mindset of not caring if my house looks like this. And you want to come to my house? This is how my house looks. If you have judgment, don't come. But if you want to clean up, go ahead, get the broom. But before this, I would be like, 'Oh no, they're coming over. Let me run and do this, and run and do that.' And it's like, why am I driving myself crazy? Yeah, I'm already not all there sometimes. VirginiaAnd if they're really your friends, they'll come and sit with you with the laundry basket, like they don't care. That's the other power of the sisterhood you're building is we're all saying to each other, 'Oh, wait, you don't care about that either. Oh, great. We don't have to be more expectations on each other.'MelaniThat's right. It feels so good when you can just be around someone and you're not worried about them judging you or comparing yourself to them, or vice versa, and just live. There's such quality in those type of friendships.VirginiaMy group of friends now in my 40s, is just everything. These are the women who, like, have held you through so many hard things in your life, who are like, we're showing up for each other, and especially now in this life stage with parents who are sick and dying, or teenagers going through their big feelings, just all these really, real things. I do not have time to care if my house is perfectly decorated for the holidays.MelaniI'm so happy that you have those friends. I would say that I do, too, but so many of us don't. And hopefully in this sisterhood, we can find that connection with other like-minded sisters. And it's like, 'Hey, you can find your tribe here.'Because we end up - the pressure, the stress of caring so much - many of us internalize that. I was reading about this with suicide. As far as the suicide rate, it's because there are all these bottled up feelings of comparison, rejection, and not being accepted, all of those things. And I just hope that this is opening up the door to be able to be okay with who you are, where you are, and what season you're in. It's okay.VirginiaPart of the expectations game has been that you don't talk about what's really hard, right? Someone asks, 'How you doing?' You say, 'Oh, I'm fine.' 'Oh, hanging in there, you know.' And you don't really get into a real conversation. I think women are taught that we have to protect the marriage, protect the image of the perfect family, to the degree that then we don't let people in when things are hard and that's really dangerous.MelaniIt really can be. It really can be. And like you said, we're the nurturers, we're the protectors. Men are there, and thank you so much, men, but we have to really be the ones to keep it all together. And we're the ones typically that are falling apart.VirginiaIs there anything you've let go of? You talked about the arms. I'm interested if there's any other things that you used to really put pressure on yourself to do that now you're like, 'I've fully stepped back from that.' And 'Wow, I can't believe I used to care so much about that.'MelaniI think I'm a work in progress as it relates to not caring. I think it's more of a reminder, because subconsciously, I think we do a lot of things that we don't even realize that we're doing. Then it's like, once I sit with it, the quieter I become, the more empowered I become, and also the more aware I become. I think with me, body image has definitely been one. And maybe the clothes. I'm not really chic and aesthetic and I'm about to go on this tour. It's like, what am I going to wear? Because I got some jogging suits in there that I could throw on, you know? And I'm okay with that. VirginiaBe comfortable. MelaniYeah, be comfortable. Some things I'm extremely vulnerable. I don't care. But, like I said, subconsciously, I don't even pay attention to some things that I might be a little bit ashamed about, or worrying what people think of. I was trying to think of an example. A lot of it comes around, like, cleanliness around the house. Like, my baseboards. I looked at them the other day, and I'm like, 'Good lord!' And then I kept walking.VirginiaI don't consider the baseboards to be my business. They're on their own journey. MelaniThey are. VirginiaThey are not for me to know what they're doing. MelaniYeah, that's their life. This is our life. VirginiaMy eyes are up here. I'm not down there looking at them.MelaniYeah, stay in your lane. We stay in our lanes. And so that was a lane that I definitely bypassed and kept going because I can't care. One day.VirginiaFair enough. So you're publishing this book in January, and January is honestly, historically, a time of, like, so much caring, right? Like, this is when people are like, I'm going to start the diet, I'm going to start the new workout routine, I'm going to be a perfect, healthy individual and organize every closet. Was that deliberate to publish in January, to give us a little bit of an alternative? It’s like, you're giving us a really useful counter name, right?MelaniThis is going to be real helpful, right? VirginiaYeah, I think people need to hear it in January most of all. No, you don't have to go so hard, like, pace yourself.MelaniYeah, pace yourself. And it's so funny. The word "pace." I started therapy last year and my therapist, she wanted to come up with a word with me. And every session I would go, I go weekly, every session I would go, and I could not come up with that word because a lot of them were so cliche, like "intentional" or "growth," or "finding," whatever it is. But when she came up with the word "pace," I said, 'That's it.' I mean, for sure, this year, I have told myself so many times you have to pace yourself, pace it. So, unintentionally that word is my word. But as it relates to the intention behind the date? Nope. This book got started in June. Harper Collins, they are under the Harvest imprint. They crashed this book. They crashed it. And it's like that, 'We need it. We want it bad. It needs to get out here.' And I was like, 'Okay, I don't know the first thing about writing a book, but I can run my mouth.'VirginiaI'm not surprised they crashed it, having been in book publishing for a long time, I had a feeling that's what happened to you. It makes sense they want to get it out here right now, in this moment where we're having this conversation about your work. But I actually think the January timing is very smart. MelaniYeah, I like that you said that.VirginiaUsually by the end of January, everyone's exhausted because they spent the whole month trying to, like, not eat sugar and not drink any alcohol. I mean, maybe some people should not drink alcohol, but, like, they don't necessarily serve us to put all that pressure and external expectations on ourselves. So for you to be publishing a book that's like, 'Hey, here's another way to go.' I think it's brilliant timing.MelaniI'm so glad. It's funny because I did not put those two together. Yeah, January is definitely the year to start over, new me, new year, new everything's going to be perfect. And then by February, it's like, okay, let's scale that back a little bit. Did I say that?VirginiaJanuary is morning energy.MelaniYeah, right, it is! I like that. January is morning. So, what is February? February, I think around noonish, we're on that decline.VirginiaMarch is dinner, for sure. March is, we're ordering takeout. It's like, oh my god, winter's not over yet. And yeah, this is brutal. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginiaWell, to wrap up Burnt Toast, we have a segment we call butter, which is where we each talk about something we've just been really loving lately. Like, what is buttering your toast right now? And it can be a TV show or a book or something. It can also just be, like, a color I love, or, something funny someone said, like, anything that's brought you a lot of joy recently.MelaniSomething I would say that I'm loving right now is Melani. When this journey first started for me on May the 13th of this year, I was extremely fearful, and I doubted myself, and I said it so many times, 'I'm not enough. I'm not enough.' I had to decide, Melani, if you're not going to be enough, just go sit down. Girl, just go sit down somewhere and be quiet.Or it's like, you know what? Let's dive into this a little bit. And so I've decided that that is what I'm going to do. I'm not used to being at the front of the class. I'm used to being the person that's in the back of the class, or I'll be the one to get things together and definitely put that quality aspect behind it, and to be sure that we meet whatever goal needs to be met. I say I'm the sister that will hold the door for you and grab your pocketbook while you go up on that stage and do your thing. That is me. But I have had to to turn into this to do something different, and I'm being forced to challenge myself. And I wish that I had have had this kind of mindset, or this type of where it wasn't so forced some years ago, because that definitely would have been beneficial for me. What makes me happy now is my mindset towards where I'm going. And you know this sisterhood and collectively how I mean when you go through the comments and you see things, it is the beauty. It's the beauty in high fiving each other. Nobody cares what color you are, what religion you are. What kind of car you drive, what kind of pocketbook you have, what size your waistline is. Who cares? And so it makes me so happy to see that without judgment. So the whole We Do Not Care Club, and I guess myself, and today on this show, actually - it will be the first time that I'm going to give myself my flowers.VirginiaI love that you're giving yourself your flowers. You need them!MelaniI'm going to cry a little bit. I mean, I am really. I am just, no, just really thinking. I'm so thankful. You know, I'm thankful, and I'm understanding my value more. But I'm frustrated a little, just because it took me being forced into the situation. And it's like, damn, I'm 45 you know? If I had to do this at 30? So I pray that younger generations like have that. You don't necessarily have to be forced in situations, you know? If you have that inner feeling or whatever, bring it out girl. Go stand at the front. When you're in the back, get out the back. Go get on that stage. Speak up. Speak up. VirginiaYou don't always have to be the one who organizes behind. Yes, you actually get to have the moment too.MelaniYes, have that moment. And so I'm going to embrace this time. I'm going to do it scared.VirginiaI just think, like, on behalf of everyone who admires you so much and feels like you've given us this gift. We want you to have this moment. Enjoy it. Like, enjoy it for all of us. You know, because you deserve it, and you've really created something super special that we really needed, so thank you.MelaniI'm curious to hear yours.VirginiaWell, I've just been thinking because I was coming to talk to you, and thinking about again, about the sisterhood and the power of all of this. I've given this one in the past on the podcast, but I'm going to give it again to my book club, which is my kind of core group of ladies. We just had book club last night, and one of our members, her mom just passed, and she was coming back from the celebration of life for her mom, and it just felt so good that we could be there to welcome her back with a lot of cheese and a cocktail. Because that's what she needed. It’s been a time, and that we could all like, be together. So I think female friendship - your best friends in your 40s, which is, I'm lucky to have a whole, tier of those people. MelaniYes. And preferably within the sisterhood, the WDNC sisterhood, the bigger this movement becomes. I want to see us everywhere. In different rooms together. And as long as you hear WDNC, you know that this door is open and you can walk through it and you will not be judged.We're all in this together. We're like I said, 'If our sister's coochie is dry, then we all have dry coochie.' It's her story. It's our story. We're in it together.VirginiaYes, I love that. Well, Melani, thank you so much. This was an incredible conversation. I'm so glad to have gotten to, yeah, get to know you and talk with you.MelaniAbsolutely. This was definitely an honor to even you know just everything that's happening, but to even be able to sit here with you, I definitely appreciate it, and I feel empowered like what you got a little magic power over here on Burnt Toast. What is that about? Good Lord.VirginiaThe Burnt Toast is where we're a small group, but we yeah -MelaniYeah, small but mighty, right? And any ideas or anything within the sisterhood? I want to welcome ideas. This is only the beginning. So if you have ideas, sisters, the We Do Not Care, Club dot com, there are going to be places where you can go and just put your ideas in. I'm having teams being built right now because I want all of us to be - just feel heard. Yeah, so, and I'm trying. I am trying my darndest. VirginiaAwesome. Well, we are rooting for you, and everyone needs to go get the book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook. And if you're not already following Melani in all the places, obviously, make sure you do that too.MelaniAt (@) Just being Melani. "Just being Melani" across all platforms.Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for our annual Ins & Outs Episode! This is what we do every New Year, instead of making resolutions or setting problematic body change goals. It's deeply unserious but still satisfies that urge to reflect and make some (fun) plans for the year to come! Listen to hear... ⭐️ The pants Virginia forgot she was wearing. ⭐️ The food trends Corinne is SO OVER. ⭐️ Virginia's new religion!!To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.Join Extra Butter!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Happy 2026!!! To celebrate—and kick off the most diet-y month of the year!—we are here with a roundup of the very best anti-diet fitness advice in the Burnt Toast archives. If you find this useful, consider a paid Burnt Toast subscription! We're way cheaper than a gym or a diet app membership, and arguably better for your health too. And in addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! You'll find so much practical support, inspiration, and fat joy. Join us here! Don't diet, come hang with us! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links!Episode 226 TranscriptVirginiaHappy 2026! We made it. It's a whole new year. CorinneThank God, honestly.VirginiaSee you later, 2025. Excited to be here in a new in a new chapter.CorinneTo celebrate, we're bringing you a helpful episode to kick off the most diet-y month of the year: A roundup of our favorite anti-diet fitness advice.VirginiaI'm excited for this. I hope this is grounding to people and helps prevent you spiraling off into some new thing that doesn't serve you. We're also holding space for the fact that a lot of people do like fresh start culture. We will be coming to you next week with our annual Ins and Outs episode. So don't think we are immune from resolution culture! That's the Burnt Toast version of it. It's coming. All right. First up, we have an excerpt from an episode called “We Have Only Recently Acknowledged That Female Athletes Need to Eat.” This episode aired October 19, 2023. It's an oldie, but a goldie. And the guest was Christine Yu, author of Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. And one of the main things Christine wanted us to understand was carbs are good for you.VirginiaI also want to spend some time on your very excellent chapter about diet and sports. This was so well done. It feels like nutritional science, athletic research— all of this research—has only just recently given women permission to eat as athletes, and to eat enough to support their sports. This feels really staggering to me, that there has been this underfeeding of women athletes for so long.ChristineConsistently. All the time. And I think it’s in part because of just general diet culture in our culture and society and these ridiculous expectations that we have or we place on girls and women in terms of what their bodies need to look like. And then you have the sports performance side, you have this idea that certain body types are the ideal athletic body types. It’s almost no wonder that we create this perfect storm and a way for disordered eating and eating disorders and all these other problematic behaviors to take root. Especially because bodies are so central, obviously, in sports and performance. And we focus so much on bodies and how they look, what their body composition is, and all of these different things, the shape of you, all of that.It’s wild to me that it’s only been recently that we do acknowledge the fact you just need to eat. We talked so much about nutrition and sports as this idea of fueling your body, which I think was at first kind of helpful in the way of reframing food within this context. Your body needs fuel to be able to do all this stuff, in order to start to give folks a little bit more permission to eat or feel like they could eat what they needed. But that, I think, even still creates this idea that there’s a certain kind of fuel that you need to be eating in order to be an athlete, in order to fuel your body correctly, if that makes sense.VirginiaIt’s, again, mind blowing, but makes sense that we had to first embrace the idea of eating, period, as opposed to eating being the enemy. You have so many heartbreaking stories from athletes in this chapter talking about feeling like they were so tapped out at the end of a practice that they couldn’t function and that when they started eating enough, they were like, wow.ChristineTurns out!Virginia“I can do a 90 minute workout without a problem!” The fact that they were performing at all when they were being asked to do it while starving is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what they were being asked to do. Then seeing that immediate and logical shift that if you feed yourself, you can perform better. But then from there, this idea of food as fuel can also become very limiting because, of course, athletes are human beings, as well. And food is more than fuel for all of us.ChristineIt’s really easy within sports and athletics to look at food as almost a hack, in a way. Like, as a way to like fine tune your performance. Oh, I need more iron, or whatever other very specific thing that you need. And again, I think it dissociates food from what it actually is. I think that also just makes it really ripe to encourage a lot of these behaviors that aren’t always helpful or healthy.VirginiaYou also do some amazing work in this chapter dissecting a couple of the modern big diet trends: Intermittent fasting, keto, and you even look at some of the less extreme ones like the Mediterranean diet, and show how they underserve athletes and especially women athletes. I wondered if we could just spend a little time talking about your findings there, because that felt super important to me. ChristineIn the last several years, we’ve seen things like intermittent fasting and keto pop up within athletic communities as this way to make your body a better machine. Especially, I think, within endurance sports, it’s this idea that your body can run longer or you can somehow create these these efficiencies, if you will.But the body likes to be in homeostasis, it likes to be in balance. So anytime energy levels start to dip, your body starts to send out these flares that are like, “Wait a second, hold on. Are we going to be starving real soon?” Because if so, I need to make some adjustments, physiologically. So with a lot of these diets, you’re actually ended up with these long periods of under-fueling your body. With intermittent fasting, you’re not eating for anywhere between eight to many, many hours. So you’re leaving your body in this huge deficit of energy so it starts to freak out and starts to shut down these non essential systems.And the thing with women is that our bodies are much more sensitive to these downturns in nutrition. It starts to send up those flares a lot earlier, it starts to make those those physiological changes a lot earlier. That can have repercussions on things like your menstrual cycle and all the hormonal things that your body does. Similarly, with keto, this whole idea of eating a lot of fat and very few carbs might seem like, Oh, I’m really full, I don’t need to eat as much. But it’s the same idea that you end up inadvertently underfueling your body. But more importantly, especially for women, by not eating carbs, it sends up those same flares to the body. Women’s bodies, in particular, need carbohydrates in order to function well, in order to do all the things it does. And when we don’t have carbs, the body starts to send all these warning signs.We tend to see intermittent fasting or keto “work” in men because it seems like male bodies can get away with that under-fueling a little bit more than female bodies. But when women tend to try these diets they end up feeling, unsurprisingly, really flat, really fatigued, a lot of brain fog. They don’t see this performance boost and then they wonder what they’re doing wrong because all the podcasts, all the influencers, say I should be intermittent fasting. This is going to be how I’m going to lose weight. This is how I’m going to cut time on my race. This is how I’m going to improve performance, improve body composition, all the stuff. But I’m not seeing that. I’m feeling flat. I’m not seeing all these other positive benefits. It’s because your body is essentially saying, ah, this isn’t working for me.VirginiaJust because it works for Peter Attia does not mean—and question mark on if it even works for these guys? Thats the other thing I just want to interject. It might improve athletic performance, it doesn’t mean it’s not having other consequences on their mental health or their relationships with food and body. But that’s fascinating to realize specifically, if your goal is improving athletic performance—one of these diets is not going to deliver for you the way you’ve been told it might. ChristineEspecially the idea around carbs. I feel like carbs still have like a bad rap. People are still really afraid to eat carbs and I just want folks to know it’s not a bad thing. Your body actually needs it. It wants them. CorinneI mean, what can I say? Perennial wisdom.VirginiaPerennial wisdom. Really important. And it's just absolutely wild —the science she gets into about how little female athletes in particular, were allowed to eat for decades, and how much better everybody performs as a human being and an athlete when they eat carbs.CorinneYeah, this makes me sad. Okay, next we're going to hear a clip from an episode called It’s Time To Free The Jiggle. This one aired on December 14, 2023 and our guest was Jessie Diaz-Herrera. Jessie is a body affirming dancer, health and wellness influencer, and fitness enthusiast. You might know her on Instagram as curves with moves or from her Free The Jiggle classes. Jessie's advice is so helpful if you're thinking about starting about starting any new kind of workout or entering a new workout space, especially as a fat person.VirginiaThe first question is:Do you have any tips for focusing on how you’re feeling in your body versus imagining how your body could look? This feels especially hard with dance.JessieThis is a very honest and vulnerable question, but also very real. Especially in any group setting, whether it’s group fitness, group dance classes, there’s always this like, “How am I perceived by other people? How am I looking at myself in the mirror?” and that can be really hard. But dance is an art form, right? So let’s relate it to art, right? Let’s say our bodies are paint brushes. If I’m a paintbrush and you’re a paintbrush, you may have slightly different widths right. And my strokes are not going to be the same as yours, right? But we’re still creating art. We’re both still moving. We’re both still working through this. I think sometimes we like to compare ourselves to other people. Like, “I don’t look like the instructor.” But the instructor is more of a facilitator, right? They’re there to help you and guide you. Obviously, in more fitness classes, there’s a form and there are things that you want to make sure that you’re doing safely. But if it’s a feel good class, if you’re like in a cardio dance class where you’re just there to feel the rhythm and dance or like a Zumba type class and there’s nerves, bring a friend and laugh. Be in the back and laugh.Like, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been nervous about a class and I’ve taken a friend and we’re like, “We’re just gonna be in the back and try our best but also just laugh at each other if we’re a hot mess.” Let’s give ourselves permission to say, “We’re probably going to mess up and that’s going to be totally fine because we have the intention today of laughing at ourselves and being silly with with ourselves and trying something new.” And you’re just not going to look like the next person, so get that out of your head. Because this is your body, this is what you’ve been given. And how you move in this world is different. So sometimes, especially in dance, when it is an art form, I say own it. Own how you dance. Own how you move. It does not have to look like the the instructor or the person next to you. If you feel good, if you are feeling the energy. I know when I dance, there’s a weariness that goes away. There’s this feeling of “Yes, I just feel so good.” Like, I’m sweating. This is my favorite song. Tap into those other things, too.Maybe you’re not there yet with your body journey. Maybe you’re like, “I can’t stop comparing myself.” Well then maybe you’re thinking about other things within the class, like is this your favorite song? Are you hitting those basses? Can you get that move? Or is the rhythm really hype? Do you want to cheer on the person next to you?  I tell people at the beginning of class, “Hey, if you don’t want to dance, cheer for the person next to you.” Take a water break and just encourage them. VirginiaI also want to say to this person, do some of Jessie’s online videos. Because I am someone who has no dance experience. You know, white girl dance moves—that’s what I’ve got. It is what it is. JessieAll of those are safe here.VirginiaAnd especially being in a bigger body, I would feel self-conscious going into a group dance class. But what was really fun for me was doing Jessie’s videos in a room in my house without mirrors, because then I wasn’t constantly looking at myself and critiquing how I looked. I could just be in my body and I was able to tap into the joy you’re talking about because there wasn’t an audience. I was just doing it for me. If you’re someone who really doesn’t have a dance background, maybe try that first before you do the group class where you’re just going to feel really intimidated and depending on the context, maybe less welcome.JessieI teach kind of a myriad of different classes, but one of our mainstays is called “Free the Jiggle,” and we purposely jiggle. We purposely do things that we would say, like, I’m afraid to do this, we will do it. Kind of to laugh and also in spite of and really to say, why not?VirginiaIt’s a body. It’s moving. JessieYeah, exactly. Bodies do jiggle.VirginiaI really love this. I love embracing that bodies move and jiggle—and everybody's does, straight size, plus size, doesn't really matter. I think this is really powerful. And if you need to do that in the privacy of your own home for a while before you're ready to do that out in some group setting—that is valid, too. CorinneTotally.VirginiaOkay. Next up, I want us to hear from Disability Rights activist and author Emily Ladau. This is from an episode we did last year called I Don’t See Myself in Fat Liberation Spaces.Emily is a wheelchair user, and we had a great conversation about how ableism shows up in fat liberation work, but also in fitness spaces. And a cool spin-off from this conversation is that Anna Maltby, friend of the show, who we'll hear from later in this episode, developed a wheelchair friendly workout for her newsletter How To Move, after hearing this interview and connecting with Emily. Which I love. I love seeing fitness professionals taking wheelchair friendly workouts more seriously. And the big piece of fitness advice I want us all to take away from the conversation with Emily is that sitting down is not going to kill you.VirginiaOne that you put on my radar is all this fearmongering about how we all sit down too much, and sitting is killing us. And if you have a job that requires you to sit all day, it’s taking years off your life.And yet, of course, people who use wheelchairs are sitting down.EmilyI think about this a lot, because I would say at least a few times a year some major publication releases an article that basically says we are sitting ourselves to death. And I saw one I know at least last year in the New York Times, if not this year,VirginiaNew York Times really loves this topic. They’re just all over there with their standing desks, on little treadmills all day long.EmilyI actually decided to Google it before we chatted. I typed in, “New York Times, sitting is bad for you.” And just found rows of articles.Cool beans, NYT.EmilyThe first time that this ever really came up for me was all the way back in 2014, and I was kind of just starting out in the world of writing and putting myself out there in that way as an activist. And I came across an article that said that the more I sit, the closer I am to death, basically.It’s really tough for me, because I’m sure there’s a kernel of truth in the sense that if you are not moving your body, you are not taking care of your body in a way that works for you. But the idea that sitting is the devil is deeply ableist, because I need to sit. That does not mean that I cannot move around in my own way, and that does not mean that I cannot function in my own way, but it’s just this idea that sitting is bad and sitting is wrong and sitting is lazy. Sitting is necessary.VirginiaSitting is just how a lot of us get things done every day, all day long.EmilyRight, exactly.VirginiaSure, there were benefits to lifestyles that involved people doing manual labor all day long and being more active. Also people died in terrible farming accidents. It’s all part of that romanticization of previous generations as somehow healthier—which was objectively not true.EmilyYou make such a good point from a historical perspective. There’s this idea that it’s only if we’re up and moving and training for a 5k that we’re really being productive and giving ourselves over to the capitalist machine, but at the same time, doing that causes disability in its own way.VirginiaSure does. Sure does. I know at least two skinny runners in my local social circle dealing with the Achilles tendons ruptures. It takes a toll on your body.EmilyOr doing farm labor, as you were talking about. I mean, an agrarian society is great until you throw your back out. Then what happens?VirginiaThere are a lot of disabled folks living with the consequences of that labor.EmilyAnd I’ve internalized this messaging. I am not at all above any of this. I mean, I’m so in the thick of it, all the time, no matter how much work I read by fat liberation activists, no matter how much I try to ground myself in understanding that fatness does not equal badness and that sitting does not equal laziness, I am so trapped in the cycle of “I ate something that was highly caloric, and now I better do a seated chair workout video for my arm cycle.” And I say this because I’m not ashamed to admit it. I want people to understand that disabled people are like all other people. We have the same thoughts, the same feelings. We are impacted by diet culture.CorinneSuch great advice. Important.VirginiaEmily made me realize how much that anti-sitting agenda is everywhere, especially in the New York Times, for some reason. They're weirdly obsessed with standing desks there. And it feels similar to wanting to go back to a time before smartphones. Like, okay, maybe it's not ideal that so many people sit so much, but it's the way the world is now. It's what work is now. Unless you're preparing to completely overthrow capitalism and have us all spend our days doing different things. Regardless of ability, most people are sitting so what if we stopped being ashamed of it?CorinneI feel like this is just one of those moments where if you weren't aware of it, now you're suddenly aware of the way that we talk about certain things and how it's really fucked up for a whole group of people.VirginiaFor sure. CorinneNext let's hear from Lauren Leavell, a weight inclusive fitness professional with an awesome online workout program that Virginia is obsessed with. Lauren has been on the podcast twice, but joined us last summer to talk about some TikTok drama that erupted when a thin Pilates trainer made a video saying you shouldn't be allowed to take Pilates if you weigh over 200 pounds. This episode was called Stair Masters Are the Mean Girls of Cardio, and this conversation is a great reminder that you don't have to have the right body for any type of exercise or be really good at any particular sport. You're allowed to just do things because you like them.I think Pilates is a great workout for people who are in, all different types of bodies and diverse bodies. Pilates is super low impact in a lot of ways, and really good for folks who have chronic illnesses, particularly like reformer, because it could be recumbent and you’re not putting a lot of stress on your joints in the same way. So the idea that this workout that’s really almost like super in line with disability and rehabilitation, to say that there’s like a weight limit—again, fatphobia, joining in with ableism—is like, so so off base. So deeply off base.VirginiaFat people can do any workout, but Pilates in particular happens to be a workout that can be extremely body inclusive when it’s taught well.LaurenExactly. I think that that maybe also added to some of the outrage and and honestly, some of me thinking it was very funny.I’m not someone who regularly weighs myself, but I’ve always been someone who was extremely heavy, as a person. Even as a child, there were stories about me versus my cousin who was three years older than me and a boy, and how he weighed less than me for most of our childhood. I have always been so solid. And I think growing up, many of us heard like, oh, that person has the body of a swimmer. That person should play volleyball or basketball or whatever. I’m like, what is this body type meant for? Like, shotput? And then I’m teaching Barre, you know? I think it’s just so made up. And yes, maybe it’s good for people who swim to have long limbs, great. But when we close ourselves off to types of movement based on body types and weight limits, then people have a harder time finding things that they enjoy, because maybe they don’t enjoy something that they “look like they should.”VirginiaJust because you don’t have long limbs doesn’t mean swimming can’t bring you a lot of joy.LaurenRight? Just because I don’t have long lean muscles doesn’t mean I can’t teach Barre. The language around Barre and Pilates is always “long and lean.” And I just feel that’s so funny as someone who’s not long and lean. I love not being long and lean and and enjoying my classes.Some of the outrage did come from that number being named, because it’s a misunderstanding of what real people in the real world weigh when you are not around those types of people. But I also think that there are a lot of limitations put on bodies, particularly larger bodies, and what you can and can’t do. I have another video that’s actually making a resurgence right now, probably because of this conversation that fat people should only do cardio, because if you lift weights, then you might gain more muscle mass, which would increase your scale weight. So you should only do cardio, because that’s how you’re going to lose weight, which is inaccurate and very boring.VirginiaAnd it’s just really drilling into and this was the core of what she was saying. It’s the core of that Melania video, that exercise is only a tool for weight management. That you would only exercise to avoid or minimize fatness, and right?LaurenAnd because Pilates “isn’t actually good for burning fat,” you definitely shouldn’t be doing it if you’re fat.VirginiaYeah, you should be at the gym running. And it’s completely ignoring the many other reasons we would exercise, the benefits you can actually achieve. Because, as you’re saying, weight loss through exercise is a very murky thing for most people. And it’s just ignoring all the other reasons you would do it that are more fun.LaurenYeah, like “I like it.” You’re allowed to like things! But again, if you’re socialized to only know shame and punishment, then the idea that people do things out of pleasure is hard to wrap your mind around.VirginiaYes, I love Lauren obviously. I'm obsessed with Lauren's workouts. but I also just really like how she thinks about this stuff, and I think it shows up a lot in how she teaches fitness. I mean, this idea that only certain bodies should do Pilates or do any sport, is absolutely wild. It's problematic at every level, but especially since most of us are not doing any of these activities with a hope of being the best version of that in the world.CorinneThis one is crazy too, because that was such a huge controversy, and then I completely forgot about it.Virginia It's a good reminder that the Internet is forever, but also these things do blow over. I can't even remember the name of the girl who made that stupid video. We're over it. You can obviously do Pilates if you weigh over 200 pounds. I did some last week. Last we're going to hear from my girl, Anna Maltby, who is an amazing anti-diet trainer, Pilates instructor and health journalist. Anna writes the newsletter How To Wove, which features weekly workout videos, which is what I do when I'm not doing Lauren's videos. Basically, my workout program is Anna and Lauren on repeat, and it's amazing. Anna has also been on the podcast twice, because whenever I find smart fitness people, I do like to keep bringing them back. And she came on last December 2024 to unpack some internet discourse that was happening then about whether core workouts are a scam. And what we distilled is: Strong core muscles are not a scam. They're really helpful for all the things we need to do with our bodies. But if you hate traditional ab workouts, you probably don't need to do those exact exercises to get a stronger core. And more importantly, you don't have to have flat abs to also have strong, functional core muscles. So this episode is called A Pudgy Belly Can Be A Strong Core, and I suspect that is really useful for a lot of us to remember right now.I’ll also just share, as someone who does identify as hating core work, I have come to appreciate it so much more through your workouts and through talking to you about it, because it’s made me realize how much the “I hate core workouts” came from knowing I’m never going to have the visible six pack. Being able to put that down means now I do notice, ohhh, when I get my core properly engaged, my back hurts so much less. Taking the giant bag of dog food in from the curb feels less painful. I get off the floor a lot more easily after giving my seven-year-old a bath. it’s these small things that are really not that small, actually.AnnaYeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s almost about safety in your body, right? I’m capable of doing these things. I don’t have to feel fear around movement. I’m comfortable moving throughout the day. There’s so much to be said for that. You say they’re they’re small things, but they’re not really small.I really want to encourage people to get to know how their body responds to exercise because of all this noise about aesthetics, we haven’t been trained to notice these more internal or intrinsic kind of things, but if you can tap into functional changes, or just how you feel moving through the day. Are you waking up a little less creaky? Are you able to pick that thing up, or are you able to bend down into the bath more comfortably?VirginiaShampooing a fast-moving seven-year-old is quite the core workout, in fact.AnnaWrestle them into their jackets and all that stuff. This goes back to the central question of why is the myth of visible abs so frustrating? There are so many other things that not just abs, but a functional and strong body, can do for you. To me, those things are better motivators.I exercise also because of back pain. What got me started on exercise, and got me sticking with exercise, was that I was throwing my back out all the time. And I do that a whole lot less if I’m active regularly. And that’s a really good motivator, and it is achievable and it’s noticeable. And I get punished if I’m not doing it, because my back hurts.VirginiaYep. It’s a real one to one connection.AnnaWe have to also talk about people who do need core-specific exercises. It’s a bit more of a rehabilitation focus, but that might include people who are recovering from an injury or surgery. And especially people who are recovering from childbirth, whether that’s a vaginal birth or C-section. A pretty functional body who’s not in that situation, they’ll get really great core work from whatever the else they’re doing, chances are. But in these situations, I do think that isolating your core and targeting your core muscles from a rehabilitative standpoint, is really important. And I think if, like those of us who are who are listening, who’ve had a baby at home, like a brand new baby that they gave birth to, have probably had that experience of like, “Oh my god, where, where are my abs? Where is my core?”VirginiaThey have left the building.AnnaI can’t do anything. They’ve left the building. And it’s temporary. It’s okay. They will be back. You need to heal. You need to recover. But it’s kind of funny, because you’ll get the advice that you shouldn’t lift anything heavier than five or ten pounds or don’t pick up anything heavy. Try not to do anything until you’ve had more time to heal. But like when you have a new baby at home, you’re picking up and putting down a growing babyVirginiaPlus a car seat!Anna75 times a day. I just remember nursing in bed and then trying to get up out of the bed while holding the baby, and you’re basically doing a weighted sit-up. It’s so, so brutal. And it’s not realistic to say you can’t do any of that stuff until you’ve rehabilitated your core. You need to be able to live your life. But I think that working with rehabilitative exercises as you’re working through your day to day life, is going to make it easier. You’re going to get better, you’re going to start to heal, you’re going to regain that strength so much better than if you’re just not doing any of the rehab and only doing this sort of demands of daily life.So I want to say, if you’re in that situation—and I think this is also true if you’ve had some kind of abdominal or pelvic or hip surgery—and you’re recovering and you have to have that rest period, rehabilitative exercises can be really, really supportive.VirginiaWhat I’m thinking as you’re talking too, is how all of these benefits we’re talking about have absolutely nothing to do with weight loss. This isn’t about, are you losing the baby weight? This isn’t about anything to do with that.And yet, again, because of the way diet culture trains us to think about core in the past, if I wasn’t losing weight, I wasn’t aware of these benefits. It was harder to tune into these benefits, or if I did notice these benefits, I credited them with any weight loss that was happening. But whether your weight changes or not from exercise is its own separate thing. We could just put that over here. It might happen, it might not. And the core stuff, you can achieve that whether or not the weight changes. And I just want to name that, because I think that’s another place this gets so, so tangled.AnnaYes, I think that’s so important. There’s a wonderful perinatal coach named Jessie Mundell, who I’m a huge fan of. She takes a super inclusive approach. And she’s in a larger body. I think I texted you when I did her postpartum certification program, and I was like, “Virginia! There are fitness models in this program in larger bodies! It’s so helpful. It’s amazing. It exists.” And she likes to say, and I’m gonna gonna get the exact words wrong, but it’s something like, you can have a round, pudgy, poochy, cellulite, diastasis recti belly and a functional core. The aesthetics do not predict the functionality.VirginiaThat’s so helpful. It’s so important. Especially if you have the diastasis or the poochy belly, you just think, “Well, that’s it. I will never have a strong core.” And that can just be defeating to even starting with this kind of exercise. So, so important to name.AnnaYeah. There are elite athletes who are competing with a three or four finger diastasis.CorinneThis is a great episode. Anna Maltby is so smart.VirginiaAnd just like Lauren, se really helps me reframe some of the toxic messages. I had a really troubling relationship with core workouts for such a long time because of diet culture. But as someone who's really prone to back issues, they are super important for me to do. And being able to do them and appreciate the non-aesthetic benefits of them has been really helpful. So I really appreciated this reframing. All right, any final thoughts, any words of wisdom about how you're going to be navigating January Fitness culture? Is the entire month of January a diet, Corinne? Shall we skip it?CorinneWell, I would not like to skip it, because my birthday is in January.VirginiaThat's right! Corinne is turning 40 this month!CorinneYes, I'll be turning 40 and I will be not starting any new fitness programs.VirginiaLove this for you. I'm very excited. Do you ever start workout stuff in January, or do you just, like, kind of try to opt out of that whole piece.CorinneWell, it's funny because I just kind of passed my three year anniversary of starting to go to the lifting gym that I go to. And so I did start that in December, which is very close to January. But yeah, I don't think I'll be starting anything new. VirginiaYeah, same.Corinne It wasn't like a New Year's thing.VirginiaThat'sjust when you went. I don't have any new goals. Maybe this is the year I'll learn to do push-ups? We can always hope, right?Corinne Yeah, why not? VirginiaI don't have any plans to set out specific goals towards them. I feel like in the last year, I did a pretty good job of keeping movement in my life, even when my life was chaos, and that is new for me. Like, often I would have long periods of like, life is chaos, so I don't have time for that, and then my back would go out. So I feel like, if there's anything I want to maintain this year, it's just to keep doing things I enjoy and keep enjoying the benefits of having movement in my life—to whatever extent that makes sense for my life at any given point.CorinneJas your back gone out this year?VirginiaIt did go out over Thanksgiving. That was a bummer. But not as extremely as it has in the past. I was able to get it back on track in like, three or four days. Whereas I've had times where it's like two weeks of I couldn't stand up. It was just like, oh, okay. It's, you know, it needs some extra attention. And I think it was a stress response. ButterVirginiaMy Butter for this episode is that I'm lifting heavier weights now! That has been really exciting. I historically thought of myself as not a strong person. CorinneWait, really?!VirginiaEmotionally strong, whatever. Like, psychologically strong, yes, like, I'm a powerful woman. I know that. But I didn't think of myself as physically strong. CorinneI'm just like.. all fat people are strong. VirginiaWell, okay, I didn't start out life as a fat person, Corinne, so it's taking me a while to step into my power. I still had an inner skinny girl who thought she wasn't strong. But you're correct. And, you know, getting into weightlifting because of Burnt Toast, really, like you being a power lifter got me interested and meeting Lauren and Anna and all that, you know, like, a lot of it has to do with, like, conversations on burnt toast that I got into weightlifting and, yeah, upgraded to a heavier. I actually got kettlebells, two heavy kettlebells.