Podcasts about eating instinct

Today we've got the Midas touch as we recollect and recount past and present experiences with feeding our kids. We share dos and don'ts, philosophies of eating and why its important to salt babies. We play it cool through prescription muffins, the trendy and the expensive before exploring the division of responsibility and assigning Matthew some homework. Hungry Monkey by Matthew Amster-BurtonChild of Mine by Ellyn SatterEssential Labor by Angela GarbesVirginia Sole-Smith of the newsletter Burnt Toast and books The Eating Instinct and Fat Talk Listener Kayoko's amazing article about feeding babies in Japan at Just One CookbookMatthew's Now but Wow! - Paolo from Tokyo a typical day at a rural elementary school video Support Spilled Milk Podcast!Molly's SubstackMatthew's Bands: Early to the Airport and Twilight DinersProducer Abby's WebsiteListen to our spinoff show Dire DesiresJoin our reddit

Our guest this week is author and podcast host Virginia Sole-Smith. You may know Virginia from her newsletter Burnt Toast, which explores fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. Virginia is the author of the 2018 book The Eating Instinct. Her most recent book—Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture—which going to talk about a lot today encourages us to name and navigate our anti-fat bias so we can raise happier and healthier children.You can find Virginia at virginiasolesmith.comYou can find Kim on her Substack: kimfrance.substack.com. For exclusive Everything Is Fine episodes — along with weekly style and culture recommendations — join our Patreon: patreon.com/everythingisfine Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author of the Eating Instinct and Fat Talk, Virginia Sole Smith joins us to discuss reclaiming our bodies from diet culture, the thin ideal, BMI, double standards and fat discrimination.TW/ We will be talking about anti fatness and obesity in this episode. You can find Virginia @v_sole smithSubscribe to her newsletter at virginiasolesmith.substack.comTrain Happy Trouper of the Week: ⁣DM @trainhappypodcast ⁣

Michael talks with Virginia Sole-Smith about her NY Times Op-Ed "Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me." Smith is the author of "The Eating Instinct" and the forthcoming book (April 2023) "Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture." Original air date 31 January 2023.

The post Rebroadcast: The Eating Instinct with Virginia Sole-Smith appeared first on Seven Health: Intuitive Eating and Anti Diet Nutritionist.

Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist behind the Burnt Toast newsletter + author of The Eating Instinct, in conversation with Julia Turshen.Follow-up links:To sign up for Julia's newsletter, head here.For more about Virginia, head here.For more about Burnt Toast, Virginia's newsletter, head here.  

Kids turn one and our expectations change. Suddenly, we want them to eat for nutrition and “food is fuel.”You're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast (and newsletter) about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. As you are listening to this podcast today, I am also writing the last pages of my next book. It is called Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. It will be out next April. I'm recording this with still about 6,000 words ahead of me. I'm hoping by the time you're hearing this, it's like a thousand or five hundred words left. Or even none left! That would be great! It's such a weird experience. I love writing books. I love being immersed in the research and the storytelling and the issues that I'm thinking about constantly. But I'm definitely also in the can-no-longer-see-the-forest-for-the-trees stage of this first draft. So, that is how I am feeling. Hopefully, by the time you're listening to this, it will be feeling much closer to relieved and celebratory! Because I am swamped with getting this manuscript finished, I am giving you a couple of weeks of rerun episodes so I can stay firmly locked into book world and do a little less bouncing between book, newsletter, podcast, the way I have been for the last many months. So this week's rerun is a conversation that Amy Palanjian and I had on our old podcast Comfort Food, about emotional eating. This episode first aired on February 27, 2020. And I think it's one where we were actually a little ahead of our time because once Covid happened, the conversation around comfort eating changed. There was so much demonization of comfort eating and stress eating that we did see this really powerful backlash of folks saying, “No wait, actually we're going through a global trauma, making sourdough and enjoying it is a great way to cope with your anxiety.” A lot of that is what Amy and I are talking about in this episode. We are longtime fans of comfort eating—that's why we named the podcast Comfort Food!—and of emotional eating as a benign coping strategy. It's something I continue to talk about: The importance of reclaiming these coping strategies for yourself, of removing the guilt and shame because that's what causes them to feel so harmful. A lot of what we talked about may not feel entirely new to you, if you've been following Burnt Toast for a while, but I do think we hit a lot of the key points really well. If you are struggling with feeling okay about feeding yourself in any way, it should be a really useful lesson. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! It’s free and a great way to help more folks find the show.And don’t forget! Today is your last day to fill out the reader survey and be entered in the Burnt Toast Book Giveaway! It’s also your last chance to enter the giveaway by becoming a paid subscriber (or renewing an existing subscription if yours was set to expire this month). AND it’s the last day to take 20 percent off that subscription price! PS. If you’ve already done the survey or gotten/renewed a subscription and aren’t sure you entered the giveaway, please fill out this form.And keep sending in your questions for Virginia’s Office Hours! If you have a question about navigating diet culture and anti-fat bias that you’d like to talk through with me, or if you just want to rant about a shitty diet with me, you can submit your question/topic here. I’ll pick one person to join me on the bonus episode so we can hash it out together.VirginiaHello and welcome to episode 64 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.AmySo this week we are going to explore the concept of emotional eating and some of the myths and misconceptions that can come up and also to talk about is it okay to eat when you're not physically hungry?VirginiaI'm Virginia Sole-Smith, I'm a writer, a contributor to Parents Magazine and New York Times Parenting, and I'm the author of The Eating Instinct: Food, Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America, which is out in paperback now and it has such a pretty new cover. Maybe I'll get Amy to put a picture in the show notes, you should definitely check it out. Anyway, I write about how women relate to food and our bodies in a culture that gives us so many unrealistic expectations about those things.AmyAnd I'm Amy Palanjian, a writer, recipe developer, and creator of Yummy Toddler Food. And I love helping parents to stop freaking out about what their kids will and won't eat and sharing doable recipes that fit into even the busiest family schedules. Okay, so obviously, the name of our podcast is Comfort Food. So, we think that food should be comforting, but we realized we never explicitly talked about it in depth— about the concept of comfort as it relates to food and why we think it's important.VirginiaYeah. And it's a really fundamental to what we do. I mean, again, we named the podcast after it. I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the other names we went through. I really wanted to call the podcast Burnt Toast, which I still think is a great name. But we couldn't because there was one, even though it’s not around. AmyIt's not a functioning podcast, but yeah.VirginiaSo anyway, if you're listening, and you were affiliated with the prior Burnt Toast podcast, you should give us your name. I mean, we're kind of already here. But Comfort Food felt like the perfect name. I think what we liked about Burnt Toast was that it was like the sort of imperfect, meal on the fly situation that a lot of us are in.AmyWe went through a lot of iterations of something with pasta.VirginiaI know, I really wanted to name it something with pasta. Basically, you can tell from all the foods we considered, we were about comfort food. So then it was like, okay, let's just group it all together into that umbrella.AmyYeah. And you actually wanted to use that phrase in your book title, right?VirginiaYeah, my original title for The Eating Instinct was actually Comfort, Food. Now that feels dumb and a little twee—maybe that's why my agent vetoed it. But I thought that summed up what I was initially hoping to do with the book. My agent and the publisher liked The Eating Instinct better because it was a little more science-y sounding. Naming books is really hard. The reason that I wanted it to be the book title is the book starts with Violet’s story. A really big turning point for us in helping Violet learn to become an oral eater was in the summer of 2016, when she was in and out of the hospital a ton. She had actually gotten off her feeding tube and become a really successful oral eater, and then she got very, very sick again and she stopped eating. I remember being in the ICU with her and these hospital dietitians and doctors swarming and obsessing over why she wasn't eating, what was going on. It was just so clear to me that eating had ceased to offer her any comfort so she had no incentive to do it. It felt like just another horrible thing happening to her body in this really intense medical situation. She didn't turn the corner again, until she found a way to make eating feel safe and comforting. That really opened my eyes to how, in this hospital setting, it doesn't work with a sick kid. They need food to be comforting—we all need that. We are so consistently making nutrition the enemy of comfort and the way we relate to food. So that was really what inspired the book and also a lot of the conversations that Amy and I have.AmySo much of what we hear about nutrition or the way that we're “supposed” to eat is looking at macros and doing it by grams. It's so devoid of any emotion, but that's not what it's like when you sit down at the table. You can't separate the two.VirginiaI mean, it literally doesn't work without it. I think any of us who have successfully fed a baby, you intrinsically get why comfort matters. It is absolutely essential to a baby eating that they feel safe and comfortable. It's this really cozy, bonding, joyous experience to feed a baby, for both the parent and the child. But then suddenly, kids turn one and our expectations change and we want them to eat all these different foods, but now it's for “nutrition” and “food is fuel.” We want them to think of food as just this way to grow their bodies, but we're just much more anxious about comfort. A lot of the research I did for the book really showed that we are biologically programmed to seek comfort in food. This is a feature, not a bug. We evolved to do it because human survival depends on us eating so often. We have to eat very regularly—and babies in particular have to eat, over and over and over again, all day long. If we didn't find it inherently pleasurable and comforting, we wouldn't do it. Especially generations ago, when food was scarce and it was hard to do. We need this, this is fundamental to the whole thing.Amy PalanjianSo, last week Selway had his 12 month checkup and on the little paper that they gave us, it was like, “Your baby should be weaned off a bottle at this point.” Virginia Whoa. Whoa there.AmyLet's back up and look at like the emotional attachment that that baby might have. For adults, it's been drilled into us that we are supposed to eat when we're hungry and stop when we're full. And if we eat for any other reason, then we're doing something wrong. We feel guilty and we've failed ourselves.VirginiaYeah, I think both Christy Harrison and Evelyn Tribole have talked about that in their episodes on the podcast. There's a misconception that when you talk about intuitive eating, you're talking about the hunger/fullness diet. I actually had a friend, a few months ago, we were out getting ice cream, and she was like, “Oh, I'd love to have that but I'm not hungry and I'm doing intuitive eating, so I'm not gonna eat the ice cream.” And I was like, “Oh, no. That's not what it means. It doesn't mean you only eat when you experience physical hunger.” You can also eat because we're out with our kids eating ice cream and we want to share that. That is this other piece of it. We are both of these things.AmySo we're going to run through a few common myths about comfort food and emotional eating. Myth number one: Eating to comfort yourself is always bad.VirginiaI mean, that's what people think, right? They think the cliche of having a pint of ice cream after a breakup or wanting cheesy crackers when you're stressed out is somehow this big failure. But eating something tasty to cheer yourself up after a hard day is totally normal. It's totally human. And it's also a totally fine coping strategy.AmyI have come to terms with the fact that I always need some sort of chocolate at the end of the day. It has nothing to do with like my overall nutritional intake. It just makes me feel better.VirginiaYeah. I mean, you have three children running around your house!AmyI made it to the end of the day, guys!VirginiaYou made it to bedtime, you need chocolate. Yeah, I struggled with this when we were in the hospital for so many months with Violet. Some people when they're undergoing extreme trauma totally lose their appetite and stop eating. I've had friends say to me, “This is really hard. People will praise this weight loss, but actually my life's falling apart. It’s not really for a good reason.” So, you know, that definitely happens. I do not respond to trauma that way. I respond to trauma by seeking comfort in food. I did a lot of comfort eating during those years of Violet being so sick. I had to really kind of come to terms with that. I struggled with it. Like, oh, I shouldn't be comfort eating. Then finally, I was like, “You know what? I am eating this chocolate croissant in a corner of an ICU hospital. This is what's getting me through the day. I am glad it is here for me.” There is nothing wrong with it. It's a form of taking care of yourself, for sure. It just gets such a bad rap. Christy Harrison and I did an event for our books recently, and when we were doing the audience Q&A, a new mom raised her hand. She said, “You know, I really think I'm an emotional eater. Especially now that my baby's three months old, it just feels like I can't even have chocolate in the house because I can't stop eating it.” And we were both just like, of course you need chocolate, you are three months postpartum. You're not sleeping. Your life has been thrown up in the air. Give yourself this grace.AmyYou're grasping at straws for something to sort of make you feel a little bit better in the moment. I have this lactation cookie, which I'm renaming to be just mama cookies, and it has chocolate in it purely because I know that having that thirty seconds of something that tastes good in your mouth is incredibly helpful when you're taking care of a small child. You're super, super tired and you just need that small window of pleasure.VirginiaYou literally can't get more sleep probably, that’s not available to you. Like, probably you wouldn't crave the chocolate quite as much if you were getting nine hours of sleep a night, but that's not going to happen for a long time. The solution is not to deprive yourself of this other thing, it's to meet what need you can. That’s a way to reframe it.AmyMyth number two: Feeling compulsive around food is the same as emotionally eating.VirginiaThis is interesting because people often label something as emotional eating when what they really mean is, it's hard for me to stop eating X. Like, If I have a bag of potato chips, I'm going to eat the whole bag. Or, if I see a plate of brownies, I'm going to need to eat the whole plate of brownies. They think that this means they're eating emotionally, when it may just mean that they feel restricted about that food. They've restricted it for so long, and now they can't anymore. That's why they're eating in that uncontrollable, scary-feeling way. This is a really big misconception about binge eating disorder, that it's somehow really different from anorexia or bulimia, these other eating disorders that are more obviously restriction-based. People think, binge eating disorder, those people just eat all the time, they can never stop. But all the new research on it is showing in around 40% of cases, it's a response to restriction. Somebody has been on a more restrictive plan, or diet, or full anorexia, and then it hits a brick wall and it goes the other way. Binge eating disorder is a whole complicated thing, we don't have to get into all of it, but a lot of cases are also people responding to growing up with intense food insecurity. Not having enough food in your house is also a form of restriction. It's kind of threaded throughout. I think it's important to understand that because we punish the symptom—eating in this uncontrollable way—without dealing what's really causing that. I think for a lot of us, even if you're not in an extreme place with it, that feeling of “I can't control myself around this food",” what you really need to ask is, why are you restricting this food? Why are you not able to give yourself permission to enjoy it when it's here?AmyYeah, and I think if you've ever had a child who's been obsessed about one type of food, like goldfish, and then you buy goldfish and allow them to have them for snacks, you don't hide them or restrict them in any way, they lose a lot of their appeal. It becomes very clear that they weren't necessarily wanting to have them so badly because they love them so much, it was the feeling that they loved them and also they were not allowed to have them.VirginiaRight. The love is not the problem, it was the restriction that was the problem. It's also worth noting, there's a difference between using food to comfort yourself in a tough situation or after a tough day, and using food as a way to escape or numb your emotions. That can become a more self destructive way to go, just like drinking to numb your emotions can be destructive. Anytime we're escaping our feelings, it can be worrisome, but it’s not the food that’s the problem. The solution isn't to stop eating those foods, it's to figure out how to deal with the hard feelings and find other coping strategies. And I'd also argue even in the short term, sometimes emotions are too frickin’ big.AmyI was going to say, maybe it's okay to numb your emotions sometimes, if you need to.VirginiaMaybe you can't deal with it all in one day and you'll deal with some more of it tomorrow. Let's not demonize these strategies. It's interesting how much these really normal ways of coping with life become demonized because they don't line up with diet culture expectations. But we of course, blame ourselves. AmyOne thing that has been helpful for me, like if there's something that I feel like I just want to eat the whole thing of, I just ask myself, what if I'm just allowed to eat as much as I want? Does that change the emotional reaction to it? VirginiaDoes it? AmyUsually. I mean, I have asked my significant other that question, too, if there's something that he says he can't have in the house. I'm like, what if you were just allowed to have it? It’s an interesting exercise.VirginiaThat's really interesting. The third Myth is this idea that we should not let our kids eat for comfort either, and that we somehow have to rein in their emotions around food.AmyBack to the baby example, we talked a little bit about weaning. We're not weaning, but like, it's a little bit on my mind. No matter when Selway’s last bottle was, when I pick him up at daycare he always wants me to breastfeed him. That's obviously not about hunger, like, he could have had a bottle within an hour. He wants to do that because it's how he connects with me. VirginiaHe wants to see his mama. AmyIt's a totally normal. That would not be something that would be upsetting to anyone. That's very easy to understand. And I think taking that a few years forward, when the child is isn’t breastfeeding, but also has that relationship with food, it would be kind of weird if they weren't comforted by food, in some ways. VirginiaThis is something that's part of the human experience. Speaking as someone who had a kid who found no comfort and food, it is terrifying, actually, when you take it all the way to that extreme place. One of the most powerful memories of my life is the first time I saw Violet take comfort from food. She was a little older than Selway and snuggled on my lap eating an apple. What the food was doesn't matter, I suddenly had this experience of like, oh, she associates me and food and comfort all together again. The way she should. It's so powerful. We were also talking a little before we started recording about seeing our kids use food in this way is actually a sign that they are self-regulating. Beatrix often will, if something falls apart for her, she immediately says, “Where's my ubby?” which is her lovey, and then like, “I need my snack cup.” I'm not worried that she's addicted to the goldfish or whatever's in the snack cup. She's like, oh, I need some comfort right now. That's pretty cool to see.AmyI don't know that I would want a child to always turn to food for comfort, just as I would want for myself to have different options of things that would make me feel better. But I think having it in the arsenal with other things can be super helpful. I mean, we had a situation where one of the girls was able to calm themselves down, after a pretty horrific screaming battle, with some crackers and cucumber and a book. There's nothing wrong in that situation.VirginiaYeah, so many great strategies that she's using there.AmyI think when that happens, as a parent, your initial reaction might be, “Uh oh. I know she's not hungry. I'm supposed to be teaching her to honor her hunger cues.” But at the same time, I think we need to be aware that sometimes we have to look at the bigger context and realize that in that moment, that was a helpful choice.VirginiaYeah, absolutely. I mean I really talk about comfort as the third eating instinct. We've got hunger and fullness, but comfort is this other really important one. Jennifer Berry has talked about that, too, that it is an internal drive kids have to seek comfort. So, don't dismiss that even if it feels at odds with their hunger. But yes, of course, eventually Selway will not need to nourish the second he sees you at the end of the day. When we were weaning Beatrice’s bottle, we talked about how she wanted to read the exact same bedtime book every night for two weeks while we were dropping the bottles, because that was the new comfort thing. She wanted Curious George over and over and over. We can definitely encourage kids to find these other tools, but don't be afraid of the food.AmyThis was on my mind after the Super Bowl. I was thinking about how holiday foods can offer this type of—or food traditions— can offer comfort in this way, too. My husband grew up, he didn't have a TV, but his grandparents did. So on Super Bowl Sunday, he went to his grandparents and his grandfather and made him a root beer float. So he's always wanted to share that tradition with us. And at this point in time, my girls don't like the carbonation in drinks, so they don't like soda. The idea of having soda poured on ice cream is like ruining ice cream for them. So they were like, we just want the ice cream. And I don't know, a root beer float? It's not my favorite thing. But I realized after, I didn't handle that well. Because this is something that means a lot to him. There could have been a way that we could have all shared that experience, taking comfort in the food experience. There was a bigger meaning to that where it was more than just the food.VirginiaHe wanted to tell the story of drinking root beer floats with his granddad and that kind of thing. And you could have shared that while possibly serving the root beer in glasses separate from the ice cream.AmyOr we could have showed the girls what happens when we pour the root beer. It could have been the coolest science experiment. Like there could have been ways that we could have all shared the experience. The way that it turned out just was really disappointing. But I mean, this happens. Now with a lot of people having very specific dietary restrictions, this happens at the holidays, where the foods that you once were able to share with everyone, you can’t. Where do all of those feelings go, about those foods that you love when you can't share them in the same way?VirginiaThat's really tough. You see this on both sides. You see both the person with the restrictions struggling to enjoy their holiday in the same way, and I also feel for the people preparing the food. You know, grandma or whoever makes these amazing cookies every year, and suddenly people aren't eating them. That's a little bit heartbreaking because she's done that to show her love. You have to think about the feelings on both sides of that. It's not to say you can't find new and different traditions, but also that these traditions do really matter and shouldn't just be sort of tossed aside, right?AmyI think we can get laser-focused on the specific food aspect of it when we are in the culture that we're in, that does often boil it down to whether or not it has gluten, or whatever the thing might be.VirginiaThere's so much talk around the holidays about how there's too much focus on food. And to my mind, it's so sad that we can't just let this be about food, because it is. Because, again, that's very fundamental to human experience. To celebrate through food is something that every culture around the world does. This is part of what we do, being able to enjoy that and appreciate it for what it is. Then it doesn't have to dominate in this intense way because, again, you've removed the restriction around it. You can take the comfort from it without feeling this compulsive, out of control thing.AmyOkay, do you guys have questions? Questions about emotional eating or comfort food? We're here to take them on.VirginiaWant me to find the old list of other podcasts names? We can see if any of them are any good. I think we landed on the right one. I think it speaks to our souls.