[CW for numbers talk if that's not good for you!]CorinneWait, I want to know how much.VirginiaMy previous heavyweight was 20 pounds, and like when I do deadlifts, or--Corinne20 pounds in each hand?VirginiaYeah, I could do 20 pounds in each hand for deadlifts. So like, 40 pound deadlifts, 40 pound RDLs, 40 pounds for lunges, or farmer carries. And I have even been able to use the 20 pounds with some upper body, like, sometimes bicep curls. I can do that. And so I got two 30 pound kettlebells.CorinneWow.VirginiaI can definitely do both of them for a deadlift and an RDL. I'm working on a farmer's carry, like a grocery carry type of thing. I'm working on them for some other stuff. Just playing around with this idea of oh yes, you can lift heavier. CorinneAwesome.VirginiaIt's super satisfying. CorinneI love that. VirginiaWhat about you? CorinneWell, now I feel like I should have a fitness related Butter, but I don't have one. I'm also going to show you my Butter, and I just have to grab it. VirginiaI'm excited. CorinneOh, okay, this is a Butter that was also sent to me. It is a Butter that I'm giving to my little baby nephew.VirginiaOh, I'm excited to see this.CorinneIt is the cutest little sweater I've ever seen in my life.VirginiaI mean! There's a sheep on it.CorinneIt's from the brand Misha and Puff. This is an expensive baby sweater, let me tell you. It is nearing $200. It's also the softest thing I've ever felt, and it has a sheep on it.VirginiaI mean, so no pressure to your sister, but she has to have like, five more kids so that that sweater can get enough use. Because the thing about baby sweaters is they fit for five minutes. CorinneI know. It's 18 to 24 months. Virginia That's a good range. He'll be able to wear it for a while. But I'm just saying, like, she's got to have more kids now so you can have more cute babies in that sweater.CorinneYeah, yeah. I want to say, like, I was kind of skeptical of, like, a wool sweater for a baby, but it's just like, it's so soft.VirginiaI will say we are very lucky, I have several knitters in my family. So my kids had some hand\knit sweaters, including some handknit sweaters that my grandmother made for me when I was little, that we had handed down. So I think it's a totally great investment. Knitting is an incredible talent and worth supporting. All right, well, I hope this has everyone feeling good about the new year and what's coming up for us. I want to hear about people's fitness goals or lack thereof! We support it all.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Happy Christmas if you celebrate! If you don't, happy Thursday where everything is closed! Either way, today we're taking a look back at your five favorite episodes of the year. If you enjoy the snippets you hear here, why not give yourself the gift of Burnt Toast? In addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! Join Burnt Toast for 2026! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links!Episode 225 TranscriptCorinneSo we dropped an episode on Thanksgiving Day, and we're back with another holiday episode. This time we're going to be looking back at your five favorite episodes of the year.VirginiaThis is so fun for me to put together every year. I think this is our second or third time doing it, and it's just really satisfying. Plus the top episodes are not always what I would have predicted! Some are, but some aren't. So a little background before we start: Since we moved platforms—we went from Substack to Patreon-—it was actually incredibly difficult to compare all the usual stats. The way Substack tracks episodes and the way Patreon does it—it's not an apples to apples situation. So this isn't the most scientific ranking. But I tried to find the different metrics we're interested in as podcasters —and I found the most popular episode for each of those metrics. 1. The Episode You Shared Most: Dr. Mara Will Not Sell You A Weighted VestVirginiaSo this one got the most shares on Substack Notes, on Instagram, etc. This is the one that people sent to other people as much as possible. CorinneI was recently recalling this episode because one of my friends texted me to say "What do you think about weighted vests?" And I was like, weighted vests have not gone away. VirginiaDid you say I wear a weighted vest all the time? Because that's what I say.CorinneMy weighted vest is my body. Yeah, I feel like we had a little chat about it. it's one of those things people have got to try for themselves. if you're interested in weighted vest then me being like, "eff a weighted vest" isn't gonna deter you, necessarily.VirginiaNo, no. Well, and they're not harmful. Dr Mara, who is a weight-inclusive doctor and writes the excellent newsletter Your Doctor Friend, was definitely not saying they were harmful. It's just this idea that as a perimenopausal woman, can never be not strength training. it's okay to just go for a walk as well, right?CorinneWell, and also, just the thing of, you need to be at least as lean as possible, but put the weight on your body. Just not as part of your body,VirginiaYeah, only weight you can remove. That's the deep irony. Let's listen: VirginiaOkay, so now let’s get into some related weight questions.I was just told by my OB/GYN that excess abdominal weight can contribute to urinary incontinence in menopause. How true is this, and how much of a factor do you think weight is in this situation? And I think the you know, the unsaid question in this and in so many of these questions, is, so do I have to lose weight to solve this issue?MaraYes. So this is a very common refrain I hear from patients about the relationship between BMI and sort of different processes in the body, right? I think what the listeners’ OB/GYN is getting at is the idea that mass in the abdomen and torso might put pressure on the pelvic floor. And more mass in the torso, more pressure on the pelvic floor.But urinary incontinence is extremely complicated and it can be caused by lots of different things. So I think what the OB/GYN is alluding to is pelvic floor weakness, which is one common cause. The muscles in the pelvic floor, which is all those muscles that basically hold up your uterus, your bladder, your rectum—all of those muscles can get weak over time. But other things can cause urinary incontinence, too. Neurological changes, hormonal changes in menopause, can contribute.Part of my size inclusive approach to primary care is I often ask myself: How would I treat a thin person with this condition? Because we always have other treatment options other than weight loss, and thin people have urinary incontinence all the time.VirginiaA lot of skinny grandmas are buying Depends. No shame!MaraTotally, right? And so we have treatments for urinary incontinence. And urinary incontinence often requires a multifactorial treatment approach.I will often recommend my patients do pelvic floor physical therapy. What that does is strengthen the pelvic floor muscles particularly if the person has been pregnant and had a vaginal delivery, those muscles can really weaken, and people might be having what we call genitourinary symptoms of menopause. Basically, as estrogen declines in the tissue of the vulva, it can make the tissue what we call friable.VirginiaI don’t want a friable vulva! All of the language is bad.MaraI know, isn’t it? I just get so used to it. And then when I talk to non-medical people, I’m like, whoa. Where did we come up with this term? It just means sort of like irritable.VirginiaOk, I’m fine having an irritable vulva. I’m frequently irritable.MaraAnd so that can cause a sensation of having to pee all the time. And that we can treat with topical estrogen, which is an estrogen cream that goes inside the vagina and is an amazing, underutilized treatment that is extremely low risk. I just prescribe it with glee and abandon to all of my patients, because it can really help with urinary symptoms. It can help with discomfort during sex in the menopausal transition. It is great treatment.VirginiaItchiness, dryness…MaraExactly, yeah! So I was doing a list of causes of urinary incontinence: Another one is overactive bladder, which we often use oral medications to treat. That helps decrease bladder spasticity.So this is all to say that it’s multifactorial. It’s rare that there’s sort of one specific issue. And it is possible that for some people, weight loss might help decrease symptoms. If somebody loses weight in their abdomen, it might put less pressure on the pelvic floor, and that might ease up. But it’s not the only treatment. So since we know that weight loss can be really challenging to maintain over time for many, many reasons, I think it’s important to offer our patients other treatment options. But I don’t want to discount the idea that it’s inherently unrelated. It’s possible that it’s one factor of many that contributes to urinary incontinence.VirginiaThis is, like, the drumbeat I want us to keep coming back to with all these issues. As you said, how would I treat this in a thin person? It is much easier to start using an estrogen cream—like you said, low risk, easy to use—and see if that helps, before you put yourself through some draconian diet plan to try to lose weight.So for the doctor to start from this place of, “well, you’ve got excess abdominal fat, and that’s why you’re having this problem,” that’s such a shaming place to start when that’s very unlikely to be the full story or the full solution.MaraTotally. And pelvic PT is also underutilized and amazing. Everyone should get it after childbirth, but many people who’ve never had children might benefit from it, too.VirginiaSo the excerpt we just listened to is Dr. Mara talking about urinary incontinence. The listener's doctor was implying that it was because of their weight. And we were just getting into how many health issues, especially in perimenopause and menopause, you're gonna hear that explanation for. And that's just not always true, and even when weight is a factor, there are almost always other treatment options besides weight loss. CorinneIt also makes sense to me that this is the most shared epsiode, because I feel like menopause is such a hot topic right now.VirginiaOh, it is. And we will continue to see this theme as we talk about our most popular episodes.CorinneOh, interesting, yes, for sure.2. Episode With The Highest Open Rate: You Can Count Your Protein And Still Be Nice to PeopleVirginiaSo for folks who don't know: "Open rate" means the percentage of people on the Burnt Toast newsletter list who actually open the email each time. It's okay, we know you don't all open the emails all the time. But it's helpful for us to know which emails get more or less opens than average. This podcast episode, when it got emailed around, had the highest open rate all year. It was the Indulgence Gospel episode where Corinne and I both talked about the diet-y or diet-adjacent behaviors we still participate in: VirginiaDo you personally have any diet-y somethings, Corinne?CorinneI struggled a little bit to think of some, but I actually feel like I have so many!First of all: Right now, I am wearing a fitness tracker.VirginiaOh my God.CorinneI wear a Fitbit. I love wearing a Fitbit. I am not one of those people who gets into a certain type of headspace about steps. I almost never look at the steps. What I love it for is the sleep tracking. I like waking up and getting a grade on my sleep, which might be—VirginiaYou like being judged first thing in the morning?CorinneYeah! It’s like, good job I did great. Or I find it kind of validating sometimes, like, if you wake up feeling like shit and you’re like, Yeah I didn’t get enough REM last night.VirginiaThis is a big revelation, because I have written pieces critiquing Fitbits, which you have edited and never told me.CorinneI go in and out of it. I will wear it every day for months, and then sometime I’ll take it off and just not put it back on. And this is part of where, like, I’m not addicted to it.I like getting the grade on the sleep. I like the watch element. I’ve never been a watch wearer, but then when I started wearing it and was seeing the time on my wrist, I was like, “h this is actually helpful to not be pulling my cell phone out to look at the time.”VirginiaYes. What must that be like?CorinneSometimes at the gym, I will use the stopwatch thing.VirginiaSure.CorinneSo it has a few elements that I like using that I could use my phone for, but it’s easier to just have on my wrist.Also, I would say I’m very susceptible to supplements, which feels diet-y to me.VirginiaThis I did know about you, because you are an electrolyte girlie.CorinneI’m an electrolyte girlie. I like electrolytes. I like fiber. I’ve dabbled in creatine, which is another gym one.PLUS: CorinneThat one we’ve talked about before because you’ve written about protein girlies or whatever, the growing popularity of people kind of tracking their protein and gotten a lot of pushback on that. Then I’m like, “Virginia, you eat protein powder.”VirginiaEvery day! Every day I have it for breakfast unless it’s like the weekend and I’m making eggs or something fancy. But yes. I am a morning protein girlie. I couldn’t tell you how many grams of protein is in it, but I do know I feel better and more functional if I have a significant amount of protein in the morning time. I have high protein needs then.Another of mine that’s maybe a little more of a mental game I play is when it comes to my exercise routines. As you know, I mostly lift weights, I do resistance training videos, and I walk the dog, and I always have a goal that every week, four of those workouts will happen.But if I know it’s a busy week and I’m not going to get in all four workouts, I think the math I do to decide which workouts I’m going to skip is often rooted in a diet-y place. For example, I’ll never give myself permission to cut the easiest workout.I’m like, “Well, you have to do whatever’s feeling hardest right now in order to feel like you did enough this week.” This is definitely a diet culture holdover, because why not just do whatever workout makes sense for my schedule, or it sounds interesting, and trust that over the course of life, it’s going to be enough? But I’ll feel this pressure that whatever I’m enjoying the least, I still have to do. I don’t know, but I have a weird sort of punitive attitude towards it. Which I often recognize and talk myself out of, but, that’s the starting point. So that’s more of a mindset than a specific habit.CorinneI think when we look at these individual behaviors, sometimes we’re reclaiming legitimately useful things that the diet industry stole from us—VirginiaLike Diet Coke!CorinneLike Diet Coke. So in these scenarios, reframing the intention can change a habit from diet-y to a form of genuine self-care.VirginiaLike you using your FitBit for sleep, not for weight loss.CorinneYes, I remember this episode.VirginiaDo you remember my being scandalized when you shared that you were wearing a FitBit while we were recording?CorinneWhen did this come out? Because you know what actually happened since is that my FitBit broke. It just stopped working. And I think I tried to replace it, and then that one broke, and I was just like, fuck this. So currently living FitBit-free. VirginiaCorinne is showing me her FitBit-less wrists. CorinneI do miss having the time on my wrist.VirginiaWell, they make watches. CorinneI've never heard of that. VirginiaYeah, this is an episode from last January, and we deliberately did it in January because January is peak diet culture noise time. And we were like," let's talk about some of the diet-y things we do," because we wanted to reduce the stigma. Because it's okay that you do some diety things, you can still stand up for fat liberation. We're all just flawed people. And sometimes you can reclaim a diet practice or product, and do them in a non diet-y way! Like, your FitBit relationship really did not seem diet-y to me at all. You could pick it up and put it down again. CorinneOkay, well, before we listened to the clip, I could remember what mine were, but I had completely forgotten what yours were.VirginiaDiet Coke and protein powder! We also talked about how I have a thing where it's hard for me to give myself permission to do an easier workout. So if I'm trying to decide which workout to do, I think I should always do the one that sounds the least fun. I think I've actually made a lot of progress on that issue this year! I really feel like I'm getting a lot of joy out of my workouts lately. So that's good. CorinneThat's awesome. VirginiaI would love to hear which ones other folks are either struggling with. Like, yeah, this is a little diet-y, but you know what? It's fine. It serves me in other ways. I think it's an interesting conversation, and it's good to be honest about it. 3. Episode With The Most Comments: How Much Did You Pay Your Pumpkin Stylist?VirginiaOkay. Next up we have the episode with the most comments, and it's really interesting to see what generates the most conversation. Would you have a guess about which episode it will be, before I say it?CorinneLet me think. I would think it would have been, like, maybe the Mel Robbins one?VirginiaWell, we'll get to Mel Robbins. But no, the episode with the most comments was the one where we talked about my love of porch pumpkins.CorinneWait, that was such a recent one.VirginiaIt was! It's because this was the episode where we talked about our problematic favs. And people really liked sharing their problematic favs. CorinneThat makes total sense.CorinneIs this just like putting a pumpkin on your porch?VirginiaNo, it's putting piles of pumpkins on your porch. CorinneOh, okay, I have seen people do that.VirginiaWait, there was a Wall Street Journal article. I'll find it.CorinneWhen I see people do this, I'm like, I'm tired. I don't have the energy to be stacking pumpkins on my porch.VirginiaAccording to the WSJ, "Families are paying north of $1,000 to create Insta perfect tableaus for porches and yards."CorinneOkay, so how much did you pay for your pumpkin stylist?VirginiaLet me tell you about me and my porch pumpkins. I've been craving this look for a few years, ever since Julia Marcum first posted it. And she bought fake pumpkins, which she just keeps on hand and brings out every year to make her pile of pumpkins. And I was like, well, that's actually a more like responsible way to do it, right? To buy and reuse your pumpkins every year?Except then I priced out her pumpkin collection, and it was like, $800 and I said to my then-husband, like, should I buy all these pumpkins? And he said, no.CorinneAnd that's why you got divorced.VirginiaExactly, yes. No — he was right. But every fall, I'm like, I kind of wish I had that. It looks pretty. I'm not going to spend that money, but it does look cool. So then this year the kids wanted to get pumpkins. And so Jack and I took them to a little local pumpkin patch, and I discovered the trick is to go the Saturday before Halloween. The pumpkins are on deep discount. And I now have 14 pumpkins on my front porch that I spent only $70 on.Corinne14 pumpkins is a lot. VirginiaIt is a lot! They just kept giving us more. I paid $70 for maybe, like, seven pumpkins. And I was still like, well, $10 a pumpkin. We'll feed them to the chickens. Jack's like, I can bake something with this cheese pumpkin. I was like, it's it's fine. And then they were like, here. Take more. Take more. I was like, well, now the pumpkins are basically paying me to be on my porch.CorinneSo funny. VirginiaI think it looks delightful and harvest-y, and I like that. It's a trend that works for both Halloween and Thanksgiving. So you can leave it up for a while. And then you could feed the pumpkins to your chickens, or bake with them, if that was the type of person you were, or throw them in your woods and let the deer eat them, which is what I would also do. CorinneWhen I was at my mom's house in Maine, we did get a pumpkin for her front steps, and it immediately got eaten by squirrels.VirginiaAnother reason to wait until the Saturday before Halloween. So you're not trying to make this trend last all fall. I think it's also like, at this time of year, I'm getting sad about the leaves falling. I'm getting sad about the coming cold, anything that makes me like anything better. It's a pile of pumpkins. They're pretty, that's all.CorinneThey are. The pumpkins in this photo are very beautiful.VirginiaYeah, no, that's the key. You don't just get orange pumpkins, you get the Cinderella pumpkins, the fancy gourds and whatnot.CorinneAnd also, how is this WSJ article/photo, leaving out the fact that there are 14 foot tall skeletons in the background?VirginiaYes, in that photo, they are also doing the very tall skeletons, which is a trend I'm not on because I don't know where to store it. Where does one store the 12-foot skeleton the rest of the year?CorinneI don't know. And those are also like $500, I think.VirginiaThey're not cheap. That's like $2,000 in Halloween decorations just on their porch. It's a commitment. And I didn't go that route, but I just enjoy it. That's all.CorinneDid you put them out and step back and rearrange them? VirginiaI sure did.VirginiaNow that I think about it, this episode is very similar to the episode where we talked about our diet-y habits. People just like us to talk about problematic stuff, I guess? CorinneThey like us to be three dimensional people with flaws.VirginiaI'm here for it. These are the most fun episodes to record, too, I think. So we need more ideas on this theme! I definitely would re-do problematic faves in a year or so to see if we have new ones. What are other what are other ways you want to hear about our flaws? Tell us in the comments. What else do you want us to fess up to? We'll think about it. 4. The Episode That Converted The Most Paid Listeners: Mel Robbins Has a PHD in Diet CultureOkay, now we get to Mel Robbins! The episode that converted the most paid listeners is a very important metric for us as podcast business ladies. Paywalled episodes exist to convert new paid subscribers, and that is how we pay all of our bills, and survive this lifestyle of making internet content. So I'm not shocked this was our biggest converter. Well, I guess my only surprise is that I honestly wasn't super aware of who Mel Robbins was before we did this episode. But then I realized she was, like, a pretty big celebrity, so it makes sense that this converted a lot.VirginiaDo you want to talk us through the morning routine post?CorinneSo, “this is the morning routine that’ll supercharge your energy all day.”Virginia“Backed by science,” that’s what she says.CorinneStarts with getting up when the alarm goes off. Once again, it’s not bad advice. Like, yes. But also is Mel Robbins telling you to do it going to make you do it? I don’t know.VirginiaSometimes you’re just not going to do that, and you might still have an okay day. It doesn’t mean the whole day fell apart because you didn’t get up the second your alarm went off.CorinneThe next thing, making your bed, tidying your space—another very common self help tip!VirginiaIt’s “the simplest way to practice discipline,” Corinne. “A promise kept no matter what.”CorinneI’m going to be honest, I feel okay with the first two. Number three, “high five yourself in the mirror.” Like, no. I’m never going to do that. I hate that. I really hate it.VirginiaI can’t stop laughing. She’s so serious in the photo. She has a selfie of her high fiving herself, and she’s so serious in the photo. Like she is earnestly high fiving herself.CorinneLet me tell you, “giving yourself a high five in the mirror rewires your brain to focus on self love and positive reinforcement.”VirginiaThe science behind that is all in her book, The High Five Habit. So there you go. The PhD level science that she’s done to confirm. I just imagine saying to someone actually struggling with depression or anxiety, like, “why don’t you just high five yourself in the mirror?” And, like, I think they would be justified in throat punching you. Like, “I’m sorry your mom just died. Have you tried high fiving yourself in the mirror?” Like, fuck you.CorinneThis is the thing, right? This is what we talk about. It’s like, exercising does make us feel better, but you can’t tell someone struggling, “Just exercise.” Like, this advice is good. Like, get out of bed, have a glass of water. Exercise. And, no one needs that advice. Everyone knows that.VirginiaHigh fiving yourself in the mirror I’m going to say is not good advice. Like, I’m going to say for most of us, that’s not going to be transformative in any way. It’s just going to be dumb.CorinneI have been surprised to see how much staying power her book has had. I'm still seeing people talking about it! And one of the things we talked about in this episode was the scandal around it being...VirginiaPlagiarized, question mark? Allegedly plagiarized? Certainly, some lack of clarity about source material and original authors? CorinneI just kind of thought that would make people stop paying attention to that book. But it really has not.VirginiaNo, does not seem to have made a dent. Also, I would have thought people would have stopped paying attention when she told everyone to high five ourselves. And yet, here we are. Have you high fived yourself yet in the mirror?CorinneAbsolutely not, have you?VirginiaAbsolutely not, never will. Truly terrible advice. And frankly, very patronizing towards anyone struggling with actual mental health issues. This is the last thing you need to hear, in my opinion.CorinneI think I agree with that.5. The Most Downloaded Episode of 2025: Is Dr. Mary Claire Haver Making Menopause a Diet? CorinneOh, back to the menopause.VirginiaBack to the menopause. This was a great episode we did with Cole Kazdin, an Emmy Award-winning television journalist and author of What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety. Cole came on Burnt Toast about two years ago to talk about What's Eating Us when it first came out. It's a really great resource about the industry of eating disorder recovery. And then Cole emailed me and was like, "Can we please talk about menopause and why it is a diet, and why I think so many millennials are going to get eating disorders in the season of life because of the diet culture being created here." VirginiaAll right, we are going chat a little bit about one of the folks that we see on the socials talking about menopause relentlessly —Dr. Mary Claire Haver.ColeShe wrote the book The New Menopause, which is a really great, significant book in many ways in terms of providing information that has never been provided before.VirginiaOh yes, this is @drmaryclaire.ColeWhen I bought her book, I saw that she has also written The Galveston Diet, and I said to myself, hmm. And then bought the book anyway. And you know now it all makes sense. Because The Galveston Diet is is very geared towards the perimenopausal, menopausal lose belly fat, but also have more energy help your menopause symptoms, right? How can you knock that? Come on.And so it's very sort of interwoven with all the diet stuff. So it's not surprising that she would bring so much of that up in her menopause book and a lot on her Instagram. She wears a weighted vest all the time. I thought, “Should I get a weighted vest?” And I again, I wasn't sure if I was doing it for menopause diet culture reasons, or I just love to lift heavy things reasons. I thought, “That could be cool. Maybe that'll be fun. I'll just wear a weighted vest around the house, like this woman, who's the menopause authority.”I guess what’s coming across in this interview is how vulnerable I am to any advertising!VirginiaNo, it's relatable. We all are vulnerable! I mean, I'm looking at her Instagram right now and I'm simultaneously exhausted at the prospect of wearing a weighted vest around my house and, like…well…ColeWouldn't that be convenient? But let me save you a minute here, because when you go to whatever your favorite website is to buy weighted vests, and you look at the reviews, it's split between people saying, “This is the best weighted vest [insert weighted vest brand here],” and other people saying, “Gee, the petroleum smell hasn't gone away after two months.”VirginiaOkay. I can't be walking around my house smelling petroleum. No, thank you.ColeBecause they're filled with sand that comes from who knows where, and the petroleum smell doesn't go away. And according to some reviews I read—because I did go down the rabbit hole with this—it actually increases if you sweat. So I thought, You know what, I can do this in other ways.VirginiaI'm sure there are folks for whom the weighted vest is a revelation. And, it's a very diet culture thing to need to be alway optimizing an activity. You can't just go for a walk. You need to be walking with a weighted vest or with weighted ankles. Why do we need to add this added layer of doing the most to everything?And I'm looking at a reel now where she talks about the supplements she's taking. Dr. Mary Claire is taking a lot of supplements.ColeSo many supplements!VirginiaVitamin D, K, omega threes, fiber, creatine, collagen, probiotic… That's a lot to be taking every day. That's a really expensive way to manage your health. Supplements are not covered by insurance. There's a lot of privilege involved in who can pursue gold standard healthy menopause lifestyle habits.ColeAnd it's always great to ask the question, who's getting rich off of the thing that I'm supposed to be doing for my health? Because it's never you.VirginiaYes. She keeps referencing the same brand — Pause.ColeIt's hers. It's her brand.VirginiaOh there you go. So, yeah, taking advice from someone with a supplement line, I think, is really complicated. This is why it's so difficult to find a dermatologist as well. Any medical professional who's selling their own product line has gone into a gray area between medical ethics and capitalism that is very difficult to steer through.VirginiaI think Dr. Mary Claire Haver is very similar to Mel Robbins in a lot of ways. I mean, she is a medical doctor, Mel Robbins has no relevant credentials to tell people what to do with their lives. But they have the same kind of energy on social media. They are both tiny women with a really good blowout telling you how to run your life. And you do not have to dig far to get into their super diet-y and anti-fat content. It's all right there at the surface.CorinneYikes. No, thank you. VirginiaBut this is a good episode. If you missed it, if you missed any of these, I recommend giving them a listen. What do you notice about these five? Any standout themes or observations? Other than, yes, we're all obsessed with menopause.CorinneDefinitely menopause. And like you alluded to earlier... flaws.VirginiaIt's interesting that there were two about problematic white lady influencers, which has been a cornerstone of Burnt Toast coverage for a while. We do a few of those every year, so I'm not surprised two of them made it into the top five. But then the others in the top five were like Corinne and Virginia just being humans.So that's kind of like a nice counterpoint. Because it's us just being messy people, right? CorinneTwo were about menopause, and two were about problematic white ladies, and two were about us having flaw. VirginiaThat's right, yes. One was about both menopause and a problematic white lady. We had some overlap, yes. Then the ones that were not in those two categories were us just saying, "here's some weird stuff we do."So, all right, more hot mess express in 2026. We can do it. CorinneOh God. VirginiaI mean, honestly, it's easier than trying not to.CorinneDo you have any further thoughts about those topics?VirginiaNo, but I'm curious to hear from listeners if you have a favorite among those five, or if you have a different favorite episode for the year?There were also a lot of little episodes that didn't hit the top metric on something but did generate great discussion or that I'm just really fond of. One that I really wanted to get in here was the interview with Jessica Slice, author of Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. That was one that was second place for a couple of these categories. It did generate a bunch of comments. It did generate a bunch of shares, and I feel like really resonated with folks. So that's an honorable mention.CorinneThat's one that really stuck with me. I've just thought about a lot since I listened to it. I would say also maybe, the one with Lisa Sibbett.VirginiaYes! Lisa who writes The Auntie Bulletin. I loved that conversation with Lisa about community and divesting from consumerism. Perpetual Burnt Toast goals. Oh, it was such a good year making the podcast. It really was.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterCorinneOkay, I'm going to endorse a problematic Butter.VirginiaOh, a problematic Butter! We love it.CorinneBorderline. I mean, okay. I'm going to endorse this product, which was sent to me. So it was gifted. I received it for free. VirginiaOkay. Thank you for disclosing.CorinneI was just like, whatever. It's a lotion. It's called Talova. And I realized once I got it that it's made from...beef tallow.VirginiaOh, that you're rubbing on your body?CorinneI did have that realization after I started using it and really liking it. And I feel like beef tallow is one of those things where I'm like, I hear it and I'm like, that's MAHA-coded.VirginiaVery Huberman Bro. Yes. CorinneIt's like, the crossover point between lefty crunchy mom heading into RFK territory. VirginiaOh dear. CorinneThat's why this is a problematic fav. But I started using it before I realized that it was beef tallow. And I was using it, and I was just like, why is this stuff so good? I love it. And then I looked at the ingredients, and there's tallow and emu oil.VirginiaOh, no. Aren’t emu endangered?CorinneI don't know. I'm also like, is Emu oil what it sounds like? Okay, but I will say it's a body balm. It's incredible. It smells so good. It doesn't smell like beef or emu, it has a citrusy scent. It's my winter in the desert thing. It's so good. I love it.VirginiaI am confirming on the Internet that emu oil is a traditional Australian moisturizer derived from the fat of the emu bird, used topically for skin and hair care. Okay, Down Under listeners, we're going to need you to weigh in on this. Is Corinne being problematic using emu oil? Do we need to cancel her? Or is she allowed?CorinneIf emu oil is problematic, I think the brand could be canceled, not me. But anyways, I really like this product, and I'm sorry to say, it's made with beef tallow, and it's it really working for my dry desert skin, and it smells good.VirginiaAll right, all right. Well, I'm going to give a non-problematic Butter, just so we don't end the year on such a controversial note. My Butter, as you all are listening to this on Christmas Day, or perhaps during the winter break, is to go take a nap. I took a really great nap the day after Thanksgiving, and I thought to myself, why do I not take more naps on holidays? Usually because I'm busy hosting them and parenting my children, and it's difficult to do. And I'm here to say, if that's you as well, take 30 minutes just stop whatever you're doing and go lay down in a room by yourself and close your eyes or read a book, whatever. It is your holiday as well, and you deserve that.CorinneI'm a huge nap fan. VirginiaI am not a lifelong napper, but I've been getting into it recently. Or even if you don't sleep, just take some quiet, no people time. I think that can be really helpful when you're in the thick of holidays. CorinneAs a big introvert, 30 minutes alone can really turn things around for me.VirginiaAnd make you like the rest of the day! Instead of getting increasingly spacier and grumpier. So yeah, I want everyone to go take a nap either today or tomorrow or whenever. All right, this was a super fun episode. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.And it's time for the episode we look forward to all year long—ever since we made it a tradition exactly one year ago! It is time for... The Year In Butters, where we look back at everything we've recommended in the past year and tell you what's still buttery and what has...gone rancid. If you're new here: Butter is what we call the recommendation segment at the end of every episode. It might be a new favorite food, a great book, an experience, or a state of mind. But since we give recs every week, some Butters stand the test of time more than others! Find out if we still love...🧈 Tracking Virginia's hydration? 🧈 Corinne's new shower head? 🧈 The $16 sundress Virginia bought last summer! 🧈 And so many more! To get the full schmear, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Membership starts at just $5 per month and is the best way to support our work! (Just want the Butter, no strings attached? Buy this episode for just $4.)

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Rachel Cahill, a longtime anti-hunger policy advocate based in Ohio. Rachel and her team support national and state-level organizations fighting every day to end hunger and poverty in the United States. Most of her work focuses on making SNAP (the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) the most effective, accessible and equitable program it can be in every community. JICYMI: When the federal government shut down this fall, it closed SNAP for the first time in the history of the program, pausing benefits for much of November. Benefits are up and running again in most places, but this has had major ripple effects on the state of hunger in our country right now. And it's led to a lot of long-term questions about what we do to prevent that ever happening again. Rachel knows more about the ins and outs of SNAP, and anti-hunger advocacy, than anyone I know, so I asked her to come on the podcast to explain what's happening, and what we can do to help fight hunger. We also talk quite a bit about how to give strategically because it is that time of year when a lot of us want to do charitable giving. Which is great! But there are good and less good ways to do that. Burnt Toast is a community of helpers, and I think this conversation will help us all be better at helping. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 222 TranscriptRachelI am a SNAP advocate. That's how I think of myself. That's my identity. I live in Ohio, and I have been working on SNAP, and the food assistance programs that are connected to SNAP, for almost 20 years. I started working on it in Philly, and have now worked in a number of different states. My passion is to protect our food assistance programs that help families meet their basic needs. If we had something better than SNAP in this country, honestly, I would work on that. But because SNAP reaches 42 million Americans, and it's the best safety net we have, that's the program that I've committed to working on. I do policy, advocacy, administrative, legislative—wherever we can fight for the program, we are doing that.VirginiaIt's incredible. I should disclose that we have a personal connection. I first met you, I guess, 20 years ago? When you were in college, you were a student of my stepmother, Mary Summers, who has also been on the podcast.RachelActually, I was a fresh out of college working in the community at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. And Mary had students who she placed with us in a service learning program. Mary was one of my first and still mentors, who has supported me in lots of different ways through this career. And I think you did some interviews with Witnesses to Hunger? I worked on that program many years ago. So yeah, we've evolved a lot, Virginia, since those days.VirginiaYes! When I was researching my first book, The Eating Instinct, you helped connect me with folks for interviews. Rachel and I go way back in a shared advocacy spirit, sort of way so I just wanted to give people that backstory. And so I emailed you a few weeks ago to say, Rachel, help! Please come on the podcast. This was when the government was shut down and it had triggered the freeze on November SNAP benefits. At that point, everybody was scrambling, and I knew you were doing the most scrambling.  Of course, because of politics, the shutdown is now over. SNAP benefits are once again being distributed, for now anyway. But that is not to say that hunger has been solved in this country, or that the 42 million Americans who rely on that program are just totally okay now. You were like, "Do you still want to have this conversation?" And I was like, well, yes, because people are still going hungry! RachelYeah, thanks for the chance to talk about this! In the 20 years I've been working on food stamps, there has never been a moment I remember where SNAP dominated the headlines for two weeks straight. So on the one hand, I'm trying to see the silver lining in this massive drama to say it's a chance to educate everybody, including your listeners, about what the SNAP program is. It has been this quiet backbone program, running and feeding communities for almost 60, years. And during the shutdown, SNAP essentially got used as leverage for both parties to bludgeon each other with and blame each other for starving the citizens of the United States. It's unprecedented. I feel like that's an overused word these days, but this truly has never happened before. SNAP benefits stopped going out across the entire country. And the emergency food system—the food pantries, the soup kitchens, the food banks —was never meant, or equipped, to be able to overnight replace what SNAP is is doing in the community.Just in my home state of Ohio, we're talking about $263 million a month that goes out in SNAP benefits. No fundraiser for a food bank was ever going to come close to replacing that. It was a crisis. It was an absolute crisis that we were facing. So starting on November 1, people's benefits were frozen. They still had to complete renewal paperwork. They still had to comply with work requirements. But people weren't getting their benefits delivered. And then it turned into a Supreme Court battle. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court because the administration actually did have money available that they could have spent, and they were choosing not to spend it on the program that it was dedicated for. So finally, when the shutdown ended, the benefits slowly started flowing again. We're recording this on November 25 and in a few states, all the benefits still have not gone out. So there are still families who are supposed to get their benefits maybe the beginning of November, and are still waiting. The long-term harm of this is hard to overstate. The definition of food insecurity is not knowing where your next meal is going to come from. And we just traumatized 40 million people who did not know where their next meal was going to come from. 40 percent of SNAP recipients are children. Their bodies and brains are going to remember this trauma that they just went through, and it's going to be a long time before we can repair that harm. We need to make sure that this type of a crisis never happens again, and Congress is never in a position where they can hold SNAP benefits hostage, even in a future government shutdown. VirginiaI've been thinking about the juggling act that this triggered for so many families. If you relied on SNAP to cover groceries, that meant you could use other income to cover childcare or pay a utility bill. So we're also going to see folks having fallen behind on other bills. Maybe they're unable to make a car payment, which then impacts their ability to get to work, to get kids to school, so many different things.RachelThere's a saying that poverty charges interest. You might only have gotten $200 from that SNAP benefit, which supplements your work income. But if you're now having to put a bill on a short term loan or credit card and you're paying 20 or 30 percent interest on that because you waited three weeks...How long is it going to take families to dig out of that hole? We hear all the time about utility shut-offs, all the time about evictions that get connected to a small change in household income, including the loss of SNAP benefits. Now I will say, because we have made SNAP such a difficult system to navigate and renew benefits, even if the government never shuts down again, this uncertainty where your benefits disappear, you go to the grocery line to checkout and you find out that your benefits aren't there because of some paperwork mishap—that actually does happen a lot in families' lives. There's a lot we have to do longterm to make this a more stable program for everybody who's experiencing the instability of food insecurity. But this was certainly a crisis moment where it was hitting everybody at the same time.VirginiaSay a little more about that. Because for those of us who are mostly just seeing headlines, it's like, Okay, the government reopened. Okay, the SNAP benefits are back. But this is a system that was already not meeting the need. So what are some other ways SNAP struggles to support families?RachelFirst, let me just remind folks who don't know, if you've never been connected to the program: SNAP is a very modest food benefit. It is on an EBT card, like a little debit card, that is loaded every month with money for groceries. But it's the equivalent of, like, $6 a day on average. It is about as much as most people spend on a cup of coffee. It is not a generous benefit. There's a lot of misconceptions about what SNAP is. It's a very modest benefit you can only use for grocery items. The program—for as great as it is, and it's the best thing we have—has a history of exclusionary policy making. Certain groups have gotten excluded and carved out over time. And HR1, the big bill that passed July 4, really took a sledgehammer to SNAP, too. It cut almost $200 billion out of the program and did some additional exclusionary policy making, the impacts of which we're just starting to feel. So I put the barriers to SNAP in two buckets. There are eligibility barriers, meaning the people that policy makers intentionally exclude from the program. This includes groups like legally present immigrants. It includes people who are forced to prove that they are working over and over again, and if they can't provide the paperwork proving it, then they get kicked out of the program. So there is exclusionary policy making that has to be tackled at a legislative law making level. Then there's all this other stuff, which is most of what I've worked on for 20 years, and what I worked on with Mary twenty years ago. These are the kind of the administrative barriers that people face in tackling the program. Application forms that are 40 pages long, that ask extremely intrusive questions, asking for tons of verification. You have to do a full interview with a case worker, you have to renew your benefits at least every six months. All of these hoops are built up in the program to make people jump through, and that often keeps the folks most in need of benefits from accessing them. Not because they're not eligible, not because they don't need them, but because they just give up when the program is too hard to access. So we do a lot of work at the county and state level, state by state, red, blue, purple states to try to tackle some of those administrative barriers.VirginiaIt is wild that we think people need to work to have the right to buy food. And that we think people need to fill out 40 pages of paperwork just so you can buy groceries this week. RachelIn a number of states that have asset tests, you're asked for bank statements. You're asked for a copy of your rent receipt, your child care bills, how much do you spend on utilities every month? Applying for SNAP is harder than getting a house loan. It's harder than getting a business loan. It's harder than almost anything else, but that is the way the program was built. And there continues to be this persistent stigma or this narrative about unworthiness that has persisted in the program is so disconnected from reality. I'm hoping having this spotlight on SNAP, where we dominated the headlines for two weeks, does give a moment for people to take a second look at the program, really learn about what it is and start to fight for it. If you survey the American people, 90 percent of people, regardless of their political affiliation, will tell you that they think we should be doing more to help people meet their basic needs and pay for groceries, not less. But that doesn't match with what's happening legislatively in Congress. So we need people to know more about this program so that they feel like they have a stake in it. And I guess I just can't stop myself from saying one more thing: SNAP is so critical to our actual economy. One of the things that happened in the beginning of the shutdown is it wasn't just the folks losing that groceries on their table, it was the grocery stores they shop at, which, all of a sudden were saying, We have no customers, because 30 percent of our receipts come from SNAP and no one's shopping right now. I had a local store here in a rural part of Ohio which started laying people off immediately. Because they didn't know when those receipts were going to come in, and they don't have enough of a margin to be able to maintain their store without the program. So if we want our grocery stores to continue to exist and be in all parts of the country, we need SNAP. As that lifeline too.VirginiaWe agree we should be doing more to feed kids. We agree we should be doing more so that people don't go hungry. And yet, the program is built with so many barriers. And that's because there's this way we feel really good about fighting hunger—and it isn't the way that actually fights hunger.RachelI'll say two things to this. Because of the history of exclusionary policy making in SNAP, there is always going to be the need for charitable giving. And there's always going to be, I think, the need for a wraparound system that provides food in real time, today, for anybody who needs it. That's what the best food pantries and soup kitchens provide: No questions asked, walk in the door, get food today. But that doesn't solve the long-term problem. So while we are always going to need that, I think the reason there's this mismatch is this misconception about who benefits from SNAP. So, if you asked those same 90 percent of people who they think the most common person on SNAP is, they would say, "It's a 30 year old in their basement playing video games." It's the same stereotype and tropes about health care, about who benefits from the safety net. There's this misconception that there are people who aren't pulling their weight in society, and that's who's benefiting from these programs. But if you actually look at the programs, most people getting SNAP are elderly, retired, they're people with disabilities, they are children, and they're working parents. They are parents working sometimes two or three jobs, but in low wage work that requires the supplement of a SNAP program. This group of "non-working but capable people" that people imagine are benefiting from the program is a fantasy. And it's intentionally used by politicians who want to attack the program. That goes back to Reagan and before, right? It's a long political strategy that we have in this country. I've been really grateful in my career to see even the food banks and the rest of the charitable sector has come a long way in talking about SNAP as an integral part of feeding the community. Feeding America is a big association of food banks. And they will say: SNAP provides nine meals for every one meal that a food bank can provide. So I think the solution is not to say, "Is it charitable giving or SNAP that solves this problem?" It's actually the blend of the two that's going to make our community's food secure.VirginiaThere's a bit of moralizing, I think, that goes into this. People feel good about giving to a canned food drive, but not necessarily good about voting for policies that would protect SNAP. And with RFK and MAHA taking over the rhetoric around all of this, is that leading to even more policing about what people can spend SNAP benefits on, and what kinds of food we want people to have access to?RachelI'm going to first tackle the voting question. I think that very few people ever vote based on their beliefs or policy preferences around SNAP. I've yet to see a major political campaign where SNAP was a top issue that got talked about. That might change after the shutdown. We did see a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle come out in defense of SNAP when the shutdown started, and that was, I hope, a jumping off point for people to actually vote. But I think there's this disconnect. I think there's a lot of bipartisan agreement here that we don't see. When you think about folks who are anti-SNAP, if you look at the comment section of an article in the newspaper that's about SNAP, you'll always see online comments that are disparaging SNAP. But if you look one layer under the maybe racism and misogyny that are layered on top--VirginiaHard to look past it, but sure, I'm with you. Comment sections are not my favorite.RachelAgreed. But if you do look past, most people's story is actually about they themselves not getting benefits from the program. So it's often a story of, "I don't like SNAP because when I needed it, I couldn't get it, or because I wasn't able to comply with the work requirement and that wasn't fair," or because I was disabled, or my family member was and couldn't get the help that they needed.So I think that, like so many social compacts in our society, if we actually built the program to help everyone who needed the help from the program, you would see more political support for it. That's why universal programs like Social Security generally benefit from really high public support, because we don't do the kicking people out there. There's not this sense of "if this group gets it, then my group doesn't get it."Some of the realest conversations I've had about SNAP are with families and parents who are just over the income limit and are really upset that they lost access to that benefit once they got a raise or once they got a slightly better job. And that just fundamentally isn't fair. So if we brought in the program and make it more accessible, we would have higher political support for it, I think.All right, on your MAHA question, which I know fits very well with your audience in terms of like you guys track the MAHA stuff.VirginiaWe do. Unfortunately, that has become a core part of our beat.RachelThe great irony of 2025 is that SNAP is one of the single best things we can do to make America healthy again. SNAP has every research study behind it that shows kids who get SNAP as children have higher economic output. They're healthier as adults, they work more. Older adults are less likely to go to the hospital, less likely to go to the nursing home, if they have access to SNAP. The research is abundant, right? VirginiaIt's wild we needed research to prove that feeding people made them healthier, but okay.RachelYes, but we have it. It's rock solid. I spent too many years trying to help those research studies to get published in peer-reviewed journals. We know that to be true. You also have a parallel movement that's been happening for several years, where food banks have been working with insurance companies and other healthcare providers to make sure that they're doing tailored meals, meal boxes for people who are going through cancer treatment, people who have diabetes diagnosis. So these sort of tailored meals continue to be a trend. SNAP is a payer. Medicaid is a payer for those programs, all of those things improve health. MAHA, of course, is not about improving health. You guys know that.It has become is about policing food, right? That is what MAHA is about. And so SNAP was an unfortunately perfect target for MAHA. As soon as we got into legislative sessions. This is at the state level. In January of 2025, we saw a flurry of MAHA-supported bills that would restrict what people could buy with SNAP benefits. In some states, it was soda. In some states, it was candy baked goods. In a state like Iowa, it's literally everything. If it didn't grow on a farm in Iowa. If it's not a vegetable or a legume, it's not in the program. So you've got  these extreme proposals that came out of it was the same two or three lobbyists who came through. They were Casey Means, they were RFK-alliance folks who came through in the state houses. And the only opponents in those hearings were the SNAP advocates. It was the Morris Institute for Justice in Arizona and a couple of brave food banks in some of the red states who saw these bills, and they were there to explain to lawmakers calmly how they have been working, how SNAP supports health, how there are other alternatives. I will say there were some victories. During session in Kentucky, the advocates very effectively educated lawmakers that it would be better to incentivize healthier purchases — because all the research says incentivizing healthier purchases works better than restricting access programs.VirginiaYes. Letting people buy food works better than banning what people can eat. RachelAnd so they actually got a legislator to to come off of a bill that he had supported and to propose a new bill for an incentive-based program. So I think that education work in some political contexts was very successful.But then we saw the White House call governors and said, "Well, you couldn't get this through your legislature, so now you need to do it through an executive order." And that's where we really have seen the most harm done with these proposals that have come straight out of of governors offices under pressure from RFK. I think my long-term view of this is that we are going to have to see the harm done in a handful of states, and see how much of a mess it is for retailers. Still to be determined if retailers sue over these restrictions, which really put all the costs on them to police their grocery lines. I hope what happens is we have, at worst, a couple of states implement these rules, we see the harm done, and we walk it back. And we see that the MAHA thing was a fad that we recover from in SNAP. Because at the end of the day we're talking about a $6 a day benefit. People are not able to meet all of their grocery needs with SNAP, regardless. You may accomplish shifting the order in which people check out. Maybe we'll put all of our fresh, healthy foods at the front of the of the conveyor belt to use our SNAP benefits on, but we're still going to buy our kids the birthday treat that they deserve to have. So it's a big old waste of time, in my opinion. And I hope that it's a fad we are able to move on from in the long run.VirginiaI hope so. MAHA is the worst version of it, but we did have Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle arguing for no soda on SNAP back in the mid-2000s. So it does seem to be this thing that we keep circling back to. And I think it is part and parcel with "it feels good to do food drives, but not to make SNAP more robust." It's this idea that all poor people need is wealthy white people to tell them how to eat, and that will solve hunger.RachelYeah. You are right that that instinct has been there for a long time, and it it probably will outlive it. In a number of states the American Heart Association came out in support of these bills. We had some doctors groups come out in support of these bills. But where they would get stuck—and this is where these proposals quickly fall apart—is how do you define the ingredients of these processed foods. Even, let's say a soda. So you had, in some states, the proposal was, "anything with bubbles is a soda." And therefore you can't buy it with SNAP. But then you have the doctor being like, wait, I did tell my patient to buy the diet soda or the 30 calorie soda. VirginiaAnd what about seltzer!RachelIt's so arbitrary! And if you look at the way that grocery stores label their products, they're by category. They're not by healthy or unhealthy. There is no universal healthy or unhealthy label, as you well know. So it's all well and good when it's moralizing in the hypothetical. But I had to spend a solid four months sitting on a SNAP restrictions work group for the state of Ohio. It was appointed by our governor. And I was in there with industry folks, grocery folks, from health care talking about the nuts and bolts of how to put this into effect in Ohio, which we're going to have to do in the end of 2026. And once you get into the definitions, it falls apart very quickly. So I wish we could go back to focusing on the bigger important things, but I think we're going to have to keep re-educating people every time this wave of this fad, this intention comes around. People need to be reminded that SNAP is there as an economic support to supplement low wages. If we really wanted people to not need SNAP, we need to have a higher wage economy. And that would be a much more straightforward way to solve the problem. VirginiaIt feels very part and parcel with the whole ultra-processed food conversation, which, similarly, when people start defining it, they're like, well, wait, what is ultra processed? What do we mean? It's everything, which then quickly becomes nothing. RachelIt's a distraction. But here we are. We still work.VirginiaOkay, so it's December. This is the biggest month of the year for charitable giving. I think you did a great job of explaining there's a role for food pantries and food bank systems in all of this. But that's not the full solution. How should people think about charitable giving, especially this December, right now, given what we're up against?RachelI love that people are invested in charitable giving at the end of the year. I personally do the same thing, and I try to look at the organizations that are doing the most long-term policy advocacy, because I'm looking at the upstream solutions, and those are often the most under-resourced organizations. You can look at the 990s of organizations. You can look at their overall budgets online and see that your typical food bank, or really any direct service, often has a many millions of dollar budget. But an advocacy organization that's there to change a policy that would help a million people often has a budget of maybe a couple hundred thousand for the year. So when you donate to a policy advocacy organization or a legal aid organization, your donation goes a lot farther and is much higher impact. Because even if you can't give $10,000 and you can only give $200 or $50, you're going to make a really big impact on those smaller organizations' budgets. So that's one place I would think about. This year, I am doing a lot of donations around immigrant support, given the onslaught of what's happening in this country against our immigrant communities. There are a number of organizations, mostly small and sometimes kind of fitting into the mutual aid category, that are trying to provide direct support as well as legal support to immigrant communities right now as they're under attack. So that is what I think, in this moment, is a really good investment. At the same time, the charitable food system is very dependent on donations this time of year too, because lots of people in the community turn to them. They know that they might be able to get a turkey at Thanksgiving. They know they might be able to get a Christmas meal from them. So those are never bad investments. I do think they are very good stewards of the donations and the money that they get. But if you can look a little bit deeper in your community and see where a policy advocacy organization exists—every single one of your states has at least one or two core social justice organizations that would really benefit from donations this time of year.VirginiaAnd I'll just make the point that if you are giving to the local food pantry, think dollars over donations of goods, because they can do a lot more with your money. They can buy in bulk. They know more what their community needs, rather than you assuming that it's something you have in your pantry. That's that's probably like the least impactful way to donate.Rachel100 percent. And a very common mistake that well meaning people make all the time is donating products that are hard to readily consume. Donating a box of mac and cheese, but not the milk and the butter that goes with it. Or a can of beans that needs a can opener. If you're going to do canned goods, make it a pop top because so the people can open it. A lot of times homeless ministries really benefit from those canned soups or whatever, but they need to be accessible without a can opener. So if you are going to do a food drive—I know my kids' school does one, it's a great way for kids to get hands on experience with it being involved— just think through, could this be a meal on its own, rather than, is this going to be something that someone's unable to use without other fresh products?VirginiaLet's talk a little bit about mutual aid. This is something Burnt Toast as a community, we've been just starting to wrap our arms around. We did a very successful Mutual Aid drive at the start of November to help with the benefits shut down, and raised around $11,000 that we were able to distribute to, I think it was 62 folks in our community. So that was great. It's something we want to do more of, and I know a lot of listeners want to do it in their own communities. But there are some things that come up for folks. I've heard people say, "I don't feel comfortable donating to someone I don't know." And some of this, I think, is a little bit of that internalized moralizing stuff that we were talking about, where it's like, am I just giving money to a random person and I don't know what they're using it on? So talk us through your take on mutual aid and some of the concerns you hear coming up around it. RachelI think mutual aid is a beautiful thing that has existed for many, many generation. It hasn't just been in the modern online era.VirginiaRight now, it's a social media hashtag.RachelThat's right, that's right. But it's always been in communities, and you could talk to communities all over the country, and they would say they wrap their arms around folks and share what they have in times of crisis. And that's what the modern era of mutual aid is allowing us to do—but with people who don't live in our physical neighborhood, because we're so segregated as a society. My fundamental belief is that cash is the best way to provide someone with the dignity to make decisions for themselves on what their family needs in that moment. I have no idea whether you need a bus pass or a pack of cigarettes or money for rent or whatever you need to get through that day as a human being. You should have the autonomy to decide what that is. When I started this conversation saying I've worked on SNAP for 20 years, because it's the best thing we have—if we had a robust cash assistance program, I would work on that. There are really nice models in some communities of how to target mutual aid towards groups who are otherwise getting excluded from public benefits and other programs. Here in Ohio, we have a local, organic thing called AMIS, it stands for Americans Making Immigrants Safe. And it's a locally funded cash assistance program for families who are excluded from public benefits. They're seeking asylum, they're working with a lawyer to get their paperwork through. They're stuck waiting on their green card, whatever it may be. And so that is a way that cash can be distributed to folks who are getting excluded from SNAP and excluded from Medicaid. So I really like that program, because there are folks doing the work of the connecting. I don't speak the languages of everybody who needs connecting to that program, and I would never be able to find through Facebook those folks who need that the most. So I think that's a great model. But I also think another really cool model that evolved during the shutdown was an organization called Propel. They have an app that people use to manage their SNAP benefits. And we were talking as the shutdown was looming, and they were like, "What can we do? Should we encourage people to donate to food pantries or whatever?" And I was like, "No, just use your app to give people cash." And they did! They figured out a way to do it. I don't know how many millions of people that they helped, but they were giving a $50 cash payment to the same families who were losing out on their SNAP benefit. So I think that kind of creativity of just saying, "Trust people with $50 in cash and let them decide what they need in this moment." As the giver, you don't own the choice, right? If that person gets ends up buying something that you personally wouldn't spend your money on, that is not on you. And that is not a waste of a donation. That is you just putting goodness into the world and giving somebody else the dignity to decide with themselves what they need in that moment. So that's my take. Get over yourself. Just give people cash.VirginiaYes, yes. Thank you, Rachel. I love that so much. I think it's just a moment when you feel those thoughts coming up, and it's important to pause and say, oh, wait, this is me thinking I know how other people should live when of course we don't. Of course we are not navigating what they are navigating in a day. But we can all imagine how would it feel if whatever our source of comfort, or vice, or coping strategy is, was suddenly inaccessible because somebody was telling you it wasn't good for you. RachelAnd that's the beauty of what mutual aid can do. We do all the other moralizing in our public systems. Families in the child welfare system are heavily scrutinized and penalized. People who are experiencing homelessness are heavily scrutinized. People going through drug treatment, who have had a traffic violation. There are a million other ways we police people in society. We don't need to do that with mutual aid.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterRachelWell, as a longtime listener, I will say I've gotten great ideas from other people's butter. So thank you for having this segment. Honestly, the thing that brings me the most joy right now is reading Anne of Green Gables to my daughters. We are just about to finish the third book, which is Anne of the Island. And it's, you know, from a million years ago, set in Prince Edward Island in Canada.  I will say what is just cracking me up with each chapter is the way that parents are just as annoying in the early 1900s as they are today. Anne is a school teacher in one of the books, and the things that parents complain about, like my Johnny really deserved an A on that test, are all the same things that our poor teachers have to deal with right now. We have screens in our house. I am not some puritanical Little House on the Prairie mother, but it's the one thing we do before bed is we've been reading Anne of Green Gables. So now we're starting to binge all the different PBS series. There's Anne with an E, Anne of Green Gables. There are redos, there's a 1980s version that's amazing. So all things Anne of Green Gables right now are bringing me joy.VirginiaI'm so rooting for this in my own life. My kids don't take my book recommendations. So there is a copy of Anne of Green Gables sitting in my family room right now that I'm just, like, waiting patiently for someone to discover. If they know I want it too much, it won't happen. So I just leave things like that out. I'm really hoping to join you in this Anne of Green Gables magic soon.RachelYou can mention that Anne is a real troublemaker, that's what got my 10 year old into it. It was when I told her some of the snippets of the ways that Anne breaks rules. Then she was like, oh, all right, maybe I'll try it.VirginiaI love it. My Butter is a really good cookie recipe. It is a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe, which I was extremely suspicious of—it uses banana instead of egg and peanut butter. But they are so good and chewy and it's so easy to make that I've actually been baking them more than just scooping the store-bought cookie dough, which I will always be a fan of, because the ease is unmatched. But this is a really easy recipe. They're super delicious. I don't think there's anything healthy or special about them, but if you have someone who can’t do eggs or whatever, it's a nice option to have. And this time of year we need a lot of treats.RachelMy daughter's art teacher just told me that she's having a fully vegan Thanksgiving, and I was super impressed with her, and trying to figure out how I could possibly gift her something at the end of year. So I'm going to try your cookie recipe. VirginiaYay! Rachel, this was so helpful and informative. Thank you for everything you're doing. Tell folks, how can we support your work? If we want to learn more, where should we follow you?RachelThank you for having me on. I have been listening to, and learning from you for many years, both on the parenting side, with little picky eaters with your first book, and—oh my gosh, I want to show you my fan girl real quick. I'm sorry. Cut this out of the podcast, if you want. But here is a copy of—I know this is like, not a live video thing where your listeners can see me, but I am holding up Fat Talk. I was a pre-order! Let me show you, and I got it signed by you at your local bookstore. But anyway, I love your books, and I have learned a lot from you over the years. So I just want to say thank you for that. In terms of where you can find me, I mostly hang out on LinkedIn. I lead a consulting team because I don't like real jobs. So we actually do consulting projects for lots of different organizations that are all in the SNAP advocacy space. You can also find us at our website, and learn a little bit more about the advocacy that we're doing and the organizations that we work with. But we are always trying to build more SNAP advocates, whether as a volunteer, as a person with lived experience who wants to go and testify before Congress and talk about why SNAP is important, or just someone who wants to write a check and support organizations. We can always point you in the right direction. So feel free to reach out if you're interested in learning more about SNAP.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!If you've ever received food assistance, tell us what else people don't understand about SNAP in the comments. And if you'd like to help with ongoing Burnt Toast Mutual Aid efforts, fill out this form. We'll be figuring out our next round of support after the holidays!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your December Extra Butter episode.Today we've got a couple of rants and answers to your listener questions. On the agenda: ⭐️ The tyranny of School Spirit Weeks — especially during the holiday season! ⭐️ How it feels to date another fat person 👀🔥⭐️ How we're surviving — even thriving? — this Ozempic Season. To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.Join us here!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your Indulgence Gospel — Thanksgiving Edition! We often skip an episode drop on this day, but given how high pressure Thanksgiving can be for food, bodies and people, we thought...maybe you need a little Indulgence Gospel, a little Butter, and a little distraction from whatever your holiday weekend entails?We've got you: A Helen Rosner-inspired fashion epiphany. Thoughts and feelings about Black Friday. A very good Corinne clothing rant.Our secret shame places. And more! You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Join Just Toast! Don't want an ongoing commitment? Click "buy for $4!" to listen to just this one.