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast! If you'd like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode!And consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter. For today (June 30) only, you can take 20 percent off and pay just $4 per month or $40 for the year! You get a ton of cool perks and you keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Teens have the ability to know how much they need to eat. And when we interfere with that, as parents, we start to break down their natural ability. When we model that we trust our children to listen to their bodies, that they are in charge of their bodies, it also models consent.Welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. Today I’m chatting with Signe Darpinian who is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, certified eating disorder specialist, and host of Therapy Rocks, a personal growth podcast. She is also the co-author of No Weigh!: A Teen's Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom and the new book Raising Body Positive Teens: A Parent’s Guide to Diet-free Living, Exercise, and Body Image. I’m really thrilled to have Signe on the podcast because she is someone who can answer all your questions about intuitive eating and anti-diet life with teenagers.If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And subscribe to the Burnt Toast newsletter for episode transcripts, reported essays, and more.ICYMI! I joined Signe on her podcast last week. We focused on how to talk about fatness and fatphobia with teenagers; listen here.VirginiaI am such a fan of your work, and especially the new book. Can you tell our listeners a little more about yourself and your work?SigneI’ve been treating eating disorders now for over 20 years. And I actually had the good fortune of being exposed to non-diet and weight-inclusive approaches right in the beginning, when I was really green. It’s something that I was very lit up about right from the beginning. It’s been interesting in 20+ years to see the different trends. Like you talked about in your book, The Eating Instinct, to see the trends of diet culture, which were more straightforward in the beginning, like Jenny Craig, to today’s wellness culture. A couple other things about me: I started a podcast right in the beginning of the pandemic. And I’m what some people call a single mother by circumstance, a little bit different than a single mom by choice. It was a happy accident! It can be interesting being a single parent and doing this food piece. My lived experience is more like, well, we’re going to do it this way. That’s not always a parallel to what other people experience — doing food when partners feel differently about diet culture can be tough.I have a 12-year-old daughter and this book was a much bigger project. My daughter threatened to stab the book in the heart when it comes out. VirginiaIs that because of the time it took or because she disagrees with the content?SigneShe doesn’t really know the content. It’s a funny question because the teen book is actually just perfect for her. Age 12 would be a great starting age. She has it on her bookshelf and I asked her if she would consider reading it. She’s like, “Only if you pay me.” I’m like, “Are we talking about twenty bucks?” She’s like, “More like one hundred.” I’m like, “Forget it.” So no, it’s not the content because I don’t think she’ll ever know. She has no interest. It’s more like, you know how it is with writing. It took a lot of time. It was a much bigger project and those last few weeks are pretty daunting. It’s a lot of hard work—and really fun! But she was ready for it to be done, which I understand.VirginiaMy eight-year-old often asks, “Oh, are you still writing that book?” And there’s a little tone there! A little judgment. She’s like, “How many chapters are you trying to do?”SigneVirginia, what about your recent post about your eight-year-old never wanting to be a writer unless she had to for the money?VirginiaI was like, “Oh, how do I explain to you that if you have to do things for the money, this is not the thing?”SigneI’ve definitely got a reluctant reader over here.VirginiaMine’s a reader, but she does not like writing. She feels sorry for me with this career choice. Okay, so the big reason I wanted to have you on is because I get lots of questions from parents of teenagers. I really relate to the sense of panic I get in these emails where parents say, “I’m just now discovering concepts like intuitive eating or diet culture or fatphobia.” Maybe during their kids’ earlier childhood they were more controlling around food or they were on diets themselves. And they’re just feeling like, well, now, what do I do? My kid is 14 or 16 or 20, and this is a shift we want to make. But is it too late?SigneThe short answer is: It’s never too late. We’re not modeling perfectionism, as parents. We’re modeling humanity. I don’t know about you, Virginia, but I try to do my best in modeling good mistake-making. I’m really taking ownership for my part in things more than I’m trying to model being perfect. Well, because I couldn’t anyway. I’ve tried that it doesn’t work. We are all immersed in diet culture and it’s really, really sneaky. There’s so much morality around food. Parents are in the same culture. Just thinking about their evolution, the evolution of their body image, and the messaging they received when they were young. What was going on at their table with food? What was happening with body image? And the conditioning that they come with. So on one hand, I think parents hold a lot of power. Our hope in writing the parent book is that we can give parents a point of reference for what a friendship with food might look like or a friendship with body might look like. Because we’ve really lost our way as a culture. We hope for them to become awake and aware about when did they become disembodied? When did they become disconnected from their own body? Thinking about ways that they might like to be different as it relates to food and body image, so that they can extend it outward.  I have friends, for example, that by now know about body positivity and intuitive eating. They know the right things to say, but there’s an incongruency with what they’re saying and what they’re doing themselves. Our kids and our teens, they can sniff out those incongruencies. So we can think about the ways that we would like to be different and think of it in terms of a process, not a finished product. I think that’s a great starting place for parents.VirginiaWhat you’re really modeling is recognizing mistakes and learning from mistakes. Because kids know we’re making mistakes all the time. They’re not fooled. For us to own that and say, “Yeah, I’ve been getting this wrong, and I’m trying to do it differently.” That feels so powerful. I would imagine kids would appreciate it, even if they don’t say, “Oh, thanks, Mom, I really appreciate that.” What does this shift look like if you’re starting this with older kids? Concepts like Division of Responsibility can be so helpful when you’re developing this with younger kids but the guidance gets a little hazier as kids get older. They are more adept at preparing their own food, they’re out in the world more. They can take more responsibility in some senses. Parents often don’t know how and when to really hand over that responsibility.SigneThe Division of Responsibility, the way that I understand it, is the parent is in charge of the when to eat and the what to eat. I like to put a lot of emphasis on being very mindful about the what to eat not being only “healthy” food. It can be problematic when somebody is in charge of the what to eat and they are immersed in their own diet culture. That could go really badly. Then of course, the child or the teen is in charge of the how much. I want to make one disclaimer about Division of Responsibility. In my caseload, by the time people come to me, there is already a very serious problem. There is already a clinical eating disorder. The thing that I’m hearing most often from parents, when there’s already a clinical eating disorder, is “I just thought they were trying to eat healthier and exercise more.” That’s the way this looks right now. I’m on the frontlines in this work. If my daughter came to me and said she wanted to eat healthier, I would respond to it in the same way as if she told me she wanted to start smoking cigarettes. VirginiaSo it’s a big red flag.Signe“Eating healthier” is a big red flag. And just don’t want to do any false advertising around Division of Responsibility. VirginiaIt doesn’t work for people in the acute stages of an eating disorder. That’s not where you start when you’re in treatment. SigneExactly. Division of Responsibility is going to really look very different with my 12-year-old than it is with somebody else’s. At one end of the continuum, we have households that may have been modeling externally imposed restriction. Externally imposed restriction might look like a parent micromanaging a teen or a child’s food and feeding them in a way that really has to do with their concern about their weight. On the other end, you might have a household that almost looks too loose. That’s actually the the household that I had, up until my daughter was in kindergarten or first grade. I was so aware of attuned ways of eating and how important a more connected way of eating is that I actually wasn’t providing enough structure for my particular child. That doesn’t mean that other children couldn’t do just fine with a very loose household with food. In my own circumstance, my daughter was needing more structure and guidance around food the same way she needed a bedtime. With teenagers, I think parents can still incorporate a lot of the Division of Responsibility paradigm. Making sure that the foods are there. One of the guidelines that we use in our book is making foods equal. Not only equal in morality, but equal in availability. Equal in availability might look like if the refrigerator was full of foods that sort of matched an “all foods fit” paradigm, not just the ones deemed “healthy.” Foods are there and equally easy to grab. Maybe there’s cubed up fruit and there’s cheese sticks and there’s fun size candy. They’re equally easy to grab. We can then grab the food that our bodies are actually calling for versus what’s easiest. I also want to make the disclaimer that we don’t always have the time to do the preliminary work to make foods equally easy to grab, equal in availability. So I just want to name that sometimes we will, sometimes we won’t. No big. One of the things that really resonates with me is not micromanaging what they’re up to with their food during the day. They’re clearly going to have a lot more autonomy with food. Some of them are driving now. They have their own money. They’re going to friends’ houses. So you would never assess or take an inventory of what was eaten that day and base your dinner decision or dessert decision on what they had during the day.VirginiaThat’s their opportunity to be practicing these skills. It’s not on you to say that if they had ice cream after school, then they can’t have cookies with dinner.SigneExactly. If I asked my daughter, “What did you guys have for snack today?” Like, if I know somebody brought something in. If my intention is to see if she had sweets and that will determine if we have dessert tonight, then I’m not going to say anything. But if my intention is just genuinely, I’m curious, then I might ask. With teenagers there’s another component that comes in and this piece would really come more from my co-author Wendy Sterling, the dietitian. She says the teenage years are also a really nice time to start introducing some basic food prep skills. Maybe they’re in charge of one recipe for dinner or maybe they’re putting together their own lunch. You’re making the food available and accessible, but they’re in charge of some of those chores that are related to food prep or cleanup as it relates to a meal. One other thing I want to bring in around that, and this comes from a podcast I did with somebody who’s an expert on adulting, Julie Lythcott-Haims. She was talking about how when we grew up we didn’t experience a culture of busy-ness in quite the same way that we’re seeing today. Sometimes, these meal prep chores, we’re not having our kids do them, because they’re too busy. Everybody is too busy. I can empty the dishwasher quicker than they can, I can set the table quicker than they can, so I might as well just do it for them. So I just wanted to bring in how the culture of busyness may show up in what we’re talking about, as well.VirginiaI think that applies for parents of all ages. I even think about that now with my eight-year-old, she could be clearing the table more. We do have them clear their own plates, but we were just having a conversation about starting to build in small opportunities for these skills. Because I want a 16-year-old who can make her own lunch! I don’t want to be packing lunches when they’re 16.SigneBefore before I did that interview, I don’t know that I was as aware of it, you know? My 12-year-old is like, “Can you get me some water?” I’m like, “Hey, you’re as tall as I am. Go get it yourself!” Right now I’m noticing how often I’m like there’s no time for her to empty the dishwasher. I’m just going to do it. Julie Lythcott-Haims, who was a Stanford Dean for several years, noticed a trend that a lot of these kids that are entering school nowadays, it looks like somebody has been cutting their meat for too long. Way too long.One other skill, as far as parents thinking about first steps that they might take in getting more attuned and connected to their body’s wisdom, is the hunger meter. We have a pretty basic hunger meter, which is one to ten. At the higher end is fullness. So, say six to ten, those are the fullness gradations of the hunger meter. At the lower end, the one would be famished, starving. A three would be the first sign of appetite, whatever that feels like for a particular person. When somebody is going from eating with a diet mentality or eating “from the chin up,” which means reducing their food choices to nutrients only and what I “should” and “shouldn’t” eat. When you go from years of eating from the chin up in a very disconnected, disembodied way and you’re going to start trying to eat from your body’s cues, the hunger meter can be a nice tool. Some people aren’t calibrated enough to start eating intuitively and so they might need to do mechanical eating. A simplified definition of mechanical eating might be eating by the clock on the wall. It may require some calibration first.VirginiaThat’s for folks who maybe in the past have been skipping meals or eating really erratically, so this is to make sure you are eating during the day and not skipping and ending up over-hungry.SigneThinking about getting recalibrated, doing some mechanical eating, ultimately that might give you some access to your body’s cues. And then the hunger meter as a tool may come in handy. We get told a lot that that’s probably one of the most helpful tools, and we have a chapter on the different gradations. Here’s what it would look like once you’re recalibrated. Maybe you just ate lunch at noon and it’s two o’clock and you’re feeling a pull toward food. Okay, so just trying to identify where you might be on, on the hunger meter. Maybe you’re at a five and you’re neutral. You’re not hungry and you’re not full, but you’re feeling that pull toward food. The hunger meter is meant to really just be used as a tool that you’re checking in and deciding from the inside. Becoming awake and aware about where you are. It’s all about choice. The target behavior here is really about creating a little bit of space between you and the food and just assessing where you are. oh, I’m at a five, I’m neutral. I’m not hungry, I’m not full. Just to be awake and aware of what’s going on for you—and then what you do after that is up to you. That’s your choice. The intervention or the target isn’t so much what you end up doing with the food—maybe you eat it, maybe you don’t, who cares? The intervention is just becoming awake and aware so you have more choice around your food.VirginiaThat’s a helpful distinction, because I do think there’s a risk of using hunger meters and feeling like, Well, I’m not hungry enough. There’s definitely a way to turn it into a diet,SigneYou can turn it into a diet in a nanosecond. It’s just creating that space between you and the food. VirginiaAnother thing you have in the book that I really love is the chapter on boundaries. I loved one you just highlighted, setting a boundary of not policing what your kid eats out of the house. What else do parents of teenagers need to understand about boundaries? What kind of boundaries should we be trying to respect when kids set them around food and body?SigneOne of my favorite excerpts around boundaries and food is from the chapter co-written with Anna Lutz, RD. [You can also hear Anna on Burnt Toast here!]Anna says: “Teens have the ability to know how much they need to eat. And when we interfere with that, as parents, we start to break down their natural ability. When we model that we trust our children to listen to their bodies, that they are in charge of their bodies, it also models consent.” So I think this really illuminates the importance of not interfering with children’s or teen’s stopping place. You are really helping them strengthen the muscle of listening to their instinct and honoring it. We might be talking about food right now, but in allowing them to do that with their food and not saying like, “you’re not going to get up from the table until you eat your broccoli,” or “you can’t have your dessert until you do this,” or “you’re not going to have another piece of pizza,” or whatever it is. VirginiaThat’s such a powerful moment, for parents to realize that the concepts that we’re working out around the dinner table is going to translate into how your kids trust their bodies in so many different settings. And that’s all we want, right? We want our kids to listen to their bodies first and foremost, in dating, all of a that.SigneThat’s my favorite boundary as it relates to food. In the body boundaries chapter, we did this effective communication model, we call it ad libs for effective communication. It’s an effective communication model that I see in a lot of places, it’s pretty well documented. When you have a body boundary to not let other people comment on your body, whether it’s positive or negative, letting them know where you stand. Like, “Hey, it’s not okay when you comment on my body without my consent.” So you stick with the facts, then you grab in one or two feeling words: “I feel angry.” And then the because. Because is what it is about them commenting on your body that makes you feel this way. “Because it gives me the impression that you’re scrutinizing my body.” So it’s a really simple formula and of course, you want to make it yours. You don’t want to sound like a therapy session. The person may come in and say, “Well, gosh, I just thought you looked great and I thought I would just tell you. It looks like you’ve lost weight.” The best way to win the game is to not play. So you just say, “That maybe be your perspective, but I wanted to let you know how those comments affect me.” Sometimes it helps to practice in your journal or with a therapist or to a friend that you’ve really felt safe with. Sometimes it’s helpful to just write out what you would have liked to have said that you didn’t feel comfortable saying, as you’re practicing and getting ready to do boundaries. Something I think we leave out when we talk about boundaries is they’re really hard. Especially if somebody has been taught to not make waves in their family of origin or if somebody’s temperament is conflict avoidant, it’s not very comfortable. I think it’s important, when we’re talking about boundaries, instead of just saying, “Oh, be sure to have a boundary and don’t let anybody comment on your body,” to also bring in this preparation. We need to tell people: When you do have these boundaries for the first time, it may feel really bad. I mean, really, really bad. In the chapter, I talked about my own experience, where I would feel so awful in practicing boundaries for the first time, like I robbed a bank or something. It might feels bad in that situation, not because your boundary is wrong, but because you’re breaking a pattern. VirginiaI appreciate the script you’ve given us because I think the other person’s reaction is often what makes it feel so dangerous. You can’t control whether or not the boundary will be respected or how they’ll respond. So that follow up of, “That may be your perspective, but I wanted you to know how these comments affect me,” is so helpful, because that gives you a way to get out of that. SigneYou’re right, you’re right. Because it of course it depends on who you’re giving the boundary to. If it’s a person that feels really safe and you have an egalitarian relationship with, then then they’re going to hear it and be very receptive. That’s going to be different from delivering a boundary from somebody who is out of balance. When you give a boundary to some people, they’re not going to be happy and that’s okay. It’s important for us to really get comfortable with tolerating somebody not being okay with us.VirginiaAnd not feeling like it’s our job to fix them not being happy about the boundary we needed to set. SigneYeah, you can say it in the most eloquent way, and some people may still not be happy and that’s alright.VirginiaThe last thing I wanted to talk to you about was your social media chapter. This is a major route that teenagers are being exposed to diet culture. Talk a little bit about how you advise parents to engage with kids on this. How do we talk about the negative food and body messages that kids are encountering online while holding that kids want to be on social media and that there’s a real need for it. SigneOne thing that I learned while writing this book comes from dialoguing with Sara Pipher Gilliam about social media. In preparing for the 25th Anniversary of Reviving Ophelia, they did 18 months of focus groups with adolescent girls and their parents. What was interesting is that every single one of those teenagers were told up front when they first got their devices, “We are going to be checking in on your social media on a regular basis. Whatever you put out there in a text or group chat, it’s for the whole world to see. I am going to be looking at it regularly.” And almost every single one of the parents never did follow up on that. This is something I’m dealing with regularly with with my particular caseload, but also with my 12-year-old. We have really good intentions and we know that the technology genie is out of the bottle and not going back in. We want to check their social media on a regular basis. But it’s mind numbing. It’s not fun. We want to be sitting down every few days or weekly and scrolling through and having them give us a tour of their TikTok or what they’re seeing and talk to them about it. But it’s just not very fun and we don’t want to do it. There’s a little bit of avoidance.VirginiaI already feel that way hearing my eight-year-old talk about Animal Crossing, so I can’t even imagine how I’ll feel when it’s TikTok.SigneYeah, it’s super boring. So let’s just say that out loud. In that chapter, we did use one of Sara’s interventions that she calls peer-to-peer peer agreements. I think we need to have parent-to-parent agreements, where we’re checking in with each other. Did you check your kid’s TikTok this week?The peer-to-peer agreements are really powerful, more so than what they might hear from a teacher or from a parent. It’s not uncommon for me to have a teenager in my caseload totally distraught because her friend was mad at her for not being on call at 2AM because she had a breakup. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes with social media, a lot of expectations. So maybe one of the agreement is we’re putting our phones away at 10PM, depending on the age. So that people know ahead of time and they don’t have unrealistic expectations for accessibility to each other. The other thing is, I’ve seen parents who are checking social media too often. It feels a little like dimming the kid’s light. It’s really different for everybody, but we need to be finding something that’s that sort of in the middle of being too strict or too loose with social media.VirginiaYou’ve talked about needing to respect to what kids are getting out of it, too. There’s the social piece and the creative expression that comes with social media. SigneI did an interview with a colleague and good friend of mine who is a registered Art Therapist. She talks a lot about how we really see our kids trying to express themselves creatively through social media, through music and dance. They’re looking for art, as well as creating it themselves. On one hand, that can be okay. On the other hand, we know that not all the images that they’re seeing are positive. What she says so eloquently is that social media is not meant to take to take the place of going to see art in real time or doing our own art. Over this last holiday, my mom was in town and she really had to push us out the door to go to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. I didn’t really want to go, like the parking, you know. We ended up getting there and I’m so glad. We brought my daughter and one of the times we brought her friends, too. They didn’t love everything, but it’s good for them to get exposed to art in different ways than on an online platform.VirginiaIn a museum, there is still an audience for the art, but it’s a much different audience than when you’re only putting things on social media and thinking of art as something you make for the whole internet. It’s really powerful for kids to realize that art is something they can do just for themselves. I think that’s really helpful for parents who are trying to appreciate what kids are getting out of it. But also figuring out the self regulation piece and kind of helping them learn those tools. It’s a messy thing we have to keep muddling through.SigneAnd making sure that there’s plenty of time where we allow our kids to be bored, and not sort of swoop in and rescue them from the boredom. Having art supplies available and accessible would be great. I do want to mention, the ability to have art supplies, and to go see art, depending on where you are, can be a privilege. Nowadays, places like the dollar store have a lot better art supplies than they did 10 years ago. So there are ways to get it cheaper than you used to be able to, so that’s cool. I like the idea of making sure they have a fair amount of time just hanging out in their boredom and learning to tolerate it and giving them an opportunity to come up with their own creative and imaginative expression through their own art.Butter For Your Burnt ToastSigneSomething that I’ve been up to lately that I used to do in my 20s and 30s and I rediscovered it recently is collaging. What’s really cool about collaging is that I don’t have art skills. I don’t know how to draw, I don’t necessarily know how to paint. So collaging can be one of the least daunting forms of creative expression. What I like about it, too, is that you can use the catalogs that come in the mail to just kind of spend time cutting out images that inspire you, which can be really meditative. My colleague calls it visual journaling. It’s kind of cool because it can give your journaling a three dimensional quality. For teens that maybe don’t want to be writing in their journal because they’re afraid a parent might see it, journaling through art or visuals can be a way to express and get your dark thoughts out on paper so that they’re not staying private. Only you really know what the symbols and the metaphors mean in the art. So it’s something that I’ve been doing myself and I’ve also been doing with clients. It’s been really helpful. I have a couple of clients that I’m doing that with right now that struggle with unhealthy perfectionism. So just spending time cutting out images and doing collage in a way that you can’t really get it wrong teaches is a nice mindfulness practice. It helps them pace themselves. And lately, I’ve been making collage cards. Cards are pretty expensive, at least the ones that I really like. You can personalize a collage card for a birthday card and make it uniquely for somebody that you’re close to. It’s just a fun way to share your art.VirginiaI mean, I’m obsessed. I want to start collaging immediately. It sounds like a great thing to do with teenagers with younger kids. It’s something I also did for a while and sort of dropped. And now as you’re talking about it, I’m like, where did that go? I need to bring collaging back. That’s a wonderful idea.SigneIt’s a really fun thing to just get totally lost in.VirginiaWell, my Butter this week is a movie recommendation. It’s not a new movie, so probably most people have seen it. I think it came out one of the years I had a baby because the year you have a child, you’re kind of culturally illiterate. It’s Inside Out and I had a feeling you would be a fan, Signe. We just watched it with our kids a few weeks ago. It was so funny because our four-year-old was really resistant. She had a lot of feelings before we started, but then she was just mesmerized. I think she has watched eight times since then. I mean, we were all stuck in the house with COVID for two weeks. It’s been so cool because she is really using the tools from it. So for people who don’t know, the premise of inside out is that it’s this 11-year-old girl Riley, who’s going through some big life stuff. And the movie is narrated by the emotions in her head. So you see the sadness and joy and anger, and disgust and fear constantly narrating what’s happening to Riley and what’s happening within her head. Now when my four-year-old gets mad, she goes, “Oh, angry guy, you’re being so loud in my head right now.” It’s amazing because she’s labeling the emotions and it takes her down a notch. She’ll scream and be frustrated and then we can talk about what the angry guy is so angry about. So yeah, if you’re looking for a way to talk about feelings with kids in a super accessible way, it’s such a beautiful movie. SigneIt is so well done. My co-author, Shelley Aggarwal, MD, she’s an adolescent medicine doctor. We were just talking about Inside Out because in our friendship with body image chapter, we have this section on how it’s really normal for adolescents to over-identify with their peer groups. She was talking about how perfect the movie is to explain and show over-identification with a peer group. Diversifying our interests is a really great way to protect ourselves from body image dissatisfaction or eating issues. I’ve been talking about watching it with my daughter again.VirginiaI can see it being something we come back to throughout the years. You’ll get different things out of it. Right now the four-year-old loves angry guy,- and she loves the imaginary friend Bing Bong, because she has many imaginary friends. My eight-year-old is a little more close to the vest with feelings and she, I think, felt very seen by the movie. Like, oh, other people have all these big feelings inside them. That was so wonderful to see. SigneIt’s just a brilliant movie. That’s going to be our movie this week.VirginiaGood to hear. Well, Signe, tell listeners where they can find more of you.SigneSo the pre-order link for Raising Body Positive Teens: A Parent’s Guide to Diet-free Living, Exercise, and Body Image is now available. My website has a books tab and both books are there. VirginiaThank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it,Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. Once again. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode and consider a paid subscription to Burnt Toast. You get a ton of cool perks including next week’s bonus episode and you will keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Why is dieting such an enduring idea when it has such mixed results? This hour we investigate that question by looking back at diets through history, talking about the latest science, and discussing portrayals of dieting through pop culture. GUESTS: Virginia Sole-Smith - Author of “The Eating Instinct” and a journalist who covers diet culture and weight stigma, and who writes the “Burnt Toast” newsletter, and hosts the “Burnt Toast” podcast. Louise Foxcroft - A historian and author of “Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting Over 2000 Years,” among other books. Evan Forman - Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Director of the Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science at Drexel University. Constance Grady - A senior reporter for Vox, and author of the recent article “Looking back at the ’90s has meant reexamining the decade’s toxic diet culture.” Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“I think in general, we all know too much about nutrition. I say that as a dietitian. Even the most intuitive eating of kids will be a picky eater. And that’s fine. We don’t need to nutrition them out of that. There isn’t of a nutrient in broccoli or kale that they can’t get from something else, I promise.”Welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about 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.Today’s guest is Amee Severson. Amee is co-author of How to Raise an Intuitive Eater with Sumner Brooks, RD. Amee is also a registered dietitian who specializes in eating disorder recovery, healing and preserving food/body relationships, and provides gender-inclusive and LGBTQ-affirming care.Amee joins us today to discuss their new book. We will be talking about feeding kids but also about doing your own work and why we need to forget everything we know about nutrition.If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And make sure you’re subscribed to the Burnt Toast newsletter for episode transcripts, reported essays, and so much more. (Here’s a 20% discount if you’d like to go paid!)Have a question or a topic you want us to tackle in a future episode? Post it as a comment on this episode of the newsletter or send it to virginiasolesmith@substack.com. Episode 26 TranscriptVirginiaI am so excited. I’ve interviewed you a few other times for articles and things, but it is always such a pleasure to chat with you.Today we are talking about your new book, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater. This is the book I’ve been dying to be able to hand to people. This is a resource we desperately need. I think a lot of people are expecting that they’re going to pick up this book and be told, “Step one to feed your child. Step two to feed your child.” Instead you spend the first 150 pages or so—really half the book—talking about parents. Why we as parents need to do our own work and how we can do that work. So, why start there? Especially because it is so hard, Amee. You’re making us do really hard work.AmeeI know. I wish I could make it easy and just have it be a complete step-by-step guide, but we would have been missing a lot.It’s not an uncommon question: Why make so much extra work in there? I remember when I was a kid, every woman in my family had super short hair. Over the age of like 35 or 40, everyone just cut their hair short. I had this assumption that you got old (because that was old to me when I was seven) and you cut your hair short. You didn’t have long hair when you were old. That’s ridiculous, you know? There’s just this assumption that this is what you do. And it was the same for dieting for my family. You reach teenage-hood and you joined Weight Watchers. You hated your body and you tried to lose weight. I just assumed that’s what you did as an adult. I know that I’m not alone because we see it everywhere. The way parents or caregivers talk about not just their body, but food in general. You don’t ever have to say anything explicitly to your child. You never have to say, “I think your body is wrong,” or “I think you’re eating wrong,” or “This is your fault.” If you are saying it to yourself, if you are living your life like that, your kids are tiny sponges who soak up all that and reflect it back in the world.VirginiaSomething I hear a lot from parents is, “My child is three or my child is thirteen and I’m now realizing I need to do this. And is it too late?” They’re wishing this was something they fixed about themselves before they became parents. Of course, we cannot go back to our pre-child selves and work on this. AmeeJust like with intuitive eating, it’s never too late to start working on it. I think at a certain point, it is probably more beneficial for your older teenage child to do their own work, as opposed to you having different rules or attitudes around food. It can feel so overwhelming to start, like, oh, I have to fix myself and master the first half of the book before I’m allowed to start trying to introduce these concepts to my kid. Especially when your kid is older, it can feel more urgent, too, like I need to do this now. I already screwed up so much. As a parent, I get that. You, as a parent or as a caregiver, are repairing your own relationship with food while continuing to foster your kids having a good relationship with food—those two things can happen concurrently. It can be very important, especially if your relationship with food isn’t what you want your kid to grow up with or if you get that sinking feeling that this is not what I want to see my kid doing in 20 years. Then doing it concurrently is important.VirginiaI think that’s reassuring, too, because it lets us know that we don’t have to fix it completely to do better for them. I hope people find that liberating. I know I do! I just think, okay, I don’t have to be getting an A+ on this, you know? I was trying to get dieting perfect for so long and now I have to get this perfect?AmeeYeah, there’s a lot of pressure to be the perfect parent all the time. Especially in this way I am so tired of, like “My kid eats kale, so they’re perfect.” My kid knows that kale goes to work with my husband. He puts it in a seafood case at work because it’s pretty, but we don’t eat it. And that’s totally fine! Because perfect parenting is a myth, I think. Sumner Brooks and I really emphasize throughout the book how faking it till you make it is totally okay. Having a lot of compassion for yourself for not having it all figured out and not being perfect is fine.VirginiaLet’s talk about your Three Keys concept. This is what you see as the building blocks of the feeding relationship. The first key is providing unconditional love and support for your child’s body. Am I right that this is often one of the hardest parts for folks?AmeeYeah, it definitely is. Partly because I think that it can be hard to recognize that we aren’t providing unconditional love and support for our kids. If someone is picking up this book, if someone’s listening to this podcast, if someone is looking up any sort of parenting advice online, they’re probably trying their damnedest to help their kid as much as possible. It’s not malicious, it’s none of that. They’re trying their best and hearing that we can be harming, for lack of a better word, our kids through setting expectations on their bodies or even praising bodies—any of that can be hard to hear. Like, oh crap I’m doing something wrong. We live in a society that has put conditional love and support on bodies and we want to change that, because one of the least important things about a person is what their body looks like or even what their body can do.VirginiaWhat is an example of when someone may think they’re providing that support, but they really aren’t? AmeeI think praise is a big one. Like, “You’re so pretty,” or “You’re so strong,” or “You’re so handsome.” It also can be subtle things. Something like, “are you sure you really want to wear that? You look really pretty. But are you sure you want to wear that?” It’s a lot of the buts, the “You’re doing really well at this thing, but your body is taking away from it.” And those are those unintentional jabs that build up over time.VirginiaI was just interviewing someone for my book and we were talking about athletics. Kids get told way, way, way too young that they don’t have “the body” for a particular sport, even if they love a sport. You might love running, but you don’t have a “runner’s body” or “You’re not tall enough to play basketball.” Even if you’re still putting your kid on the team or encouraging them to love that sport, you’re letting them know that they won’t be the best at it, and so that it’s somehow not worthwhile because of their body.Key number two is to implement a flexible and reliable feeding routine. This is something that you all articulated so well in the book that was really helpful for me. Often, we can either be very structured about meals or have zero structure and both can be really problematic. You said that what kids really need is to know they’re going to get enough food. The point of structure is to let them know that this is a need that will be met. I was like, oh, it’s not about trying to get the kid to eat on a certain schedule. It’s about reassuring that they are going to be fed. How did you come to that realization and why that is so important for parents to realize?AmeeOne of the reasons why it felt so important to talk about enough-ness is because of the central importance of enough-ness in all of nutrition. It’s not about what you’re eating or the timing of it, or anything. It’s just enough-ness, overall. It can feel really uncomfortable to say no, because that’s often how we’re told to do it as an adult for ourselves is if you want something, you eat it, regardless of when you want it, regardless of how you want it. That’s totally fine. Absolutely encourage that. Kids have very one track brains. They’re not quite as prefrontal cortex-developed as we are as adults. It can be harder for them to recognize, like truly recognize, that if I’m hungry and I don’t eat now, I will get enough food later. Especially if there has been a time where they were maybe presented with food, like a dinner for example, that they didn’t want to eat. It’s a lot of food, maybe on a plate, that they don’t enjoy. They’re going to probably leave the table hungry. And the same with snacks, the same with lunches, breakfast, all of it. If they’re not given enough and given the option to have enough, they develop the sense of okay, I need to get it when I can. And we want to make sure that they know that if you don’t eat all your lunch, that’s fine. And you can have more when you get home. I have an elementary school kid. And elementary school lunches are a whole thing where they only get like 10 minutes to eat food. My kid is a very slow eater. So I know she never finishes her whole meal. So she comes home hungry. We’ve fallen into the routine that she gets  another lunch when she comes home from school. Because otherwise she’s hungry. We want her to know that like, okay, you don’t have to feel sad or upset that you didn’t finish your lunch. You don’t need to feel chaotic when you come home and just go for whatever food is available. You can make yourself some mac and cheese, or we can. She’s figured out the microwave and it’s beautiful. So she can do more.VirginiaWe love that. Yeah, my eight year old has the toaster and the microwave down now.AmeeSame! It’s beautiful. It’s a lovely day as a parent when that happens.One other thing that comes up in that space is if we’re about to have dinner and she’s hungry, I will say “No, we’re not gonna have a snack right now because I want you to eat dinner. It will come and it’s food that you like. There will always be one part of it that you will eat. So I want you to be hungry for that.” It’s normal to be hungry leading up to a meal and there will be enough food for you to eat. My seven year old does not understand that whole sentence, but her brain will conceptualize and understand if we do it again and again. And that’s the goal.VirginiaYes, that’s helpful. I think you’ve just articulated this thing that parents struggle with. There are times when kids want to eat a lot of food and it’s not, in our brains, a time to eat. We think you had lunch at school but now you’re coming home starving. But you’re compensating for a lack, where she’s not getting enough time to eat her lunch at school. Versus, it’s 20 minutes to dinner and I’m not creating a lack by saying no at this point. Your enough-ness will be achieved very shortly, I’m just helping you understand 20 minutes. When you’re saying no, are you saying no in a way that’s restrictive or supportive? AmeeThat phrase right there—restrictive or supportive—is a conversation Sumner and I had a lot as we wrote this book. How can we phrase this in a way that is supportive and not restrictive? VirginiaYes. That’s a helpful phrase for us all to keep in our hearts and come back to in those moments when there’s a request for food that’s catching you off guard. And then the third key is to develop and use your intuitive eating voice. What is my Intuitive Eating voice, Amee? AmeeIt’s the voice that tells us we are hungry, we want food, that we don’t really want to eat this food tonight, but we want to eat that one. It’s I want to move my body today because I feel like I’ve got energy. It’s I don’t have energy and I think I need to take a nap. We are all born with that voice, all of us are, and sometimes we shut it down. Sometimes we’re just raised and in this culture that is not allowing us to foster that, not allowing us to hold on to that and to trust it. So, by developing and using that intuitive eating voice, we get the chance to pull it out of hiding and keep it from being lost. By doing that as a caregiver, as a parent, we show how safe it is, how okay it is to do that. We get to be the home base forever, for these kids. Like, this is what my my family did and it was fine. This is what I learned is safe and okay. We can really allow that space to be held for ourselves. For our kids, it looks like not letting this thing that is really cool and really important fade away and be locked in a deep dark corner of our brain. Because it’s a really cool space where we get to trust our bodies.VirginiaI’m almost tearing up as you talk about that because it’s really such an honor to be able to do that for our kids. It’s a privilege that we can be that space for our kids. So, you take us through these three keys and then we start to talk about nutrition. I love how late in the book nutrition comes because all too often this is where the conversation starts and stops, right? Why do you think it’s so important to shift the focus off nutrition? When is there a place for nutrition in the conversation?AmeeI think in general, we all know too much about nutrition. I say that as a dietician. 90% of the work that I do is un-teaching nutrition to people because there’s so much that’s contradicting itself or so overblown. How the heck are you supposed to navigate all of that? The last thing Sumner and I want to do is throw on even more rules. The rules are not the point. We didn’t want to make it the main focus of the book because it’s not the main focus of intuitive eating. It’s not the main focus of raising kids. If you are shoving vegetables on your kid, they’re not gonna eat it. My kid ate a bite of a carrot last night. That was it. Her vegetable for the day was a single bite of a carrot. And that was fine. I was glad she ate a bite of the carrot because they were good. Because when we obsess about nutrition—did you eat enough vegetables, did you eat enough fruit, protein, fat—we take away from that intuitive eating voice. We take away from that instinct that it’s okay to eat food. It’s okay to to not like things. It’s normal to have a picky kid. It’s not a screw up on parents part. it’s not a broken thing within your kid. Even the most intuitive eating of kids will be a picky eater, and that’s fine. We don’t need to nutrition them out of that. There isn’t of a nutrient in broccoli or kale that they can’t get from something else, I promise. We can expose our kids to these things, expose them to us as parents, normally eating food andtaking the pressure off of ourselves and off of them to find the most important thing that we could possibly eat on our plate is the brussel sprout. It’s just a piece of food, same as this chicken, same as this french fry. I don’t need to fight with you about this one. I’m allowed to not like this and I’m allowed to try it. That comes up, too, how many exposures it takes for a kid to be willing to try a food, to be willing to accept a food. It’s a lot, like 18 to 20 exposures, which is just looking at the food existing.VirginiaRight, without pressure to eat it. I think so often people hear that exposure number and think that means they have to push it on their kid 18 to 20 times. They just need to be in a room with it.AmeeYeah, It’s like sparkling water, like if the essence of it exists in a room with you.VirginiaIt’s the Lacroix of vegetables. Just a waft. Check, we got another exposure down. The hyper focus on nutrition and the anxiety parents have about nutrition so often gets in the way of the meal being relaxed, fun, maybe you have a conversation you enjoy with your child. All of that gets lost, right? We’re not getting that opportunity for food as connection and food as comfort. AmeeYeah, when it turns into a food fight at the table, like just eat this food, it takes takes the focus away from a time where we can hang out or just be together. My daughter, she’s almost eight and she goes in and out of more picky periods, but she’s also a kid and her tastes do not line up with that of mine and my husband’s. I like really spicy curry. She does not, to my great disappointment, like really spicy curry. So if I’m going to make curry, I don’t expect her to eat it. I don’t even really expect to present it to her because she knows what it is. She isn’t gonna touch it. But I know she’ll eat some of the dino nuggets I keep in the freezer. So she can have that and some white rice and she’ll eat one of those things.The other night we had fish tacos, again spicy and fish, two big no-no’s. So, we made her a quesadilla because we figured she would eat a quesadilla. It did not land that night. I don’t know why, could not figure it out. But it was not the ticket. And she was visibly really sad. She ate a couple bites and was like, “I’m full.” And we were like, “No, you’re not, like, we know you’re not full. What’s wrong?” Just very quietly, she was like, “I just don’t like this tonight.” And we’re like, “Oh, just go get something else then. You can make yourself a sandwich or have some mac and cheese.” Like, “Eat food, please.” She got up and made herself an easy mac. It was beautiful.VirginiaYes, that’s awesome. It does get easier when they can use the microwave themselves so you’re not the one having to get up and make the whole second meal. That’s the tension, right? Is all the labor that goes into that. AmeeThe food she can make herself, she can switch out a dinner for. That’s the rule.VirginiaThat’s a great rule. That’s a great way to put it.AmeeAnd we always, always have some foods that–well, there’s a really weird Uncrustables shortage right now. It’s very sad, actually, because it makes lunches a lot harder to pack. But, even before she could use a microwave, we would have Uncrustables in the freezer, and she would just pull those out and eat those. Or a bowl of cereal, which is totally fine, too.VirginiaI think folks are gonna find this deeply reassuring. I want to talk a little more about the nutrition piece. I liked how you said that you do a lot of un-teaching in your work because I think a big problem is we’ve absorbed so much of this nutrition knowledge and accumulated it so intensively over the years. Is there a way to incorporate nutrition in a more useful way into your life? Or is it a matter of just letting a lot of that information go? AmeeYeah. I think there is a little bit of case-by-case for that because there is some nutrition information out there that is really valuable for some people, given their circumstances in life or what’s happening for them. And some of that same information is really not useful for anyone else. For example, my partner is diabetic. He needs to count carbs because he needs to dose insulin. If he doesn’t, It could be bad. I however, don’t need to count carbs. Neither does my kid. The only reason my kid is learning any carb ratios at all is for “Daddy has low blood sugar. Can you please go get him a soda?” She did absolutely bring him a Diet Coke one time.VirginiaLove the effort but…AmeeSo, we’re learning this one has carbs so we need you to bring this one to Daddy. But so many of those little specific nutrition like tidbits can be really important for one person but really unimportant for another. We are in such like a black and white society that if this thing is important for one, we assume it’s important for all. If this thing is unhealthy for one person, we assume it’s unhealthy for all, but that’s not true. We can pick and choose what is important and for the most part, we also get to pick and choose that forever. For example, I like to use my husband’s example. He doesn’t drink sugar sodas, for example, because he didn’t drink them growing up and he doesn’t think it’s worth his insulin. But Fritos and queso, like Fritos scoops and the crappy Fritos queso, is his jam. He will eat an entire bag in 30 minutes. That’s one of his Christmas presents every year. That’s worth his insulin.There are a few exceptions to that, like allergies is one. But for the most part, we get to pick and choose when it’s important and when it’s not. We don’t have to cut anything out ever. If it will kill you, then maybe. But for the most part, we don’t have to. If we are interested in or willing to do the work to unpack our own internal diet culture beliefs, internal fatphobia, and the way we externalize that as well, then we really get to pick it apart, which is a lot of work and sometimes not the most fun work. But that’s what leads to having a better relationship with all of this. I find most of the work we do around nutrition is unpacking what’s not important.VirginiaThat’s a really empowering way to frame it. I think people think they don’t get to choose. Nutrition is given to them as the set of cardinal rules they have to follow instead of something you can filter through your own life and your own context.I really love that you call the last chapter of the book “what to do when this feels harder than you thought.” I do not want to give away the ending of the book. There’s so much more in this book than Amee and I have talked about—you need to read the whole thing. But I do think when people are working on divesting from diet culture and fatphobia it just feels so hard some days. You hit these brick walls and you don’t know where to go. Then you end up worrying that what you did caused more harm because you’re trying to reduce harm. So what do we do when we hit those brick walls? AmeeI think accepting, believing, expecting that we will hit a wall at some point. There’s always a wall, whether it’s exhaustion or just confusion or frustration because we all have limits. We don’t have to be ready for every circumstance that’s gonna come our way. And we can have a lot of compassion for ourself in that space. I expect it to be hard. I haven’t met a single person that’s like, “Oh, my God, that was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” Most people come to me, as a clinician, and are like, this is so much harder than I thought it would be. It is challenging. And it is for our kids, too. The longer we’ve been stuck in our own diet culture mindset, the harder it can be to encourage our kids to re-trust this space. It can feel really frustrating and hard and that’s okay. I think self compassion is probably the most important thing we can hold.In our house we have a lot of conversations about how we’re not going to have any more candy right now. We’re gonna save this candy for later and you can have more tomorrow. Or no, you don’t get to eat more Halloween candy before bed because you just brushed your teeth and I’m tired. You’re going to bed and you can have more tomorrow.VirginiaI had a cool moment with my four year old recently. We had popcorn and we hadn’t had popcorn in the house for a while because my kids are really messy with popcorn so I stopped buying it for a few months. Then I was like, Oh, they love popcorn, I should get popcorn again. And the first day we had it, my four year old wanted only popcorn. At dinner she was having a plate of popcorn. And then she wanted another plate of popcorn and another plate of popcorn and I could see Dan, my husband, getting a little tense. Like, are we gonna watch her eat a whole bag of popcorn? Is that okay? I knew that it was just because it was new and we hadn’t had popcorn for a while and she loves it and she was really happy to have it. I said to her, “Just so you know, I want you to have as much as you want with dinner. We can also, if you’re getting full, save your plate and have this popcorn with breakfast tomorrow.” Immediately her posture changed and she was like, “Oh, oh yeah, I’m full.” and gave me the plate and we put it aside for breakfast and she ate it for breakfast the next morning. And it was clearly that she was just like, “I better eat all the popcorn right now because I don’t know when I’ll have it again.” As soon as I explained that it’s here in the house now and we’ll have it again, she was like, “Oh, Okay, got it.” That was very cool to watch happen  in real time with her.AmeeYeah, once you see your kids start to do it, it’s really cool. We had a similar experience with a chocolate orange, those ones you whack on the table and they break apart. That fun, interactive food is really exciting for my kid right now. We found one at Trader Joe’s and she was so excited about it, and we bought it. She ate that first one within a few days. Then we went back to Trader Joe’s a couple days later and there was another one. So we got it. It’s been like a week and a half and it’s still sitting in the cupboard and she keeps forgetting it exists because it’s just not exciting anymore.Butter For Your Burnt ToastAmeeWe are currently watching—we’re late to the game—Succession. That is what we spend our nights doing. I’m very invested in all these people that I really hate so if you want to hate watch something…VirginiaIf you have not read it yet, the New Yorker profile of Jeremy Strong is a fascinating and hilarious read. Definitely check it out.It turns out he is just as horrible as Kendall Roy is. He’s not actually acting at all. At times I even found it a little triggering because I find all the men on Succession a little triggering. I was like, “Oh, God, he’s like so many like, boys I had crushes on in high school who turned out to be these theater jerks.”AmeeThat’s the whole reason we stopped watching House of Cards after one season. We’re like, this is too close to home. We have to stop.VirginiaExactly. Okay, my recommendation is also something to watch. It is a movie I watched recently. As folks know, I do a monthly movie club with my siblings. My siblings are significantly younger and cooler than me, so we each take turns picking movies and my movie is always a terrible pick and then they all pick these amazing things. This was my brother-in-law’s pick, actually, it’s called The Sound of Metal. It is a really moving film about a musician. He’s a drummer in a heavy metal band and he loses his hearing overnight. He goes completely deaf and you never really find out why he loses it. But you watch him coming to terms with being deaf. It’s also a powerful story about addiction. He’s in recovery and you see his quest to get his hearing back almost as like a form of relapsing. It’s just a beautiful movie, it takes you into the deaf community. It’s very thought-provoking about addiction, mental health, and disability and it’s beautifully shot and acted. So Amy, thank you so much for joining us. This was such a great conversation. The book is How to Raise an Intuitive Eater. Tell folks where they can find more of your work.AmeeMy website for my professional work is Prosper Nutrition Wellness. I’m based in Washington State. You can find me on Instagram or Twitter at Amee Severson. Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast! If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode. Or consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast Newsletter. It’s on sale this month for just $4 per month or $40 for the year. You get a ton of cool perks and you keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space. The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti diet journalism! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Every January nearly 75 percent of Americans resolve to make their lives better by losing weight. But this year we're breaking free from the cycle of restrictive eating and spiraling shame. Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith, host and author of Burnt Toast and The Eating Instinct, has some eye-opening tips for our listener Tori that will help her ditch the scale, become more comfortable with her body, and even learn to control sugar cravings—by eating as many sweets as she wants.  If you liked this episode, check out “How To Lose 155 Pounds Happily” Do you have a question with no easy answers? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every January nearly 75 percent of Americans resolve to make their lives better by losing weight. But this year we're breaking free from the cycle of restrictive eating and spiraling shame. Journalist Virginia Sole-Smith, host and author of Burnt Toast and The Eating Instinct, has some eye-opening tips for our listener Tori that will help her ditch the scale, become more comfortable with her body, and even learn to control sugar cravings—by eating as many sweets as she wants.  If you liked this episode, check out “How To Lose 155 Pounds Happily” Do you have a question with no easy answers? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“This is exactly what diet culture, and everyone who gives advice on Instagram  doesn’t want you to know, because it’s not straightforward. And there’s no clear solution.”Welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about why your kids should be eating more waffles and frozen burritos for dinner. We also talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today’s guest is Burnt Toast fan favorite and friend of the show, Amy Palanjian. Amy is the creator of the kid food blog Yummy Toddler Food. She’s also a mom of three, my lifelong work wife, and my former co-host on the Comfort Food Podcast. Amy joins us today to dissect the concept of the “back-up meal.” If your kids hate what’s for dinner, should you let them swap it out for something else? And more to the point: Since many of you have told us you are doing this, how do we let go of the guilt they can inspire?If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And make sure you’re subscribed to the Burnt Toast newsletter, for episode transcripts, reported essays and so much more. Have a question or a topic you want us to tackle in a future episode? Post it as a comment on this episode of the newsletter or send it to virginiasolesmith@substack.com. PS. Amy’s and my last conversation was about Halloween candy. If you are stressing about holiday food right now, this might be a good one to go back and listen to because all the strategies we talked about for Halloween candy definitely still apply. Episode 25 TranscriptVirginiaToday we are talking about backup meals. This first came up when I wrote an essay on Burnt Toast about how my grandmothers fed their families. My British grandmother did not cook a weeknight dinner, ever. In England, they have tea as an evening meal. In my grandmother’s house, tea meant literally a cup of tea and two pieces of toast, maybe some sponge cake. That is all you serve and it is possibly genius. I do love that this newsletter is called Burnt Toast. I didn’t know this story about her when I named it that, but it feels very appropriate. A lot of readers, after that essay, said, "We don’t do exactly that, but if our kids don’t like what we’re eating for dinner, we let them pick a backup meal like peanut butter and jelly or a bowl of cereal." And then you, Amy, messaged me and said, "Oh yeah, our backup meal is a frozen burrito." And my head exploded because you and I have been talking about how we feed our kids for the last eight-and-a-half years and I had no idea you did this! AmyWe did it with our first kid. She could have toast if she didn’t like the main meal. Then we had more children and I stopped doing it regularly because it seemed like too much work. Instead, I leaned in hard to making sure that there were easy sides on the table. But I’ve got a kid who’s nine, and she likes what she likes. Sometimes she’s willing to try new things and sometimes she’s not. I have discovered that I don’t actually need to make her eat food she doesn’t want to eat. So we have easy options that I don’t actually have to get up and cook. The only problem with our current backup meal is that it requires me to buy a lot of frozen burritos, which I should maybe just embrace. But there’s a particular one from Amy’s that all three of my kids really like. It’s just bean and cheese. I should just buy it by the case.So, maybe twice a month she really dislikes the meal. She will get up and make herself a frozen burrito. Right now I’m testing recipes for a cookbook, so my kids are seeing recipes that they’ve never seen before, or they’re seeing things in slightly different ways, because we tend to eat the same thing and I can’t make a cookbook with five recipes.VirginiaNo. You need, like, 75 recipes and that is a lot of new food to throw at your kids all the time. That’s like the cobbler’s kids have no shoes. Or in your case, many, many pairs of shoes that they don’t want to wear.So, an interesting thing to me about the whole backup meal conversation is that when people started telling me they were doing it, it was a little apologetic or ashamed. Like, “Yeah, we know we’re not supposed to, but this happens at our house.” And I just thought, where have we gone wrong here? Because to me, this does not sound like a failure. You have a nine-year-old who’s capable of making her own burrito for dinner! This feels like a triumph! So, let’s unpack this a little bit. Where do you think this sense of backup meals as a parenting failure comes from?AmyI think a lot of it is this pressure on family meals, that we’re all eating the same thing. The point of family meals is to expose kids to a range of foods over time so that they eat them. Which, as you and I know, is not really the way that humans work. Backup meals feel like a departure from what we’ve been taught. So I think it’s both the pressure on family meals to look a certain way and also the way that we talk about the Division of Responsibility. The way that we talk about how we feed our kids doesn’t really allow for the option of the kids just choosing something else. VirginiaDivision of Responsibility can reduce a lot of pressure. But what happens if the kid refuses every piece of food you put on the table? The backup meal is definitely not strict DOR because it’s what they’re trying to get you away from. But there’s also this reality.AmyYeah, I think there’s also something about if we let our kids eat the food that they want, we’re somehow not doing our job. It feels like we’re not succeeding in our parenting goals of raising kids who want to eat a bunch of different foods. VirginiaOften the foods they want to eat are not foods that we have been told we can feel good about them wanting to eatAmyEspecially not for dinner.VirginiaRight. This is where the diet culture piece of it comes in. You’ve made a delicious kale salad with a runny egg on top and some goat cheese and your kid is turning all of that down and would rather have Eggo waffles (not like that’s a story that’s happened in my own house or anything.) You’re not supposed to live on Eggo waffles. But kids are not programmed to want confusing textures like kale and runny eggs all the time.AmyI mean, honestly, I don’t ever even want to eat kale. I also think, we serve more vegetables probably at dinner than most other meals, because it’s the meal that we cook more. So, I think if we know that our kids are just going to eat some crackers that we’ve doubly failed.VirginiaRight, you’ve missed this opportunity to get vegetables into them. We’ve equated dinner with vegetable consumption in a way that’s counterproductive, both to teaching kids to like vegetables and to enjoying dinner.  AmyRight. Also, kids are the most tired at that time of the day. So giving them the more challenging foods in that context is just silly.VirginiaIf you’re approaching this from that Division of Responsibility mindset, there’s this equating of backup meals with short order cooking. I think we need to sort out the gray area between these things. A backup meal is not helpful if I sit down at the table and my kid immediately demands something different and I have to get up and go prepare another meal. That’s short order cooking. That does legitimately both make me cranky and create a not-great power dynamic between me and my kids and food. So a backup meal is not that. But what is it? What’s your line?AmyWell, I’m not getting up.VirginiaThat is the line. Amy’s not getting up.AmyI’m not getting up. The kids need to be able to get it on their own. So, we have done the frozen burrito, which my two girls can make on their own, and we have done cereal, which they can bring to the table. The five-year-old needs help because she can’t pour. And we’ve done toast. In my mind, this is a fairly rare occurrence. It is a way to make sure that the meal is still pleasurable for everyone and that we can have a good experience regardless of what the food is, so I want the food to be super straightforward.VirginiaI’ll also say, as someone for whom the backup meal is becoming a less rare occurrence—more like a twice a week occurrence—don’t feel bad, if it’s more frequent. For kids with more complicated histories around food, this might be where you are. If settling on a backup meal that they feel good eating an doesn’t create extra work for you enables you to share the meal, and have a fun conversation with your kid, that’s great. That’s going to do so much more for their confidence and comfort level around food than dying on the “But I put rolls on the table and that’s your safe food and why won’t you eat the rolls” mountain. They’re like, “Because these rolls have seeds on them and I hate rolls with seeds.” Now you’re in a whole hellscape. AmyMy kids can spot a seed from like seven miles away.VirginiaSeeds are such a problem, and yet my children love everything bagels which are covered in many kinds of seeds. Speaking of bagels, I want to list some of the options people said they use as backup foods because I think these all fall into that criteria you’re sketching out of very minimal prep, kids can access themselves, and you can quickly move on with the rest of the meal. So: yogurt, cereal, simple sandwiches, PB&J type things, bagel and cream cheese, sliced turkey, peanuts, cheese and crackers.I also appreciate the mom who said, “Whatever they can safely get out of the fridge by themselves” because that seems like a fair bar. Any other options that you would recommend or that I haven’t listed there?AmyFrozen foods, like burritos. You mentioned waffles.VirginiaWaffles are huge in my house.AmyWe don’t do mac and cheese as this option, but you could get those individual microwavable servings.VirginiaAnother piece we need to talk about is the timing. I have been experimenting with, rather than having it happen in that moment of everyone sitting down at the table, I have been talking to my kid ahead of time and saying, “Here’s what I’m making for dinner. Do you want that? Or would you like a bagel or a waffle?” And the reason I like that is because then we don’t have the super stressful panic attack moment at the table where she feels overwhelmed by stuff she doesn’t want to eat. It gives her more confidence going into the meal that she knows there’s going to be something there she likes. But I don’t know if that would work for everybody. AmyI would much rather bring everything to the table, including whatever easy sides I’ve decided to include, and see how that goes first. Because if I offered a frozen burrito every night, they would probably always take it. Usually the reactions that my kids have about food are worse when they don’t see it. Like if I was saying, “I’m making pasta,” they’d be like, “What shape? What color? Is there cheese?” I don’t have the bandwidth to have the pre-negotiation. So I would rather just wait, even though, it could create a hiccup.VirginiaI think you have to know your kid’s temperament. We were stuck in a bad pattern of kids sitting down to the table and screaming. That was super triggering for me, because I literally just finished putting effort into this meal. I want to sit down and enjoy my food and instead I’m having to sort out whether or not you’re going to eat it. So deciding ahead of time, even if it means she’s defaulting to the backup meal more often, is reducing our dinnertime conflict so much that it feels worth it. But I completely agree. I’m saying, “Do you want ramen noodles and kimchi or do you want a bagel?” It’s not shocking that she’s like, “Bagel, please.” She may be saying that more because I’m asking. So another work-around is to think about how you can still make the meal feel inclusive for them. I still serve the rest of the dishes family style, and every now and then if she sees something she does want a bite of, or there’s a new food, and I’ll say, “Do you want some of this on your plate?” I’m not ruling out the idea that she would eat the rest of the meal. I’m just like, “Okay, you want a bagel on your plate and then there’s this other stuff you can choose from.” This is why we have to get away from these hard and fast rules about how family dinner has to go, because this is what’s working in my house. But it needs to play out differently in your house.AmyI think we need to give ourselves plenty of room for this to change and adjust to whatever phase that you’re going through. This is exactly what  diet culture and  everyone who gives advice on Instagram doesn’t want you to know, because it’s not straightforward: there’s no clear solution. The key here is being responsive to your family in the context. I think as my kiddo is getting older, I’m trying to see where I can give her more independence and let her be more in charge. And that’s not every night, but we want them to be able to respectfully speak up when they want to add something else to their plate. Even if it’s a condiment, or if they want a different drink. These are subtle ways that they can advocate for themselves in those situations. So, practicing that a little bit more, especially as kids get into middle school, and they might start hearing stuff. I just want some of those tools to be practiced. VirginiaThat’s a useful way of reframing this. I think the reason people were embarrassed to admit they did the backup meal is because it felt like overly catering to their kid, and because the food that the backup meal is isn’t “good” food for family dinner. But when we think about our big picture goal, it’s not to have a kid who eats everything that we serve. It’s to have a kid who can navigate the strange waters of, “What am I hungry for? What do I need at this meal? Is that different from the messages I’m getting?” The family dinner is a place to practice that before they’re out in the world, and the messages they’re getting are diet culture messages. Having them be firm and able to stand their ground in knowing, “this is how my needs will be met at this meal.” That’s the whole goal. That’s what we’re doing.AmyI’ve been thinking about this more this past year, because it’s been very hard for me to feel excited about food through COVID and all the stress. I’m hungry physically, but not much is appealing. So I am very aware of what it feels like when someone else offers me food that I don’t want. It’s a horrible feeling when someone wants you to eat something and you don’t want it. It’s that pressure that comes with knowing someone wants you to do something that you just, in your body, don’t want to do. I’m not saying this is always going to happen at the dinner table. But It’s liberating to look at this as part of raising a competent eater.VirginiaA kid who can advocate for themselves and who knows that what feels safe in their body matters more than making other people happy. That’s important.AmyOn Instagram recently, I had posted this reel that gave ways to help kids engage with their food and to help them feel more in control of their food. There were a lot of comments from people saying things like “This generation of parents gives their kids too many choices.” It’s not like previous generations of adults had great relationships with food.  Why would we not do something different?VirginiaWe’re actually trying to unlearn some stuff here.Okay, so back to nuts and bolts. Do you think it should always be the same option, no matter what? Or would you rotate? One idea I got from a follower was that the backup meal is always cereal, but the kids can pick which kind of cereal, which seems like a nice framework if you’re a family that stocks multiple kinds of cereal, which we are. AmyIt rotates based on what we have in the house. Some weeks, we might have frozen burritos. And then some weeks, we might just have a lot of bread. Or we might have muffins that I made.VirginiaYou could get caught in a really frustrating power struggle if your backup meal is a burrito and she’s like, actually, I don’t like burritos anymore. And then it’s like well, now what am I doing?AmyYeah. I keep it fairly loose.VirginiaWhat about if you’re dealing with multiple kids? Do siblings get the same backup meal option? Or would you kind of customize it for each kid? AmySo, the last time that we had a burrito with the oldest, I thought that the younger two were going to ask for one, but they wound up not. We did have one meal where nobody was happy so they brought cereal to the table, and then all the kids had a bowl of cereal. Sometimes, one of them asks for cheese and crackers and they’ll just bring it to the table and then anyone who wants it can have it. It just gets very chaotic when you’ve got multiple kids. And I don’t want the whole kitchen on the dining table.VirginiaBecause that’s overwhelming for kids, too. And messy and frustrating for you. But this is not hard and fast. There are going to be scenarios where it would make sense to customize, certainly if you have kids with an age difference that impacts their chewing ability, like a young toddler and a preschooler, you might have to do different backups. But I agree, if our big picture is less work for us, then whatever reduces the chaos makes sense. The other piece of it we should talk about more is, should kids be in charge of getting it themselves? I know that’s what your nine-year-old is doing. I was all for this at first, because it does sound like the best way to reduce the work, especially if you’re waiting to make the backup meal call at the table. But when I talked about this on Instagram, Diana Rice of @anti.diet.kids raised some great points. She works with kids with ARFID and other traumatic feeding histories, and her concern was that if you have a kid who is regularly needing a backup option, leaving them to fend for themselves could make them feel really isolated and could add to the stress of managing that condition. I think that’s a piece that’s worth considering.AmyI think it's all about what your reaction is in the moment when you're having that conversation with your kid. It would be very easy to take their disinterest in the meal personally, and to say something like, “Well, fine, go get your own food.” It's hard to not have emotional reactions when the kids don't want the food that we make. But I think the more you can remember that dinner is a time to be together, everyone may or may not eat the same thing, that's not really the end all be all goal here. There could be a way that your kid can go get their food, and then you ask them to tell you a joke, or you get the conversation off of the food. Or if their backup meal is always the same thing—like if it is always bagels in your house—maybe you put those bagels someplace that your kid can reach near the toaster with the stuff that she would need. Just like we have a snack bin, so after school the kids can get their own snacks.VirginiaI think this comes down to intention. You don't want the child to feel like they have failed because they're opting for the backup meal option. Just like you shouldn't perceive this as a failure of your own parenting or food prep skills. The goal is to have a kid find this empowering. My eight-year-old has a traumatic feeding history and this has always been our way through: Giving her as much control as makes sense to give her. So for her, it's confidence-building that she can make her own waffles or she can go get something she wants from the fridge. But for another kid who is in a different place with that struggle, it could feel like they aren't being cared for.  AmyEspecially if they're younger, too. VirginiaYes, obviously we're not saying expect your three year old to hop up and go peel a banana. Another piece of advice from Diana is to consider making the backup meal into a bedtime snack. So if your kid doesn't eat a lot of dinner, you don't have to worry about them going to bed hungry because you can give them the cereal, or whatever, as the bedtime snack. Make that something sort of predictable and something they can rely on and that is minimal prep work, which is similar to how you do bedtime snacks at your house.AmyYeah, ours is a banana or no banana. That's the option that we have, just because it's very straightforward. And I don't want to be negotiating with small children at that time of the day. For my two-year-old, if he didn't eat dinner and he ate a banana, that would be enough food for him. Because he, at this time in his life, has a very small appetite at that time of the day. I just don't know that that would be enough for some kids. You have to read the room.VirginiaMy four-year-old basically never has a bedtime snack because her bedtime comes really soon after dinner. But my eight-year-old does. She's our night owl kid. And she, regardless of whether she eats dinner or not, will often make two or three more waffles, because who doesn't love a bedtime waffle? I think we, as parents, are always looking for food rules. That's what diet culture teaches us to do. And also, parenting kids is hard and it's more helpful to do it with a roadmap. You want to make these rules, like we don't do a backup meal, or if we do a backup meal, it's only this. But the way the math plays out at your house might be different.AmyI think it's okay to trust yourself a little bit more, even if what you decide to do is not the conventional wisdom. Or if what we're saying makes no sense to you, I think that's fine, too.VirginiaYes. If you've gotten this far into the episode and think, Well, they are crazy and unreliable, that’s fine. We're comfortable with that. I'll wrap up by talking a little bit about how this has worked at our house. I was blown away by this whole concept when people introduced it to me. I was thinking and talking about it all week on Instagram. That weekend, Dan was cooking—he cooks on Sundays a lot. He was doing a roast chicken and some vegetables, which is a meal three out of four of us like. As he was getting started, he said to our eight year old, "I'm doing chicken and vegetables for dinner. Do you want a bagel?" And she said yes. And then she just happily went off to play and that was it. And I said to him, “Oh, that reminds me, were you following my Instagram this week? We need to decide if we're going to do backup meals.” And he goes, "Oh, I hate that idea." And I was like, "Wait, but you just did it. That's the backup meal." It turned out that he thought I meant short order cooking. Like, we sit down to dinner they don't like and we'll get up and cook you a backup meal at that point. And I was like, “No, no, no, no, no. It's the thing that you just did of giving her another option.” And he was like, "Well, that's what I always do. Why wouldn't we do that?" It was not something I was doing, but it's how he has been approaching it whenever he cooks family meals. I hadn't noticed, somehow. So, we've apparently been doing it all along with great success. Butter For Your Burnt Toast AmyI have a relatively new recipe for gingerbread muffins. They're straight up holiday-spiced goodness. They store incredibly well. And they have molasses in them, so they're crazy moist. I usually make a double batch and put half in the freezer. I've been putting very pretty gold sugar on top (from Wilton) so they're kind of festive.VirginiaThey're really cute. I appreciated them on your Instagram.AmyI guess it's a unique enough flavor that it feels special. Even though it's just a muffin. It makes me feel like I've tried harder even though it's just stirring stuff together in a bowl.VirginiaMy recommendation is a little bit random and has nothing to do with food. But I am a broken human being and I do not like to tie shoelaces because it's just time in my day that I don't want to invest in that task. This is how I feel about you know, teeth brushing and showering, too. But I do do those things every day. AmyI was just going to say that I don't actually ever untie my shoes. Is that unusual?VirginiaHow do you get them on your feet?AmyI guess they're loose enough that I just slide my feet in? I don't know. VirginiaI didn't know that was an option, so I spent $12.95 on these special shoe laces that I'm about to tell you about. Maybe there's something to my foot shape? Don't shame my foot shape. I need these! Okay, so the laces are called Xpand Laces. They are basically just elastic that comes in colors. So, I got white to match my sneakers. You lace them just like you would lace a normal sneaker and then there's a little clip thing at the end that holds the lace inside your shoe so you don't have to tie your laces. And then you can just shove your foot in. I have these cute Veja sneakers that I got for fall / winter. I just pretend the V stands for Virginia. I'm so happy because now I'm wearing them a ton. You can cut the laces to any length, so they would be a great option for kids. I'm secretly hoping that laced-up shoes for kids are just gonna go the way of cursive handwriting because it is a mountain we have yet to climb in my house. We're still buying velcro shoes. Fortunately, my children have smallish feet so I can still find velcro shoes in their size, but that ship is gonna sail. And we're going to have to either learn how to lace their shoes or get these shoe laces.AmyAlso, the amount of energy that I spend telling my oldest child to tie her shoelaces instead of just walking on them? That would be nice not to have to do.VirginiaLet's just remove shoelaces from our mental load.AmyYou're solving everyone's problems. VirginiaYou're welcome. Alright, Amy, thank you, as always for being here! Remind listeners where they can find more of your work. AmyYou can find me at Yummy Toddler Food Or @Yummytoddlerfood on social.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. Once again. If you'd like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode and consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter. It's just $5 per month or $50 for the year.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