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Debra Benfield, RDN.Deb is a registered dietitian/nutritionist with 40 years of experience helping people heal their relationship with food, movement and their bodies. Her work sits at the intersection of anti-ageism, body liberation and trauma-informed care, offering a radically compassionate alternative to diet and wellness culture—especially for those in midlife and beyond. After turning 60, Deb began questioning the dominant narratives around aging, vitality and beauty, and quickly realized the majority of resources still centered weight loss and youthful appearance as the ultimate goals. In response, she created what she couldn't find: A framework for nourishing the body that honors body respect, prioritizes liberation and embraces the full spectrum of aging. Deb is the author of the beautiful new book Unapologetic Aging: How to Mend and Nourish Your Relationship with Your Body.  Deb came on the podcast back in 2023 and we had what was really the first, or certainly one of the first, conversations we've had on Burnt Toast about the intersection of ageism and anti-fat bias. That discussion helped lay the foundation for how we're continuing to talk about those issues. Deb is someone I always turn to for resources and wisdom as we're navigating those conversations here. I am so thrilled to have Deb back on the podcast today, to talk about her new book, how diet culture has hijacked the menopause discourse, and why peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are actually giving you all the protein you need.  Unapologetic Aging comes out on December 16, so now is the perfect time to pre-order it as a holiday gift for yourself, your mom, or anyone you know in midlife and beyond! And don't forget that if you've bought Fat Talk from Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off your purchase of Unapologetic Aging there too — just use the code FATTALK at checkout.And if you value this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 220 TranscriptVirginiaWe are here to talk about your new book, Unapologetic Aging, which comes out on December 16. I loved the book. I think it's such a valuable contribution to this whole conversation. It's really a guide to living well in midlife and beyond without, as you put it, "the whole diet and wellness mess." It's also a very powerful reckoning with how our ageism and fatphobia prevent us from doing the things we really want to do at this time. DebI'm trying to create some awareness of our internalized ageism, because I think it goes unnoticed. If anybody is listening to your podcast, my hope is that they've already done quite a bit of work looking at their anti-fat bias. So then it's about looking at where those two meet, as you notice changes in your body. So I created a book that helps you with your awareness and with how you could look at making choices to support yourself and mending some of the body stories you carry about your aging and about changes. That includes being in a larger body, and some pieces around body image and intimacy. Body liberation as you age is such an important legacy for the generations to come. VirginiaI want to start with something I underlined right in the introduction. You wrote that we so often hear “You haven't aged a bit!” And this is considered a grand compliment, right? But you're immediately questioning why. Unpack that for us.DebAgain, hoping that your audience is already aware of how “you look great,” if you lost weight is a problematic thing for someone to hear. It's very similar. It's a very parallel compliment in that you just calcify this belief that looking older is bad and looking younger is always better. That very definite binary that we impose upon ourselves. It is very much like looking thinner is always a victory, and looking larger must mean you're failing in life. VirginiaIt's so interesting when you step back from it. Why do we not want to look like we've been living? Why would I want to look like a younger, less accomplished, less mature person? Not to criticize my younger self—but why wouldn't we want to own the aging that we've done, and the living that we've done? DebWe've just internalized all of this fear. And I get it. I understand that to pass as younger gives you more social collateral, and theoretically you lose relevance in our very ageist culture. So I get it. It's disempowering to say the very least. And it's a perpetual fight. I'm not a fan of fighting my body overall. And I think that's what's at the center of my book: What happens when you stop fighting, and instead befriend, and care for, and lean into the connection and relationship you can have with your body? How beautiful it is, especially at this time in life. There's so much liberation there that I'm very attracted to that for myself and anybody that wants to talk to me about it.Join Burnt Toast! VirginiaI have a kind of funny story to confess. As I was reading your book, a moment came up where I had to recognize, oh, this is my own internalized ageism showing up. The backstory is my boyfriend, Jack is nine years younger than me. So we have an age difference. And he was talking about a friend, and he referred to her as "an older woman." And I realized the person he was talking about was the same age as me, and I immediately was like, "What do you mean older woman? Why are we using the phrase older woman?" And he just looks at me and he's like, "Babe, it's a good thing. That's a neutral description. It's a neutral term." And I was like, oh, I need to reclaim "older" or "old," just like I've reclaimed fat. So now our joke is, if you say older women, you say, "parentheses complimentary," to clarify that it's meant as a good thing. DebWe're just socialized to think “older” is negative.VirginiaObviously you shouldn't even need that parentheses!DebWell, we all do. I do it too. We all do. It was just so deeply, deeply ingrained, just like all the stuff around anti-fat bias.VirginiaI remember last time we talked about language when you were on the podcast. And we were talking about how we like “elder,” but there are other terms that do feel more negatively imbued. So it's not necessarily that you have to reclaim every term around aging, but it is worth looking at why is this term hitting you this way?DebAnd we may be different in the way things land with us, too. I mean, clearly with you and Jack. VirginiaYeah, totally. I was like, Okay, called out for my own ageism. So something you write about quite a few places in the book is this phenomenon of what you call “super agers," which we see constantly on social media. They're always showing up on Good Morning America. Super agers are folks who are over 70 or 80 and still windsurfing or doing yoga or  rock climbing. It's pretty much always some incredible physical feat that someone's doing in their later years. And we have such a tendency to celebrate that, but you're very clear that that's not necessarily a straightforward celebration of aging.DebWhen I was thinking about this, I was also watching the New York City Marathon. And all the celebrations tended to be focused on people with disabilities, older ages. It was very interesting to me. And larger bodies! All of them are grouped together as celebrations because they pushed through some sort of social limitation to accomplish this thing. And again, as always, there is some truth in that. I do have respect for people that work hard to accomplish things. And aging is fascinating in that we become more unique and heterogeneous the older we become. The longer we live, the more experiences we have, the more  possible disease diagnosis and treatments, medications. I mean, so many things happen with each passing year. We're very unique. There are just as many ways to age as there are to live your life. I just want to put forward the fact that you don't have to be in a super human category to be aging well or successfully. It's not unlike when you say “Good Fatty." You're a “Good Fatty," if you work out right, and if you work really hard on your body and being healthy. All the healthism that starts to rise up. So it's very similar with pushing yourself despite your age.VirginiaThere are two layers to it. There's this thing where it's actually quite patronizing to the person doing the activity. Like, oh, good for you. You're doing this despite all the odds. Which you wouldn't say to a thin, able-bodied 25-year-old running a marathon. Then it's, wow, you've worked hard and have skills and experience. And then also it's contributing to this artificially high standard of what we need to aspire to. So now it's not enough to just try to  preserve my mobility as I get older. I also need to be able to do a headstand.DebThe hard part is that, yeah, I do want to celebrate these accomplishments. Of course. I think that's amazing. I saw something about this woman who beat the world record and how long she could hold a plank. And she was about 10 years younger than me, so I immediately got on the floor, of course, to see what I could do. And there are so many little things on social media about tests of your capacity as you age. If you can get up from the floor in a certain way. If you can put on your socks and shoes without sitting down. And what happens, of course, is we judge ourselves, we compare ourselves. And I don't know how helpful that is. I mean, if it motivates you to see if you can shift and change some of your habits, to see if maybe you could work on balance, maybe that's uesful. It's very important to have healthy feet, for example, but to what end? That's what happens for a lot of people. It's like, hell no, I can't do that. I can't do this so why try? A lot of the research on ageism shows that this narrative about decline and fear mongering does not do us any favors when we believe those negative story lines. Fear doesn't motivate us. It makes us feel like we're doomed. And there's actual data showing that we live longer with a much more positive mindset around what it's like to be in an older body. VirginiaIt's making me think of how much we narrow the definition of health when we do this. When we say, Can you get up off the floor without using your hands? That is a sign of how healthy you are. Well, I can't do that every day. That's not something that's available to my body every day now. On the other hand, I recently increased how much weight I'm lifting when I strength train. I can lift a much heavier weight than I could when I was younger and could get up off the floor more easily. And so it's kind of a wash to me, like, which is healthier? And that's setting aside the aging discourse around strength training —we'll get there. I just mean, there are so many different facets of health. And those two examples are just talking about physicality. That's before we get to mental health, or all of the other ways we can measure health. And I just think it's so interesting that we constantly narrow how we define health and how we're grading it.DebWe're so influenced by these “longevity bros.” We're just so, so inundated by those types of messages, especially on social media and podcasts, that it totally narrows our definition of beauty, our definition of  what it is to be well and to live well. One of the things that we need to do at midlife—and I think midlife invites this when you're staying in touch with yourself— is to embrace a reflective period. It's like, okay, I clearly have less time in front of me. What are my values? How do I want to sail the ship? That is something that happens in midlife, and I think it's very important to clarify how you want to spend your time and energy now. And for some people, it is getting up off the floor without using their hands. For a lot of people, not so much. And that's okay.Support our workVirginiaThey are morally neutral activities.Another phrase I underlined in the book, because as soon as you wrote it, I said, Oh God, I'm hearing that everywhere, is people saying, "Well what I've always done isn't working anymore." They're usually referring to how they're eating or how they're moving their body. Like, I always used to do X, Y and Z, and now it's not working anymore. You have such a smart reframe for this. Because was it ever working? DebYes, what do you mean by "working?" Working to fit your body into a certain size and shape, or maybe functionality? Why are we holding onto that? I don't think that serves us very well, because our bodies are supposed to change. I talk a lot about this metaphor of the monkey bars, that in order to move down the monkey bars, you have to let go of one to move to actually move forward. If you cling and grasp, you will stay, and I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in continuing to move forward, whatever that looks like. To evolve and change and become is the beauty of midlife and beyond. That's the opportunity, that's the emergence that is available to us. So this focus on holding on to what's been working, as in, keeping ourselves in the same size dress, or whatever the story is, that's another one of those, like, I can still wear the dress I wore when I went to prom in high school.VirginiaThat's a big achievement. Staying your high school size forever.DebI don't think it's serving us.VirginiaIt's really not. It's really a way of staying stuck, as opposed to letting yourself change. When we fight change, we make it so much harder on ourselves.DebBut the social conversation is maintained. Maintaining that freeze frame--it doesn't make any sense to me. It just doesn't make sense. But I see it and hear it, and people spend a lot of money on it.VirginiaDo you think that wanting to freeze frame is also behind so much of the menopause discourse right now? DebAbsolutely. What I hear in the menopause space is fear mongering about change. And that's getting more and more extreme, in my mind. We are talking to each other right after you've probably seen the very viral conversation about how in menopause, your brain eats itself. Thankfully, there has a lot of pushback on that by people I respect, because there's absolutely no data. It was a rodent study, and the rodents died soon after menopause. So clearly their menopause is not the same as human menopause. But the fear mongering gets people. It just hooks you and makes you feel like you should do whatever this is being sold. But the research does show that our brains change in very interesting ways. As we get older, our brains have more capacity for being flexible and adapting. So that's a beautiful thing. I like celebrating the fact that we find ways to continue to live our lives as fully as we would like to, and age the way we want to age, without all this pressure and fear. Fear, in and of itself, is harmful for your brain, by the way. VirginiaWith the menopause discourse being so loud right now, especially on social media, it feels like all of diet culture is boiling down to two things that we are supposed to do as much as possible: Eat all the protein all the time, and strength train constantly in our weighted vests. The book, I want to be clear, is so much more than that. You have so many great tools, journaling prompts, strategies to help people do this really hard work of figuring out how they want to relate to their bodies and take care of themselves in this life stage. But I do want to get you to give us your hot takes and reframes on protein and strength training, because those are the two that we get the most questions about by far.DebAs most things in this arena, there is some truth. There's a kernel of truth. It's just gone too far. It's gotten too extreme. My preference is to really honor the unique person and their needs, and I also prioritize mental health. If you are a person who has had any history of disordered eating, chronic dieting, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, then the fear mongering is going to be very harmful for you. And triggering. There is research that shows there's an increase in relapse and development of new eating disorders [at this age]. Obsessing over numbers like protein grams is harmful. I don't do it. I don't recommend it for anybody. I think understanding where protein is in our food is smart. You probably already know that. And making choices where you include some protein most of the time is helpful. You don't have to do it every single time you eat. But that is kind of how things naturally happen anyway, without a lot of effort. Unless you're a person who doesn't like protein-containing foods at all—and that can be true—then it may require more effort on your part. My favorite example is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I just love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or peanut butter in anything. I feel like my body goes “thank you” every single time I give myself that. It works. And I've heard that from many clients, too. Pleasure centers light up. You get carbohydrates, fat and protein. It's such a great combo. It's a beautiful food choice, and it lasts forever. You don't have to keep it in the fridge. Another example is a charcuterie board, where you have some cheese, you have some ham if you eat meat. There tends to be a little bit of protein along with the carbohydrate and fat, naturally. So you don't really have to get down in the numbers. I encourage you to pay attention and make choices that include protein. But I think it's completely unnecessary to count the grams of protein.VirginiaI love that the takeaway is eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yes, done, sold. DebAnybody listening to this and has ever worked with me is probably laughing really hard right now, like, there she goes again. Peanut butter and jelly is my solution to all the things. VirginiaIt's one of the most perfect foods! I had a phase where one of my kids basically lived on Uncrustables, and I was like, no notes. It made packing lunches so easy. We could always have them with us. It was delightful. Join Burnt Toast! DebOkay, strength training.VirginiaLet's do it. DebHere's the thing that I want people to hear me say: No matter what you do, you lose muscle mass. It's not like doing all the things it's going to stop that, because it doesn't. So that's a fact. That's an opportunity for acceptance that your body softens. There's something about that that I find very inviting. I love that my body is softening. I really, truly do. I'm attracted to the softness that's available to me that didn't used to be. I'm naturally kind of like-I don't know if anybody ever watched Popeye? Popeye's girlfriend's name was Olive Oyl, and that was my nickname when I was a kid, because I was just long and lean. So softening is exciting for me. I've never really had this softness, so I think it's sweet. And there's a softening that I'm attracted to around taking the edges off of all of our anxiety and our preoccupation with being perfect. I have a lot of positive associations with softening. There are also some health protective aspects of having more storage space. That's what body fat is. You will be safer when the next virus comes around. We're in that time of the year where we're all going to get this and that virus. So you have more storage and your bones are a little bit more protected. Weighted vests... well that's a huge conversation. VirginiaAs a fat person, I'm already wearing my weighted vest at all times.DebIt's just anti-fat bias that you would need to be as lean as possible and then strap on some extra weight. I'm sorry. It makes me laugh every time I think about it. I'm sorry if people see me laugh when I see them without walking and they are wearing their weighted vests. I'm just entertained. VirginiaAlso, caveat listeners: If any of you are like, no, I just love my weighted vest, we're not taking it away from you!DebI'm not judging you if you're doing it. I totally get that you're just trying to do the right thing for yourself all the time. We all are. It's just, I'm not falling for that one. Weighted vests are on my “I'm not falling for it” list. But yes, we do need to do things that include bearing your body's weight and extra, if that's possible, and of course, the data supporting heavier weight is there—if that's interesting to you, if that's accessible to you. So many women contact me and say, I just feel like I'm not doing it right, because I just can't make myself do heavy lifting. And that's okay, too. Making yourself spend time doing something you hate doesn't feel in my mind like the thing you want to do with this precious part of your life. Because it's more and more precious. I'm in that category. Maybe I'll get to a place that I want to. I'm sure it feels good to feel yourself be powerful and strong. Yes, I get that. I'm a yogi. I love doing yoga poses where I hold my body weight. And I'm also a single mom, so I do a lot of lifting naturally in life. I do all the things around the house.VirginiaI think it's so interesting, because I do enjoy strength training, and I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't genuinely enjoy it. Because for me, the form of exercise that I detest and get caught in this "I need to make myself do it" cycle is cardio. And if they were pushing cardio as hard as they push strength training, I would be a mess. So that's just to underscore—any way you're moving your body that makes sense for you is good. And if you can find joy in it, even better. DebAbsolutely. And feel playful!If you can find some playfulness, and if you can find some social connection, you're also doing things to help your brain and your aging process be with other people. Finding community and finding some playfulness is very, very healthy. VirginiaI love that. DebSo yes, of course I want people to keep moving. But not in this prescribed, "can you hold a plank for three minutes" way. And not in ways that disconnect you. That's probably the biggest thing for me is when you start counting grams, you get disconnected from your body. You get all in your head. When you start judging your body to make sure you're doing it right, you're disconnecting from your body again. Things that keep you connected and in your body are what I'm all about encouraging.VirginiaI love that.Are there any habits or lifestyle practices, or anything that you're like, "well, if people could add on something...?" And I realize I sound like I'm undermining our whole conversation here, because I'm like, "tell us one habit we need to have!" and that's not what you're about. But I'm just curious what you think people benefit from doing more of in midlife? DebMy number one go-to is adequacy. I am very afraid that people are starting with a diet culture mindset which is so inadequate for supporting our bodies. And I notice that the symptoms of being undernourished are exactly the same symptoms that women experience in menopause. Brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, problems with sleep, loss of libido. It’s the exact same list. So I worry that this "blast your belly fat" conversation is contributing to our menopausal experience, peri and post. You are not going to age well if you are living with scarcity and under-nourishing your brain and body. So that's my number one concern, because I hear it so often, and because diet culture has so skewed our perception of what is adequate. I feel like it's a very common experience. Trying to feed yourself throughout the day, trying not to skip, because there's a lot of that going on, a lot of skipping. Because morally, we feel like we are being good and superior thanks to diet culture when we ignore a request for fuel from our body, that little hunger that pops up. And you're going to have more food noise, by the way. I don't know if you want to get into GLP-1s today, probably not.VirginiaI mean, when are we not getting into it? Feel free to throw it in. DebI would not be getting into it if it wasn't so commonly recommended. The new thing now is microdosing for the menopausal changes in your body. I mean, I'm not going to make a bold statement against GLP-1s, because I have many clients that are benefiting, that are in recovery with type 2 diabetes, that are benefiting and doing well. So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about this facelift plus GLP-1 phenomenon. I believe in bodily autonomy, so I also don't want to diss anybody from making that choice, but discerning what you want from what the social construct is imposing on you requires some time. And that's the other thing that I want people to do in midlife, is to do some checking in with themselves, to get some clarity about what they really want versus what they think they should do. And how can you tell the difference?VirginiaWell I love all of that, and it feels, in so many ways, more doable than counting your protein grams and wearing your weighted vest. I hope people are receiving it that way. And your book is just such a great guide. It's like being in conversation with you. You're just so warm and wise and grounded and gently moving people through what can be heavy work, but there's a lot of joy to it as well.DebYeah, thank you. I tried to create little body breaks, chances for people to just go drink some tea and look at the sky, take a few breaths, because it can be very hard to look at the stories you carry about your body, and do you want to still carry that.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterDebI am in love with the Samin Nosrat book.VirginiaThe new one?DebYes, Good Things. Well, the old one too, but the new one.VirginiaAnything Samin does, really.DebAbsolutely. I mean, her work is such a beautiful antidote to diet culture. I send people to her Netflix series, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, because it's pure food joy, without a single tiny second of nutrition anxiety. It's so rare to find. It's so rare. But she has this--what does she call it? The roasted vegetable salad matrix? I've  dog-eared that page. I just keep it on my counter, because there are so many cool ideas about mixing and matching, and that's kind of how I cook anyway. It's like, what do I have? What's on sale? Can I do some extra roasting on the weekend when I have time? And what can I throw together as I go through the week? Little bit of crunchy, a little bit of bright acid, little bit of sweet. You can make sure you throw your protein in there, too.VirginiaI haven't gotten all the way through the cookbook yet, but I love it, and I love the way she writes about food, and about giving herself permission to seek pleasure. There's a really lovely essay in there about that.DebAnd not perfection! I mean, she rages against that perfection piece, which I think is so helpful. And try to invite people to join each other. Because the other piece about aging is you want to stay in community as much as you can.VirginiaWell, that leads us perfectly into my Butter, which is last night I had the absolute joy of going into Brooklyn for Kate Baer's book launch event with Joanna Goddard at Books Are Magic. Kate Baer is a phenomenal feminist poet. I probably don't need to introduce her work to anybody. Her new book is called, How About Now? There are so many fantastic poems in it. And just the experience of sitting in—it was actually in a church because Kate draws such a big crowd, they have to have it off-site from the bookstore. So we were in a Unitarian Church, and there were probably at least 300 women, most of us in midlife or beyond, just sitting together to celebrate poems about our lives that make us feel seen. I have goosebumps just thinking about it again the next day. It was really such a gift to be in community with so many women. DebThat sounds amazing. VirginiaKate is such a sweetheart, and I’ve been rooting for her a long time. Yes, now let's talk more about your work. People need to preorder Unapologetic Aging: How to Mend and Nourish Your Relationship with Your Body. It's out December 16. That makes it a fantastic holiday gift for any midlife person and beyond midlife person in your life. What else? How can we find you and support your work? What else can we do? DebWell I have a Substack called Unapologetic Aging and you can find me by my name. I am most commonly found on social media on Instagram, but you can find me anywhere, just by my name, Deb Benfield.VirginiaThank you so much for being here. Deb, DebI just want to say one more thing about purchasing the book. The last time we were together, we talked a lot about grandmothers and mothers and the generations, and I think my book is the perfect gift for your mother, If you're trying to have this conversation. VirginiaI agree with that. All the Burnt Toasties who write to me and say, "What do I do about the thing my mom says?" This is what you do.DebAnd have a conversation. VirginiaAbsolutely. Thank you so much for being here. DebThis was really wonderful. Thanks for having me. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Support Anti-Diet Journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your November Extra Butter episode.Today we're talking about our problematic faves! These are shows, musicians, influencers and other pockets of culture that we want to enjoy without thinking much about them, even if there's discourse. We'll get into: Our favorite Bad Skinny Girl TV shows. The straight man who has Corinne's heart. Is Virginia a pick-me girl now? And so many more!!! To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. If you haven't joined us yet — we've extended your Burnt Toast gift access deadline! Check your email for "claim your free month by 11/20!" And do it TODAY! Join Extra Butter

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Kaila Yu. Kaila is an author based in Los Angeles. Her debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, came out earlier this fall to a rave review in The New York Times. She's also a luxury travel and culture writer with bylines in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The LA Times, Condé Nast Traveler and many more. Kaila's memoir grapples with her experience growing up Asian and female in a world that has so many stereotypes and expectations about both those things. We talk about the pressure to perform so many different kinds of specific beauty labor, the experience of being objectified sexually —and we really get into how we all navigate the dual reality of hating beauty standards and often feeling safer and happier complying with them. I learned so much from this book, and this conversation with Kaila. Don't forget that if you've bought Fat Talk from Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off your purchase of Fetishized there too — just use the code FATTALK at checkout. And if you value this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 218 TranscriptVirginiaWell, I just couldn't put this book down. Your writing is so powerful. The storytelling is incredible. The research is impeccable. It's just a phenomenal book. You write that from a pretty young age, "I felt the straightest path to empowerment was through courting the white male gaze," which, oof. I felt that. So many women reading can feel that in our bones. And iIn the great New York Times Book Review of your book, the writer asks, "How much can someone be blamed for their choices when those choices are predetermined by one's culture?" I feel like this is what we're always reckoning with at Burnt Toast, and this is what runs through the book: So often, beauty work is a logical survival strategy for us.KailaWe're taught at such a young age that women are just prized for this thing we have absolutely no control over, really. We can get surgery and makeup but beauty is a currency that's depreciating from the moment you receive it, according to the patriarchy. Like, it shouldn't be considered depreciating, but it is.And we learn this from like, Disney movies, right? In the book, I bring up my favorite, which is The Little Mermaid, which, because they recently came out with it again, has had a re-examination. And I think they edited it for current audiences. But The Little Mermaid wasn't unique. That was what every fairy tale was like. The beautiful princess wins a prince at the end, and that's the goal. VirginiaAnd it doesn't matter that she gave up her family, her home, her culture, her body, everything. KailaYeah, she fell in love with him after seeing him one time. And him the same with her, without speaking a word to her, because it doesn't matter.VirginiaIt's purely aesthetic, what we're falling in love with. KailaWhen I was growing up—and it's changed so much since then, luckily—there was just such scarce representations of Asian women. Mostly they were just prostitutes and massage parlor girls on the side, you know? Not even speaking in movies. It wasn't really until Lucy Liu that we got a well-known named actress—and that was way after college for me. So growing up there really just wasn't anyone.VirginiaYou do a great deep dive into Memoirs of a Geisha, which, I'm embarrassed to say--I was a kid when that book came out, and I didn't realize it was written by a white man! I was like, I'm sorry, what?KailaNobody knows this! I've been talking about it, and still to this day, many people are surprised.VirginiaI had no idea. Why did anyone give that book the credence it was given? I mean, it's mind blowing. And you're right. It's a story of child prostitution and exploitation.KailaThat is glamorized. And sadly, it was beautifully written. Like, I loved the book when I was I think in high school, when I first read it. It is just so well done that you kind of just skate over the many, many red flags.VirginiaSo as an Asian teenage girl reading the book, you're thinking, "Oh, I'm seeing myself. This is Asian stories being told. This is powerful." And then, wait, who's telling the story?KailaYeah, we didn't really think about that. I think I knew it was a white guy author, but I was like, "That's okay." Like, at that age, I wasn't really thinking about it. I was like, "Thank you for sharing our story," because I didn't really know any history of geisha either. I thought this was what it was, right? And I was very invisible in high school. So to see these glamorous, beautiful geisha, dressing up in finery and fighting for attention in this seemingly glamorous world was very enticing to me. Because there really were no other examples. Virginiait speaks to the dearth of representation that you were like, "Pkay, finally, they're showing us" and it's this terrible story of a child prostitute.KailaMargaret Cho really said this amazing quote, which I'm going to butcher, and I'm paraphrasing. But she said something like, "Asian actresses are like, 'Hopefully one day I can be the prostitute in a war movie, or hopefully one day I could be the woman that the husband cheats on." And she's like, there's so little representation that we would be glad to hold an umbrella behind a main celebrity, just to be in the picture.VirginiaIt's enraging. Since you mention war movies: I was fascinated by the history you include in the book, tracing the development of Asiaphile culture. And we should probably define that term for listeners, who don't know exactly what an Asiaphile is.Subscribe to never miss an episode!KailaYeah, it's a pretty obscure term that's not used that often. But I use it just because it's an easy, succinct way to say man with an Asian fetish. But I want to specify that I don't think most men who are dating Asian women have an Asian fetish. I do think it's a small vocal minority, but they are very vocal and very online. And they are people who treat Asian women as disposable, replaceable sex objects. VirginiaAnd this is really rooted in colonialism and in US military occupations.KailaI don't think people realize the deep history of that. The origins are probably because when Western men first encountered Asian women, it was in colonialist situations. Whether they were going there to spread Christianity or during American occupations in multiple Asian countries. What's disturbing is that after these young, impressionable soldiers who are like probably barely out of high school, have finished fighting a very traumatic war, they're rewarded by being sent to rest and recreation centers in Thailand or somewhere beachy and nice. Where they found these stations, or clubs, of prostitutes set up specifically for them as a reward.VirginiaIt's skin crawling. That is just a part of our history. That is a thing we did. And I don't think it's well understood, and it completely makes sense then okay, this is how white men first began relating to Asian women. And it has just become more and more entrenched.KailaAnd Thailand is still a hub of sex tourism today. I don't think there's any military occupation there now, but that industry is all from that time period.VirginiaIt's so dark. Okay, so you have the Asiaphile issue. You have this geisha representation of Asian women as sexual objects, disposable. And then on the flip side, there is the stereotype of the Asian woman who's an A student, very cold, the Tiger Mom, the Lucy Liu sort of characters. Which is also really problematic and narrow. And those are your options. KailaYes, yes. I fell into that model minority stereotype, which is exists because I think Asian parents immigrate here to give their children a better life, so they're very strict. My parents, at least, were very strict and expected excellence in school and obedience to parents. And so I was very shy and very studious and all of those things. And I found my social life very lacking in that way. And I did not like being a model minority student. Because that nerdy Asian stereotype was represented on TV at the time in very terrible ways, with the Revenge Of The Nerds guy, or with the Sixteen Candles Asian guy. Super cringy versions. You don't want to be associated with that at all, as a young person. So I really swung the other way, aggressively rebelling like some other people might not have. Most people, most Asians, didn't rebel as much as I did, but I just really, really rebelled against that stereotype.VirginiaI mean, it's so understandable. It's not remotely empowering. Even with some of Lucy Liu's characters where she's playing like a "powerful" woman, it's a very narrow form of power.KailaYes, and it's sexualized. Always.VirginiaSo it makes sense that as a kid, you're like, "Well, I don't want to be in this box. I guess I'll go over here." And it just shows how few choices we give girls in general, but especially Asian girls. You've always got to pick a lane in a way that doesn't let you just be human.KailaIt's robbing women of multi-faceted humanity.VirginiaSo you were like, okay, I'm not going to be the model A student. Tell a little of where you went next.KailaWhen I was in high school, there weren't any Asian female role models that were useful. And then the internet started. So then I was surfing around online, and I discovered that there were dozens or even hundreds of websites dedicated to this one Asian model named Sung Hi Lee. And I became really obsessed with her, because I'd never seen so many non-Asians and Asian guys be fans of an Asian woman, period. And she was so beautiful and stunning. But she was a Playboy model, so she was very, very highly sexualized. And I spent many years being a fan of hers. And then I started to aspire to want to be like her, because it just seemed like she had everything I didn't. And then eventually, when I got to college, I started to pursue pinup modeling, and then that eventually went into import modeling, which is very niche Asian car shows that ultimately inspired Fast and Furious. But it was not really known out of the import or Asian community.VirginiaAnd were there parts of the work that were validating and enjoyable? Or was it always sort of this feeling of I'm trying to play a role, I'm trying to be something that other people want from me?KailaI say that at first, it felt like love. I couldn't explain it at the time, but like looking back, I had such a lack of self-love from the beginning. I think I was just maybe born that way, or built that way. That attention, after feeling so invisible in high school, felt like so deeply validating. But it's just such a temporary hit. And then there are all these girls coming up behind you and you're being pitted against each other. So it's like a cocaine high, you know? It's lasts a day or two, and then you're chasing the next thing. So it wasn't at all fulfilling. VirginiaAnd you become increasingly aware of all you need to do in terms of your own body appearance in order to keep being the girl that they want for this. KailaI mean, before I even started pursuing import modeling, I got breast implants, which are still really huge now today, but this was the era where Baywatch was massive, and Pamela Anderson was the ideal. And I was completely flat chested, so I was like I don't feel completely feminine. Even Sung Hi Li, that model I looked up to, had breast implants. So the complicated thing is that I don't regret the breast implants. I like them. But I wish we didn't live in a society where we have to get surgeries to feel better about ourselves, right?Join Burnt Toast! VirginiaYou wish it could be a choice that you made on your own terms, and not in response to this feeling of lacking something.KailaBut I definitely felt lacking in that arena. So that was the mindset behind the surgery. Then in the book I talk about—and this is a little bit timely now, because I don't know if you saw the Love Island controversy. This happened in the last season of Love Island, Cierra Ortega, who was a big contestant who made it near the end, got kicked off the show because she had made some comments about her eyes, calling them the C word, which is a slur referring to Chinese eyes. And she was basically saying, oh, my eyes look too Asian. I'm going to get them Botoxed so they're wider or whatever. I think Asians learned that many people didn't realize that that word is considered a slur, and then especially how she was using it, because she was saying she didn't like how her eyes looked.VirginiaBut no producer on the show knew that it was a slur?KailaShe didn't say it on the show. It resurfaced. You know how fans go back. So she ended up getting booted off the show. And I don't believe in cancel culture and all of that, but I thought it was important for people to know that Asians do consider that a slur. VirginiaIt's important for everyone to understand. KailaBut I myself got that eye surgery. There's a surgery called double eyelid surgery, which is probably the most popular surgery amongst Asians, at least East Asians, and it was popularized in South Korea, I believe, during the wartime by this white doctor named Dr Ralph Millard, who was trying to make prostitutes' eyes look better for military men or for wives to look better for the military men who were bringing them back home. And then in medical journals, he described the Asian eye as dull and listless and unemotional. I wasn't trying to get my eyes lifted to look more white, and I think most Asian girls like me aren't. In Asia, bigger eyes are just considered more attractive. But it's important to know that the surgery originated from someone who had racist comments to make about the Asian eye.VirginiaAnother gift from white men. They really have done so much for us. I had Elise Hu on the podcast when Flawless came out, her book about the Korean beauty industry, which is fascinating. It was really interesting for me to learn that these standards also are part of Asian culture. And it's not necessarily about seeking whiteness. It's also just a longheld beauty standard within the culture—but then fueled by racist white doctors developing surgeries and what not. And that that kind of push pull is really interesting to me, that it's a both/and.KailaBut then I wonder, as we're speaking, is that beauty standard ultimately Western? To have bigger eyes? I don't know. I haven't done enough research on that to comment on it at all, but that's a question that just popped into my head. Listen to Virginia and Elise Hu!Virginia I think what your book explores, and what you're talking about, is how we lose touch with the origin stories of these standards, but the standards feel so important to achieve all the same. And I think that's what we see over and over in beauty culture. We get conditioned and normalized to needing this body part to look this way. And we usually don't unpack why we've decided that's so important. And then when you do look at the origins, they're always very dark and racist.KailaWe've just seen it in this generation when we were growing up Paris Hilton was the body type choice, and then it was Kim Kardashian. Neither body is really that achievable? VirginiaNo, definitely not. KailaAnd so it swung and you couldn't fit into either one. And then now it's back. So yeah, there's no way of winning that.VirginiaSpeaking of bodies, I wanted to ask you how you see anti-fatness, which is, of course, the beauty bias that we talk about the most on Burnt Toast, intersecting with and upholding anti-Asian racism.KailaIt's always a joke, when you go back to your family of origin, they're like, "Oh, you gained weight!" That's always what they'll say to criticize you.But it's crazy. I was skinny when I was 25 and I got hired to do a movie in Beijing. And then when I got there, the skinny standards in Asia are scary. And I met the director, and then the next day, I got fired because he told my agent, like, oh, she's heavier than we thought. But I was not at all, I was skinnier than I am now. So, yeah, I do feel the beauty standards and weight standards in Asia are super, super toxic. I wouldn't want to be a woman in East Asia. It's even worse, I think, than being a woman in Western cultures. Between the youthfulness and weight standards, it's it's a lot tougher than here, I think.VirginiaWas managing your weight something you were thinking about during those years as well? Like that was also part of achieving this look?KailaYes, definitely, weight was always a concern with that kind of East Asian expectation in place. I will be very transparent to say that I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time so that made it less of an issue, just because not eating is a symptom of a lot of cocaine.VirginiaYeah, that's a whole other piece. I think you write about addiction really beautifully in the memoir as well. And I super appreciated that component of it. KailaWhen I started using substances and alcohol, it just, like, again, felt like a form of love. The first time I did ecstasy. I mean, a lot of people do describe ecstasy as feeling like love, and I think for someone so lacking in it, it was just maybe more deeply fulfilling than for the next person.VirginiaI mean, as we were saying, working as an import model, it's so validating. It feels like love, and then it's over, and then you're not quite good enough, and you're competing against other girls. And then here's this other way to get the feeling. It just all makes sense that it would all fit together. How were your relationships with other women during this time? With the competition so cutthroat, and particularly the pressure on Asian women, that can create so much toxicity and competition. KailaI think it was very well-reflected and illustrated for me in Memoirs of a Geisha. Because that's very much a story of how this very young girl comes into the industry and takes down this older geisha, like the most famous geisha in all of the area is taken down by this much younger girl. And from the minute the younger girl enters the scene, this older geisha is threatened because she knows she's there to take her place. And it probably happened to another geisha before her, you know? But, the thing with me is, I've always been a girl's girl. So I've always had my group of friends, and that's really helped temper some of the situations. I think I always felt very threatened in the import industry, because I felt I made it there because when I set my mind on something, I'll knock down the door to get in. But some of the girls were there just simply because they were super beautiful, and I felt like they just had an easy gliding ride through everything where I was trying to pitch and submit and get into things. So that always gave another layer of insecurity.VirginiaAgain, this is patriarchy, right? If we're all pitted against each other, then men have more control over women. And it's interesting that Memoirs of a Geisha, which was this very like formative influence on you, was portraying women pitted against each other. And then that's replicated in the industries you move into. And in Memoirs of a Geisha, it's not really a critique. He's not arguing that they should form an alliance, that they should reject the system. There's none of that. So it just kind of keeps perpetuating this representation of Asian women. It's all piling on top of each other, and it's so hard to start to see the whole picture.KailaAnd then you're watching it in media happen too, right? With Britney Spears and Cristina Aguilera, who I don't think were enemies, but they probably became that way, because it was people started gossiping and then you just create conflict.VirginiaWomen are cast into these roles, and in order to hold on to the power that we have, it becomes necessary to keep playing these roles. What was it that helped you start to dissect all of this? Because you're clearly in a really different place with your relationship to all of this now, what was it that made you start to say, like, okay, I'm actually participating in a whole system that is harmful to me, that it doesn't align with my values.KailaI don't think I even had any clarity about that until, like, maybe 10 or 15, years ago, when I got sober. I had quit modeling, and I had started a musician career. And then we had a little bit of success, but then ultimately, we weren't making any money. And I was in my 30s, so I was like, okay, I need to find a real career now. Because this wasn't working for me. So even then, I wasn't thinking critically about things. I was trying to find my career. But only when I got sober and I started going to a therapist, that's only when I could even look at anything with the drugs and alcohol. Everything is hazy and you could rationalize anything really. It's funny, because I do a lot of therapy and trauma therapy and IFS therapy. And it's much easier being sober and and having a support group and walking through some of the trauma as someone decades older than the little 21 year old. But it's just so important, I think, to deal with the trauma. Because I stuffed it down for decades. So then I kept having to feel it in different ways, and suffer through it. And I think when you just process the feelings and let them pass, feel them, then you're, they're no longer haunting you and your subconscious.VirginiaBut it's hard work. I give you a lot of credit. That's major uphill work. And you do a really incredible job in the book of reckoning with where you were complicit. You talk about pushing some of the younger girls in the band to be more sexual than they were comfortable with, because you were trying to make sure the band was appealing to Asiaphiles. This is not quite the same, but before I did this, I was a women's magazine writer and wrote a lot of really terrible diet stories. It's hard to look at how we participated in such toxic systems. KailaYeah. When you're a fish swimming in water, you have no idea. And it's important to look back, I think, and reflect on it. And I think the positive part of it is that I feel like Gen Z and Z and Gen Alpha, they're so much more aware, and they're already kind of being critical as things happen. Whereas for me, I did it decades later, and there's nothing that could be changed. But if we could just keep having these conversations and look critically at things while they're happening. Right now we're like, doing this whole reckoning where we're apologizing to the women of the 2000s, like the Paris Hiltons and the Monica Lewinsky's and Amanda Knox right now because we treated them horribly. Virginia How has that changed your relationship with beauty and with beauty work now? I mean, you talked about complicated feelings about your breast implants, which makes so much sense. I'm curious if any of it feels more optional now? Do you still feel like you have to opt in? KailaI think writing the book was one of the most healing things, which was an unexpected outcome that wasn't the intention of writing the book, I guess. And then also, my editor, Amy Lee, is an Asian American woman, so she could deeply relate to a lot of what happened and had experienced similar things. It is complicated, because I still dye my hair. I still like to look pretty. I think what it isn't is male-centered. And that just might just be because I'm older. I'm not dressing like I dressed in my 20s. VirginiaYou're like, I would like to be comfortable now.KailaBut I would love to aspire to be where Pamela Anderson is now, where she just is makeup-less on a red carpet and everyone's like, this is amazing. And if more people could do that, and we could become just more normalized to that, I think that's where the change would really, really happen.VirginiaShe has had such an interesting arc, and I give her a lot of credit, that she's just like, why are you even talking about this? I'm just showing up with my face. And I think women are like, oh, this is so inspiring and amazing. And then when you see the male comments...KailaOh I haven’t been reading.VirginiaThere are so many men who are personally let down to learn that it was all fake. They frame it as, she was faking it the whole time, she was never really beautiful. If this is what she really looks like. "She was lying to us for years." And this whole premise of men thinking that women wearing makeup is "lying" is so interesting, because this is what we're supposed to do to please you. This is the standard that patriarchy requires of us. You don't get to feel personally betrayed that we have held these standards.KailaI love how they're personally offended.VirginiaThey're like, "But I watched Baywatch for years. She didn't look like that!"KailaShe was also 21, right? Women age, as do men! VirginiaIt's like when Jennifer Love Hewitt was was doing her publicity tour for I Know What You Did Last Summer. They rebooted it, and everyone was like, oh my God, she doesn't look the same anymore. And it's like, great, it's been 20 years. She was 17 or something when she made the first one. Now she's a mom with three kids. She doesn't look the same.Absolutely wild. And meanwhile, men are allowed to age and become silver foxes.KailaI think more and more we're just showing older women like that's normal and not having crazy amounts of surgeries. Like, I think it's just all about normalizing. So we could see more and more of this. Like, one really good example is how when I was growing up, Asian men weren't seen as desirable. They were emasculated. But now that K Pop is big, there are a lot of women who are suddenly into Asian men as they were never before. Media representation is so, so important.VirginiaAnd I think it's useful for us in our own lives to think like, well, what can I give myself permission? I mean, I'm with you. I'm still dyeing my hair, but I'm every now and then I'm like, are we ready to let the grays out? I don't know. It's important to at least name for ourselves: I am participating in this labor. I could opt out. That feels scary. There's parts of this I enjoy because it's fun to feel pretty and I mean that's what I try to do with my own kids, at least. Like, when they see me putting on makeup or whatever, it's like, "I'm participating in patriarchal labor! Also, it's just a lipstick!" They're like, we get it.KailaThey're so much more aware.VirginiaWhen we do feel like we can opt out of something, that's really liberating, when you can say, okay, I'm not going to. I don't hold myself to the thinness standard anymore. That's not what my body is. It's not what it ever is gonna be without intense, traumatic interventions. And so that one I'm letting go. Other ones are harder to let go.KailaI guess it's maybe the conservative movement, because that's all about controlling bodies in a negative way. Because we've swung towards the Ozempic thin again, which I find it troubling that a lot of body positive icons are like, suddenly shrinking.VirginiaIt's kind of what we were saying. On the one hand it is really hard to exist in a fat body in this world. Everyone is allowed to make their own choices about their bodies. And it's sad that we're losing fat representation. It's sad that we're seeing more homogenized thin bodies. And it's tricky, because I really believe we can't police people's individual choices. KailaYeah, so tough, so tough to be a woman.VirginiaIt really is. It's a whole thing. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterKailaWell, I just finished bingeing this show called The Girlfriend on Amazon Prime. VirginiaI don't know that one!KailaIt has Robin Wright, and her son gets this girlfriend, and there are some things about her that the mom doesn't like, and then they go to war against each other. It's not really great for, like, female on female. But it's really well done. It's like, more trashy kind of drama. VirginiaWe love some trashy drama!KailaIt's escapism. VirginiaAll right, I'm going to check that out. Less trashy, but definitely drama. I just finished watching Dying for Sex on Hulu. Oh man, all the trigger warnings. If you have anyone in your life, any cancer stuff, choose carefully. It goes to dark places. But like, such a beautiful story of female friendship. Who knew Jenny Slate was this incredible dramatic actress? You're used to her being so goofy, comedic and she has so many layers in that performance. It's so nuanced and beautiful. Oh, my God. I just absolutely loved it. Cried through so many episodes. KailaYeah, I went back and listened to the podcast. VirginiaOh, I want to do that!KailaIit's such a unique story, right? Because we're seeing so many reboots and, like Marvel. And I just love an original story. VirginiaIt's so original, for anyone who hasn't seen the show, I'm not spoiling this. It's in the first episode, she's diagnosed with terminal cancer. She leaves her husband and she's never had an orgasm with a partner. She really wants to explore her sexuality before she dies, and she kind of embarks on this whole journey with that. It's, like, edgy and raw and very dark, at times, but also very joyful and empowering. And, yeah, it's just, it's not a story that gets told very often, that's for sure. KailaWould a guy ever have sex if he didn't have an orgasm, right? Women are just like, not having orgasms all over the place.VirginiaYes, yes, the rage I felt about that. Kaila, thank you so much for doing this. This was wonderful. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support your work.KailaYeah. My name is Kaila Yu, so you could find me on all social media websites. And then the book is in all bookstores and I say, support your local bookstore.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your October Extra Butter episode. Today we're talking about plus size fashion influencer and body acceptance advocate Katie Sturino — who teamed up with WeightWatchers last year. What happened there? And where is the line between body liberation activism and capitalism? (Yes, we struggle with that too!) To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Join Extra Butter! Already an Extra Butter subscriber, and having a hard time getting this episode in your podcast player of choice? Step by step instructions are here! Episode 217 Transcript

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Lisa Sibbett, PhD. Lisa writes The Auntie Bulletin, a weekly newsletter about kinship, chosen family and community care. As a long time Auntie herself, Lisa often focuses on the experiences of people without children who are nevertheless, in her words, "cultivating childful lives." We’ve been talking a whole bunch about community on Burnt Toast lately, and Lisa reached out to have a conversation about the systems that get in the way of our community building efforts—specifically our culture's systemic isolation of the nuclear family. This is one of those conversations that isn't "classic Burnt Toast." But we're here to do fat liberation work—and so how we think about community matters here, because community is fundamental to any kind of advocacy work. Plus it brings us joy! And joy matters too. I super appreciate this conversation with Lisa, and I know you will too.Join our community! Today’s episode is free! But don't forget, if you were a Substack subscriber, you have until October 28 to claim your free access to our paid content. Check your email for your special gift link! Episode 216 TranscriptLisaSo my newsletter is about building kinship and community care. I live in cohousing, and I’ve been an auntie for many years to lots of different kids. I’ve always been really involved in the lives of other people’s children. And people who have lives like mine, we often don’t really have even language for describing what our experience is like. It’s sort of illegible to other people. Like, what’s your role? Why are you here?And all of this has really blossomed into work that’s definitely about loving and supporting families and other people’s children, but I also write about elder care and building relationships with elders and building community and cohousing. And I have a chronic illness, so I sometimes write about balancing self-care and community care. VirginiaI have been an instant convert to your work, because a lot of what you write really challenges me in really useful ways. You have really made me reckon with how much I have been siloed in the structure of my life. It’s funny because I actually grew up with a kind of accidental–it wasn’t quite cohousing. We had two separate houses. But I was the child of a very amicable divorce, and my four parents co-parented pretty fluidly. So I grew up with adults who were not my biological parents playing really important roles in my life. And I have gotten to the point where I’m realizing I want a version of that for my kids. And that maybe that is just a better model. So it's fascinating to consider what that can look like when not everybody has those very specific circumstances. LisaIt’s a dreamy setup, actually, to have amicably divorced parents and extra parents.VirginiaI’m super proud of all of my parents for making it work. My sister —who is my half sister from my dad’s second marriage—has a baby now. And my mom made the first birthday cake for them. There are a lot of beautiful things about blended families. When they work, they’re really amazing. And it always felt like we were doing something kind of weird, and other people didn’t quite understand our family. So I also relate to that piece of it. Because when you say "cohousing community," I think a lot of folks don’t really know what that term means. What does it look like, and how does it manifest in practice? What is daily life like in a cohousing community? LisaThere are different synonyms or near neighbor terms for cohousing. Another one is "intentional community." Back in the day, we might think about it as kind of a commune, although in the commune structure, people tended to actually pool their finances. I would say that cohousing is a much more kind of hybrid model between having your own space and being up in each other’s spaces and sharing all of the resources. Join the Burnt Toast community! So I really think of cohousing as coming frpm where so many dreamy social policies come from: Scandinavia. In Denmark and I think other countries in Northern Europe there is a lot of intentional urban planning around building shared, communal living spaces where there are things like community kitchens and shared outdoor space for lots of different residences. So that’s kind of the model that cohousing in the US tends to come from. And sometimes it’s people living together in a house. Sometimes it’s houses clustered together, or a shared apartment building. It can look a lot of different ways. The shared attribute is that you’re attempting to live in a more communal way and sharing a lot of your familial resources. In my cohousing community, there are just three households. It’s really, really small. We really lucked into it. My partner and I were displaced due to growth in our city, and needed to find a new place to live. And we had been talking with some friends for years about hoping to move into cohousing with them. But it’s very hard to actually make happen. It takes a lot of luck, especially in urban environments, but I think probably anywhere in the United States, because our policies and infrastructure are really not set up for it. So we were thinking about doing cohousing with our friends. They were going to build a backyard cottage. We were thinking about moving into the backyard cottage, but it was feeling a little bit too crowded. And then my partner was like, "Well, you know, the house next door is for sale." So it was really fortuitous, because the housing market was blowing up. Houses were being sold really, really fast, but there were some specific conditions around this particular house that made it possible for us to buy it. So we ended up buying a house next door to our friends. And then they also have a basement apartment and a backyard cottage. So there are people living in the basement apartment, and then, actually, the backyard cottage is an Airbnb right now, but it could potentially be expanded. So we have three households. One household has kids, two households don’t, and our backyard is completely merged. We eat meals together four nights a week or five nights a week. Typically, we take turns cooking for each other, and have these big communal meals, and which is just such a delight. And if your car breaks down, there’s always a car to borrow. We share all our garden tools, and we have sheds that we share. There are a lot of collective resources, and availability for rides to the airport ,and that kind of thing. VirginiaThere are just so many practical applications! LisaIt’s really delightful. Prior to moving into cohousing, we never hosted people at all. I was very averse to the idea of living in shared space. I was really worried about that. But because we have our own spaces and we have communal spaces, it sort of works for different people’s energies. And I certainly have become much more flexible and comfortable with having lots of people around. I’m no longer afraid of cooking for 12 people, you know? So it just makes it a lot easier to have a life where you can go in and out of your introversion phases and your social phases.VirginiaI’m sure because you’re around each other all the time, there’s not the same sense of "putting on your outgoing personality." Like for introverts, when we socialize, there’s a bit of a putting on that persona.LisaTotally. It’s much more like family. We’re kind of hanging around in our pajamas, and nobody’s cleaning their houses. VirginiaYou have that comfort level, which is hard to replicate. It’s hard even for people who are good friends, but haven’t sort of intentionally said, "We want this in our relationship. "There are all those pressures that kick in to have your house look a certain way. This is something I’ve been writing about —how the hosting perfectionism expectations are really high. Messy House Hosting! LisaAbsolutely, yeah. And it’s just such an impairment for us to have to live that way.VirginiaFor me, it took getting divorced to reckon with wanting to make some changes. I mean, in a lot of ways, it was just necessary. There were no longer two adults in my household. The moving parts of my life were just more. I suddenly realized I needed support. But it was so hard to get over those initial hurdles. Almost every other friend I’ve had who’s gotten divorced since says the same thing. Like, wait, I’m going to ask people for a ride for my child? It’s this huge stumbling block when, actually, that should have been how we’re all parenting and living. But it really shows how much marriage really isolates us. Or, a lot of marriages really isolate us. Our beliefs about the nuclear family really isolate us and condition us to feel like we have to handle it all by ourselves. So I would love to hear your thoughts on where does that come from? Why do we internalize that so much? LisaVirginia, you’ve been cultivating this wonderful metaphor about the various things that are diets. VirginiaMy life’s work is to tell everybody, "everything is a diet."LisaEverything’s a diet! And I feel like it’s such a powerful metaphor, and I think it really, really applies here. The nuclear family is such a diet. You have done, I think, the Lord’s work over the last couple of years, helping us conceptualize that metaphor around what does it mean to say something is a diet? And the way that I’m thinking of the Virginia Sole-Smith Model of Diet Culture is that there’s an oppressive and compulsory ideal that we’re all supposed to live up to. If we’re not living up to it, then we’re doing it wrong, and we need to be working harder. And there’s this rewarding of restriction, which, of course, then increases demands for consumer goods and forces us to buy things. Then, of course, it also doesn’t actually work, right? And all of that is coming out of a culture of capitalism and individualism that wants us to solve our problems by buying stuff. VirginiaI mean, I say all the time, Amazon Prime was my co-parent.LisaI think the nuclear family is just part of that whole system of individualism and consumerism that we’re supposed to be living in. It really benefits the free market for us all to be isolated in these little nuclear families, not pulling on shared resources, so we all have to buy our own resources and not being able to rely on community care, so we have to pay for all of the care that we get in life. And that is gross. That’s bad. We don’t like that. And you also have written, which I really appreciate, that it’s a very logical survival strategy to adhere to these ideals, especially the farther away you are from the social ideal. If you're marginalized in any way, the more trying to adhere to these ideals gives us cover.To me, that all just maps onto the nuclear family without any gaps. Going back to your specific question about why is it so hard to not feel like in an imposition when you’re asking for help: We’re just deeply, deeply, deeply conditioned to be self reliant within the unit of the family and not ask for help. Both you and I have interviewed the wonderful Jessica Slice in the last few months, and she has really helped me.Jessica wrote Unfit Parent. She’s a disabled mom, and she has really helped me think about how interdependence and asking for help is actually really stigmatized in our culture, and the kind of logical extension of that for disabled parents is that they get labeled unfit and their kids get taken away. But there’s a whole spectrum there of asking for help as a weakness, as being a loser, as being really deeply wrong, and we should never do it. And we’re just, like, deeply conditioned in that way. VirginiaSpeaking of community care: My 12-year-old was supposed to babysit for my friend’s daughter this afternoon, she has like a standing Tuesday gig. And my younger child was going to go along with her, to hang out, because she’s friends with the younger kiddo. I was going pick them up later. But then we heard this morning that this little friend has head lice. And that did make the community care fall apart! LisaOh no. It’s time to isolate!  VirginiaWhile I want us all to be together....LisaThere can be too much togetherness. You don’t want to shave your head.VirginiaThat said, though: It was a great example of community care, because that mom and I are texting with our other mom friends, talking about which lice lady you want to book to come deal with that, and figuring out who needs to get their head checked. So it was still a pooling of resources and support, just not quite the way we envisioned anyway. LisaIt always unfolds in different ways than we expect.VirginiaBut what you’re saying about the deeply held belief that we have to do it all, that we’re inconveniencing other people by having needs: That myth completely disguises the fact that actually, when you ask for help, you build your bonds with other people, right? It actually is a way of being more connected to people. People like to be asked for help, even if they can’t do it all the time. They want to feel useful and valuable and and you can offer an exchange. This sounds so silly, but in the beginning I was very aware, like, if I asked someone for a ride or a play date, like, how soon could I reciprocate to make sure that I was holding up my end of the bargain? And you do slowly start to drift away from needing that. It’s like, oh no, that’s the capitalism again, right? That’s making it all very transactional, but it’s hard to let go of that mindset. LisaYeah, and it just takes practice. I mean, I think that your example is so nice that just over time, you’ve kind of loosened up around it. It's almost like exposure therapy in asking for help. It doesn’t have to be this transactional transaction.VirginiaAnd I think you start to realize, the ways you can offer help that will work for you, because that’s another thing, right? Like, we have to manage our own bandwidth. You wrote recently that sometimes people who aren’t in the habit of doing this are afraid that now I’ll have to say yes to everything, or this is going to be this total overhaul of my life. And  No. You can say no, because you know you say yes often enough. So talk about that a little bit.Community building for introverts!LisaAbsolutely. I come at this from a perspective of living with chronic illness and disability where I really need to ration my energy. I’ve only been diagnosed in the last few years, and prior to that I just thought that I was lazy and weak, and I had a lot of really negative stories about my lack of capacity, and I’m still unlearning those. But over the past few years, I’ve been really experimenting with just recognizing what I am capable of giving and also recognizing that resting is a necessary part of the process of being able to give. If I don’t rest, I can’t give. And so actually, I’m doing something responsible and good for my community when I rest. You know, whatever that resting looks like for me or for other people, and it can look a lot of different ways. Some people rest by climbing rocks. I am certainly not one of those people, but...VirginiaThat is not my idea of relaxation. LisaBut, whatever, it takes all kinds, right? And I think that the systems of community care are so much more sustainable the more that we are showing up as our authentic selves. VirginiaYou talked about how you schedule rest for yourself. I’d love to hear more about that. LisaThat was an idea that I got from a really, really, really good therapist, by far the best therapist I’ve ever had, who herself lives with chronic illness and chronic pain. She initially suggested to me that whenever I travel--I have a hard time with travel--that, like, if I travel for three days, I need to book three days of rest. If I travel for two weeks, I need to book two weeks of rest. That’s a radical proposition to me, and one that I still am like, yeah, I don’t know if I can quite make that happen. But it did inspire me to think about what would work for me. And the reality of my life for many, many years, is that on a cycle of one to two weeks, I have at least one day where I just collapse and am incapable of doing anything. I can’t get out of bed. So this conversation with my therapist inspired me to go, you know, maybe I should just calendar a day of rest every week. Instead of having an uncontrolled crash, I can have a controlled crash, and then I’m making the decision ahead of time that I’m going to rest, rather than having to emergently rest when other people are relying on me for something, right? It just actually makes me more reliable to rest on a calendar.VirginiaAnd it honors that need. You’re not pretending that’s not going to happen or hoping you can skip by without it. You’re like, no, this is a real need. This is going to enable me to do the other things I want to do. So let’s just embrace that and make sure that’s planned for. It’s really, really smart.LisaWell, and you know, I’ll say that not having kids makes it much easier, of course. But I hope that there are ways that parents can schedule in little pieces of rest, even, of course, it’s probably not like an entire Saturday. But, the more that families lean into aunties and community care, the more that that space can be carved out. VirginiaSo let’s talk about the auntie piece. Is it just something, like, because these friends live next door and they had kids, you found yourself playing that role? How do you cultivate being an auntie? LisaThat’s a great question. For me it was kind of both always going to happen and a conscious choice. I grew up in a big family. I’m one of six kids. I spent a lot of time babysitting as a kid for both my siblings and all the kids in my town, and some of my siblings are a lot older than me, so I became an aunt in my teens, and so I’ve always had kids in my life. Really, I can’t think of a time when I didn’t have little ones around, which I think is a real benefit, not a lot of people have that kind of life. And I was raised by early childhood educators. My mom is a teacher. My grandma was a preschool teacher. My other grandma is a teacher. There are a lot of teachers in my family, and a lot of them worked with little kids, so there are a lot of resources available to me.But then I also did have to make some conscious choices. I think that one of the early things that happened for me was one of my best friends asked me to be her child’s godmother, and that kid is now 17. I know, she’s a teenager, oh my god. So that relationship in my 20s started to condition me to think: How do I really show up for a family? How do I really show up for a child that’s not my own child? And then when we moved into cohousing, which was in 2019 right before the pandemic started. We knew that we would be involving ourselves more in the life of a family. More on Lisa's childful lifeAt that time, my partner and I were hoping to have kids, and I ended up losing a lot of pregnancies. We decided to not become parents, but so we were initially envisioning sort of raising our kids together, right? And then when my partner and I decided not to have kids, one of the things that we sort of decided to pivot toward is like, well, we’re going to really invest in these kids who live in our community, which we already were, because the pandemic hit and we were a bubble. So many people know the story. All the adults are working full time. There’s no childcare. There are little kids. So it was really all hands on deck during that time, and it really pushed our community into a structure of lots and lots of interdependence around childcare and I spent a lot of time with these kids when they were really little, and that really cemented some bonds and forced us to make some very conscious decisions about how we want to be involved in each other’s lives. To the point that once you get very involved in the lives of kids, you can’t exit. Like, even if you wanted to. And so that changes your whole life trajectory. Moving to Mexico is off the table for me and my partner until these kids are at least out of the house, and that’s many years down the road, right? It would be harmful for us to separate from these kids at this point. So, there are conscious decisions and just sort of happenstance. And I think for anybody who’s interested in becoming an auntie or recruiting an auntie: Every situation is kind of different. But the piece about making conscious decisions is really important and requires sometimes scary conversations where we have to put ourselves out there and be vulnerable and take risks to let our loved ones know that we would like to form these kind of relationships. VirginiaAs someone on the side with the kids, my fear would be that I’m asking this huge favor, and like, oh my gosh, what an imposition. Because kids are chaos and these friends have a lovely, child-free life--I love my children, standard disclaimer. LisaKids are total chaos.VirginiaKids are always in whatever vortex of feelings and needs that that particular age and stage requires and asking someone to show up for that is, it’s big. It’s big.LisaWell, I definitely can’t speak for all childless people, definitely not. But there are a lot of aunties who read The Auntie Bulletin, several thousand people who read The Auntie Bulletin, and a lot of shared values there in our community. Something that I think is a common feature among people who are aunties, or who want to be aunties, is: We really recognize how much we benefit from being in relationship with families. There are a lot of people, myself included, who were not able to have children and really want to have a child-ful life. We would feel a loss if we didn’t have kids in our lives. And so this was something that I was reckoning with during the pandemic, when my partner and I were providing really a lot of childcare for another family. People would ask me: Do you feel like you’re getting taken advantage of? What are you getting in return? What I realized during that time was, I’m getting paid back tenfold, because I get to have these kids in my life for the rest of my life, but I don’t have to do the hard stuff. And that’s really important. Parenting, I don’t have to tell you, is very hard. As a person with chronic illness and disability at this point, I’m very glad that I don’t have kids, because I don’t think actually that I have the stamina. It's not about capacity for love, it’s just about straight up physical energy. And so I’m able to have the benefits as an auntie of being parent-adjacent, without the cost. So I’m the winner in that transaction. And I think a lot of aunties think that way.VirginiaWell, that’s really encouraging to hear. And I think, too, what you’re talking about is just having really good communication, so people can say what they can do and also have their boundaries honored when they have to set a limit. That’s key to any good relationship, so it would apply here too. Subscribe to Burnt Toast! LisaYeah, totally.VirginiaThinking about other barriers that come up. I’ve been reading, and I know you’re a fan too, of Katherine Goldstein, and she’s been writing such interesting critiques right now of how youth sports culture really derails families’ abilities to participate in community. That’s a whole fairly explosive topic, because people are really attached to their sports. So, I’ll save the specifics of that for some time I have Katherine on to discuss this. Are youth sports a diet? Yes, absolutely. And we are not a sports family, but when she wrote about it, I immediately recognized what she meant, because every fall I noticed that my kids' friends become much less available for play dates because it’s soccer season. And it’s like, waiting for when soccer practice will be over, so that so-and-so might come over. Suddenly, even as a non-sports family, I feel like I’m loosely revolving around these schedules. And to bring it back to your work: That is one aspect of parenting culture that is really feeding into this isolation problem and this lack of community problem. This way that we’ve decided parenting has to be so intensive and performative around sports makes people actually less available to their communities. So this is a long way of asking my question: Do you think what we’re really talking about here is a problem with the institution of marriage or the institution of parenting, or is it a bit of both?LisaThat’s so interesting. I do think that youth sports is, like, by far, the kind of biggest engine of this. But there also are families that are, like, deep, deep, deep into youth performing arts that would have the same kind of function.Virginia Dance is another big one. Competitions taking up every weekend.LisaOr youth orchestra, sometimes those can be incredibly consuming and also incredibly expensive. So going with the grain of the parents that are really hyper investing in their kids activities: They will find community in those places often, right? It's a sort of substitute community for the length of the season, or whatever. And then my question is: What’s the culture within those spaces? Is it like, hyper competitive? Is it about getting to the national championship? Is there a sense of community? Is there a sense of supporting kids around resilience when things don’t go the way that they want them to? The cultures within these spaces matter. And I think it just ties back to the way that the nuclear family is a diet. Because we are so deeply incentivized to be fearful in our culture and to treat our problems with money, goods, services, activities. And the fear, I think, for a lot of parents, is that their kids are going to not have a good and happy life. So then there’s what Annette Lareau, an educational researcher, calls concerted cultivation, particularly among more bourgeois middle class families of trying to schedule kids to the hilt, to make sure that they get every opportunity in life, and they can therefore succeed through every hurdle, and never have any adversity. Or that the adversity that they have is character building adversity in some way. And so I think that the hyper-involvement in kids activities does come from fear that’s motivated by capitalism. And is that an issue of parenting culture or marriage culture or capitalist culture or gender culture?VirginiaAll of it. Yes. I mean, one thing I think about, too, is how these activities create their own community. But it's a very homogenous community. The child-free folks aren't there, because it’s only soccer families or dance families or whatever. And you’re only going to get families who can afford to do the activity. So it's a self-selecting group. This is not to say I’m doing a great job cultivating a more diverse community for my kids. I live in a white majority town. This is hard for all of us. We’re not saying you all have to quit your sports! But if that’s your primary community, that is going to narrow things in a in a way that’s worth reflecting on. To bring this a little more fully into the Burnt Toast space, where we talk about diet as metaphor, but also diets specifically: One question I am asked a lot from the aunties in the Burnt Toast community, is, "How do I show up for the kids in my life that are not my own, I don’t get to make the parenting calls, but for whom I still want to model anti-diet values?" Maybe there’s stuff the parents are doing with food that's sending a weird message, or dieting in the home, that kind of thing. LisaWell, my sense is for myself—and I try to preach this gospel at The Auntie Bulletin— is that there are a lot of these moments for