We need our own place to critique diet culture and combat fatphobia, without the continual compromise required by corporate media. And, we need this podcast. Because you will never need to worry that the host is going to pause mid-episode and tell you how much I love Noom.Welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast 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, the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia and the newsletter Burnt Toast. This is technically Episode 24 of the Burnt Toast podcast, but also for a lot of you it’s going to be Episode 1. So we’ll start with some backstory on how I went from a writer of women’s magazine diet stories to a diet culture dismantler and why having a space to do independent, anti-diet journalism is so important, right now. I’ll also be answering your questions: How to help a 3-year-old who won’t stop grazing? How can we respond thoughtfully to casual fatphobia? What should I do if I’m a houseguest and my host is on a diet? And can my kid really eat ice cream every day? If you enjoy this episode please subscribe and rate and review Burnt Toast in your podcast player. And sign up for the Burnt Toast newsletter, to get episode transcripts, reported essays and more. [Editor’s Note: Regular newsletter readers will recognize the first half of this episode from this essay. Feel free to scroll down to the next line break to get to your questions!]So, I thought today we would start with some backstory. Eighteen years ago I graduated from college and started my first job the very next day as an editorial assistant at Seventeen Magazine. I was living in a shoebox studio apartment next to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. I walked to work in my Reef flip flops because I couldn’t actually stand up for more than ten minutes in the shoes we wore around the office. I made $27,000 a year. But for those first few months, I was in heaven at Seventeen. My bosses were these smart, feminist editors who thought that the intelligence of teenage girls was undervalued. We did features on things like hookup culture and youth marketing. And yes, I realized that last one now sounds a little ironic. One of my tasks as an assistant at the magazine was to track down statistics or expert quotes when the editors were working on a feature and realized that it needed some things like that, that the writers had failed to deliver. Seventeen is where I started to learn how to report.I was learning to report in a way that would pass muster with our research chief who was this completely terrifying person who would throw your reporting file out of her office if you tried to use a non-primary source or a newspaper, or couldn’t backup a controversial fact to her liking. Yes, this is the same Seventeen that published “I got my period in front of my crush,” the horror stories you remember from Trauma-Rama. And yes, this is the same Seventeen that first published Sylvia Plath. I learned really quickly that being a feminist in women’s media, but also all mainstream media, meant that you had to hold these strands together as lightly as you could. It meant successfully pitching a story on birth control, only to have your editor write in the margins, “But wait, isn’t Plan B the same thing as having an abortion?” No, it is not. And it meant every day reading letters from girls who hated their thighs, girls who tried to cut the fat off their stomachs, girls who skipped breakfast and made themselves throw up after lunch, girls who were trying to shrink their bodies in every conceivable way. And then going into a meeting where we would brainstorm five new ways to put the phrase “bikini body” on the cover.I didn’t last long at Seventeen. A few months after I was hired, a new editor came in with a new team and a new vision. Suddenly there was a lot less meticulous reporting about teenage health and a lot more of that “Bikini Body” stuff, glossed over, of course, with the kind of “Girl Power” talk that wooed so many of us into thinking weight loss could be a valuable self improvement project. So, I moved on. First to another junior editor job at another women’s magazine, and then, when that publication folded, to being a full-time freelance writer. That move freed me up to move out of the city, to wear shoes I could walk in, and to write stories I really cared about. But: I ran into the same tension everywhere I went, especially when I wrote about weight and health. So I spent most of the next decade still deep inside the diet culture beat, at first rationalizing it with the usual, “Well, this one’s not a diet, this one’s a lifestyle plan.” That same song and dance we talk about all the time. And then slowly, but determinedly trying to crack it apart. And that was uphill work. I found myself translating the principles of Health at Every Size into language that a women’s magazine could handle. And yet I was continuing to use terms like “ob#se” without any awareness of their toxic history. I made compromises. I added health warnings to stories so the editors would run them because I figured it was better to get a few seeds planted where I could, rather than see the story killed. And also, I had to get paid. For a while, I even backed away from critiquing the diet industry directly. Wellness culture was shifting things so fast, I wasn’t even always sure who I was mad at. Instead, I started to focus on the beauty industry. In a weird way, it was easier to report on how I learned to do Brazilian waxing so I could interrogate our obsession with it, or to expose the exploitation of nail salon workers than it was to reckon with my desire to diet and detox. But in other ways, it was harder. I couldn’t run either of those stories in women’s magazines where hair removal is gospel and nail polish brands pay the bills. It was and is a tough sell to persuade “real” media outlets (emphasis on the quotes around “real,”) to care about stories in which no men would appear. Then, a little over eight years ago, I had my first daughter Violet. And as many of you know, she stopped eating when she was just one month old. She needed me to make food feel safe again. That’s the experience that started to connect the dots for me that led to my first book, The Eating Instinct, and that pushed me all the way out of diet culture. I started to explore how we relate to food, and then realized how much fatphobia underpins everything we think we know about food. And health: I wrote about how weight stigma shows up in fertility treatment, in eating disorder treatment, and in science, full stop. Fatphobia is pervasive in parenting culture too, whether it’s as overt as a diet app for kids or more implicit in our anxiety about kids and sugar.      In the past five years, telling these stories has gotten so much easier. We are now in a cultural moment where terms like “body positivity” and “intuitive eating” are embraced by popular culture; where magazines like Good Housekeeping and InStyle ask me to write about pushing back against the pressure to lose your pandemic weight gain, and nobody tries to water down the rhetoric at all. Could these brands be doing a better job owning their own historical complicity in diet culture? Yes, absolutely. But they recognize the importance of the conversation now. I cannot underscore to you enough how much that was not the case, even as recently as when I sold The Eating Instinct.Still, any time I write for a major media outlet--and again, that has been the primary way I’ve made a living for almost two decades--I am aware that my story, my project is like this little boat tacking its way through a great, churning ocean of other priorities. It gets stuck in a holding pattern if the hook isn’t newsy enough, it gets chopped in half because the word count is too tight, it gets cut altogether because a new editor comes in with a different vision. Or it runs, but I’m asked to add caveats and softeners that make everyone more comfortable while making the story less accurate. Or it runs, and then the next week, the same outlet runs a pro-weight-loss story. And I hear from confused readers who feel betrayed by the switch in tone. I still see the value in publishing traditional journalism. I adore working with smart editors who tear my words apart and find something so much better buried beneath them. I love writing for outlets with copy editors and fact checkers and art departments, who are all so brilliant at their essential jobs. And I adore seeing how a story resonates across a broader platform, even when that means the comment section goes bananas or all of the angry men in America send me emails. We can’t only preach to the choir. I started Burnt Toast because I realized that after almost twenty years of doing it their way, we need our own place to critique diet culture and combat fatphobia. Without the continual compromise required by corporate media. Where I don’t have to worry that a sidebar for flat tummy tea will run alongside my explanation of why the “obesity epidemic” was overhyped. We need a place where we can publish stories that I can’t tell in other outlets because they are too niche or aren’t newsy enough but still matter deeply to people’s lives. We need this podcast because you will never need to worry that the host is going to pause mid-episode and tell you how much I love Noom. I absolutely do not love Noom. So, most weeks Burnt Toast will be a conversation between me and a guest. So far we’ve had really amazing fat activists like Aubrey Gordon and Marquisele Mercedes on. We’ve had authors like Crystal Maldonado, Alyson Gerber, and Tyler Feder, and a bunch of other folks who I would call thought leaders on fashion, culture, health, and parenting. Once a month, I’ll also release a solo episode, like this one, for paid subscribers, where I’ll answer your questions directly. So now, let’s get into those! Q: My three year old is recovering from a minor illness which came on the heels of a long vacation. So we’ve been out of our usual routine for a few weeks and eating, which had been mostly non-stressful, has become a hot mess. Through traveling and then trying to nourish a feverish child, we were in survival mode, and our snack game was strong. Now, my kid demands only snack foods, is obsessing over sweets, and wants to graze all day. I want to get back on our meal/snack routine for both our sakes. I cannot dispense food all day long and my high energy kid needs the structure of sitting down to eat in order to focus and notice hunger and fullness. But it seems like there must be a feeling of restriction around snacks and sweets and I’m worried about exacerbating that. So, normally when we talk about this issue, you guys hear me say over and over again that if your child is fixating on a particular food, it’s probably because they think they don’t have enough access to it and the answer is to lean in and give them more freedom. But I do think there’s a slight exception for that in the situation that this mom is outlining, where you’ve been traveling or you’ve been sick, so you haven’t been on your normal schedule. When we go through seasons like that, it’s very normal for everything that kids understand about food to go out the window. I don’t think that your child is feeling restricted about snacks and sweets, I think they’re just feeling generally uncertain because of the lack of structure. When we feel uncertain, we can fixate more on our comfort foods, right? Because food is feeling a little unpredictable. In a way, your child asking for that favorite food all the time is their way of saying, “I need more routine, I need more predictability, please.”So, what I would do is not mess with the particular foods your kid wants. I would work on getting back on the schedule first, even if it means your child is eating Oreos at every meal and snack for a few more days. Serve the favorite snack foods, but just work on breaking the grazing pattern and getting to eating at a more regular schedule. Sometimes what is happening with grazing is kids are feeling like they need to be in charge of making food happen. Which is not to say you haven’t been feeding your child, you obviously have been. And I know when you’re in that snack mode, you’re like, all I do is give you food. But they somehow feel like it’s their responsibility to make sure they get enough because there’s no schedule and it’s not predictable. So, if we work on making it predictable, but you serve the foods that they’re most anxious about having access to, you can ease the scarcity mindset. You can give them that comfort of structure. Once it feels like you’re back in a routine around eating, then I would start to bring in other foods, have more variety, maybe start to say things like, “Oh my gosh, I love Oreos so much, too. We’re going to have them for a morning snack, but not for breakfast.” (I’m always using Oreos, as the example, but whatever your child’s comfort food is, of course, insert here.) Work on structure, then you can work on food variety. Don’t try to tackle it all at once. That will be too big of a change. And good luck. Q: How can we respond to casual fatphobia and weight stigma?This is the challenge with holiday gatherings, right? Because this is when people make those side comments like, “Oh, I need my stretchy pants for this meal” or, “diet starts Monday!” Even if it’s not directed at you, it can feel really awkward to tackle it because you look like the buzzkill. You’re the one who’s suddenly taking it really seriously and oh, we were all just joking. But I think we do need to start to build our muscles for how we push back in these moments.Someone I follow on Instagram, who posts a lot of memes, recently posted a meme that was super fatphobic. [TW: I’m going to describe it.] It was one of those dogs that has very thin legs and very round bellies, and for some reason, this photo of the dog was standing on two legs and wearing jeans. The caption was something like “how men over thirty look in jeans.” I am sure she posted it thinking, “I’m laughing at men and we are allowed to laugh at men.” Which, you know, is sort of true. I think that was her intention on one level. But it’s not okay to make fun of the bodies of fat men or fat women or fat people of any gender. It’s not okay to equate fat people with animals. And the meme did both those things. So I sent her a message and said, “I know your intention was to be humorous, but this meme equates fat people’s bodies to animals. That is very harmful.” She was immediately defensive. She said, “You know my account is a humor account, try to take it in that spirit. I’m really sensitive about body image issues. That’s not what I was doing here. I’m just making fun of men over thirty!” Of course, it’s also not okay to be posting ageist memes, so that wasn’t a super helpful argument. But I didn’t get into a long explanation of why the meme was wrong. Instead I said, “I am saying, as someone in a bigger body than you, with a body that looks quite similar to this animal, that I find this harmful. And I’m also saying this to you as someone with a fair amount of privilege as a small fat person. There are people in bigger bodies who will find this meme even more harmful, who won’t feel safe speaking up. And so I hope you’ll reconsider this in the future.” I stayed really polite, I didn’t get super inflammatory. I felt annoyed, to be honest, that I had to be that thoughtful and careful about it because this is part of the labor of engaging on these issues, right? Someone else has said the offensive thing but somehow it’s our job to keep it light and friendly, as we are calling them out on their offensiveness. I want to hold space for that piece of it. But I also think the reality is, you’re not going to get anywhere with someone if you come in and say, “This is horrible. How dare you post it?” They’re only going to get defensive, and they’re not going to start to think about it. She did come back to me after that follow-up and said, “I appreciate you for speaking up on this.” And I haven’t seen a fatphobic meme go up on her account again. So I’m hopeful that there was maybe an opportunity for some learning there. Figuring out some ways where you can, in a friendly way—and again, holding space for the fact that it’s annoying that we have to be so friendly about this—say, “Oh, hey, I’m not really here for fat jokes,” or, you know, “Let’s not go after their bodies.” I think about this a lot. When people make jokes about Donald Trump, there is so much material about Donald Trump, you can make a million jokes about him, you don’t have to talk about the fact that he’s a fat person. We don’t need to go there. There are many other reasons to hate on him. If someone comes back to you, though, it’s useful to say, “Look, these comments do cause harm. And, you know, I’ve been thinking about this more. I’ve been trying to do my own work.” I think it’s useful to own, “I don’t always get this right myself.” Then it’s not you versus them. You’re saying that this is learning we all need to be doing and this is learning I’m doing right along with you. Q: I have a really odd food etiquette question about being a guest of someone who is massively restricting calories and we do not. I felt guilty eating the entire week at her house and was really hungry, and we are back there over Christmas. She has a very good friend from high school and not anorexic, but suddenly super aware of every calorie and kept bugging me if I ate. Any polite way to handle this?This is another one I think a lot of us may be encountering over the holidays. Some of the people hosting us may be on diets, and that’s going to be a drag. I think it’s important, as a guest in someone’s home, to stay aware of the amount of work they’re doing to host you with these meals. There is a lot of labor being performed by your friend and by women in general around the holidays. Even if that labor comes with an infusion of diet culture, we want to be respectful of the labor and make it clear that we see the labor. To that end, I think one easy solution might be to say, “You know, you did so much to host us last time, we are so grateful. This time, when we come to stay, please let us buy the groceries!” And go and buy groceries and take her list and buy whatever she needs for cooking Christmas dinner, but also buy food you want to have in the house. Buy the food that you like to have for breakfast, or some snacks you want to have on hand. To be honest, this may still be super stressful to her because people who are restricting are often very anxious about having more food in the house. But I think if you keep framing it as, “we want to take all this work of hosting off your shoulders, you don’t need to feed us every meal,” that makes it easier for her. And at least you’re acknowledging her labor even while you’re also meeting your own needs. If buying all the groceries isn’t an option, pitch in to help with the cooking as much as you can. If you’re staying for more than just Christmas Day, say, “Okay, you’re cooking Christmas dinner, but can we please handle breakfast that day? Or can we please make lunch the next day?” So you’re acknowledging her labor, you’re helping to reduce her labor, and then at the same time, you’re making sure there are a few meals in there that are going to have enough food and food that you like to eat, as well. If grocery shopping and cooking isn’t an option, I would offer to pick up takeout. Suggest eating out in restaurants for other meals. Go out and get bagels in the morning for breakfast. Look for other ways to bring in more food, not in a way that’s rejecting the food that she is making, but in a way that is supplementing. And then that way, when you are placing restaurant orders, you can order what you want and it’s really not her problem. If none of that feels like an option, or it helps but doesn’t help that much, you can also pack some snacks to keep in your room or wherever you’re staying. So if she makes a very sad diet-y dinner, you can at least go have some chips or some granola bars afterwards and not be starving. That’s awkward and it doesn’t feel great, but if you do that, do not feel ashamed about the eating you’re doing that as a way of managing your own self care during the holidays. Holidays are stressful for a million different reasons. You not having enough to eat is not going to make it better. As for her comments bugging you about what you eat, I think that’s another thing where setting a really friendly boundary, maybe over email before you get there or the first time the comment comes up, could be helpful. You can say something like, “Our bodies are all different. We just need different amounts of food.” Just make it clear that you’re not going to get into a nickel and dime-ing conversation about she’s eating this way or you’re eating that way. Sometimes people start to have this diet talk war, where they’re comparing health strategies, and that’s not at all helpful. So make it clear, you’re not here for that. However you eat, you’re not going to defend it to her. And you’d really rather talk about other things, it’s more interesting. It sounds like she’s deep in her own struggle here. So anything she does say about your eating is a reflection of her own anxiety, it is not actually about you, even though it’s going to feel like it’s about you. Just remember, if you want to take seconds at a meal, if you want to order something different, if you suggest going over to another friend’s house, because that way you’ll get a meal you like, you don’t owe her an explanation for that. You can just say, “Oh, this is so delicious. I’m excited to eat it. So and so’s a great cook,” and leave it at that.Okay, and now we are going to wrap up with a segment that I think is going to be a regular feature on solo episodes, called, “Can my kid eat that?” And the answer is always going to be yes! I get a version of this question every single week, so I’m going to keep answering it every time we do these episodes because I get it. I get this anxiety and I think it’s really important that we keep speaking to it. So this week’s can my kid eat that is: Q: I have a question that I am truly confused about. How many days a week can my newly two year old toddler have an ice cream cone as a snack or dessert? He is obsessed. He created his own sign language for it. He brings books open to the page with a picture of an ice cream. Not that it matters, but he’s under 5% for height and weight. So I usually give him whatever he wants. I just have all of the voices in my head on this. First: It doesn’t matter that he’s under 5% for height or weight. Yes, your child can have ice cream every day for a snack or dessert. If your child is in the zero percentile if your child is in the 99th percentile. The food we serve our children is not dependent on their body size, ever. How many days a week can your two year old have ice cream? Seven. There are seven days in a week, your child can have ice cream seven days a week. There is no law against this. Yes, you can serve ice cream every day. I say this as someone who did serve my two year old ice cream every day. My younger daughter was two in the summer of 2020 When we were in lockdown, and I was stuck at home with two children and zero childcare and nowhere to go and nothing to do. We had “ice cream o’clock” every afternoon on our front porch. The reason we did this was because as the weather started warming up, my kids were both asking for ice cream pretty often and fixated on when we would have ice cream again. I realized they had a scarcity mindset about it just because when it’s cold, we don’t eat ice cream. So then when it’s warm, and we start eating ice cream again, it’s super exciting, and they want to have it all the time. So we made ice cream o’clock a daily thing and we ate it every single day. After about three weeks, they were completely over it, they would leave it to melt in puddles while they went off to play. It was not a concern. We kind of switched it to popsicles, sometimes ice cream sandwiches, sometimes they didn’t want ice cream and they had a different snack. And the issue completely faded. And that was true for the two year old and for the then-six year old. So them being a younger toddler doesn’t impact this they will be able to adjust and habituate to having access to the food just as well as an older kid. I would make it a specific ritual like that though, because you can tell him this is the time we will have ice cream. And you don’t have to have ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and every snack. You can say “Oh, I know you love ice cream so much” when he makes his little sign (by the way, that’s adorable.) When he makes his ice cream sign or shows you the book with ice cream, say “Yes, I can’t wait! We’re going to have ice cream after your nap.” Tie it to something he can really understand because at two he doesn’t grasp the schedule well and that’s why he’s asking so often, as well. So, hearing we’ll have it tomorrow or we’ll have it this weekend is probably too vague and too far off for him.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast!Once again, if you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode. And consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter. It’s just $5 per month or $50 for the year. You get a ton of cool perks and you keep this space ad and sponsor free.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Today we get the scoop on Sarah's dangerous liaison in Mexico and why mariachi music might not be as hellish as she thought. Sarah met her twin, and Susie thinks they should have a sitcom. We hear about Sarah's decision to try LSD, and what her trip was like (she had a trip on her trip!). Sarah discusses a new zero waste trend that is not ok at all, and why people sometimes have good intentions, but end up using fabric to clean their buttholes. Sarah is mad at a small business, which is a nice change of pace from how she is usually mad at big companies. We hear why the SpaceX toilets are leaking. Plus, Susie talks with author, Virginia Sole-Smith about her book, The Eating Instinct, about how diet culture is toxic. Join our book club, shop our merch, sign-up for our free newsletter, & more by visiting The Brain Candy Podcast website: Connect with us on social media: BCP Instagram: Susie's Instagram: Sarah's Instagram: BCP Twitter: Susie's Twitter: Sarah's Twitter: Go to & use code: braincandy14 for up to 14 free meals AND 3 free gifts! Get 10% off your first month of therapy at To try the greatest vitamins ever, go to Download Best Fiends FREE today on the App Store or Google Play! More podcasts at WAVE:

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 am Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today, I’m pleased to be chatting with Dr. Rachel Millner, a psychologist based in Newtown, Pennsylvania who specializes in eating disorders. Welcome, Rachel! I’m so excited to talk to you. Before we dive into our big topic, why don’t you tell our listeners a little more about yourself and your work?RachelAs you already said, I’m a psychologist, outside of Philadelphia, I’m in private practice here. I work primarily with folks who are dealing with eating disorders, disordered eating, those wanting to heal their relationship with food and body. I do a lot of work around anti fat bias and weight stigma. And I frequently talk about “atypical anorexia” and weight stigma and how those issues play out within the eating disorder field.VirginiaAnd you have an awesome Instagram that I will link to in the transcript. I also interviewed you for a New York Times piece last year. (And this Good Housekeeping story!) What I wanted to chat with you about today, what kind of inspired this conversation, is an Instagram post you did back in June, and I’ll just read the text here. You wrote: And I sort of had a real like, yes moment reading this. I think this probably resonated with a lot of folks, and for other folks, this might be sort of confusing. There are a lot of misconceptions about the relationship between trauma and weight. There’s just a lot we can unpack here.So first, I would love to hear a little bit of the background of what inspired this post for you.RachelI think, you know, there is so much nuance here. And it’s one of those topics that I think does bring up a lot for people, because of all the weight stigma. You know that when we start a conversation around trauma and fatness, given the weight stigma in the culture, of course, we all kind of go into high alert and brace ourselves for like, okay, what’s coming next? What prompted this Instagram post was just sitting with clients and hearing their stories and feeling like their stories aren’t being told. And wanting to name that for some people, there might be a connection between fatness and trauma. The other side of that narrative that’s so harmful, is this idea that if we heal trauma, then somehow we’re magically not going to be fat anymore. This is something that’s projected onto my clients all the time. So I was just thinking about these conversations that I have in my office all the time, that are never told.VirginiaI’ve heard this from readers before, where they almost feel like they’re being a “bad fatty” if they say, “I think my body size is related to this experience I had.” That really denies their truth. And it makes it difficult for them to tell their story.I mean, it gets really messy, it gets really messy. So, I guess, you know, for folks who are newer to this conversation, it might be useful to start by talking about some of those relationships you’re seeing among your clients? How does trauma sometimes relate to body size? What scenarios are you kind of referencing here?RachelThe story that I hear from my clients is that when they were going through trauma, particularly childhood trauma, although I think it’s also true for people who have experienced trauma as an adult, that oftentimes food is what’s available to cope. If somebody is in a home where they’re being traumatized, or a child who doesn’t have access to therapy or other ways of getting support, food is often available. And it’s a really effective coping mechanism. It can be really helpful to eat in response to sadness or pain or suffering. And for some people, that eating may lead to weight gain, not for everybody, but there’s, you know, people who, that eating in response to emotions over time might lead to them gaining weight.Then too, I think for a lot of people who have trauma around weight stigma, and are put on diets at a very young age, we know that dieting often leads to weight gain. A lot of my clients talk about what it was like to have trauma around weight stigma, being told that their body was wrong at a young age, and being forced to restrict their food intake, which then, of course, leads to bingeing and leads to weight gain.VirginiaAnother narrative I often hear about is what Roxane Gay wrote about in Hunger. She framed it as almost more of a deliberate decision to eat as a form of protection. What are your thoughts are on that, if that’s something you also see coming up for folks?RachelI appreciated Roxane Gay’s book so much, because I think this is a narrative that doesn’t get told. And I’m really of the belief that we need to believe people. And you know, when people share their story, we can trust that what they’re saying is true and real. When I have clients who talk about intentionally gaining weight, or thinking about fatness as a way to be protected from the male gaze, that makes a lot of sense. And we still know that that’s rooted in weight stigma. Because this idea that if we’re in bigger bodies, then men are not going to be attracted to us is rooted in weight stigma. And it’s real, right? This is the water that we swim in. It doesn’t mean, you know—there are many people in fat bodies who are in wonderful relationships and have lots of people that are attracted to them. But I think this idea, especially, I hear a lot with my clients who have had sexual trauma, is that there’s a feeling of protection when their body is bigger.VirginiaRight, that somehow they can hide more that way. Which, yes, again, there’s the layers of fatphobia built right into that, but it’s also an understandable path to seek when you’re struggling in that way.RachelAnd we know that when people either lose weight, or their body is smaller that, especially for those socialized female, oftentimes their body is sexualized, is put on display, people feel free to comment and you know, “compliment.” And that can be really vulnerable for people, for anybody, but especially people who have trauma history, especially around sexual trauma.VirginiaI think that’s really important to articulate. The more you’re talking about this, the more I’m realizing how weight stigma plays into it right from the beginning, for so many folks navigating trauma and weight. Even, as you were saying earlier, that the sort of idea of emotional eating, getting demonized, that’s something we talk about a lot here—I’ve certainly experienced it myself. We tend to praise the idea of people losing their appetites while undergoing trauma, like that gets celebrated as if that was a good coping strategy, when actually, that’s quite alarming. That weight loss that can result, again, doesn’t always result but sometimes results, isn’t a good thing.I remember when my daughter went through a lot of intensive medical experiences, and we lived in a hospital for weeks and months at a time at various points. And people would always sort of encourage me to get out and go for a walk, like that’s what you should do as a “healthy coping strategy.” And I was like, hey, I can’t leave her hospital room. We live here. And I’m terrified if I leave, she’ll stop breathing. So no, I’m not going for a walk. And actually, eating Au Bon Pain chocolate croissants while I sat in this hospital room for hours a day like felt good, and was comforting and it alleviated boredom and stress. I just remember wondering, through that trauma, why is my chosen coping method feeling wrong to everybody around me? And that’s weight stigma. It’s because they didn’t see it as “healthy” because it might result in weight gain, or did result in weight gain.RachelInstead of being able to see the wisdom in that, that having access to food while sitting in a hospital room is so wise and comforting. If we were neutral about food and body size, then it would be like, okay, bring all the croissants, and have as many as you want, and comfort yourself and try to get through this really horrific time. Instead, we hold up some coping mechanisms and vilify others, which is ridiculous. VirginiaI will say, for the people in my life listening to this, that I did have people who supported me on the croissants and understood when I said, “No, I really can’t. Yes, my husband can leave and go for a run, and that’s really helping him through this time, but me leaving is not something that will feel—like, that feels terrifying.” And people did respect that, but it was tricky to articulate. And it’s tricky that when you’re in the active experience of trauma, to have to articulate your need and defend a need. You shouldn’t have to assert to other people that your need is valuable at that point.RachelRight, you shouldn’t have to defend it. Even just thinking over the past year and a half with COVID, there is some subset of people who have coped by eating, and there is some subset of people who have coped by restricting. And we don’t name the restriction as harmful. We praise it when really, restriction weakens your immune system and makes you more vulnerable to stress and the impact of stress. But instead, what we say is, oh, if somebody is restricting and losing weight, that that’s a positive thing. We don’t name the harm of it, where, you know, eating to cope actually makes a lot of sense. And is way more beneficial than restricting.VirginiaBecause that’s at least meeting a physical need. It’s getting you through. Absolutely.So, we see the weight stigma showing up in the active trauma space, and as people are kind of navigating coping strategies. And then we also see it, you know, I don’t want to say after, because of course, trauma can be a long unfolding process, but in terms of how these fat bodies are then pathologized by the world, right? So talk a little bit about what is often the approach to when, you know, whether it’s in eating disorder treatment, or in trauma therapy, in general, when you know, providers encounter someone in a bigger body, and the focus goes to weight loss, and why that is not actually going to help with the healing from the trauma.RachelWhat I often hear and see from clients is, there’s two paths that come up the most: I see clients who went to therapy, are in a fat body, and the provider made an assumption that because they’re fat, they must have had trauma, without even assessing or asking questions. And then there’s clients who do connect their fatness to trauma, and so they have gone to therapy, wanting to talk about their trauma history, and sometimes also starting out in therapy saying, and I would like to lose weight, or just not even focusing at all on body size, but just wanting to talk about their trauma. And what happens is that therapists then say, “Well, yes, we can work on your trauma. And if we work on your trauma, then you’ll lose weight.” Because if we’ve decided that eating in response to trauma lead to weight gain, then the belief is, if we heal your trauma, then your eating is gonna change, and you’ll release the weight. That’s the word that comes up.VirginiaThat phrase is really yucky.RachelIt seems to be the one that my clients hear quite frequently. People are in fat bodies for endless reasons. There are so many different reasons, and we don’t need to know them in order to know that promoting weight loss is harmful. It doesn’t matter if somebody is fat because of trauma, or for any of the other reasons that influence body size. It’s not like diets differentiate, that one diet says, okay, this person had trauma, so, this diet is effective.VirginiaI can totally see the trauma diet becoming some new creepy trend on Instagram: Intermittent fasting to heal your inner child or something.It’s just so missing the point because it’s not helping people work on, you know, processing what’s really happened to them or figuring out what they really need. It’s like solving this problem that’s, as you say, possibly related, possibly even completely unrelated, and not actually a problem at all. And giving them this other thing to focus on and then measure their “success” based on whether they can control it or not. RachelI think it’s so important to name really clearly that fatness is not the trauma. Weight stigma is a trauma, and clients have all kinds of other traumas that they’re coming in with. But fatness is not the trauma, and trying to you know “fix fatness” is actually re-traumatizing. So if somebody is coming in, and a therapist is saying, '“Okay, I’m going to help you with your trauma, and I’m going to help you lose weight,” they’re actually re-traumatizing somebody who’s already been through significant trauma.VirginiaSo where do you think that sort of line of thinking in the provider community is coming from? I mean, why? Why is that an accepted practice when it’s so clearly causing harm? RachelIt’s an important question. I think some of it is that providers are still being trained in really stigmatizing programs. I don’t think people are learning about the impact of anti-fat bias and weight stigma. I think, unfortunately, a lot of providers haven’t done their own work around it, so they may still be trying to suppress their own weight or still trying to diet in their own life. As providers, we’re always going to be in process. It’s not that, you know, as a therapist, you suddenly get to this place where you’ve worked through everything.But I think if we haven’t done our own work around weight stigma and our relationship with our body, then we are likely to harm clients that are coming in wanting to address those issues. I think the trauma field still supports this, I think some of it comes from the eating disorder field. But I think a lot of it comes from the trauma field. If you read some of the main books about trauma, this narrative is written about, and they are not HAES-informed books. So if you don’t already have some footing in Health at Every Size, and you’re looking for a trauma book to read, or to learn about, that narrative is going to be reinforced.VirginiaIt also makes me think about how much our internalized vision of healthy or recovered or happy is intrinsically linked to thinness, so if someone achieves weight loss—however temporary that’s likely to be, and no matter what they have to do in order to achieve it—we’re going to view that as “success,” because that narrative is so embedded in our culture. And we’re not going to look deeper than that, we’re not going to see that that isn’t actually dealing with the underlying issues.Do you think there’s a degree to which the underlying stuff feels harder, you know, that it’s that work that might be scarier to people? And going on a diet feels like, well, this is what I can control. So let me do that.RachelAbsolutely. I mean, I think that all of us have been socialized to believe that weight is under our control. And that if we can just find the right diet and lose weight, then it’s going to solve other problems. And there’s so many providers who reinforce that.VirginiaAnd the science that’s getting done is reinforcing this, too. I mean, I was looking at a couple of studies that were done recently on adverse childhood experiences, and they are all trying to document this phenomenon. One is called “Adverse childhood experiences are associated with an increased risk of obesity and early adolescence.” (I apologize for using the O-word, I’m quoting the fatphobic research.) And there are several others I’ll link to in the transcript. It seems like the goal of this research is to say, we should worry about childhood trauma because people might get fat from it, as if that is the outcome we’re worried about, not the trauma.I’m curious for your thoughts on that research, I think we see the similar thing happening in research on childhood poverty and childhood hunger. Like if fat is the outcome, then it’s really bad.RachelI think that we want to believe that research is objective and neutral. And the truth is that it’s not. The questions that are being asked in these research studies are inherently biased. And so they are asking a question that they think they know the answer to. I would love to sit down with somebody like Deb Burgard or somebody who’s really great at pulling through statistics, because just glancing at this research, I’m not sure that there’s actually a difference between the percentage of kids who are in higher weight bodies in this study where they’re connecting it to adverse childhood experiences, and just the percentage of kids who are in higher weight bodies in general.VirginiaOh, that's interesting. Yeah.RachelSo I’d be really curious for somebody who’s really great at statistics to kind of pull all of that apart.VirginiaYeah, because if it’s like we’re trying, what it feels like, in a way is that they’re looking at the “childhood obesity epidemic.” They’re saying kids are in bigger bodies now, let’s find this explanation for it. And then that’s a way of pathologizing the fact that kids come in different sizes. Then you’ve decided, all those kids are traumatized or broken in some way. Now, you’ve explained it to yourself. Just yeah, that’s a pretty fatphobic way of going about the problem.RachelRight. And it’s like you said, I mean: You’re identifying fatness as the problem, like, how about if we identify the problem is that so many kids have childhood trauma? This idea that, a kid’s coming in and identifying that they’ve had a history of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and the thing that these studies are worried about is fatness?!It’s just so harmful. And it’s scary that this is how we’re responding to kids’ body size and to trauma, that the thing that these studies are focused on and asking questions about is how do we make kids not be in bigger bodies? And ignoring like, how do we protect kids from being physically and sexually abused? VirginiaRight, right. It’s a really similar thing that played out in childhood hunger research, which was like, in order to get funding and attention on childhood hunger and childhood poverty, there was a huge effort to document the connections to higher weight. And it’s like, do I really need to explain to you, that you should care about kids being hungry? You needed some other outcome—you needed to make it about fatness? In order to care about this problem? We couldn’t just care about feeding hungry kids? It’s mind blowing. And it feels very similar.This also feels very tied to the older conversation about whether “obesity” should be classified as a disease. And, a lot of folks who were in favor of that argued that it would reduce stigma, if we could understand high body weight as a “chronic condition” because you would understand that it was beyond people’s control, and they needed intervention and support. That has definitely not been the result of classifying obesity as a disease. We know that it has only furthered weight stigma, and it feels like a similar parallel here that if we’re trying to understand weight as always trauma related. You could argue that that’s a way of increasing empathy. But it doesn’t seem like that’s how that conversation plays out.RachelYeah, I am fascinated by this kind of line of thinking. I really am curious about who thought it was a good idea to classify body size as a disease. And like, how they convinced themselves that that was actually going to decrease stigma or not pathologize people. I understand the narrative they’re telling themselves but I would love to dig deeper and really pick apart like, what actually is going through their mind when they thought that that was a good idea.Of course labeling body size as a disease was not going decrease stigma. I think, first of all, it contributes to the idea, like when we think disease states, we think of something that requires treatment. And so then you’re reinforcing that body size needs some sort of intervention. So naming it as a disease is not going to reduce the stigma in the culture, like we actually have to address the stigma and not try to find creative ways to describe body size, and pretend that that’s actually going to be the thing that’s beneficial. We have to find ways to reduce stigma. I’m just sick in general of our need to pathologize these expected and typical responses to being in a body, and being in a culture that harms bodies. I think this happens with lots of different diagnoses. I don’t think this is unique to labeling body sizes as disease, but I think we’ve just got to get away from pathologizing people and name the problem in the culture and you know, in the environment, instead of saying that body size is the problem.VirginiaCompletely agree. And on the other side of this conversation, what we sort of started touching on in the beginning that I just want to hit on quickly, before we wrap up, is that it makes it harder for people to talk about what’s happened to them, because they’re worried if they own their full story, that they’re going to be pathologized for their weight. And I do sometimes feel within the Health at Every Size community, we don’t do a great job of making space for this story, right? Because we’re so quick to fight against the pathologizing. Then I hear from folks in fat bodies that feel like, I’m not allowed to be a fat person with health problems here. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that, because I’m sure you sort of see that tension, often.RachelTotally. And it makes sense to me, I understand why that’s the reaction from the Health at Every Size community. When you’ve been oppressed for so long, and there’s such a difficult time holding nuance within the larger environment, that anytime there’s a narrative, that there’s a fear it’s going to increase oppression or marginalization, of course, people want to defend and protect against it. So it makes a lot of sense to me. But what it does create is this reinforcing of stigma and it silences people. And we want to do the opposite within the Health at Every Size community, we want everybody’s story to be able to be told. So I think we have to be able to hold space for these conversations. Because, one, they’re true, right? Like this is real. These narratives are true and real. There’s a ton of nuance within the research around, you know, fatness and health conditions that we need to be able to talk about. And when we don’t talk about them, we prevent people from getting help with the things that there actually are interventions for, and weight loss is not one of them. If somebody in a fat body can’t talk about whatever health conditions they might be dealing with, then how are they going to get appropriate interventions for whatever those health conditions are? So we’ve got to be able to talk about it. VirginiaThat makes total sense. And I am so grateful for how you articulate this nuance. Thank you so much for your work and for being here.RachelThanks for having me on for these hard conversations.Virginia They are hard but they’re really important and I hope it helps people feel more seen in their own experiences and more like they can own their stories.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! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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 am Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.On Tuesday we talked about why parents need to question our own biases around school food. Today we are getting into all of your concerns about the diet culture your kids encounter at school. I am very excited to be chatting with Gwen Kostal, a Canadian registered dietitian and the co-founder of Dietitians4Teachers. Welcome, Gwen!GwenThank you. It’s so great to be here. I’ve followed your work. VirginiaWell, likewise. You are who I always send everybody to when I get school questions, because your Instagram is amazing. These topics come up in such complicated ways and I always want to make sure I’m sending them to someone who is a dietitian and really understands this issue from multiple sides. So why don’t you tell us a little more about yourself and your work? How did you end up launching Dietitians4Teachers?GwenThat’s a great question and a little bit of a funny story because we sort of stumbled into it. So I started this work with a colleague of mine, who’s moved into consulting for this, but we were honestly going for a walk in September of last year and sort of grumbling around, like, Oh, shoot, it’s started already. The comments are back. And then we had a really great chat about, Well, how come this isn’t working? So many dietitians, so many people are talking about this. How come it’s not landing? I’m trained in change management and quality improvement, which is really a fancy way of saying solving problems that people think, well, it’s just the way we’ve always done it. And so we started to look at the problem a little differently. And we said, Oh my gosh, what if we showed up for teachers, instead of just chastising people and making people feel like they’re always wrong? What if we showed up and started to help people unlearn this? And so we started testing the water, seeing if there was interest with an Instagram account, and talking to some teachers we knew, and it’s just gotten so exciting. And so it’s me, and then I consult with different dietitians, depending on the expertise needed, but I’ve worked with so many great teachers, and many, many of them are ready and they want to do this differently. They know it feels icky. They just don’t have the time, the resources, and the knowledge. And when we keep wagging our fingers and not showing up to help, nothing’s going to change. So that’s a big part of where it’s come from, and it’s just been so exciting. Teachers are incredible to work with.VirginiaI love this because, you know, I’m mostly hearing from the parents, as I’m sure you do, too. And often, the moment a parent notices this is an issue is when something has happened to their child. So they’re very emotional, understandably. They’re feeling extremely concerned about harm being caused to their child. But then immediately, we’re in this parents-versus-teachers place, which is really uncomfortable, really unfair to the teachers, really hard to navigate out of. And so I love the idea of, let’s not start there. Let’s start by engaging with these incredibly hardworking professionals, and in a respectful way. That’s fantastic.So let’s talk big picture. I’m sure I have some listeners who aren’t parents or teachers and are kind of new to this conversation, or parents of preschoolers who haven’t totally experienced it yet. How is diet culture showing up in schools? What are you noticing the most? And why is it there?GwenThis is such a complicated question because it’s there for so many reasons. It’s in the curriculum to teach healthy eating, in every curriculum you come across. It’s there somehow, and 99 percent of the time, it’s written in super vague language, which is then on the teacher to interpret. Dieting has been the lay of the land for the last 50 years, so most of our teachers grew up in pro-diet culture space. So when our curriculum writers have left things really vague, they’ve left that interpretation into a space where the diet culture machine has programmed us to think healthy eating means X, Y, Z. A healthy snack is X, Y, Z. So the curriculum is part of why we’re here. Even national food policies, like food guides, they’re new. It’s just over 100 years since the first micronutrient was identified. This is not something that’s been around a really long time. And our first food guides came out of scarcity, right? They came out of war measures and all of that, and then they got adopted more widely. And anytime there’s a national policy on something—when curriculums are national, or here, provincial, and I think in the U.S., state—they get adopted because it’s endorsed material. They don’t have to source out new things. So that’s how we got here. And diet culture is showing up because there are companies that profit by make programs for schools, and schools are resource-tight. They don’t have a ton of time to research and read all the up-to-date evidence on what would be good. If someone’s offering them a canned, ready-to-go way to teach a certain set of subjects, that’s great news for teachers and schools and educators. The other thing is sort of innocent. Teachers inherit resources from whoever taught the classroom before, or they’re googling online on their own time, looking for things and up comes Teachers Pay Teachers or different types of resources and free things that they’re like, “That looks good.” And because they’re not dietitians, they don’t really have a way to vet it. And it’s super important to remember that teachers were taught, at least in the Canada and Ontario context, teachers were taught how to teach. They weren’t taught all the minutiae of every topic they’re going to teach. Some of them cover aerospace!VirginiaYes, yes, absolutely. Yes. That makes sense. The standard teaching certification doesn’t include a quick six months through nutritional science to get you ready for this.GwenAnd, you know, food and nutrition and health is often not the testable material. And so in Canada, we have standardized testing. It’s on math and reading and all these sort of things. So when it comes to pressures on, what do we need to standardize and make sure is taught the same way? Those are the subjects that are getting the attention. So we see it coming out of curriculums and health class and gym class and different assignments that are trying to reach these teaching points. We also, though, see it in something I think your followers have commented quite a bit on: in just comments, or a funny policy-not-a-policy. VirginiaRight, right.GwenYou know, rules that are in school, like, you have to eat your vegetables before you eat your cookies. Those kind of things. So we see it there, too.VirginiaYeah, absolutely. It seems like there’s the official curriculum-version of this, and then there are the unofficial comments on lunchbox contents and general off-the-cuff remarks that people make in these settings. And they can both be really tricky. So yeah, this is definitely an issue where parents feel a lot of anxiety over how, or even whether, to engage. I’ve gotten a couple questions recently, like, Should I try to lobby for change in my public schools before my kid is attending them? If so, what? To which I would say, No. Maybe wait until you’re there and see what’s happening. Get to know the community. But on the flip side, is there any way to even start making this kind of change without it becoming a full-time job? I can also relate to that overwhelming feeling of, how do I even begin to push this boulder up the mountain?So how do you suggest we begin to think about these conversations? From the parents’ perspective, what can be helpful? How do you start to engage on this?GwenI think the instinct or the gut-reaction that we’re going to need to do it 100 percent and for every child and for the whole school board, district, state is there and it’s real—and some reassurance to parents that there are really fabulous people working on that. There are ways you can get involved. I know there are people, especially in the States, working on that, and there are groups up here working on that, as well. What I would say is, should you try and lobby—lobby is a really tough word. So, lobby is a fighting word. Maybe I’ll start with when your kid is already in school and you’re noticing something, and work back to whether you should approach it before your kid’s even there. My general approach is, remember that this teacher, especially in September, you’ve got eight months, and there’s a whole lot more relationship with this teacher than just around the food part.VirginiaYes, great point.GwenThe food part is really important, but so is learning safety and good communication, and building a relationship of respect and honesty and transparency is going to ripple effect through your whole year. So when you when you have a hunch that something’s going on at school, whether you’ve read something that came home and you explicitly know something’s going on at school, or you’ve heard little comments here and there, you see the cookie come back every day, the very first thing I’d say is, take a minute. And that’s not intending to sound disrespectful. I take lots of minutes. When you’re in this space, we’re so aware, right? Once you start learning about diet culture, you see it everywhere. VirginiaYes. GwenSo we do need to remind ourselves to approach with calm. The next thing I would do is, depending on the age of your kid, but if they’re school age, it’s probably appropriate, is ask some curious questions, like, what happened at lunch? Tell me about lunch? Who’s in the classroom? Is there a movie playing? And what’s going on? Does it feel rushed? Do you feel like you have to hurry? Try and understand what’s actually going on before jumping to conclusions because we assume that this is ill-intentioned. And we know that impact and intent are different and separate. But a reminder that no teacher is intentionally doing harm. They’re stuck with some unlearning to do of their own or some policies that they don’t like and they have to find ways to work around.If you determine that you want to go forward and talk about it, I would get out of email space. We’re so comfortable with email, and teachers are so great at it after last year, but email is the land of misinterpreted tone and miscommunication. I would see if I could get a call, or even in person, if your school is doing that, and just listen to understand first. So there’s a few different models from the change-management side of things that help you approach this. And you really just want to say, Here’s what I’m seeing, or, here’s what I heard. I’m curious, or—depending on how bad or severe it is—I’m curious about it because I’m concerned about it, because I’m worried about it. All these feeling words are appropriate. You can attach them. And stay focused on your kid because you are in a parent-teacher partnership for the next year.VirginiaYes, yes. That’s great. And what happened to your kid is kind of the only piece you really can be knowledgeable about, right? You don’t know what’s happening in other kids’ lunchboxes, so that’s really helpful language.GwenThe other thing I would say is a lot of things that do happen at school are counter to evidence. So when I’ve heard from people who have reached out to parents, and they say, oh, I got an email back, but it says we do this because we know that sugar makes hyperactivity in the afternoon and worse behavior. We know the evidence doesn’t support that. That is based on one study from the 70s with one child. Feingold is the pediatrician that did that work. Thank you. VirginiaThanks, Feingold. Big help. (Note to readers: For more on why sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity, check out this piece.)GwenAnd, you know, it’s really tricky territory when you feel the need to start sharing resources, and journal articles, specifically. So once you have this conversation of, I’m worried, I saw. What can we do together? What can we do about it? If you built that with trust and empathy and understanding that teachers have a ton on their plate, you may get to the point where you say, Do you want me to send you some stuff to read about this? I’ve been doing some learning. I’ve been changing the way I see this. Would you be interested? That’s the moment to share resources. It’s very much like your New York Times article around teachers and virtual learning. Teachers were highly watched last year, right?VirginiaYes.GwenSo we have to give them a bit of grace and a bit of space to breathe, but remember that, if they’re getting like, Hey, so-and-so parent is on line three for you, they’re probably feeling a bit of a sense of, Oh, gosh. So they might be entering that conversation with tension.VirginiaDefensive, sure. GwenYeah, and it’s normal, right? VirginiaYeah, absolutely. That’s great. And I like the asking if you can send—I mean, I’m definitely the parent who has to hold myself back from being like, Here’s some stuff I’ve written. Here’s some stuff other people have written. Here are all the things that have been written. And it’s not what they need, it’s not helpful. So I like the idea of asking first, before you start peppering them with links. I mean, we’ve seen that in every Twitter thread ever. Out-linking somebody never results in that other person being like, Okay, I got it now. They just feel bad because you gave them six things to read and they have a lot of other things to do.Let’s talk about some more specific concerns that have come up.You know this policy that a lot of schools have of encouraging kids to eat their sandwich before their cookies or their vegetables before—the order in which children eat food comes up a lot. There’s that great lunchbox note that Katja Rowell wrote. Do you recommend something like that? Or is there another tactic you’d suggest?GwenYeah, I do, but as a third defense. I really, really encourage parents to strive for partnership and understanding and compassion. Even if that means you try an opt-out without a template note—maybe borrowing the language without saying, Look, I found a PDF online and I’ve filled it out. That can feel really off-putting, I think.VirginiaThat’s a great point, to take the time to write it yourself.GwenBut there will be situations that you may need to use that. So if you get a really sort of traditional teacher, or someone who’s really rooted in their own body image struggle, their own diet culture stuff, and they absolutely cannot meet you where you’re at, then opt-out is a really good option. And in a situation where the school is not providing the food, you’re the one providing the food, in a packed lunch environment, that is outside of their domain. And so you have to say, I respect that you have a way that you’re running your classroom. It won’t work for my child. I’m giving permission for my child to not participate in that. Please let me know if we need to do anything to make that happen. And you don’t need to have a lot of explaining with that. There’s that line that goes around that says, You don’t need to explain your no. Well, a little. But you can just sort of say, I respect that we see this differently. This isn’t going to work for my kid. Please opt them out.VirginiaI love that. That’s really helpful language. Would you do something similar—obviously, it’s going be a little different when we’re talking about the class assignments, like the health class that’s having the kids keep food logs and exercise logs and calorie-tracking, school BMI stuff, which I’m going to be doing a newsletter about soon, but certainly it is a very common practice here in the United States still, despite being pretty under-supported by evidence. Those are things where parents officially can opt out, but again, would that be sort of a last resort? How do you approach that?GwenYeah, I think anytime you opt out or kind of throw the flag on the play—I cannot believe I just used a sports analogy; my husband will be so proud—anytime you’re going to do that, you’re going to raise awareness that there’s conflict or tension, right? And sometimes your kid doesn’t want you to do that—VirginiaYes, I’ve heard that a lot.GwenAnd sometimes that damages the parent-teacher trust, right? However, that being said: Tracking, analyzing, weighing kids at school is dangerous. It’s dangerous. I would be a lot more apt to let it slide with the lunchbox policing and do some home-coaching with my kids and be like, I can appreciate that people see things differently and everybody has a different relationship, but we can be empathetic that different people think different things and you’re going to see diet culture. Here’s what it looks like, etc. When it comes to a dangerous practice, like weighing kids at school, I would probably recommend saying: I’m concerned. I’m worried about it because this is damaging and dangerous and promotes eating-disordered bodies, fatness dissatisfaction, and these are 13-year-olds. I really would like to see an alternative assignment for this. Can you tell me what else is available for my child? Or, can you explain to me why this is still an assignment, given what’s known about the danger of these assignments? So I think you can be a bit more clear and to the point in these situations. And this is probably one that I would move up the chain a little bit more aggressively on than, say, carrots before cookies. That’s probably not an involve-the-principal conversation. I bet you can deal with it in the class. But weighing kids at school is.VirginiaYeah, absolutely, because the school administration has signed off on that as a policy. And that’s a helpful line to think about in general. When it’s a teacher’s off-the-cuff comment that is displaying their own struggle or just where they are with this issue, that feels like a really different thing to me, than, this is baked in. This is the curriculum. The whole school has decided we’re weighing kids, that there’s been this decision that the seventh grade keeps calorie logs. That feels like a bigger fight. And I think that’s maybe helpful for us all to think about because the off-the-cuff comment can feel like the big fight when it happens to your kid. And that’s understandable because it can be really upsetting to the child. But I like that distinction you’re making. You also touched on what was going to be my last question, which is, How do we talk to our kids about this? We’re obviously not going to get all of diet culture out of the classroom, so there are going to be times where—and a reader wrote in and said, our school has a no-candy, no-soda rule. How do I explain this to my kids on a kid-level without engaging in diet-culture reasoning? That is a tricky conversation.GwenIt is. And my first question is, How old is the kid? And every time I ask that, I think about healthcare and how there really is no age. You can start these conversations pretty young. You just might have to change how you talk about it, but avoiding diet-culture reasoning is probably not the goal. I think what we want to be showing our kids is that this is out there: school, workplaces, co-ops, on the bus. It’s around. And we want to be building up kids’ critical thinking to see it, spot it, reject it, and still be respectful, participating people in their classrooms, etc. But know that, Oh, that’s a bit funny. And come home and ask their parents about it, if that’s the safer place. I think how I would explain that one is the same way I would explain, you know, grandma’s on a diet and talks about it all the time. I would be having a conversation with grandma and saying, you know, I really would prefer if you don’t talk about that. We can talk about that on the side, or separately, but not in front of the kids. And then I would talk to the kids and say, you know, This is happening, or, This conversation comes up and different people believe different things, and different people have been taught things, and we have to respect that everybody’s learning things at their own pace, but in our house, in our family, in our classroom—for teachers that are further along with this—in our classroom, we believe this. Because I do have teachers that are really doing awesome stuff, but that may not be the case when they go to their friend’s classroom, or they do reading in the library.VirginiaSure, that’s a great point. I think that’s really helpful framing, again, to help with that parental panic of feeling like you have to—we often have this feeling like we have to insulate our kids from these messages, and we just can’t. So thinking, instead, how to help them identify them and question them is just going to be a more useful set of skills. This is so, so helpful, Gwen. Thank you so much for talking it through with us. Tell us anything else about what you’re working on, where we can follow your work, anything else I should be throwing in the transcript links?GwenI would say the Instagram is where we’re the most exciting. We are on Facebook also, but I’m a bit of one of those old millennials that is still figuring out all the different social media platforms.VirginiaWith you right there.GwenI think they call us geriatric millennials. VirginiaYes, yes. GwenBut we do have a Facebook page, as well. We are launching more and more education for teachers that are either ready to come individually or as a group. So I do professional development, and it actually doesn’t matter what state, country, province you’re in. As long as we speak the same language, then we can we can do it because there are no boundaries for this, and most of the curriculums are public space. And we do have a website, dietitians4teachers.ca, which gets updated when it gets updated, and all of those things.VirginiaI hear you.GwenAnd there are a few resources to try and compete with the ocean of bad nutrition resources. We’re starting to put some up on Teachers Pay Teachers.VirginiaOh, that’s fantastic.GwenHoping that teachers have new options.VirginiaYeah, absolutely. And I’m sure there are some teachers listening to this, so I hope they will check out your work and this will be helpful to them and the work they’re trying to do. And for parents, if you do get to the stage of sharing resources with a teacher, obviously Gwen’s stuff is your first stop. So thank you so much, Gwen. This was great. GwenThanks for having me. This was so fun. VirginiaThank 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. This week we also had help from the also fantastic Rebecca Nathanson. 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! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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 am Virginia Sole-Smith. I'm a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and I'm the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today, I am delighted to be chatting with Alyson Gerber, author of the critically acclaimed novels Focused, Braced, and, most recently, Taking Up Space. Alyson, welcome! AlysonThank you so much for having me. VirginiaI'm so excited to talk to you. I have followed your work for a long time, so this is a real treat. So why don't we start with you just telling us a little bit about yourself?AlysonSure. As you said, I'm an author. I write middle grade books for readers 8 and up, and the adults who care about them, so teachers and parents, doctors, anybody who's interacting with kids of this age. I really started to write for this age group because I experienced a lot of trauma right around sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. I wore a back brace to treat my scoliosis, which was the beginning of my journey to body image struggles. And at the same time, I had undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and I cover those topics in my first two middle grade novels, Braced, about scoliosis, and Focused, about a girl, a chess player, with undiagnosed ADHD.And Taking Up Space was really the novel that I pushed off writing because I knew how difficult and challenging it would be for me to dig into it. I started writing it when I was pregnant with my daughter and I had a pretty significant disordered eating relapse. I really wanted to talk openly about what it feels like to struggle under the diagnosis. To really be facing food struggles and body image and not have a way to talk about it, I think it can become very complicated. Because there isn't a medical diagnosis for disordered eating, it becomes something that people don't talk about. So I'm always curious and interested in—and most of my books really cover—the topics that we'd rather brush under the rug because we're ashamed of them, for whatever reason.VirginiaRight. That's such an important point. What Sarah struggles with in the novel isn't necessarily what would meet criteria for an eating disorder, but it is really serious and really difficult and way too common. You're giving voice to that struggle, which I think we are all inclined to normalize or push away or have reinforced by people in our lives, by diet culture, all that kind of stuff. I was curious because I knew the first two novels were very personally inspired: It sounds like with Taking Up Space, the topic is something you've really dealt with, as well. Are any of the characters drawn from your own life? Or was it more taking the issue and putting it into a fictional world?AlysonThat's a great question. For all three of my books, actually, I really wrote the story of the main character from the heart of what I experienced. So from the ups and downs and the pain of feeling misunderstood and feeling alone and unsupported and confused about whether or not what I was going through was worthy of attention and deserving of comfort—even conversation—and deserving of support. And so especially with Taking Up Space, I really drew on that experience of being confused about what are the rules of eating. Are there rules of eating? And how do you learn how to eat and feed yourself? Sarah's journey to understand that she has all the tools she needs within herself by listening to her body, that really has been a lifelong journey for me. And so the emotional arc of the character is from my real life, and the plot of what happens to her as this incredible basketball player whose family identity is about basketball—she wants to be part of it and she wants to continue to play at an advanced level because it's so important to her identity—that is fiction. I never played basketball. I was not a basketball star.VirginiaWow. I am a complete non-athlete, so I can't say how authentic it was, but it felt very authentic to me—the team culture, the coach relationship. I thought you did such a nice job. I think something that a lot of parents with kids in sports struggle with is how body stuff gets handled in sports. We think about it a lot with gymnastics or cheerleading, which are very aesthetic-based sports, but even in sports like basketball, there's so much emphasis on your body being a certain way to be good at the sport. And the way Sarah was struggling with, “Is my body changing? And do I have to fix that in order to be good at my sport?” I thought that was so, so important to articulate that struggle. AlysonThank you. I actually purposely picked a sport that wasn't endurance or aesthetic because it is such a problem in all sports and I wanted to really showcase that this is an issue that's impacting a big part of the population. It's not just the stereotypes. I wanted her to be outside of that. And I played sports. It was sort of forced upon me. This is one of those things where I went to a school where it was a required, three seasons of sports. VirginiaOh god.AlysonI was also not an athlete. I was very much a benchwarmer. But one of the things I took away—and I brought that to Braced because Sarah is a soccer player and chess, in a lot of ways, is a team sport—was there was something about being on a team that I loved. I loved the orange slices and I loved the cheering and I loved being there for your friends and wanting to win together. That is the one takeaway of being forced to play sports. It was really not great, but—VirginiaYou had that experience.AlysonExactly, and I'm able to use it in a way that really benefits me now. That's one of the things I love about writing: You get to imagine you're good at something you really can't do at all.VirginiaI love that. I think I played field hockey for two days, and then I was like, “we have to run a lot at practice and I'm not going to do that.”AlysonAlso, there are a lot of rules in field hockey. I was always in the wrong place.VirginiaIt was very stressful. I literally lasted less than a week on the team. I was like, Nope, not for me. But I was a theater kid, and so I can relate to that sense of the group experience of building something and creating something as a team. You have that in the theater world too. It is a really special experience and it's definitely the real strength of athletics and activities like that. Another thing I love about the book is the mother-daughter relationship. This must have been pretty tough to write. I obviously don't want to give away spoilers about the book because I want everyone to go read it, but the mom is struggling quite a bit and you really show how her struggles impact Sarah in really major ways. But they also have this beautiful relationship. They have these things they can really bond over. They love the same kind of murder mysteries and there is a closeness to their relationship, as well as this distance that's happened around food and body. And I thought that was so beautifully done because I think so often, in the way we talk about eating disorders culturally, there's a lot of mom-blaming. And in the way they're often portrayed in fiction and movies or books or whatever, the not-really-examined evil mother figure comes up a lot. So I loved that you steered so deliberately away from that.I wanted to hear a little bit about your thinking there. Was that a conscious choice? Did you have to resist the urge to make Sarah’s mom the bad guy? How did you think about developing their relationship?AlysonI'm so glad that this is not a video, I should say, because you just made me cry in everything you said. I'm just totally tearing up because I think you said that so perfectly. I think there's so much mom-blaming and I think there's so much black-and-white thinking around mother-daughter relationships: that we have a good relationship, or we have a bad relationship. And I think mother-daughter relationships are really complicated, and especially for characters like Sarah and her mother, I really intentionally wanted her not to be the bad guy. And I wanted the reader to understand that she might be making bad choices as a parent, but those bad choices are because she's also a victim of diet culture. She's a victim of her own experience, and a victim of the time, of growing up in a time where it wasn't as easy to go to therapy. It was not as socially acceptable to talk about your feelings, and so those feelings got buried. Even now, when both mothers and daughters can have access, I think there are places, there are families, there are communities, where it's less accepted. And I hope that's not always going to be the case, but I think for a long time, it probably will be the case. And so when you have a parent who has complicated feelings that aren't being addressed, those feelings are going to come out in their relationship, and that's where the relationship gets complicated and messy. But it doesn't mean that it's not an amazingly close relationship, like you just said. You can be an incredible parent and also be somebody who has struggled with something in your life that