non-parents who are really deeply invested in the lives of kids, where it’s not our call. And it’s just a tricky terrain for aunties or any kind of allo-parental adults who are involved in the lives of kids who aren’t their own kids. I’m really fortunate that most of my friends are pretty on board with an anti-diet philosophy. The people who are close to me, where I’m really involved in feeding kids are on the same page. But it comes up in other ways, right? Where I might have a different perspective than the parents. My sense is really that aunties do need to follow parents' lead that it’s actually quite important to honor parents’ decision makings for their kids. And we can be sort of stealthy ninjas around how we disrupt cultural conditioning more broadly. So I’m not super close to their parents, but we’ve got some kids in our neighborhood who are buddies with the kids who are a big part of my life. And those neighborhood kids get a lot of diet conditioning at home. There’s this little girl, she’s in fourth grade, and she’s always telling me about her mom’s exercise and saying that she can't get fat and she can’t eat that popsicle and things like that, which is really heartbreaking to witness. And it’s exactly that kind of situation where it’s like, I’m invested in this as a just a member of our society, but I also care about these kids, and it’s just not my call, you know? So I can just say things like, "Well, I like my body. I feel good that I have a soft body and I’m going to have another brownie. It tastes really good." And just kind of speak from my own experience, where I’m not necessarily trying to argue with their parents, or trying to convince the kid of something different. I’m just modeling something different for them. And I think it’s totally fine to say, "In my house, you’re allowed to have another brownie if you want one!" VirginiaThat modeling is so powerful. Having one example in their life of someone doing it differently, can plant that seed and help them reframe, like, oh, okay, that’s not the only way to think about this conversation. That’s really useful.LisaAnd I think affirming difference whenever we have the opportunity to do so is important. When a kid comments on somebody’s body size or shape, you can just always say, "Isn’t it great how people are different? It’s so wonderful. There’s so much variety."VirginiaRelated to modeling and fostering anti-diet values: I think there is a way that this collective approach to living and being in community with each other runs quite counter to mainstream narratives around what is good behavior, what are social expectations, and which groups do we let take up space. I’m thinking about how the group of soccer moms is allowed to be a community that everyone has paid to participate in, while the Black neighborhood having a block party might have the cops called on them. So, talk a little bit about how you see collectivism as also an act of radicalism.LisaYeah, thank you for that question. It’s such a good one. A soccer community that is literally pay to play, where there are increasing tiers of elitenes—that is coded as very respectable in our society. Whereas a block party in a neighborhood of color is coded as disrespectable, unrespectable, disreputable. The music is loud and the people are being inconsiderate and their bodies are hanging out. There is all of this stigma around collectivism. I find for myself it’s very insidious and subtle, the ways that collectivism is stigmatized. I have a theoretical allegiance to collectivism, but it takes having to actually ask for help to notice our friction and our resistance to that. You were talking about that earlier in the follow up to your divorce. And I’ve had that experience, when I’ve needed to ask for help around my disability and chronic illness, and there’s all of a sudden this feeling of like, oh, I shouldn’t ask for help. Oh, there’s something wrong with that. And I think that there actually is a dotted line there between our resistance to asking for help and that feeling like we’re doing something bad and anti-Blackness, anti-brownness, anti-queerness. Community is so, so essential for queer folks who have had to find their own family, choose their own community for for for generations. There’s this kind of whiff of disreputability around collectivism, and these narratives around these kids are running wild and bodies are hanging out and the music’s too loud, and like, what’s going on there? What are they eating? VirginiaThere are so many ways we police it all.LisaIt’s all really, really policed. I think that’s really well put. So I think it's important to reclaim collectivism and reframe collectivism as legitimate, valuable, important, meaningful. Collectivism is something that a lot of people who live in dominant white communities have actually had taken from us through the medium of compulsory individualism. We need to reclaim it, and we need to not stigmatize it in all the communities that are around us and our neighbors.VirginiaMaybe instead, we should be looking at other communities as examples to emulate.LisaAs resources, absolutely. The disability community as well. VirginiaI think that’s really helpful, and I’m sure it gives folks a lot to think about, because it just continues to show up in so many small ways. Even as you were describing that I was thinking about the stress response that kicks in for me after I host a gathering, and my house is left in whatever state it’s left in. And it’s like, of course, the house is messy. You just had 12 people over, and there are seltzer cans laying around and throw pillows out of place. That’s because you lived in your house. You used it. But there’s this other part of my brain that’s so conditioned to be like, well, the house has to be tidy. And now it looks like you’re out of control. But it’s that kind of thing, that inner policing we do, that is very much related to this larger societal policing that we participate in.LisaAbsolutely, yeah.VirginiaAny last tips for folks who are like, okay, I want to be doing more of this. Particularly folks who want to connect with child free folks, or for child free folks who are listening, who want to connect with more families with kids. Any little nudges, baby steps people can take towards building this?LisaMy big nudge is to practice courage, because it’s scary to put yourself out there. You have to be vulnerable when you ask to build a relationship that’s deeper with people. And I think it actually is analogous, in some ways, to forming romantic relationships. You have to take some risks to say what you want, and that’s a scary thing to do, but there are lots and lots of people out there who want to be more involved in the lives of families. And there are lots and lots of families out there who need more support.VirginiaWhen you were talking about the pandemic, I was like, I would have killed for an auntie. LisaEvery family needs an auntie. Two adults I love, Rosie Spinks and Chloe Sladden who both have wonderful newsletters, have been writing about this lately, that even having two adults is just not enough to run a household in the structure of society that we live in. I think that that’s right, even if you’ve got a man who’s pulling his weight, to crack open a whole other can of worms.Why Fair Play didn't work for ChloeVirginiaWhich, yeah.LisaThey’re rare, but it does happen, and even then, it’s not enough. We actually need more adults to make communities run than we get with the way nuclear families are set up. So it’s a really worthy thing to seek out aunties, and for aunties to seek out families, and it’s just a little bit scary. And you also have to be persistent, because when we offer, parents will usually say no. Like they don’t believe us. They think their kids are too wild and whatever. So parents have to persist and and families need to persist in being welcoming. VirginiaI would also add on the parent side, as much as I appreciated what you said before about aunties have to respect parents having the final call on stuff: It’s also an exercise in us having to loosen up a little. Not everything is going to go exactly the way you want it to go. The bedtime might look differently, meals might happen differently, there might be more or less screens, and we have to be less attached to those metrics of parenting and touchstones of our parenting day, and realize that the benefits of our kids getting to be with other people, way outweighs whether or not they eat three cookies or whatever it is. LisaYeah, the more that we live in community, the more we all learn to be flexible.VirginiaWhich is really the work of my life, learning to be more flexible. Work on flexibility with us! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Butter LisaI feel like this is pretty nerdy, but this is my true self. The Substack algorithm fed me a newsletter yesterday that I’m so excited about. It’s about The Babysitters Club, which was, like, my favorite thing. VirginiaOh you shared this. Oh, my God, I keep thinking  about it. LisaAnd then yesterday, I ran into my childhood best friend on the beach. I’m visiting my parents right now. We read a lot of Babysitters Club together. So I’m going to tell you this guy named Andrew Knott, who I had not heard of before, but the algorithm fed it to me, wrote a post called A Classic Children’s Book Series Has Me Questioning My Parenting, and he’s reading The Babysitter’s Club together with his daughter, who I think isa tween. So for those who aren’t familiar with The Babysitters Club, where have you been? But major cultural touch point, most important books of my childhood. And, you know, very like auntie-formative books as well. Yeah, he has this really great argument about how the babysitters in these books did like, 100% of the parenting for a lot of families.VirginiaThey absolutely did!LisaIt’s like, this weirdly dystopian situation where the parents are just like, I guess we’re gonna go to Atlantic City for a couple days. Have fun kids.VirginiaYes, yes, they took two 12 year olds along to babysit a family of eight children on a beach vacation and the parents are nowhere to be found. For sure, Mary Anne and Stacey can handle all of the Pike children roaming around the Jersey Shore. It’ll be no problem.LisaYeah, I don’t know. It made me laugh so hard. I feel like I’m always on the lookout for, like, good takes on my favorite books of my childhood. And I’ve got to say this one is an absolute winner. VirginiaAnd intersects so well with your work. My Butter is that I was thinking about the sort of evolving work of being more in community. And a really lovely win I had recently over the summer —and it also relates to what you were saying about scheduling rest— is that a friend of mine and I now have a standing Wednesday morning date, where we meet to walk in a local garden. We've been doing it all summer — every Wednesday, 10am, we walk in these gardens for an hour. And they are now about to close for the season and we're figuring out a replacement place to walk. But when I say walk—I mean, like, stroll, maybe stop and watch bees on flowers for 10 minutes. We’re just talking and strolling and we are not wearing athletic clothing. I call it a workout because it mentally gave me permission to put it on my calendar—that’s my Wednesday workout. But it is not cardio in any way. We’re just strolling around, chatting and and it’s just such a nice touch point. And I’m really proud of myself for making time for that connection with someone. And she’s a good friend, but prior to doing that, I could go three weeks without seeing her easily. And now we always see each other once a week, and we have invited other friends to join us. And the really funny thing, or really, thecool thing was one day, I went and did the walk with her, and then I had a doctor’s appointment. And historically, in the last year or two, my blood pressure has been inching up a little bit. It’s been a smidge high. So I was getting nervous for the blood pressure reading. And my blood pressure was normal to low! LisaOh my gosh. Gosh, because you’re looking at bees with your friend.VirginiaI texted her, I was like, I truly think we’re lowering my blood pressure. LisaYeah, it’s not weight loss. It’s looking at bees, on a schedule with your friends.VirginiaIt’s having a weekly appointment to watch the bees with your friend. Well, thank you, Lisa. This was so much fun. Such a great conversation. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support your work. LisaYeah, thank you so much for having me. Virginia. I’m at The Auntie Bulletin, which is the auntie.substack.com and that’s the main thing I’m working on right now, so I hope people will come check it out. Thank you so much for having me.VirginiaIt’s really fantastic. And there’s just, if any part of this conversation has resonated, there’s like, so much more over on The Auntie Bulletin. So folks need to go check it out. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Subscribe!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Laura Birek. You probably know Laura as co-host of The Big Fat Positive Podcast, but today she’s here to talk about her new book, co authored with Gia Gambaro Blount. It’s called Good to Go: A Fresh Take on Potty Training for Today's Intentional Parent.I'm years past potty training (thank God!!), but I honestly remember the pain of it better than childbirth. This is often a very fraught parenting milestone. And as with all things parenting: That means we encounter a ton of societal expectations and pressures around how to get potty training right, which makes it all even harder. If you, too, have been a victim of that viral three day potty training method, you'll want to hear this conversation. Laura has amazing advice about how to recover and do it differently. But even if you’re child-free or years out from this experience: What we’re really talking about today is how perfectionism and performative parenting can make life harder for parents (especially moms!) and really get in the way of kids’ body autonomy. And of course, promoting body autonomy is core to the work we do here on Burnt Toast.Today’s episode is free! But don't forget, if you were a Substack subscriber, you have until October 28 to claim your free access to our paid content. Check your email for your special gift link! And drop any questions or concerns here.PS. You can take 10 percent off Good to Go or any book we talk about on the podcast, if you order it from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, along with a copy of Fat Talk! (This also applies if you’ve previously bought Fat Talk from them. Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)Episode 215 TranscriptLauraI am the co-author of a new potty training book that just came out called Good to Go: A Fresh Take on Potty Training for Today's Intentional Parent. You can find it everywhere. And then I am also the co-host of a long running parenting and pregnancy podcast called The Big Fat Positive Podcast. I’ve been doing that for over seven years now. Every week for seven years! VirginiaYou are an OG podcaster! I love the podcast. I’ve been on the podcast. But today we are going to talk about Good to Go. Because you reached out to me and you said, "Potty training culture is such a thing. Can we talk about it?" And I am not going to share my own children’s stories. But I’m going to say, yeah, it is such a thing. And it really messes with our heads. And of course, my work is all about investigating cultural messages that mess with our heads, aka diet culture. So yes, let’s talk about potty training diet culture today. You kick off the book with the story of how you tried and failed to train your older kiddo, who you call Augie in the book. And the impetus was that you read the super popular three day potty training book that I think most of our listeners who have potty trained a child have encountered. Why did the idea that you could magically change potty train your child in three days go so wrong?LauraSo we kind of fell into that new parent trap of "This kid’s a genius!" He was hitting all his milestones early. He was such a talker. And I had been given that very, very popular three day potty training method that shall not be named. And I read it and really took it as gospel. And in the book, there were all these signs of readiness. And I was like, check, check, check, for Augie. It was stuff like, is he interested in the potty? And I thought, oh, this kid is ready, according to this book. And there were extenuating circumstances--namely, the pandemic. We were deep in the pandemic. We were also stuck indoors because there was a wildfire nearby, so we weren’t even able to go outside. That’s Southern California life for you. And I was in my second trimester with my second pregnancy. So all of these things came together to be like, well, you know, what the hell? Let’s give it a try. VirginiaWe’re trapped indoors anyways. LauraWe’re trapped indoors. Let’s spend three days naked and see what happens. And so the very first sentence of our book is: "I’m a failure at potty training." Which is a very weird way to start a potty training book.VirginiaBut so relatable. LauraOh, I hope it’s relatable! Because the thing is, we thought we were a success at the very beginning. Right after those three days, he was mostly making it to the potty. We were like, okay, we can take away diapers. But what we didn’t realize is that we had just entered into a state of constant vigilance with him. We were constantly reminding him to go, and we were always nervous about going anywhere and doing anything with him, like even just going to the park. We never got over the stress level, right? My mom would say, "He wasn’t potty trained. You were potty trained."VirginiaYou were trying to take him to the potty obsessively and monitor all the signs.LauraExactly, exactly. And the other thing was, I had this idea that having two kids in diapers was going to be hard. I don’t know where I got this idea! Everyone is like oh, you can’t have two kids in diapers.VirginiaIt feels like a really common cultural message. I’ve heard a lot of friends say that, who have kids close in age. "Oh we have got to get her out of diapers before the next one comes!" LauraActually having two kids in diapers is way more convenient than one who’s in a very early stage of potty training and a newborn! That was our first mistake. But we just continued to deal with this stress around going places. And at some point, I ended up having the baby. Augie was still out of diapers, but he was having accidents. In our book, we call them misses, but this author called them accidents, so we’ll stick with accidents. It’s the more familiar term. And he was having accidents all the time, and I was really stressed out about it. Then I take my new baby, we call him Sebastian, to a local place called the Family Room, which is where I did mommy and me classes, and then toddler and me classes with my now co-author, Gia Gambaro Blount. I brought him for a lactation support group. But Gia happened to be there, and I descended upon Gia. I was like, "Gia, I need your help. Augie is having all these problems with potty training. I don’t know what to do." And she looked at me, and said, "Can I ask you something? When you decided to potty train him, did you tell him it was going to happen?" And I was like, "No." Because the book specifically tells you you’re not supposed to do that. VirginiaYou just spring it on them.LauraThe book tells you, do not even have the little potties out, because it will confuse their little brains. And I didn’t know anything about potty training at the time, so I was like, "Sure, that sounds legit. Whatever." So Gia was like, "You need to go back and ask him how he’s feeling about this." So I go back and I look Augie in the eyes. I’m like, "Hey baby. I know we’ve been having a lot of accidents. Do you think you want to go back to diapers for a little bit?" And he was like, "Yes!" Instantly. "Yes, yes, yes, I want to go back to diapers!" And I was shocked by that, because I thought he was going to be like, "No, I’m a big boy!" VirginiaHe was like, no, I’m really not ready for that. LauraAnd so we went back to diapers, which, by the way, in the 3 day method is a big no no. Like, huge regression. And there was also this strict thing about having to potty train between 18 and 30 months, and if you don’t do it between those times, you’ve ruined them forever. At least, that’s that’s the takeaway I had.VirginiaAnd if you could do it beforehand, even better.LauraYes! So I was really worried about all that. But the minute we put him back in diapers, the stress went away. And you know, TL/DR, he is not ruined forever. We ended up actually potty training him using Gia’s help just after he turned three. VirginiaEverything in your story is so deeply relatable. Because I think those first years of parenting are such chaos. And this is certainly not all moms... but there’s a certain kind of mom who is vulnerable to this message of "control as much of it as you can." Have the feeding schedules, track the ins and outs when they’re newborns. There is a need to have a lot of information and structure around what is otherwise just this sea of "when will we ever sleep again? When will anything happen?" That makes us really vulnerable to messages like "You want to achieve this milestone by a certain age." Or "You want to achieve this milestone before you have another baby." There is this idea that we somehow get a gold star if we get it done at a certain point. And now that I have kids who are way, way older, and I’m just like, "I don’t even remember when it all happened." You don’t look at a bunch of seventh graders, and think, "Well, I can tell  you didn’t potty train till 3.5." LauraAnd I think that I am one of those moms who is totally susceptible to that. We had a sleep schedule with my first. And I think part of it is that I had my kids later in life, I already had a career. And when you have kids, any control you have over your days, over your schedule, over your life, just flies out the window. So I think I was grasping at anything that would give me a sense of control in my life. And rightfully so! So I’m not saying that those things don’t help people —I actually do think some of the sleep schedule stuff helped us. Or we got lucky, and that just happened to align with my kid's personality.VirginiaYou had a baby who was like, "Yes, fine, we’ll do a schedule."LauraExactly. I don’t know. There’s no way to know, but it did give me a sense of control. The trap with that is, say you have a good experience, like I did with sleep training , and then you go to potty training and it’s not as successful. Suddenly you think it’s some kind of referendum on your own parenting. VirginiaYes! LauraHaving a second kid is really helpful — or third or fourth, I imagine, even more— but having more than one kid has really helped me realize that so much of parenting is luck of the draw with your kid’s personality and temperament and all that stuff. But with your first, it can feel like such pressure and such responsibility for you to be the person who figures it all out. When it turns out that a lot of things are just not figure out-able, or need time or a different approach, or you need to be flexible.VirginiaSocial media has not helped in all of this, for sure. I mean, not that everybody documents their kids potty training on social media, but it’s of a piece with needing to celebrate milestones in this public way, I think.LauraHopefully one of the gifts that we give with our book is this concept that potty training is not a light switch. It’s not a binary. You’re not either potty trained or not in some clear crossing the finish line manner. Instead, we describe it as a continuum in terms of how much parental involvement is required. So at the very, very beginning, those first days, weeks, even months, you’re in the highly involved phase, where you are doing a lot of reminding and you’re doing a lot of cleaning up of pee on floor. You’re doing a lot of thinking about it. Then you go into the occasionally involved phase, which is fewer accidents, they know they need to go, but you still have to wipe their butts until kindergarten, at least usually. That’s something that the other books don’t really tell you. They frame it as, "oh, you’re done after three days." But these kids need help! There are just some physiological reasons why little kids have trouble wiping their own butts. Their heads are huge! Their proportions are all off. Some kids physically cannot reach their butts. But no one’s telling you that. So our goal in the book is to try to shorten the highly involved phase so that you’re in the occasionally involved phase quicker, and then finally you'll get to the point where you’re rarely involved. We say that there’s some day in the future where you won’t know the last time your kid went to the bathroom. But that’s years away. I mean, in my house, it’s still getting announced! So if you can think of it as the spectrum of where you’re in this process, then you can be a little bit less like, oh, okay, so and so just posted "oh, my two year old potty trained in one weekend." You can know in your head: Okay, yeah, that just means they’re not wearing diapers on a daily basis, right? But caregivers are still involved.VirginiaYeah, it doesn’t mean the two year old is like, "Okay, mom, I’ll be back in a minute!"LauraPeople will come out of the woodwork and be like, "My two year old self potty trained, they won’t let me be involved. They do everything!" And it’s like, I am so happy for you. But that is not the majority of kids and we need to just understand that’s not an expectation we should have.VirginiaI also appreciate understanding the stages more, and the fact that you and Gia really emphasized that this means you can decide readiness, not just based on your kid. So: Are they achieving these certain milestones? Are they checking these boxes? But also: Consider yourself. Are you, the parent, ready? Maybe when you’re about to have a newborn, you don’t want to be in the highly involved potty training phase. If you don’t think you can get all the way to "less involved" by the time the baby comes, maybe put this on hold for a while. And that just gives us so much more permission to center our own needs in the process. And to actually have needs, which is another thing the three day discourse really leaves out. The idea that you as the parent would have any other things going on other than potty training.LauraMost of the 3 day experts say you cannot leave the house for three days. Okay, that’s great for a stay at home parent who has no other kids. But what happens when you have an older kid that needs to go to soccer practice? What happens if you have a prescription you need to pick up from the pharmacy?VirginiaOr you’re a single parent.LauraOr a single parent doing it all. Exactly.We were in a pandemic, in a wildfire, and that’s why I was like, okay, we can stay home for three days. There has been no other time in our lives we’ve been able to stay inside for three days. Those unrealistic expectations really set you up for failure. And then on top of that, the message in all these other methods is, "If your child is still having issues after the three days, you must have done something wrong. You must have not followed my method perfectly."That’s with so much of parenting, right? But no, every kid is going to react differently and have a different timeline. And also, sometimes prescriptions need to be picked up at the pharmacy. VirginiaMy listeners frequently get a little annoyed when I say everything is a diet. But: A system that tells you that if it didn’t work, it’s because you didn’t do it right is 100 percent classic diet culture. It’s classic like, well, if only you’d followed it, if only you’d have better discipline... as opposed to: This just isn’t a match for what you’re trying to do right now. This isn’t the way for you. Laura And it’s trying to police this thing that everyone has to do, too. I think that’s just such an interesting analog to diet culture as well. We all have to eat. I know you’ve written about this, right? Even the most restrictive diet is going to have to provide some food, because you will die. And we all have to eliminate our waste and, save children with medical issues that may prevent them from potty training, almost all of us are going to end up having to learn to use a toilet at some point. It’s this thing we all have to do. And yet, we’re being told there’s this one right way to do it. But there are also at least five different people saying their way is the one right way. What gets more diet-y than that?VirginiaAnother thing I really appreciated is what Gia emphasizes in terms of assessing your child’s readiness. Because it's not just the cognitive signs, like, do they have the language? Are they looking at the potty and interested or following you into the bathroom? She also talks about this concept of interoception, which is something that comes up a lot when we talk about helping kids be intuitive eaters. So again, there are these parallels between food and potty stuff. Can you explain how understanding where a child is with their interoception development can help you prepare for a more intuitive approach to potty training?LauraWe talk about the three realms of readiness: There are the cognitive signs, the social-emotional signs and the physical signs. But we further split those up into two categories. Some of these things are teachable signs, and then there are some unteachable things that are just developmental. A really good example of that is in the cognitive signs of readiness. An unteachable sign is whether your child is curious about you going to the potty, right? That is often listed as a sign of readiness, like, oh, your child wants to know what you’re doing. Why are you sitting on the potty? Wants to come be with you in the bathroom. You can’t teach that level of interest, right? And if you tried it would be weird. And interoception is another unteachable sign. There’s nothing we can do to force your child to have more awareness of what’s going on in their body. That’s a thing we’re kind of born with that is on another spectrum. Some people are incredibly sensitive. I’m a person who’s been accused of being a hypochondriac, and I think part of that is I have heightened interoception. I feel every ache and pain. I always felt when I ovulated, for example. I also heard once that only some people can tell when their heart’s beating. That’s just a sign that some people have a more sensitive sense of interoception versus others, right? We can’t teach it. It’s just the way your kid is. What we can teach is supporting their interpretation of their interoception. An example that’s not potty training related is if your child gets goosebumps, you can help them identify: Do you have goosebumps because you’re feeling cold, or do you have goosebumps because you’re scared? Goosebumps have a feeling associated with them, and you can’t teach them how to feel that. But what you can do is try to connect language to the feeling. And that’s hard. That is the hard work of potty training, honestly. And so Gia and I identified something we called the universal potty sequence, just to keep it short in our brain, which is, when we are as adults, go to the bathroom. We say we’re going to the bathroom. We think of it as one step, but in reality, it’s up to nine steps. We identified nine steps. But you know, it’s a bunch of different steps that the kids have to learn. It’s all new for them, right? So the first step is feeling. The sensation is that interoception, every step after that is kind of mechanical, right? Like you navigate to the potty, then you pull down your pants, then you sit on the potty, then you eliminate, then you flush, blah, blah, right? So we have this thing we call the rehearsal period. That’s about two weeks ish--again, everything is flexible--before you actually plan to take away diapers, where you teach everything on the universal potty sequence, all those steps, all those new things, all those new mechanics for them. Except step one: Feel the sensation. That one we are leaving to when you take away diapers. The point is when kids are thrown into "we’re taking away diapers. We’re taking away this thing that you’ve worn your entire life!" this way, the only thing they have to learn is how to connect the sensation to the need to go. Everything else isn’t brand new, so the other eight steps aren't so overwhelming. All we’re focusing on is interoception, and so that’s what we’re trying to really center in our method to help our kids connect the dots. And that’s why we also don’t forbid prompting. Some kids are not going to have a strong sensation, and you’re going to need to sometimes, in retrospect, be like, "hmm, there’s pee on the floor now, you you had a miss." And we say miss, because we don’t want there to be shame involved, right? We don’t want to say, oh, it’s an accident. It’s not really an accident. They just didn’t get to the potty in time, right? or they didn’t even think to try to go. So we say, "Oh, you had a miss. Do you remember what it felt like before it came out? Next time we feel that feeling, let’s see if we can catch it before we go." So we’re working on that. And some kids need that extra support. Honestly, my six year old still likes to get hyper focused, and so he does need to get prompted to this day. And no one would say, oh, that six year old’s not potty trained. He’s definitely potty trained at school. He’s fine, but sometimes we just need to help him connect. I mean, how many adults do you know who wait till the last second go to the bathroom?VirginiaThat’s me, every work day. What I love about this is how you’re really centering kids’ body autonomy in this process. And in way that is so counter to how I’ve seen body training explained before. This feels like such a huge shift. I mean, I remember when I was doing it with my own kids, feeling like, "the way I’m doing this doesn’t feel aligned with the way I’m thinking about feeding them," for example. When I’m feeding kids, I’m really focused on the power of their ability to say no to a food they don’t like, and why that’s important. And the importance of not pushing them past their fullness cues and helping them notice hunger cues. Their body autonomy is the center of it. And potty training is this thing where because we’re so focused on getting it done, because we’ve got all this pressure on it, it’s like... suddenly they don’t have body autonomy in the process at all. And that feels really troubling.LauraIt does. I mean, I came to that same revelation. It was part of what allowed me to feel okay with putting Augie back in diapers, VirginiaYeah, because you gave him his power back. LauraExactly and I realized this exact same thing you said. I am so dedicated to respectful parenting. I’m a Virginia Sole-Smith fan girl! Like I read all your books, and I'm offering foods without judgment, and all of that stuff. And yet, in this one realm, I fell into the trap of not just not centering his body autonomy, I like full on ignored it. I mean, it sounds awful, but I really did violate his own body autonomy. I forced him to do things he wasn’t ready for. And I do feel bad about it to this day. And it’s not an inconsequential thing, right? Like, people say, No one’s going to college still, still using a diaper. Everyone eventually learns to potty. And it’s true. But there is a lot of shame around using the bathroom. There was some Vice article that just came out, which said, like, 83 percent of Gen Zers have bathroom anxiety. And a bunch of them want to quit because of it. They don’t want to have a job because they’re afraid of using the bathroom. VirginiaI’m an old millennial, but I have some women’s magazine bathroom trauma. I understand what they’re saying. It’s a stressful place. LauraAnd I’m not saying I enjoy pooping in a public bathroom either! But there are consequences, and not just about anxiety. There are actual physical consequences to involving shame in the potty training process. There's encopresis, which is a specific type of constipation and a really big problem that is so hard to solve. I’ve heard from so many parents whose children have it. It's a form of chronic constipation, and what happens is you’re so constipated that liquid poop escapes around the sides of the impacted stool, and kids can’t tell anymore that they have to poop because their colon is so enlarged. And this is a much more common problem than people realize, and it’s really hard to solve once it’s started. It's something you really want to get ahead of. And that’s the other reason we say if your child is refusing to poop in the potty, give them a diaper. You need to get that poop out one way or another, and it’s not a judgment on whether you’ve been able to potty train them or not. We’re looking at the long game here. We’re trying to create a child who doesn’t have long term problems that require a ton of medical intervention. What’s worse, having to go to a GI doctor for the next five years or just giving them a diaper to poop in at the end of the day?VirginiaAnd giving them another month or six months in diapers, and then you try again. LauraIt goes back to the perfectionism, though. Like, when you put it that way, you’re like, yeah, of course, I’ll give them a diaper. But if you’ve been told no, they’re going to be confused. It’s failure. That's harder. It's not failure. These kids are way smarter than most people give them credit for, like, they will know the difference. They’re not going to be confused about what’s going on.VirginiaI think another piece of this body autonomy conversation is night training. I really love that Gia does not endorse night training. I mean, I have heard of parents setting alarms to wake toddlers up to pee at 11pm so that they could say they were night trained. Just tell us why this is so unnecessary.LauraNight training is absolutely unnecessary. We did a ton of research to make sure we were right. Night training is just not effective. It’s really a one hundred percent developmental shift that happens in your child’s brain and their body. When they are ready, they will be night trained. And there’s nothing you can do to force it. One in 6 kids at age six still wet the bed at night. At age seven, that goes down to one in 10. But that’s still a lot of kids! One in 10 kids in your second grade class are still wetting the bed at night. And that’s fine and developmentally normal. And so if we know that, if we can normalize that, it may lessen the pressure for night training. There’s a scientific term for waking them at night to sit them on the potty. They call it lifting. And the research shows that lifting has no measurable outcomes like lifting. People who practice lifting had no better results than people who just let their kids sleep. And I would imagine—this is just my hypothesis—that those parents are crabby because they have to wake up in the middle of the night to do it. And their kids are also probably crabby for having gotten woken up, even if they’re half awake, right? So we are firmly in the belief that you don’t have to do night training. That said, we tell you when to start looking for signs that it's time to take away night time diapers and how to do it. And also what to do when your kid is getting up to pee in the middle of the night, and that becomes a problem. So if your child is waking up in the middle of the night every night to go pee — we get into how to address that, what the root causes might be, and how to how to deal with that when the time comes. But we say do not do night training at the same time as daytime training. Your kids will likely just night train themselves during or after the process. One in 10 will take past age seven.VirginiaThe last thing I want to hit on is the stuff piece of potty training. There’s a lot marketed to us, a lot of gear, different types of potties, all of that. And I would love to hear your take on what is actually useful and what is just marketing, and you can probably skip. LauraLike anything parenting-related, mom-related specifically, there are going to be people trying to sell you a bunch of stuff. But I mean, basically you need a pot to piss in, right? Like, that is the bare bones of what you need. A lot of people ask us about the floor potties: Do I really need a floor potty? A lot of people find them kind of gross, unsightly. I get it. You don’t want to have a little toilet in your living room. Yeah, I didn’t either. But if you buy nothing else, we recommend having a floor potty. And you don't have to buy them — there are going to be 20 parents in your neighborhood who are desperate to get these out of their basements! You can get over the fact that it was used by another kid, just get some Clorox. You know, you’re fine. You don’t have to spend actual money on any of this stuff, because it is a thing that you only need for a narrow window of time. So we recommend, at the bare minimum, having a floor potty for this reason: There are three types of awareness when it comes to your internal body awareness. There’s sensation awareness, which is, oh, I have to go. The action awareness is: Is it pee or poop? And then there’s urgency awareness, which is like, the real key to all of this. Urgency awareness is how much lead time you have between noticing the feeling and getting to a toilet. And when you are first potty training, in the first days and weeks, that urgency awareness window is seconds. We’re talking like five seconds between when a kid recognizes and when they go. Because of that, we want to give them as many opportunities to have a win as possible, right? Like, you don’t want to clean up pee off your floor, and you want your kid to feel successful, right? The more chances they have to successfully make it to the potty, the better everyone’s going to feel, and the like, quicker the process is going to go. And sometimes the difference between a win and a miss is the time it takes to walk from the living room to the bathroom.In addition, there are a lot of things about the big potty that scare kids or just are really, really challenging for kids. It’s high up, so you have to have a step stool or something. Usually you have to have some kind of insert for the seat. So like, if you’re like, oh, I don’t want to buy a floor potty, you’re still having to buy a step stool and a seat insert. So that’s two things versus the one floor potty. And kids can be scared of the balancing being high up. They can be scared of the plopping, like the poop falling all the way into the bowl. We have some techniques to help them get over that, but there are just more barriers to entry for most kids to use the adult potty at the get-go. Obviously, you can work towards that. And I always hear from people like, well, my kid wouldn’t even go in the small potty. It’s like, okay, there you go. Now, you know. All the more reason to get one from some other parent. If you have a really big house, two floor potties could be helpful so you don’t have to be carrying them around everywhere you go. I mean the amount of time I’ve spent in my life carrying around a little floor potty full of pee. It’s just so gross. It’s such a glamorous life we live as parents. And then the only other thing that I’d say is really a good buy if you're in the car a lot, is a travel potty.VirginiaOne hundred percent. LauraThere are so many great ones now. I have the Oxo one, it like, folds up into this flat little package. And you can either pop the legs vertical, so that you put a little plastic bag in that has a little absorbent pad so that you can sit on the potty in the backseat of the car or the trunk or whatever. But it also folds out, so it can be a little seat to use in public bathrooms. And that’s honestly really great. Public bathrooms are a whole other topic that we actually talk a lot about in the book. But one major thing is that their butts are too small. They just so you either have to hold them, and it’s a whole thing, or you can have this travel potty with you, which gives them a seat that’s their size and makes it more accessible. ButterVirginiaWell, this was fantastic. Speaking of stuff, though, it does not have to be stuff. Laura, do you want to give us some Butter today?LauraI do. Okay, so I went straight from saying you don’t need to buy things for potty training, and then I’m going to tell you about this thing that I think you should buy for potty training. But I have to tell you about this because I have been giving these out to my friends left and right. Anytime I tell someone about it, they they’re like their mind is blown. They’ve never heard of it before, and so I feel like I have to share it, because it’s something that’s been so helpful for us, and that is a disposable travel urinal. Have you ever heard of these? VirginiaI do not have children with penises, so no.LauraWell, guess what? It works for children with vulvas, too. VirginiaWow. Okay!LauraSo it’s this universal spout. It’s basically this sort of oval shaped spout that, if you have a penis, you point this the top part up, and if you have a vulva, you point it down, just so it catches the pee. And it’s just a plastic bag, kind of like an emesis bag, but the difference is there’s a little zip lock top, so you can seal it off, and there’s like a gel pad at the bottom that’s dry when you get it, but it absorbs liquid, kind of like what’s inside of a diaper, right? And you can it folds up into this tiny little package that you can have in your purse. It’s saved us so many times when you are places where you just can’t get to a bathroom quickly, and they really have to pee. Because, I don’t know about your kids, but no matter how many times I tell them, like we’re leaving the park, let’s go to the bathroom. Yeah, no, I don’t have to go. And then five minutes into the drive home, I have to pee. I have to pee.And while I do have two children with penises, I don’t usually like to have them pee on random people’s yards, right? So really helps to be able to have this thing in the car. I will tell you the most clutch moment, which hopefully doesn’t get me canceled, which is we were in line. My six year old and I were in line for the Guardians of the Galaxy breakout ride at Disney California Adventure. And it was an hour long line. And I was shocked that he was focused and able to stay in that line the whole time. But we were almost to the boarding area, and he’s like, Mommy I have to pee and it was just me and him. I couldn’t send him with his dad or anything. And this line is like a maze, you know how Disney does it’s like they create this whole experience. But I didn’t know how to get out in any quick way, even if they would have led us back in the line, I didn’t know how to get out. And it was dark in there, all moody, and so it was scary. And I was like, okay, baby, just turn around. So I got him face away from the crowd, and he peed in the bag, and there was a trash can right there. And it saved us! so I highly recommend it. I have one in my purse at all times, just in case. I have yet to use it for myself, but it is apparently used by adults. Okay, yeah, yeah, absolutely so. And they, I don’t have a brand recommendation. There’s like 500 different brands, so just look up disposable urinal bags. VirginiaWell, my Butter is not something you can pee in, but It is body adjacent in thinking about this episode, and thinking back to earlier parenting years, because, as I said, I’m like, pretty well out of the stage. Now, I was remembering how much one of our favorite picture books at that time was Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder. LauraI love that book. VirginiaIt’s incredible. It should be in every parent’s library. It’s a go-to baby shower gift for me forever, because it’s just an amazing celebration of body diversity, which is all of Tyler’s work. So that’s a Butter I’ve given before, but just to re-up. But recently, a friend of mine gave me a print of Tyler’s of this beautiful, fat mermaid. I’ll put a photo of it in the show notes. And I actually hung it up by my bathroom, because our bathroom is near where our pool is. So now we have a lot of middle school girls changing into swimsuits all the time. And I am slowly making this bathroom my body celebration shrine. So I have three Tyler illustrations in that space. And I’m just adding to this little collection of body positive art so that when teenage girls are in there changing into swimsuits and having the feelings they can look around and be like, Oh, right. Bodies are cool. So, another way to think about your bathroom as a place to affirm that body autonomy matters. LauraYeah, it really does. VirginiaWell, this was a delight. Laura, thank you so much for joining us. Tell folks where we can follow you, how we can support your work.LauraYes. So as I said many times, my book Good to Go: A Fresh Take on Potty Training for Today's Intentional Parent is out in the US and Canada, wherever you buy your books. There’s also an e-book version you can find. We are hoping to get an audiobook going soon. And we also have a website that you can find us at and then listen to my podcast. We have great conversations all the time. We had Virginia on for two episodes when Fat Talk came out and one of our favorite episodes ever. And we are Big Fat Positive a pregnancy and parenting journey.VirginiaAmazing. Thank you so much for being here. LauraThanks for having me. I love talking to you.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, here with our first-ever Patreon podcast episode! We're going to chat about: ⭐️ How we're feeling about the BIG MOVE. ⭐️ How to think about clothes after a significant size change. What even IS your style now?! ⭐️Figuring out fall uniforms! ⭐️ Diet culture in disaster prep. ⭐️ The one thing we wish straight-sized style bloggers would do differently. And so much more! To hear the full conversation, you'll need to be a paid subscriber. Reminder: Substack subscribers, make sure to redeem your gift to read this newsletter for FREE!🧈 🧈 🧈 Check your email for your gift link.🧈 🧈 🧈

Yes, it’s clearly a diet. It’s as shitty as any other diet. But also, it’s not a good business plan. It’s not a good way to make money. And these companies are preying on women in more than one way. You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting and health. It’s time for your June bonus episode! EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hello and welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. Today is your May bonus episode for paid subscribers! Thanks for being here. This month, I decided to do more of a grab bag. We’re going to do one reader question, one diet, and one recommendation—because I really like doing the Butter for your Burnt Toast segment on the regular pod and I thought, why not bring it here and give the bonus folks a little extra butter? PS. If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player!Episode 42 TranscriptQ: I have an upcoming 15 year reunion with my college roommates. We will be sharing a vacation rental for a weekend, and spending all of our time together. So eating, there and at restaurants, will obviously be involved. When we first started living together in college, one of the roommates’ sisters was in a public health program and was a teaching assistant for an intuitive eating course. Our roommate told us about it, and invited us all to take the class together and five of the six of us did. (Ironically, the one roommate who was not interested was studying to become a dietitian.) It is not an exaggeration to say the class was absolutely life changing and was the turning point for shaping my relationship with food today, as well as the launchpad for my passion for learning anything I can about anti diet culture, media literacy, food with kids, body image resilience, etc. In the 15 years since taking the class, I have continued to see several of the roommates on rare occasions due to living in the same state. Through comments some of them have made over the years, it has become apparent that they have not all continued practicing intuitive eating. I will fully own that my personal journey with intuitive eating has had its moments of ups and downs, especially due to doctors trying to push specific dieting techniques to “help with medical conditions.” I’m really not trying to be judgmental about my friends here, just trying to prepare in advance for what to do and say when dieting and weight conversations will inevitably come up on this weekend where a group of 35 year old moms are all together after years apart. In the past, I’ve generally just been silent. I think my friends are aware that I am still trying to eat intuitively. But I’m feeling more empowered now and want to be prepared for how to handle this scenario, both to protect myself when triggering topics come up, and because they feel a greater responsibility now for helping show others that there are alternative paths to lifelong dieting. EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

You may end up quitting your job and leaving your partner and ditching all your friends, but don’t worry! It’s gonna be a good thing because you’re eating a lot of banana green smoothies.Welcome to Burnt Toast! It’s time for your April bonus episode. We’re gonna do what we did last month, where I asked you for the diet trends that are showing up the most in your life. I’m going to look them up on the internet, tell you what I think, and we’re gonna chat about it. Here we go!EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

I think any time you’re wondering, “is it a diet?” And they have a bridal program? The answer is obviously yes.Hello and welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. It’s time for your February bonus episode! We’re doing something a little different this month, because I’ve realized that bonus episodes are a great chance to play around with some different formats and workshop ideas that may become regular episodes. So please tell me if you like this and think it’s genius or if you don’t ever want me to do this again. EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

When your providers are emphasizing weight to you, I think this is something you can feel free to push back on and say, “Look, if I am at higher risk, we don’t know that the problem is really my weight—or the care you’re going to give me because of my weight.” Hello and welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.This is the monthly subscriber-only episode where I answer your questions. So thank you to all my paid Burnt Toast subscribers. I love you. Let’s get right to it.Q: I’m 20 weeks pregnant and trying to navigate mainstream healthcare’s view that my body is too big to have a healthy pregnancy. I can’t believe how stuck my providers have been on my weight. Do you have any advice for dealing with this experience? EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hello, and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!For this episode, I thought it would be fun to both answer some of your questions and just talk a little bit about a recent piece I did on Division of Responsibility and Instagram.The response to this piece was very interesting. I heard from so many dietitians and other kinds of kid food influencers on Instagram saying, “Thank you for articulating this. This is a conversation I’ve been afraid to have on here. I’ve been afraid to talk about this.” I’m even seeing a few folks changing the way they talk about Division of Responsibility and admitting more openly when it’s not working for their own families. I’m excited about that. And I want to be clear: That’s not because I think Division of Responsibility is evil. I will be forever grateful to the role DOR has played in my own family and I think has a lot of potential to help families. But I do think there are some problematic elements baked into it that we need to reckon with. As I explained in that piece: The way we talk about DOR on social media both distorts it and focuses on some of those problematic elements. And so I think people are starting to rethink when they are being rigid for rigidity’s sake. When am I refusing to question my family’s mealtime structure? Is this a plan that I jumped on, is it something that I have decided on, or am I considering how my kid is responding to it and is this really working for them? EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hello, and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!This is the newsletter where we explore questions (and some answers) about fatphobia, diet culture, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture. I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. I am doing another solo episode this week, but as we discussed last week, I’m open to feedback on how you feel about the balance of guests versus Q&A episodes. I’m recording this before people got a chance to comment on last week’s post, so if you already told me what you think—don’t worry, I saw it! I’m still figuring out the right schedule here. I have some really good questions this week and they all deal with a perennial Burnt Toast favorite topic: How do I have conversations about Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating with people who are still buying into diet culture?What’s especially tricky is that these conversations either come up with people whom we are otherwise very close to, and suddenly this is a real tension point in the relationship, or, as one of these questions touches on, it comes up in a context where we don’t feel comfortable being controversial, like with school parents or work colleagues. It’s difficult to find the middle ground between staying true to your values, saying what you need to say, setting boundaries you need to set, and also not alienating people or creating a disruption. That’s the balance we’re going to try to find today with these questions. Q: I had a question about promoting intuitive eating and HAES (Health at Every Size) as a thin person. I believe pretty strongly in Intuitive Eating because it was instrumental in ending my years-long battle with anorexia. Many of my mom friends love to complain about their weight or discuss their current diet and weight loss goals. I often want to join the conversation and share about Intuitive Eating as an antidote to that, but I’m never sure if it’s appropriate because I’m usually the thinnest person in the conversation. My natural body type has always been very thin, even without anorexia. I could just envision my friends thinking, well, it’s easy for me to say that since I’m already thin. I’d love to share some of what I’ve learned, but I never want to be condescending. Is this one of those situations where I should just shut up?I’m going to link to the episode I did with Aubrey Gordon because we talked quite a lot about how to be a thin ally and what a thin person’s role in these conversations is. But if you don’t have time to listen again, Aubrey’s advice boiled down to: Ask your fat friends what they need, and then do that. If these friends are talking about living in significantly larger bodies than you, if they are on the receiving end of weight stigma and oppression around their body size, then it’s not your place to say, “Have you tried intuitive eating?” because you don't have their lived experience and you can’t really know what it’s like to deal with what they deal with—despite having absolutely had your own personal struggles. Figuring out how to support them is the most important goal. From there, there might come a time where they want to hear about your experience with intuitive eating, but they also might not ever want to hear about that from you. And that’s okay, you don’t have to be the person who brings them that message. If you’re talking about friends who are larger than you but still straight size, I think it’s a little bit different. I think it’s still worth acknowledging the privilege difference that you have, but you all have some degree of privilege. I still wouldn’t necessarily start with, “Hey guys, have you heard of intuitive eating?” because it may just not hit right if they are really struggling and wanting to diet or in the middle of a diet. I think once someone has already made the decision to diet, that’s not the moment to come in and say, “No, let’s try this another way.” Look for more neutral times in your friendship, where it might make sense to bring this up. Often people dip in and out of dieting, so if they’re coming off a diet that went badly, that may be a time when intuitive eating is something they’re open to learning more about. When they’re in a more neutral place with their body, they may be more interested in your experience.The other thing, too, especially if we’re talking about this with other straight-size friends, is that it’s okay for you to set boundaries. It may be not great for your recovery to hear friends talk about diet and weight loss. Even for folks who don't have an eating disorder history, it’s just not fun to hear about diet and weight loss. It can be stressful. So, it’s definitely okay to say, “I love you so much, but I really would love to not talk about dieting. It’s something that has been pretty harmful to me, and it would really help me if we could keep that off the table.” Are these people you need to set boundaries with to protect yourself? Go ahead and do that. Otherwise, start with what support they actually need. Ask how you can be supportive. With other straight size folks, feel free to look for opportunities when they might be receptive to this message. When someone is deep in complaining about their weight or feeling excited about a weight loss plan, it’s probably not the time. Q: I’d love to hear how you handle other adults’ diet culture-y, self deprecating comments, even if they are comments that don’t require a response. Like when you go to a kid birthday party, and another parent is like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just ate two pieces of pizza. I’m such a lard ass.” I usually either ignore the comments or smile and say something like, “I had two pieces of pizza, too.” Is there something more constructive, but also supportive and non-snarky, that we can say to get them to reframe their thinking a bit?This is in some ways trickier because these social moments often are not the right time to bring up a controversial topic or challenge somebody. But they are also the times where it can feel really important to do so, right? If someone makes a fat joke at a party, I do think anyone who feels safe doing so has a responsibility to call it out—just like I would hope we would all call out a racist joke or a sexist joke. The self-deprecating nature complicates that a little bit because you’re calling out someone for being mean to themselves, but they’re also being mean to other people. So there is some nuance there, but I do think it’s worth addressing. I often do what you do, just smile and try to say something positive like, “I love pizza. Pizza is so delicious.” This is the lowest stakes way to engage, but I think it does have value by adding a layer of positivity to the way food is being talked about. And that’s really useful for the kids who might overhear these comments. If kids are busy trying to enjoy their birthday party food, and the parents are all being weird about pizza, it’s great for someone to say, “I also love pizza.” Then the kids know that even if their mom or dad is worried about pizza, someone out there isn’t. So, thinking about adding positivity so that it’s not all just food shaming is step number one. The other thing I like to do with the self-deprecating comments is help the person take the blame off themselves and put the blame onto diet culture. You might say something like, “Isn’t it such a bummer that we feel like we have to apologize for eating delicious food?” You’re not calling them out or saying, “I can’t believe you just said that!” You’re saying, “Isn’t it a bummer that we live in a culture that makes us feel this way?” This is a way to reframe it and to stop being self-deprecating and apologetic about eating in that way that so many people—and especially women— are conditioned to be.Instead you’re saying, “Hey, I get that instinct. I have that instinct, too. I’m really mad that our culture has taught us that we need to atone for eating, because that is not something we were born with. That is something we have learned from diet culture.” Sometimes that can open up a really different conversation.Obviously, you can’t always have a script ready. These comments are random and it’s hard to know when or how they’re going to come up. But if you can say, even just in your own head, when people food shame, I’m going to try to turn it back on diet culture, that might help you to be more ready when these things do come up. That way you don’t feel like you’re commiserating with them or denying their experience, you’re just saying, “Yeah, it sucks to feel this way. I’m so mad that the culture makes us feel this way.” If it’s a straight up fatphobic comment, and you feel able to do it, I hope you will say, “That is a really harmful thing to say.” I hope you will say that you are not comfortable with that kind of comment about people’s bodies or that you don’t think it’s okay to talk about people’s bodies or people’s eating habits.I have found I feel best doing that in contexts where I am the host. I will say something like, “We don’t food shame at my house. Sorry, guys!” to set the boundary.Even if I’m out in the world somewhere and fatphobia comes up, I am going to try to call it out most of the time because I have the privilege to be able to do so safely, which is not true for folks in bigger bodies. I also want my kids to see that I think those types of comments are not okay and that other adults recognize that those comments are not okay. If your child overhears you letting it go, then I would follow up with them later and say, “I was really bummed that that dad kept telling his daughter not to eat more cookies. You know that’s not how we handle food at our house.” Follow up directly with them so that your child has some context for what they heard. Where I will end on this: None of us are going to get every one of these right. You’re not going to hit every pitch. There are going to be times when a comment comes up, it catches you off guard, and you don’t have a response. You just have to let it go in the moment and be frustrated.Q: My husband wants to go on a diet. I don’t know how to navigate. He thinks intuitive eating is bullshit. This is a bummer. Especially because I’m guessing that if you’re writing this, you do not think intuitive eating is bullshit. His being dismissive of something that you have found helpful or liberating is probably very, very hurtful. It’s frustrating to feel like you’re not being heard or seen by him or that your struggle is not being recognized. That is most likely because he is deep in his own struggle with this stuff and he just can’t see it yet. But it still just sucks. So, I just want to hold space for this being really hard. I’m really sorry. It’s hard to not be on the same page with your partner. I get this question from straight women with straight cis male partners a lot. I think it’s because men are so conditioned to engage with food in a very black and white way. The term “intuitive eating” strikes them as woo-woo or emotional. That’s something that they’ve been kind of conditioned to reject, right? They’re conditioned to count their macros, eat their burgers, and engage with food in this very straightforward way. This is why “calories in, calories out” dieting makes sense to them. It feels straightforward and understandable. Instead you want him to have an emotional process with food and that feels hard because he doesn't have language for that. I’m speaking very generally here and I also realize I’m not making space for non-heteronormative relationships. I’m sure this plays out in similar ways in different types of relationships and different gender pairings. A benefit of that black and white thinking is that sometimes these people do respond well to data. I will link to my favorite evidence review, demonstrating that diets do not work, and, in fact, are bullshit. This might be something you share with him. I’ll also link to a piece I wrote a few months ago called The Thing Your Husband Really Needs to Read. This piece is more about how not to talk about food around kids, but I think there are probably some useful nuggets in there. Those are both pieces that you could suggest he read if he is asking for your advice or if he is asking if he should go on a diet.What I will also say is: This is your husband’s problem to solve. We’re conditioned, as women in heteronormative relationships, to be our husband’s emotional support. We’re conditioned to help them navigate and solve problems. And that’s not always fair. Of course, in relationships, we want to support our partners, but there can be such an imbalance. If he is saying, “I’m gonna do this diet. I’m psyched about it. Intuitive eating is bullshit,” and he’s not actually asking for your input, I don’t think it serves you to put in the emotional labor to try to change his mind or coach him through this or try to get him to open up about his feelings about food. That’s work for a therapist to do. That’s not work for a wife to do. I think you can say, “Okay, that’s where you are. I’m in a really different place. I need to protect my own relationship with food.” If you have kids, you need to protect your kids’ relationships with food, too. So, “Good luck with that diet, but I don’t want diet talk at the family table. We’re gonna all keep eating the way we always do. This is something you’re doing for yourself. We get it, but we don’t have to be on this journey with you.”That might sound a little harsh, but I think it’s important to recognize that you cannot fix other people. You can’t change them, especially on something this complicated. This is something he’s going to have to muddle through for himself. It’s really hard to watch someone caught in a long-term dieting cycle. Maybe this is a new thing he’s trying, and he’ll quickly realize that it doesn’t work and he’ll come back around. If he’s coming to you saying, “Intuitive eating is bullshit and I want to do this diet,” then he’s not looking for the kind of support you can give. If he’s asking for information, we’ve got the information for him. If he’s just informing you of this, then you’ve been informed. Set the boundaries you need to set. I hope this is helpful, especially with holidays on the horizon in whatever COVID state they’re going to be. We might be seeing friends we haven’t seen for a long time or reconnecting with folks. So these conversations will likely keep coming up because we didn’t have these conversations for a year and a half. We’re back in the space of trying to figure this out. I hope this gives you some helpful strategies to play around with. As always, I love updates! If you try this, if you have these conversations, report back let me know how it goes. If you’ve got other strategies you like to use, drop them in the comments!Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you liked this episode and you aren’t yet a subscriber, please subscribe! If you are a subscriber, thank you so much. Please consider sharing Burnt Toast on social media or forwarding this to a friend. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy & sell plus size clothing. And I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram or Twitter. I’m @v_solesmith. Thanks for listening! Talk to you soon!Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!This is a newsletter where we explore questions (and some answers) around fatphobia, diet culture, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Today, we’re going to do another solo episode where I answer your questions.But first! I’m curious to know what folks think about the guest episodes versus the solo episodes. Right now I’m doing like one solo a month, and then three guest ones. Maybe you would like a different balance of guests to solo? I’m also always curious to know how many folks download and listen or how many listen to the audio versus read the transcript. I’m happy to keep doing both—I think they’re both really useful—but you know, I’m just interested. So if you have any thoughts about that, please comment on this post. That is a long way of saying any feedback is always very welcome.Let’s dive into questions! Sometimes I manage to group these with a theme and this week, I don’t think there is a theme. It’s just kind of a grab bag. I mean, there’s the obvious themes of diet culture and fat phobia, but I don’t think I have a narrower theme than that. But that’s okay! There’s a lot of really interesting stuff in your questions this week.Q: I loved your book and I’m just starting to try to disentangle myself from my own diet and body image hang-ups, most of which were absorbed through my loving, amazing, subtle fat-shaming family. Occasionally we engage in discussions over weight and health and while I can bust out all the stats and research I can about health and weight they inevitably bring up their ace in the hole to win the argument every time: Namely, there aren’t many obese/fat old people. And I can’t counter it because I’ve seen it myself every time I visit a relative in a long-term care home; everyone there is very old, and very thin. Any thoughts/research on this? If weight doesn’t automatically equal unhealthy outcomes, where are all the old fat people at?A: This is such an interesting question: Where have all the old fat people gone?What I think is happening here, is confirmation bias. I think we are confusing what we see in our own lives and our own bubbles with, this must be true for everyone. And this happens all the time in conversations around weight and health. Think of every Thin Man in your life who, even if they do gain weight, sort of effortlessly loses it just by starting to run once a week or something. And then they think everybody could lose weight so easily if they just did this. That’s confirmation bias. That’s thinking that your own lived experience is representative of everybody’s lived experience. And we know it’s not. But this comes up a lot.But this is definitely a new twist on it, this idea that just because fat old people are invisible to you, they must not exist.I will link to Katherine Flegal’s research on this. We know that folks in the “overweight” and “low ob*se” BMI ranges have the longest mortality. So we know that those folks are living longer than people in the “normal weight” or “underweight” ranges. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, the data is a little less clear. Folks in the very highest-weight bodies may have more complicated health issues, just like the folks at the most underweight level. And in both cases, this may impact longevity. But in the sort of skinny to small fat/medium fat space, we’re seeing that bigger bodies live longer.So why aren’t you seeing them in the nursing home that you visit? Maybe because the nursing home you visit caters to a demographic that doesn’t have higher rates of larger body sizes. If you’re in an affluent, mostly white community, you may not see bigger body sizes as often in general, and certainly not in the nursing home setting.Also: If Flegal’s research suggests that higher body weight is protective in aging, then those folks might not be in long term care facilities. Fat old folks might be able to live independently at home longer. And so you don’t see them in the nursing homes that you’re going to, you’re seeing there the frailest and sickest people, perhaps, and those might not be the people in the larger bodies. So this is just playing with this assumption that you’re having—I’m not saying this is definitively what’s happening in the nursing home that you visit. Of course, as much as we know that larger body size is linked with longer mortality, we don’t know that that’s a causal relationship. It’s a correlation. So we don’t know that body weight really has much of anything to do with how long you live. You may be seeing smaller bodies in this nursing home, but that is not reflective of the general aging experience. Or these people may have been in bigger bodies earlier in their lives that enabled them to live longer. As we reach our later years, the elderly and the geriatric population does tend to lose both body fat and muscle mass with aging. So people are again frailer and also thinner once they are very old. That doesn’t mean they were that thin their entire life, that just means that’s the body you’re seeing them in right now.So yes, you’re seeing this. But you’re not seeing the entire experience. One nursing home is not representative of even your entire community, let alone your state, your region, your country. There could be good reasons that you’re not seeing bigger bodies there. There could be bad reasons. It could be that folks in bigger bodies receive worse health care. So even if we’re seeing some protective benefits of larger bodies, we may also see that folks receive worse health care, have less access to health care, and maybe they are less likely to access the type of long term care facility you’re talking about. So there is a lot of nuance there. But I do think that “I don’t see old fat people” is not proof that they don’t exist. They are out there. Hopefully that gives you some nuggets to take back to your family conversations.Q: Do you think intentional weight loss (and/or intentional weight change, including gaining weight) is always bad? Do you think there is any room for folks to intentionally change this aspect of their bodies just like we might change any number of other physical and aesthetic characteristics? Is there any way of decoupling intentional weight change from diet culture? (That last part is my biggest concern, of course.)I think what this person is asking—well, they may not be asking it, but what I am often asked under the guise of this question is: Can I be anti-diet and still be dieting?You can absolutely fight weight stigma, you can think that fatphobia is wrong, you can call it out, you can parent in ways that are weight-inclusive, you can support weight-inclusive health care, you can do all of that… and still not love the body you’re in. Our individual body struggles are quite separate from this as a sort of political social justice movement, so I think that is worth acknowledging and saying pretty explicitly. I think most people who do this work have our own stories of dieting and body acceptance struggles, and so relate very much to the idea that personally, you may not be where you want to be politically or publicly.But do I think that personal struggle can happen separately from diet culture? At this stage? I do not.Anytime we pursue intentional weight loss and try to change ourselves in an aesthetic way, we are driven, at least in part, by the central diet culture message that we should take up less space. It’s just the water we’re swimming in. It’s the social conditioning we have received since we were children. It is incredibly hard to turn off that noise and say, no, I definitely would want this in a void, I would want to be thinner for X, Y, and Z reasons, even if diet culture didn’t exist, and thinness gave me no social currency, and didn’t make it easier to buy clothes, and didn’t make my body feel more acceptable to society. I don’t think you can even really run that thought experiment because we cannot silence that noise. So, do I think intentional weight loss is always bad? I’m not going to shame behaviors because hey, who does that—diet culture, right? If you are dieting or intentionally losing weight, because that is something you feel you need, I am not here to judge your personal struggle. I think this is especially important to say when we’re talking about folks who live in fat bodies and decide to pursue bariatric weight loss surgery. If you have not lived in a larger body, and faced that pressure and faced the daily onslaught of weight stigma and the difficulties in accessing health care, and the reasons why that surgery might feel necessary, you are not in any position to judge that person’s decision to pursue intentional weight loss.At the same time, I think I always feel a little bit sad, because it’s a reminder that our world could be so much better. And it’s not. We are not making the world a safe place for fat people. We’re really not making the world a safe place for anyone with a body, but particularly not for fat people. So anytime I hear about someone intentionally pursuing weight loss, I’m just reminded of how much work we have to do. Because yes, if we could get to a point where weight loss was something you could manipulate as easily as, say, dying your hair, then maybe you could say that this is a temporary aesthetic change, and you’re making it for fun and self expression. [Virginia’s post-recording note: Something I forgot to add here is that even if it was truly harmless to the individual, weight loss would still be a way of reinforcing the idea that thin bodies are more valuable than fat ones—which they aren’t. The anti-fat bias is impossible to escape.]But even hair dying is not a great example of that, right, because often women dye our hair to cover our grays, to look younger, because we live in an ageist society. So pretty much any aesthetic change we make has some component of cultural pressure and cultural conditioning attached to it. And it doesn’t mean you should completely stop making any of these changes. I dye my hair, you know, and we all wear clothes, and people wear contact lenses, etc, etc. And it can certainly be a part of personal expression, and feeling good about your body and also be a response to these cultural messages.But the reason to put weight loss, intentional weight loss, in a separate category from say, hair dye, is because intentional weight loss can be really dangerous physically. It can lead to a disordered relationship with food and your body. It can cause spiraling and anxiety and ruminating and compulsive thoughts and compulsive behaviors in a way that making choices about shoes or hair doesn’t because these other more easily changeable choices don’t have quite the same impact on our physical health, or our mental health. And again, I’m speaking broadly here—there’s going to be someone who comments and says, no, actually dyeing my hair is like this hugely complicated, dramatic journey for me, and I want to hold space for you in that journey. But we don’t have an epidemic of hair disorders, and we do have an epidemic of eating disorders. I resist saying it’s always bad, because that sounds like I’m saying the person pursuing the weight loss is bad, and I’m not. But I do think intentional weight loss is never simple. I think it’s never just about health, or just about, oh, I don’t like how my pants fit, but I’m fine with other people being in bigger bodies. I think we find lots of ways to rationalize the desire for intentional weight loss to ourselves. And I did this for years. I wanted to support Health at Every Size, and I was dieting myself. So I really relate to this place that this questioner is in, wanting to say, I’m doing this for me, but that’s separate from the larger struggle. The truth is, we’re always intertwined with our personal and our political. With something like intentional weight loss, where the side effects can be so serious and so severe, I think it is especially important to approach that with caution.If weight loss is something you’re pursuing because you’ve been told it’s necessary for your health, I would encourage you to check out the HAES Health Sheets that were created by Louise Metz and Ragen Chastain. They are a phenomenal resource for thinking about weight-linked conditions, from a weight-inclusive perspective. That might give you some other options to think about, do I really need to pursue weight loss for my health? Or is there another way to treat my high blood pressure? Or my acid reflux?And if it’s about aesthetics, well, then I think you already know the answer that that’s a diet culture-driven thing. The thin ideal is driven by diet culture, it’s driven by white supremacy, it’s driven by patriarchy. It is uncomfortable to acknowledge that we are all complicit in it, but there it is. So yeah, I think we’re a long way from being able to decouple this and I’m also not sure that that should be the goal, because if we say we’ve decoupled unintentional weight loss from all of these toxic narratives, and it’s totally fine to pursue it, you’re still saying fundamentally, that smaller bodies are better, you’re still saying that this whole group of people who live in larger bodies, for whom intentional weight loss is not an option or would never achieve a thinner, a truly thinner body, that their bodies are somehow less than. So yeah, I don’t see it untangling anytime soon.Okay, next question. The TL/DR version of this question is: My daughter “binges” on food and I don’t know how much I should control this.Q: My 10-year-old daughter hit puberty young and has a larger body. She has not displayed any body dissatisfaction, or said anything negative about her body in front of me. She is very active and she loves food. Food is what motivates her. Food is what she turns to in boredom. She gets a lot of pleasure from food. I don’t see any of that as a problem. My concern (and my husband’s concern, who doesn’t handle it the way I would like) is that with being home all the time the last 1.5 years and counting, she is eating all day. She eats 3 “meals” in a row, each time saying she is still hungry. I try to advise her to wait a little while between meals so her body has time to realize she already ate, but she won’t do that. She’s also cooking and preparing her own food, which I love and think it is wonderful that she is independent in this area. I’m just not sure if she is ready to have all limits off on quantity of food. This might look like a tortilla with eggs and bacon, followed by frozen tamales, followed by melted cheese and crackers. She never chooses fruits or veg. If there is any sort of candy, ice cream, or baked good, she will eat it all right away and not choose any other food until that is gone. Part of the reason this is triggering for me is that I am a binge eater and it looks like she is binging when she loads up on food like this and when she is hyper-focused on the sweet foods.A: I think there’s a lot going on here. I want to be clear that I am not a therapist or a dietician or a healthcare provider trained to diagnose or treat eating disorders, and also a podcast would not be the setting to do that even if I was. So I encourage you to reach out to a therapist who approaches weight and family feeding dynamics from a weight inclusive Health at Every Size perspective. I like Christy Harrison’s list of providers so linking that here. And I’m saying that, not because I think your daughter is showing so many red flags of a huge eating disorder, but because you are really struggling with her eating, and I think you deserve support and help to navigate what this is bringing up for you so that you can best support your daughter.Now, as a lay person who reports on this a lot and who hears a lot of people’s eating stories, a lot of what you’re describing sounds like fairly normal 10-year-old, hungry 10-year-old in puberty behavior. When you listed the meals, the tortillas and the tamales and the cheese and crackers, I don’t know that that sounds like a binge as much as it sounds like a kid who’s exploring lots of different foods, maybe getting a lot of pleasure out of the fact that she can independently make foods like bacon, which is kind of hard to make well, and that she has that independence in the kitchen, which I love that you’ve given her. So is it necessarily that she’s eating three huge meals in a row or is she just experimenting and enjoying lots of different foods?What we need to step back and acknowledge is: It’s not about the food. If your daughter is struggling in other ways, if she’s very anxious, if she’s depressed, if she is coping with any big negative feelings right now, and you see this eating as the way she’s coping, you want to support her in working through the negative feelings, you want to get her the help she needs with that. You don’t take away the coping skill that she has, if that’s food, before she has other coping skills, and before she has the support she needs with the underlying problem. So it’s really not about the food if this is binge eating is a way to either numb and escape emotions or cope with emotions.But from what you’ve also said: She’s a kid stuck at home. We’re all bored, we’re all eating more because it’s novelty, and we’re programmed to seek novelty, and that’s one of the few ways we can get it. She also gets a lot of pleasure from food, and that’s great. And she’s enjoying the sort of independent cooking experience, which is really fun. And I think that the best strategy through all of that is just to continue to support her in building those skills. And along the way, she’ll be learning to listen to her body more. When you’re advising her to sort of wait in between meals, you know, or if you are coming in and trying to control quantities, that’s when you’re gonna start interrupting her own ability to listen to her body. It’s understandable, it’s natural, but it sounds like you’re trying to control too many things possibly. This happens a lot when parents freak out at their kids eating patterns and try to come in with a lot of structure. And then we both try to control the how much and the how often. Division of Responsibility, which is the model that I sort of loosely follow and find is a good starting point for families, says the parent should be in charge of how often kids eat, but not in charge of how much. And at 10, you would probably still also have some control over what food she’s offered in terms of, you’re doing the grocery shopping, but you are starting to hand over more independence at that age about individual meal choices, and yes, cooking skills and things like that. So if you are going to try to impose structure around what the schedule looks like, you really have to back off and let her decide how much to eat in any one of those settings. And I find this is often tricky, because we will have a portion size in our mind and then the child will want more of it. You know, it happens to me often because like if we buy snack foods, like granola bars, or little packages of goldfish crackers that come in a single serve package. That’s not a single serving to my kid, she wants two or three or four of them in a sitting to make a meal or make a snack that honors her hunger. And so I’ll think wait, you’re eating more than a serving, but it’s like, I’m sorry, does the packaging company know what a serving is to my child? No, of course they don’t.Similarly here, if it’s snack time, or it’s lunchtime, and she and you have said this is the time we’re going to eat, you need to allow her to eat as much as she needs to feel full and good in that meal. And then you can say, “Okay, now we’re going to wait until after this next activity, and then we’ll have a snack.” Versus going straight into another meal. Transitioning to more of a schedule is itself pretty hard to do. And it’s really hard to do if you’re also trying to control how much, or which food, she’s eating. So I would pick one and I would pick the schedule to work on and not work on the how much. Let her be in charge of the how much. You truly don’t know how hungry she is. Kids in puberty need a lot of food, they are growing really fast. And it may look like much more food than you as an adult would eat in a meal. And that’s okay, that’s normal. I’m going to link to a piece I did earlier in the summer on when is it restriction and when is it good parenting, and that may give you some more ways to think about how to have this conversation with her.Q: I, like you, consider myself a “small fat person.” I also consider myself someone that’s engaged with and interested in topics like dismantling diet culture, the toxicity of the wellness movement (and the consumerization thereof), and how it all fits in with questions of intersectional feminism. At the same time, I work as a strategist for an advertising agency that has recently been asked to work on a major diet brand campaign. In the theoretical, I can argue it is an opportunity (to affect change, to influence decision makers, to enable further understanding in an organization that doesn’t understand why it’s quite so hated today) — but in the practical, I’m struggling with it, big time. So I’m curious, as someone who started her career in the world of women’s magazines and wellness and then found an enlightened path out, how would you feel in this situation? What might you do?A: This is tricky, because the idealist in me wants to say, don’t work for the big evil diet company. Just like, I would hope you would not work for a tobacco company or gun brand. There are certain jobs where, that door feels closed in my brain. But then there is the reality of your life. I do not know the reality of your financial situation, I do not want to assume that you can just like up and quit this job or make life difficult for yourself at this job and then weather whatever storm that would cause in terms of lack of job security, financial uncertainty, etc. So I’m certainly not going to tell you absolutely don’t take this, don’t work with that brand, if that’s your job, and I assume you need your job, as most of us do, to pay your bills.So thinking of it as an opportunity to try to influence decision makers is the way to go about it, right? Because you need this job. And now you do have this opportunity to try to turn some tides within this company. I am not using the brand name in this because I want to protect this reader’s privacy, but I will say it is a brand that I am extremely skeptical will actually ever change on this topic. They are pretty much a weight loss brand at their core. And it’s hard to imagine that changing. So I do think you’ll have your work cut out for you.When I started in women’s magazines, I absolutely went in thinking, “I’m making change from the inside.” I think I put that in my cover letter for the job and it’s amazing I got the job, because I was not at all quiet about that as my mission. But I will be honest about what happened next, which is: I began very quickly to rationalize content that I found objectionable as not that bad. I’d think, oh if we make this change, it won’t be so bad, this isn’t really a diet. Because number one, I wasn’t actually as clear on my own values as I thought I was at that point. Shocking, that at 22, I didn’t have that all worked out. And also because I needed the job, and because now I was working with people who I liked personally, even if I disagreed with some of the editing calls they were making. And because I wanted to make a career in this world, and it felt like I couldn’t die on every mountain and also make that happen. So I think what you’re going to really struggle with, if you stay on this job and do this work, is being able to do it in a way that feels ethical, and in line with your values, and not like you’re rationalizing the decision. (I guess maybe the theme of today is rationalizing, or at least it was in a couple of these questions?) I think it’s very understandable that we do this. Because, again, cultural indoctrination, we’ve been hearing these messages since we were kids, and also, when we’re talking about things like job security, that’s kind of a non-negotiable. So I’m not saying, don’t do the job, because I’m sure it’s something you really need in your life. But I am curious to hear what you decide, I would love an update. Maybe find a way to have someone outside of that world who can be a sounding board or a check-in person for you. Someone who you can come to and say, “Well, they wanted to do it this way, and I pushed back, and here’s what I won.” And that person can either celebrate that victory with you or say, “Okay, but here’s what you left on the table, here’s what they’re still doing.” And kind of keep you accountable as you try to make change from the inside. Because how do you know if you’re really making change? What are the benchmarks you’re going to use for that?For me, personally, it was in many ways murkier. Did we make change from the inside? Yes. And no. I think there were articles that I was involved in, that caused less harm than they would have otherwise, because I was involved with them. But they still caused harm, I still own that, absolutely. Also, looking back now on where women’s magazines were in the early 2000s and where they are now, there has been an enormous sea change. I think every women’s media brand is trying much more now to lean in to critiquing diet culture, and calling out fat phobia. This is a topic that I’m regularly asked to write about for these places now, whereas years ago, I was pitching these stories, and they were falling on deaf ears. I am not personally taking credit for the entire sea change—I’m glad to have played a small part in it—but that took 20 years, first of all, so it’s not like I was able to get in there and make all these changes overnight and feel really good about the work I was doing right away. I mean, there were years when I felt not good at all about the work I was doing. And it took a long time, and we still haven’t made nearly enough progress.So I think that’s the way to think about it: If you are going to be working to make change, it’s going to be slow, it’s going to be very uphill work. And in this particular case, I’m skeptical that this brand will really evolve. Even if it does evolve, the thing you have to watch for, the thing I still watch for with women’s magazines, and I see all the time happening with these brands, is that they’re evolving because they’re responding to consumer demand. They’re not evolving because they’ve actually made progress on the issue, or they actually are ready to acknowledge the harm that they’ve done. I have yet to write an anti-diet piece for a women’s magazine where I get to say, here’s a piece I wrote a decade ago that was actually horrible, or here are all the other ways this brand has caused harm over the years. I think there are a lot of people working in that space who are really eager to do things better now, but it still feels really scary and really untenable to acknowledge what happened in the past. That’s just sort of a hard reality of where we are.I don’t know that I really answered this question. I don’t think I can answer it for you because I don’t know you or your life. But I hope I’ve given you some stuff to sort of ponder as you decide what to do. And everyone listening, if I answer one of your questions in one of these epsiodes, I love updates, and if you send me an update, you know, maybe I’ll update listeners as well, in a future episode. It would be really fun to hear how these things unfold for you and what you continue to work on. And if you think I got it totally right or I got it totally wrong. I’m open to hearing that too!Thank you all so much for listening to Burnt Toast! If you like this episode and you aren’t yet subscribed, please do so.If you are a subscriber, thank you so much for being here. And please consider sharing Burnt Toast on social media or forwarding it to a friend.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Jessica McKenzie, who writes the fantastic Substack, Pinch of Dirt. Our logo is by Deanna Lowe.And I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram and Twitter. I’m @v_solesmith. I’m barely on Facebook anymore, so don’t worry about that. Thanks for listening and talk to you soon!Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hi Burnt Toast subscribers! I’m back from vacation and I’ve missed you all! Today we’ve got an audio newsletter (recorded before my break). Tomorrow I’ll have a Friday Thread for you. (Do we need to talk about Sarah Paulson’s fat suit? Or any other burning questions on your mind? Comment below and let me know what you want to chat about!) And the big Tuesday essays will resume next week. Now on to today’s episode…Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions (and sometimes answers) on fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today is another solo episode. I’m going to answer a bunch of your questions that all relate to each other, because they’re all on the theme of “How do I talk to other people about this?” I see this a lot. So often, we are in a place where we’re starting to work through our own stuff around food, our own stuff around bodies, or we’re really committed to doing things in a different way for our kids than how we were raised. But explaining this to a partner or explaining this to your parent or explaining this to your child can be so difficult. This is something I talked about with some podcast guests recently: In my conversation with Janet and Nyemade we were saying how this is an issue that we all feel sort of nervous to own, in a way that we don’t feel as nervous to stand up for ourselves around other controversial topics: Facism, homophobia, etc. Even with COVID, I think people who are firmly pro-vaccines are comfortable being firmly pro-vaccines. There are certain topics where we kind of know where we stand and feel good about standing up for ourselves. But this is one where we have internalized so much doubt and so much anxiety that advocating for ourselves or advocating for our kids can just feel super complicated.So I just want to say up top: It’s okay if you don’t have the right thing to say in every moment, in every interaction. None of us do. This is hard work. If this is someone you have a good relationship with, someone who’s in your life in an ongoing way, like your partner, or your child, it’s okay to get it wrong in one conversation and come back and have a follow up conversation. It’s okay to say, “I wish I hadn’t approached it like that, and I want another try.” That’s such good modeling for our kids, it’s good for our relationships when we can do that. I think we can give ourselves all some grace as we try to navigate this, because we probably are going to mess it up a couple of times, many times, and we can try again.The other thing I wanted to say: It’s not your job to convert everybody you meet to intuitive eating, or to make everybody in your life aware of the dangers of fatphobia. You know, it even is my job, and it’s also not my job. I don’t fight these fights in every conversation I have with a friend or every party I go to, every family gathering. I’m not navigating this all the time. There are lots of times when I just let something go, because it’s more important to me, in my relationship with that person, that we have a nice time and that it doesn’t become tense. And that is okay.It is also true that those of us with a lot of privilege always have the option not to stand up and fight the fight. And people in marginalized bodies don’t.So, if you’re a person with thin privilege, I do encourage you to push yourself out of your comfort zone when you can to take this on. For sure, it is worth calling out fatphobia when it happens around us, especially with our kids. This is very important. But there is some nuance here to how successful we’re going to be at doing it every time and if it even makes sense, if it even feels safe, to do it every time.Enough big picture and talk, let’s dive into your questions.Q: My teenage son is going for his first solo visit to Atkins Crazy Grandma. Do I tell her to back off before he goes?A: First of all, I really love “Atkins Crazy Grandma,” I’m picturing that on a mug or something.I’m going to link to my piece, The Grandparents Are Not OK. If you haven’t read it, definitely start here. It will give you a good overview as to why grandparents struggle with this issue so much and why so many Boomers are steeped in diet culture to the extent that they are. It is not entirely their fault. It is the water they have been swimming in for a very long time. They are navigating concerns around gender expectations, body expectations, aging expectations. And all of that is intersecting in a way that Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, none of us are dealing with it in quite the same way that boomers have had to deal with it. So try to hold some space in your heart for that.Remember that the goal of this trip is for your teenage son to have a strong relationship with this grandparent. I mean, I’m assuming this is the goal of the trip. And that’s why you’re sending him there, on his own, to have time with his grandmother. If that’s the goal, it is not that helpful for you to get in and interfere and set ground rules about what they can talk about, and try to moderate their relationship in that way. This is something I didn’t state as clearly as I could have in that grandparents piece. It is not our job to control the relationship that develops between our children and their grandparents. That is its own independent relationship, quite separate from us. And if you want your kids to know your parents, as people, they’re going to know them as people, which means they’re going to learn that they are flawed, and they’re going to have things they disagree on and part of their relationship is going to be figuring that out together.Now, I do think you can set some boundaries. If you’re worried that your mom is not going to feed your son adequately because her dieting is so restrictive, I think that would be a place to intervene. And certainly, if you think she’s going to talk negatively about how your son eats or his body, that’s a different thing. Because then she is directly causing harm. And as parents, we want to obviously step in and mitigate that. But if it’s more like, she’ll make lots of food, but she won’t let herself eat the bread, or she’ll make comments about how she’s eating with him—if it’s more self-directed, as this diet talked often is because people criticize themselves before they direct it to others. In that situation, I think you can talk with your son ahead of time about how this is something she struggles with. And say: “Yeah, it’s a drag that grandma doesn’t eat bread, but there’s no reason you need to stop eating bread.” Let him know where you stand on this, certainly, and give him some tools to navigate this. But don’t feel like you have to make your mom or your mother-in-law act differently around your son than she would otherwise. This is something they can figure out themselves. Your son’s a teenager, he’s old enough to start to really understand his grandmother as a complicated person. I wouldn’t feel like I needed to mitigate unless it was going to be directly harmful to my child.If you are worried about her saying things directly to your child that might be harmful to him, there is a line that I absolutely love from Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks, from their forthcoming book, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: “My body is none of your business.” I love that. I actually taught that line to my own kids the other day, and it was hilarious to watch my three year old stomp around saying it unprompted and in response to absolutely nothing: Do you want Cheerios for breakfast? “My body is none of your business.”So I think you can start to think about ways that your child can advocate for themselves in those situations. If you have a younger child, or if the relationship is, you know, really toxic, you are going to be at the front line of that advocacy work. Otherwise, give your son some tools, talk about it ahead of time, support him in navigating this issue with his grandmother, but don’t feel like you have to block the relationship with this person. Q: My daughter is 12 and your work tends to address younger kids. Any resources for supporting parents of teens in intuitive eating and helping me break through my judgment of her body size?A: My work does tend to address younger kids, partly because that’s the stage of parenting that I’m in. But also because I think that dealing with these issues when kids are young is really important. As I talk about all the time, we know that kids between three and five are starting to understand fatphobia and internalize it. So I do think the work starts there. But of course, your 12-year-old is not a lost cause! There’s a lot of really important work that has to happen in the tween and teen years on these issues. So I’m really glad you are trying to do it. And I’m really glad that you are recognizing that this is your work to do, that you want to break through your judgement about her body size, rather than seeing her body size as the problem and that she somehow needs to fix it. So, just want to give you a big high five for that, because that’s a really important first step.Something I think is useful to sort of hold in your heart as you navigate this is: I’m guessing your feelings about your daughter’s body are tied to your feelings about your own body. This is really, really common. 12 is puberty and big body changes. And this is often an age that we experienced a lot of negative feelings about our bodies, or internalized lots of negative messages. So a lot of what might be coming up for you is your own stuff. And if she looks similar to how you looked at her age (or how you look now!) that may be kind of bringing it all together for you. So as much as possible: Recognize that this really isn’t anything to do with her, that this is you working through your own seventh grade bullshit, because Lord knows, we all have that. A therapist who works from a weight inclusive Health at Every Size perspective could be helpful. The HAES Community site has a searchable database of providers.I’m also linking to this piece and this one, both of which I wrote for the New York Times about parents navigating body image issues with their kids. I think the parents quoted in those articles do have younger kids, but the advice is applicable to all ages. And the experts quoted in those pieces might be folks that you want to look up on Instagram or online other places and follow their work. A couple of folks I really love, who do a great job about talking about teens and eating: Katja Rowell MD is on Instagram. She is a responsive feeding expert, and a parent of a teenager. And she talks quite a lot about intuitive eating and teens in a really great way. Also, as I just mentioned, Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks, their book will be geared towards parents of teens as well as younger kids. I’m going to throw a few other links in the transcript: @teenhealthdoc on Instagram is a great resource for all things teen health but definitely comes from a body positive perspective. I also like The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens by Elyse Resch and You Are Enough by Jen Petro-Roy; they are meant to be read by your kid but you will get a lot out of them too! But I think, as much as possible, focus on the fact that this is bringing up stuff for you. And what you really need is support for you. It’s less about their age, and more about how you’re navigating this.Q: My teenage daughter has postural issues. I am afraid to point them out to her because I don’t want to say anything about her body. But she is unaware her posture is problematic and therefore can’t work on it herself. Or should she? Is that just more dieting culture nonsense?A: This is interesting. I think, if there is something about your child’s body that does not conform to societal beauty standards, and you are worried that it will sort of create a “problem” for them, the last thing your child needs is to hear that information from you. What your child needs from you is radical acceptance of their body. They need to know that you do not see their body as the enemy, you do not see their body as the problem. And that is related to whatever size their body is, certainly their posture, if they have acne, if they have anything about their body that is atypical —scars, disabilities—they need to know that you as their parent view their body as a miracle and something really special and unique and wonderful and worthy of taking care of. They need to know that you trust their body so they can trust what their body is communicating to them.On this question of posture, I think it’s very normal for teenagers to have awkward posture because their bodies are growing really fast in lots of different directions. It’s normal for a kid to not be fully aware of how she’s holding herself through space. That’s part of being a teenager and figuring out your adult body. And I really would not think that it’s your job as her parent to speak up about it and point it out in some way because you’re only going to make her super self-conscious about it. I think your instincts are right on.If you want to support her from a more body-positive, empowered place, I think you could look into something like taking yoga classes together, ideally with a weight-inclusive, body-positive teacher. You know, strength training can be really positive and powerful. Maybe you follow someone like Meg Boggs on Instagram who talks about strength training in a weight-neutral, weight-inclusive, body-positive way. Tally Rye is another body-positive fitness trainer and I also love fitragamuffin. So maybe you start exploring the world of joyful movement with her. But I don’t want you exploring this, because you’re thinking, “if we do yoga, it will fix her posture.” That’s not the goal, just like it’s not the goal to be like, “if we start running together, she’ll lose weight.” That’s not the goal. We’re not motivated by this perceived flaw about her body. We’re motivated by wanting to help this kid find ways to move her body that she loves, to find ways to feel strong in her body, to feel joyful in her body. So you’re giving her tools to take care of her body in different ways. If that addresses her posture, great, if it doesn’t adjust her posture, great, that’s not really the issue. It’s really about helping her feel what it’s like to be in her body and really be embodied in her body in a positive way.Q: Any thoughts about eating in front of the TV? It seems unsupportive of intuitive eating—but it’s one of my kid’s favorite things. And I don’t want to nag him around this other than an occasional ask, “Are you listening to your body when you’re eating in front of the TV?”A: First of all, it kind of is nagging to say to your kid, “Are you listening to your body when you’re eating in front of the TV?” I know you’re really trying hard not to nag. But kids are smart. And I think they know that obviously, the implied answer is “No, I’m not. And you want me to stop doing this.” I think maybe back off direct questions. It is true that eating every meal in front of a television or in front of any screen—whether that’s eating every meal while you’re playing video games, or while you’re on your computer, while you’re Virginia and you’re writing your book so you’re eating lunch at your desk while reading chapter drafts—these are all ways that we are disconnecting from the experience of eating and distracting ourselves. We’re not eating in a very “mindful” way. We’re getting fuel or we’re snacking because it feels good while we’re doing this other thing. So no, this is not, “mindful eating.”But is this intuitive eating? It can be. Because it can be realistic to say, I’m so busy today that I’m going to eat lunch at my desk, because I know it’s really important that I eat, I know I’ll feel like garbage if I skip lunch and work straight through lunch. But I don’t have time to stop and savor this experience for 45 minutes. So I’m going to eat this while I’m working, so that I have some fuel in my body and I can keep going. But no, it’s not like the most enjoyable lunch I’ve ever had in my life. That is not anti-intuitive eating, that’s assessing what you need and meeting your needs in a variety of ways.Similarly, I think, for a lot of us, eating delicious snacks in front of a TV show we love is a very comforting and joyful activity. And I don’t think that that’s anti-intuitive eating to say it’s the end of a long day, and I want to zone out and watch Monty Don on BritBox and eat chocolate because that is what I like to do in the evenings. Or for your child—I’m guessing your son doesn’t watch Monty Don, maybe he does, I hope he does—but whatever he’s watching, and snacking, you know, this can be really relaxing. My now eight-year-old loves to watch nature documentaries or Simpsons reruns and eat various snacks. And this is something she often does on the weekends for an hour or two while her little sister is napping (or not napping, but we’re pretending she’s napping).I don’t see that as a problem. I see that as nice, relaxing, it’s fun to unwind and watch a favorite show and eat some good snacks. If she did that for every meal, I would be concerned. But it’s a couple times a week. During lockdown (and over the last few weeks of summer break) it was more than a couple times a week. But it’s still just one part of the day. It’s not every eating opportunity in the day. That’s how I think about TV.Obviously, you’re going to hear more rigid viewpoints on that. There’s certainly folks in the intuitive eating world, in the Division Of Responsibility world, who would say “no meal should ever happen in front of a screen, that’s a terrible habit you should break.” But to me, that kind of rigidity, that’s like a diet culture mindset coming in saying we have to have this hard and fast rule.Do I think it’s great for every meal? I do not. Do I make a big effort to make sure that we as a family eat dinner at a table looking at each other? Yes. Every now and then do we say, “Hey, guys, do you want to eat dinner in front of the TV?” so that my husband and I can actually talk to each other during dinner, and they can enjoy a show? Yep. We definitely do that. So I think it’s not something that you need to set hard and fast rules around. Is this happening to a degree where it’s replacing other kinds of eating experiences? Or is this just like one of your kid’s favorite things that they like to do on weekends? And sort of find some “balance” in there, as opposed to having rules, like you can only do it on Fridays, or you can only do it three times a week. Because that may be setting it up so it won’t feel like enough and they’ll want to do it more, and you’ll end up with this fixation. So I would look at the overall balance.If this is how they eat dinner every night, you might say I want us to start eating family meals again. But if this is something they do a few times a week, it’s a relaxing thing, it’s bringing them joy, it’s not replacing time that could be spent in other ways, then I would let it go.Q: My husband is limited in what he eats. It’s pretty much all fast food or heavily processed food (chicken fingers, pizza, Panda Express menu items, etc.) and treats (candy, soda, etc). He doesn’t like to go to other people’s houses because he’s afraid he’ll have to eat something he doesn’t like. He has traumatic memories from childhood about being pressured to eat things he didn’t like. I can only imagine how terrible that must feel.But now my kids (ages 5 and 7) are starting to limit what they eat to processed foods, too. I will never force my kids to eat anything, but it’s important to me to serve vegetables and whole grains and encourage them to try new things, alongside the processed stuff they already like. But whenever I try to serve a meal that’s not part of their limited palate, they have serious meltdowns. My husband is now their ally in this. It feels like the three of them are pitted against me. He tells them they’re not allowed to have Pizza Hut every night, not because they need a balanced diet, but because “Mommy won’t let us.” He’s constantly adding more and more sweets to the kids’ breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. (I think this is his way of showing love.) Now, they’ve stopped eating the sandwiches and fruits I put in their lunches. They’re starting to steal candy and cans of soda that my husband has hidden around the house. I realize my husband is dealing with his own childhood issues, but I fear that all this fighting over food is going to create issues for all of us. It’s definitely creating tension between me and my husband. (We’ve talked about this many, many times.) Now, I dread dinnertime. I don’t enjoy eating any of the things we have for dinner. It’s stressful for all four of us, and I’m sure I’m making things worse. What can I do to make eating less stressful for my family?A: So this is really tough. This happens when one or both parents have different sorts of unresolved eating issues. And this is similar to what we were talking about in that first question, when our kids hit certain stages, which are very normal for kids to hit. It’s very normal for five and seven year olds to be pretty cautious about trying new foods, and prefer comfort foods and predictable foods. But then when that intersects with a parents own issues around those same foods, you’re going to kind of have this powder keg moment with all of these different tensions coming together.I think your family sounds like you would really benefit from some professional help. My suspicion, you know, keeping in mind that I’m just a journalist who researches this, I’m not a trained professional—this is not a medical diagnosis of any kind—but my suspicion is your husband would meet criteria for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, otherwise known as ARFID, which is basically an eating disorder that centers around fear of food rather than body image issues, although it can get kind of all intertwined. (Here’s a piece I wrote about ARFID a few years ago; there is also a chapter devoted to it in my first book.) But often, at its core, ARFID originates because kids have had really punitive experiences of being forced to eat certain foods, and where their caution around new foods was punished or demonized. Sometimes it happens when kids have choking experiences or they gag, they have really strong sensory responses to different textures with foods. And the problem builds and builds until it’s this intense phobia around different foods.ARFID is treatable, but it is a very poorly understood eating disorder. And it is difficult to treat because it’s often treated the same way you treat anorexia, which is to refeed and insist that people eat huge amounts of food, and for someone with really deep fears of specific foods that can pile on the trauma. So it’s really important to get good help for it. Some folks I know who work on ARFID and who do it in a really compassionate and thoughtful way are Katja Rowell MD (again), Grace Wong RD, and Lauren Mulheim, PhD. So this will hopefully give you some starting points. I’m hoping your husband will be open to talking to someone about this because it’s not easy, and he needs support, and I love how much empathy you are holding for his struggle.But it is also true that his struggle is creating a lot of problems for you. I’m also going to link to Anna Lutz, RD, and Elizabeth Davenport. They are dietitians who specialize in family feeding dynamics and write the blog Sunnyside Up Nutrition, which is a great blog about feeding families. But they’re both also experts in these disordered eating dynamics that can have these ripple effects throughout families. So I’d really encourage you to reach out to some therapists and dietitians who can support you, because it does sound fairly entrenched. Especially because you’re referencing that he’s hiding a lot of food around the house, the kids are now finding the food that he’s hiding, and they’re sneaking his sneaking food. I mean, there’s like layers of food sneaking here. So yeah, there’s a lot going on.In terms of how to start to navigate this as a family, I would encourage your husband not to have to hide food and to let the let the kitchen be full of foods everybody loves. So your fruits and vegetables and whole grains, right alongside his, you know, Panda Express, candy, soda, etc. Let it all be out in the open, nobody needs to feel ashamed about the food that they love in your family. Something else you might talk to a therapist about is, you know, you haven’t talked a lot about your own stuff here. I appreciate that you’re saying you don’t want to force your kids to eat anything they don’t like, but it does sound like you are focused on the vegetable/whole grain side of things, which is understandable. But you might want to consider whether you have some rigidity about that. It could be helpful to get some support to work through that, so just throwing that out there as a possibility. I think in general, though: all foods fit. There’s permission around all foods, there’s no need to be banning these foods. And maybe as you’re approaching family meals, you can have it all on the table. And if your kids are gravitating towards the “processed” stuff more than the other stuff, let that be okay. That’s very normal for their ages, it’s very age appropriate.And they are fixating on these foods more because the dynamic between you and your husband has given them so much power, because he’s saying things like “Mommy won’t let us.” And so there’s this idea that these foods have to be forbidden and that you are the one forbidding them. I mean, this is not a fair situation for anybody. But it’s really unfair for your kids to feel like they have to sort of pick sides on food. And it’s not surprising that they’re picking the side of the foods that tastes really good to them. It’s very understandable. But you can start to give these foods less power if you can say, “I know you love Pizza Hut, that’s so great, and we’re having pizza tonight, and we’re having salad and we’re having, fruit on the table, and you can have as much as you want of what’s on the table in whatever order you want.” If they don’t eat something, it’s fine. One food is not more special or better than the other. It’s just this is what’s for dinner, they can pick from what’s offered. So I would definitely lean into making sure that there’s always some of these preferred foods on the table along with the other foods that you're hoping to expose them to.At the same time you have a right to eat food that you like for dinner. I mean, I like a lot of processed foods. But if I had to eat mac and cheese every night, I’d be pretty grouchy about it. It’s not my favorite So if this means that you guys are sometimes serving two dinners, you know, I think that’s okay. I was talking to a friend recently and he was like, “Yeah, our kids eat with us maybe two nights a week and the rest of the week we are making two dinners and sitting down together, but they have their chicken nuggets, and my wife and I are eating what we want to eat.” And I thought, Oh, that’s genius. His kids are 5 and 7 too. And for those of us who have kids in this age range, we know that it’s just not realistic to come up with a meal seven nights a week that every member of your family is going to like. This is probably not realistic for any group of people. But it’s particularly difficult when you’re in this under eight, hyper cautious stage, when they tend to have a pretty short list of foods they want to eat, and they want to eat the same things over and over again. It’s totally normal. And it’s exhausting to try to cater to that, and also still have other foods.So, maybe you have nights where you order from a restaurant where everyone gets to pick something they like, and it’s a restaurant that does serve something you like and something that everyone else likes. Maybe you have nights where you make a big salad that looks good to you, and you know, you’re serving chicken nuggets alongside it, that’s great. Don’t be hemmed in by rules about what the meal should look like, or do these foods even really go together? You know, we went through a phase where we were putting Eggo waffles on the table at dinner a lot because they were a preferred food. And Eggo waffles don’t really fit in with any menu I might be trying to plan, but it sure takes a lot of pressure off if my kid who really likes them knows that they’re there, and she can have those. And she can also maybe try other stuff if she’s in the mood. So I think bringing some more flexibility all the way around to the situation is going to help. And I think it’s very fair to ask your husband not to throw you under the bus about food. I think it’s very fair to say we’re going to keep serving the foods that I like to eat—especially if you’re the one doing the work of making the foods—but at the same time know that any rules you are putting around processed foods is only going to make them more appealing, or that your kids are more prone to fixating on.I hope you’re going to reach out to some professionals who can help you navigate what sounds like a really difficult situation. I’m also hoping folks might chime in in the comments on this one. Because I think there’s a lot of different ways to handle this. I certainly welcome anyone who’s either dealt with this firsthand and has some lived experience or any of my followers who are professionals in the responsive feeding world, feel free to chime in. Because this is a complicated one. Hopefully that gives you some starting points. If you liked this episode and you aren’t yet subscribed, please do that! If you are a subscriber, thank you so much and please consider sharing Burnt Toast on your social media platforms, forward a free weekly essay to a friend, or purchase a gift subscription.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Jessica McKenzie who writes the fantastic Substack, Pinch of Dirt. Our logo is designed by Deanna Lowe, and I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram and Twitter where I am @v_solesmith. Thanks for listening! Talk to you soon.EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!Audio newsletters are like podcasts in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now by pressing play, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever, by clicking that “listen in podcast app” link, above. And just in case you don’t like listening (or that’s not accessible to you), I’m including a full transcript (edited lightly for clarity) below.EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer:  Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!