makes that piece of your relationship really hard. And I think we have to get rid of the black-and-white thinking around parenting because it's just not. I'm a parent now, so I can say, "I'm such a bad mom today!" But then I have to consciously say, "No, I was challenged today and this is how I managed it, and it wasn't my favorite day that I ever had parenting, and I'm going to try to do better tomorrow." And even cutting that black-and white-thinking in the way that we talk to ourselves as parents and as kids, just rethinking it and reframing it for ourselves so that we can really see it for what it is, which is that you can be an incredible parent and have a real deficit in one area, a real blind spot. And there's also room to always change and grow, and that's one of the things—and I don't want to give anything away—but one of the open pieces of the book that I wanted to keep in place is that some things are resolved and some things aren't, and the door, I think, is left open. And that's one of the special things about middle grade is you can give hope without resolving everything and putting a bow on it. And you can always work on it, you know? VirginiaYeah, and the closeness that they have is in these other ways. Because this question comes up all the time with my listeners or my readers of, “How do I talk to my own mom about this? Or, Am I a bad parent because I'm struggling?” And it's this other closeness that you have—bonding over murder mysteries, or whatever it is—that can be the foundation of a lot of healing in this area, if the person is in a position to do the work—and not everybody is. That's the other thing. Not everyone, as you're saying, has the resources, is in a culture that's going to be encouraging of that.So it can be both a really complicated thing because it's like, how can you love this parent so much when they are also doing things that are harmful to themselves and to you? But it can also be a really cathartic, beautiful opportunity for growth. I think you pack so much nuance into their interactions. It was very powerful to read, and I have a feeling for a lot of parents reading it, it will be, at times, painful, but also there's something powerful about seeing that struggle play out that way.AlysonThank you. I hope it's a conversation-starter for parents and kids, and even teachers and kids. I think there's real space in the classroom to talk about this and say, How can we listen to each other better? How can we respond more thoughtfully to each other? What you just said about a parent might not be willing to work on it and do the work, but are they willing to listen to your feedback? And can they do some of the work? Maybe it's not only for themselves, but can they do that for you? And so I think it's more complicated than just, yes, they can heal themselves, because not everybody is in a place to be able to do that. But if they can give you the space you need and the safety you need, then that can often really help.VirginiaAbsolutely. Another thing I thought about a lot while I was reading the book, because it's something I struggle with a lot in my own reporting when I read about eating disorders and disordered eating, is the level of detail to include or not include. It felt like you had probably made some very thoughtful choices about, you know, you have to tell a good story and you have to bring the reader into the experience.But my first job out of college was at Seventeen Magazine, and whenever we reported on eating disorders, I was like, “are we just teaching these kids how to have eating disorders?” Because we were including way too much detail about the vomit and all those sort of things. But as I've continued to work in this area, number one, I'm more thoughtful than I was, I think, at that point in my career. But I also think there's a reality in which kids who are struggling with this need to feel seen, and that can mean seeing descriptions of behaviors or thought patterns that may be quote-unquote triggering, but also may be like, Okay, I'm not the only one with that thought. Or, I'm not the only one who was doing that behavior. So how do you think about that issue? Because I'm sure you also struggle with this question.AlysonI think this was the hardest part of writing this book and the thing I wrestled with the most. As a middle grade author, one of the things I always think about is, How am I keeping all my readers safe? That means the reader who has never interacted with this, the reader who is struggling with an eating disorder, the reader who is struggling with constantly being bullied because of fatphobia. I'm trying to think about everybody in the room, and also let that go at some point to write the story. But then when I go back and revise, they're often on my mind in the language that I choose, especially in this book, in the detail that was given. I wrote this book many times. In the first version, there were more details. Sarah's size was more clear. And as I revised, I really started to get rid of that because I realized it was only hurting the story. We know from some indicators that Sarah is a straight-size person. You know the fashion term. We know that because she doesn't consider things like her chair and her uniform. There's no question about the sizing for her uniform. There are other things that would come up if that weren't the case, but other than that, I really tried to eliminate all those pieces because I didn't want readers walking in comparing themselves to Sarah.VirginiaThat was really smart.AlysonThat's something that I really struggled with, and have always struggled with: Am I as sick as this person? That sort of comparison, really, at the lowest points, was really hard for me. I know that that can be a struggle for a lot of people, so I wanted to keep those readers safe. And there's no scale in the book, which is also another choice, and I could have made a different choice. I tried to make a different choice at some point. Every choice that felt like the thing you think of as a stereotype when you think of an eating-disorder book or movie, I ended up getting rid of because it didn't serve the story. Truly, it's not the story I wanted to tell. This is a story about somebody who doesn't value themselves and who has learned to value herself based on outward things, based on her success at basketball, based on the way that she looks. And I wanted her to be able to recognize that and say, I really need to value myself based on myself, on who I really am. That, for me, has actually been the biggest struggle in overcoming all of my many issues. But in particular, self-worth has been the thing. And I think at the root of a lot of eating disorders is this: Does society value me? Does my job value me? Do my friends value me? How do I fit into the world? And the truth is, it's really how do you value you that matters the most. And it took me a long time to really understand that.VirginiaAnd you're completely right. If you had included the more cliché descriptions of her getting on a scale and tracking numbers and that kind of thing, that wouldn't have helped tell that story. That would have just been the more Lifetime-movie version—or Seventeen-Magazine-article version—of this story that isn't particularly helpful because it doesn't encourage readers to take these questions deeper. It doesn't help kids think beyond the behaviors about the underlying struggle, which I think Taking Up Space does so well. Because you do have other people in her life—the coach and various other people—who are able to reframe things for her and help her understand these larger questions. And that's really effectively done and, I think, contributes to that sense of safety that you're talking about, as well, for readers.AlysonThe other thing I thought of when you were sharing that is that I really wanted the reader who had no experience with this—the person who maybe thinks, Well, why don't they just eat? Why can't you just sit down and eat a piece of pizza? What's the big deal? I don't understand—to really be able to understand and to really be able to empathize. I taught over the course of the pandemic virtually, and I met with a lot of middle school kids who felt that whatever their pain, their mourning, their loss that they were experiencing, because it wasn't as big as other people's, that it didn't count.So they really talked down their pain and dismissed their own pain and made themselves feel bad for feeling bad when, really, everybody's pain counts. There's a spectrum of pain and you deserve support wherever you are. And I think that's something that took me a really long time to understand: that somebody can have it worse, and I can also still need help.VirginiaYes, yes. That is a tricky spot, for sure.AlysonAnd I can also be grateful for everything I have. You can be so thankful for the things that are going well, and also feel a lot of pain and be struggling in big ways. And I think as an adult, there's this tendency for adults to be like, "It'll get better. It's going to be fine. This isn't that big of a deal." But if a kid is telling you this is a big deal, that they feel something, it's a big deal, and it doesn't feel like it's going to get better. And they do need help.VirginiaAbsolutely.AlysonEven if we don't think that they need help, they sometimes do, and they need to know that. So that's one of the things I hope readers get out of Taking Up Space is a sense of empathy for other people and kindness for themselves.VirginiaAnd another thing, I'm realizing, that I think is so effective about the book is because you didn't focus in the traditional way on her weight, you were able to show that the struggle really isn't about, Are you losing a lot of weight? Or, Is your body changing? It really is this internal struggle. And I think that's so important because, going back to what you were saying earlier about, often, we feel like we're not as sick as someone else, one of the main ways that plays out is when an eating disorder doesn't result in this extreme weight loss that we expect. And, of course, the majority of eating disorders don't do that. And so all these people's struggles get swept under because you don't look like the cliché super-emaciated person. So I loved that you showed that, and you showed, too, that the tinkering with disordered eating can have pretty immediate effects on someone's ability to function and how they're feeling moving through their day, and all of that. That felt really powerful for kids to read, both either if they're going to see themselves in it, or if this is a newer concept to them, to understand that the stakes are quite high, even when you're just in the "early stages" of something. AlysonDefinitely. VirginiaI know you said your daughter is almost 4. I don't know exactly when you wrote this because books always take forever to come out, but did becoming a mom change how—and as a fellow mom who's a writer, I hate when we get reduced to being mom writers; I'm not trying to do that—but because you write for kids, and you write about these issues, I'm just curious if your relationship to the work or to this book has changed now that you are a mom of a daughter who may someday be dealing with some aspects of this.AlysonSo interesting. I started writing this book when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I think I was really thinking a lot about home and what it means to be a parent and what it means to create a sense of home, and I do so much home-creation in my storytelling. Because for 8 to 14 year olds, home is really the center, even though friends are slowly becoming the center. But it's where you come back to for safety. I thought a lot about what does it mean to have a home that's safe, emotionally and physically, and a place where you could really be yourself.And so I've given that a lot of thought in my parenting, and also I think it's really impacted my writing, and changed it. It's made me see some of the things that were safe for me in my own home growing up that maybe I wouldn't have considered before as being safe. It made me rethink things a little bit. And it made me realize some things that maybe I hadn't seen as being problematic. And I'm working on a mystery—it's very mysterious!—right now. The character's sense of home and sense of self is a major part of the story. And so I've been thinking about it a lot. It's interesting. The way that my daughter interacts with me has changed the way that—because now I'm seeing it from the other perspective. I'm not writing from the adult perspective interacting with kids, but now I am living the adult perspective interacting with kids. And even though Juliet is younger, I'm still imagining and thinking a lot about how this will play out. The three-nager years really showed me a lot about what I'm in for.VirginiaYes, that is a real phase, for sure, having done it twice. Definitely is a phase. I do think there's something to, like, the dynamics you're dealing with now will be the dynamics. Of course, kids change so much, but there are certain throughlines, for sure.AlysonAnd there are certain things that I find that will be a pain point for me. I'll feel the pain point as a parent and be like, Oh, I need help. I can't do this on my own. And seeing that from the other side is really interesting.VirginiaI was just thinking, with the mom character we talked about, she has such a richness to her, and I think your experience being on the other side maybe helped inform that too. Because it's sometimes left out—and it's understandable because kids don't see us as fully formed people, nor should they have to. But I think it's great for them to read books where the parents are flawed and struggling and fully formed people because that's useful for them to start to experience.AlysonDefinitely. A big part of my writing process is really thinking about each character as having their own arc and writing a little bit from each—sort of journaling from their perspective so that they feel like fully formed people. So I understand where they start at the beginning of the book and where they end up and how they get there. It's not just the main character. And the adults are always the hardest, which makes sense.VirginiaYeah, it does. Okay, so a question I always love to ask fellow writers is, Where do you do your writing? Tell me a little: Do you have a workspace? What do you love about it? What do you hate about it, if you don't love it? I love hearing about where people write. AlysonSo I live in Brooklyn and I have an office in my home here. I love it because it's my own space and I can close the door and shut everybody out, and it's quiet. And I really need that. I really need quiet, although I do like to draft at a coffee shop. So I have missed that a lot during the pandemic, hearing other people typing. There's a YouTube channel where you can hear other people typing. So I've done a little bit of that, which has been helpful. And the thing I dislike about my workspace is that it's—well, I like that I can see out into the front of the house, but also other people can see in. So I get scared often because I'm in another world when I'm writing and then the person delivering the UPS package will knock on the window and wave to me, and I go flying.VirginiaThat's so funny. Yes. My office is on a side where I can't see our door, which means I miss every UPS package, which is its own hassle. But it is nice from that perspective of being startled out of your work mode because it's so hard to get back to it, too, once you've broken the flow. Well, you mentioned you're working on a new mystery. Anything else you're excited about right now? Whether it's a new writing project, something else new in your life. My kids started school today. That's what I'm excited about. AlysonThat is exciting.VirginiaOh god, it's so exciting.AlysonMy daughter's about to start school next week, which is very exciting. I'm really excited about this book that I'm working on. It's taken over my brain, which is great. And it means that it's going to work and it's singing. At first, I always feel like I'm putting pieces together and I'm trying to layer the onion back together. It works or it doesn't work, and it's working. And it's working in a way that I really wanted it to work.VirginiaThat's so satisfying.AlysonAnd just like the characters in Taking Up Space, I'm a huge mystery fan. I'm sort of obsessed, actually. I've watched, like, every British mystery. That's the one thing about the pandemic is I've actually gotten to watch—there were a couple of old ones that were on my list that I got to.VirginiaWhich ones?Alyson“Vera.” I had really wanted to get through that.VirginiaI've never seen that. My mom loved it, I think.AlysonThey're a little bit older, like “Foyle's War,” which is very long. It's nine seasons long. I was able to get through that.VirginiaWell, that's nice because you've got a lot. I hate when something's only two or three seasons.AlysonSo it's both exciting because I'm loving the book, but also exciting because this is a genre that has always interested me, and those were the books that I read most growing up and the books that kept my attention. So this is keeping my attention.VirginiaThat's awesome. And will this be middle grade, as well, or are you doing an adult mystery?AlysonNo, it's middle grade. And I'm hopeful that it will be a series. I'm trying to work to figure out how to do that.VirginiaThis is very exciting. All right. Well, when you're ready to talk more about that, you'll have to come back and tell us all about it because that sounds awesome. AlysonPerfect. I would love to. VirginiaAnd tell listeners where we can find more of your work and follow everything you're doing.AlysonSo my website is my name, alysongerber.com, and I am basically everywhere @AlysonGerber. So on Instagram @AlysonGerber. On Twitter @AlysonGerber. And you can find all my books also through the Scholastic website. Scholastic is my publisher.VirginiaAwesome, and I will link to all of that in the transcript. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been such a great conversation. I'm just so thrilled there are writers like you in the middle grade space doing these books because we really need more. This is a question I'm asked a lot: What can my kid be reading? And it's so great there's finally more than just Blubber to tell them about, so thank you so much.AlysonTotally. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.VirginiaAnd thanks to all of you for listening to Burnt Toast. If you like this episode and you aren't yet subscribed, please do that. If you are a subscriber, thank you so much. Please consider sharing Burnt Toast on social media or forwarding this to a friend. Our 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 or Twitter. I am @v_solesmith. Thanks so much and talk to you soon! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Deciding what to have for dinner can sometimes be as exhausting as making it. Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, the author of the book The Eating Instinct (Henry Holt and Co., 2018) and the newsletter Burnt Toast, talks about why meal planning often falls to women, and offers tips on how to make the process less agonizing and more equal.

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!This is a newsletter where we explore questions and sometimes answers around 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.My voice is a little raspy because I was at my sister’s wedding all weekend screaming at the top of my lungs. Not like in an angry way, in a joyful way. You know. Dancing Queen came on. Anyway! Today I am, raspily, but very excited-ly, chatting with Tyler Feder, an artist whose work explores big feelings, feminism, and pop culture, all of which are things I’m obsessed with.Tyler is the author of the young adult graphic memoir Dancing at the Pity Party. She also illustrated Together We March and Unladylike: A Field Guide to Smashing the Patriarchy and Claiming Your Space. She runs the very awesome Etsy shop Roaring Softly. And her newest project, which we’re going to talk about today is a body positive picture book for preschoolers called Bodies Are Cool.Tyler, welcome.TylerThank you so much for having me.VirginiaI’m so excited to chat with you. I really fangirl about your work. Your illustrations are amazing. And you know, this new book is the book that I feel like my readers, everyone in my life really, has been asking for, for so long. And I’ve been looking for as the mother of a former preschooler and a current preschooler. It’s just so needed. So thank you.Before we talk about the new book, I’d love to hear a little bit of your story, how you became an artist. And specifically, an artist who focuses on feminism and big feelings, because I mean, those really are my favorite things.TylerI grew up always very into art. I was always doodling more than I was supposed to be in my notebooks in school. I would like take every art class that I could. But I always thought it was just like, my special thing, that is just like, a cool talent or whatever, but not a career. And I went to college and studied screenwriting.VirginiaAlso a solid career path.TylerThat one felt more legit, a lot of classes on how to market yourself. And somehow I ended up combining the two things that I love art and writing, and doing comics. I did comics for a school newspaper growing up, and they’re really embarrassing. Like, I can’t believe that I was showing that to a lot of people.VirginiaI feel like all of us who work in creative professions have some—I wrote a lot of one act plays in high school, and I had a lot of big teenage feelings that went into those plays. And I really can’t quite think about them now.TylerI have a lot of compassion for the person that I was.So, my mom got cancer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, and then she died during spring break of my sophomore year. So that is what my first book Dancing at the Pity Party is about. I had always liked just drawing pictures, but I never put them into a project of that length before. Definitely not anything that deep. I mean, when my mom first died, I was taking a lot of writing classes in college and I did a lot of poetry and screenplays, and play scripts, and everything was about dead moms. And it was very on the nose because that’s all that I had in my brain.VirginiaI mean, you had to write through it. That makes sense.TylerSo I made this book 10 years after my mom died, so there was a little time to work on actually making it more thoughtful and working on the tone and having it not be just like 100% a death march, just this, horrible, horrible sad like—I mean, it’s still pretty sad, but I tried to make it a little light, too.VirginiaIt’s such a tricky thing. I’ve written quite a lot about my older daughter’s heart condition and honestly probably needed more distance than I had when I was writing some of those pieces. I was writing about it while we were still going through intense open heart surgeries and long ICU stays. And that’s completely not the same thing as a personal loss like yours. But it was very traumatic in its own way. There’s a weird experience of needing to write to sort of survive your trauma, but trying to figure out, is that the part that goes out in the world? Or is that writing as therapy? Sometimes the line there is very blurry.TylerJust because something is in your journal, does that mean it’s a book that people who aren’t you should read?VirginiaThat is a strange space to navigate. So tell me about the new book. What inspired Bodies Are Cool? I mean, like I said, I feel like this is such a needed book when I saw it I was like, finally it exists, but I’d love to know what led you to doing it?TylerAfter I finished Pity Party, I was like, I need to do something fun and colorful and playful and positive and less intense. And this was a perfect fit for me. I’ve been really into the body positivity and fat liberation movement for many years. My family has a history of a lot of mental health issues and eating disorders and my immediate family was extremely diet-y growing. My mom had grown up a chubby kid and got made fun of a lot. And I think she just really didn’t want her kids to feel that way. I think it came from a really wholesome and loving place, but the way it presented itself was a lot of calorie counting. My sisters and I went on Weight Watchers when we were kids and it was just not a good thing.And I had this moment when I was little, before any of that really had come up yet. I was still so young. And I was in the basement with my dad, and he was doing sit-ups on the floor. I think I was just watching him, I was probably six or something, talking about how he wanted his stomach to be hard, to have abs. And I remember being like, why? It’s so nice that it’s soft. I had seen soft as a positive thing. Like, why would you want your pillow to be hard?VirginiaYes. It’s so illogical. It’s so understandable that a child would find that illogical, and then we internalize this illogical thing.TylerWhy should my dad be different than how he already is? Like, I love how he is.VirginiaOh my gosh, I love that.TylerWhen I was much older and had gotten into learning about diet culture and everything, I thought back on that time, and I was like, oh my god. There was an age where when I thought about different bodies, it was just with a sense of wonder and awe. Just in a very neutral to positive kind of way. Like, my grandma’s arms were saggy, because she’s old and they were so soft, and we just liked to play with them, completely positive. And it was just cool. It was part of my grandma.So with this book, I wanted to catch kids when they’re still having those positive responses to people’s bodies and really try to instill that that’s correct for them to feel that way before they start being really aware of their own bodies and differences and in a way that is free of judgment.VirginiaPreschool is such an important age because we know that’s the age when they start absorbing this, which is heartbreaking to think about, that it starts that early, but it does. So we have to get out in front of that. I love that the book is very diverse in terms of body size, but also so many different aspects of bodies you cover. And I was curious, what was your process for figuring out what those different aspects would be that you wanted to highlight?Tyler It was a big challenge. I knew tackling this type of project, the goal was people to feel accepted, and seen. That means showing as many different combinations of traits as I can. I wanted each page to be diverse, but I also wanted the whole book to be diverse. I didn’t want it to be like, every person in a wheelchair is the same race on every page, the whole book had to be shaken up, and sprinkled with the different traits everywhere. So at one point, I made this huge spreadsheet.VirginiaI wondered, because it is so meticulous. The book reads like this beautiful kaleidoscope but when you look, there’s so much detail. And there’s so much thought into every little piece of the drawings. I was like, how did she keep track of all that? How did she possibly not repeat things? So yes, tell me about the spreadsheet, I love a spreadsheet.TylerIt just had like 100 columns and 100 rows: skin color, body shape, body size, age, hair, hair length, or texture, disabilities, every possible thing I could think of. And I also did like a lot of passes after I had finished most of the illustrations, I would go back and add beauty marks, or scars. It was a lot to think about and a lot of research. I was very lucky to work with some really great sensitivity readers, one for race, one for disability and one for trans representation. And that was super, super helpful.When the book came out, I was bracing myself for people to like, be like, oh, I didn’t see my specific combination of traits in there, I feel left out. I just really hoped that I could avoid that at all costs.VirginiaI feel like even if that happens, surely it is clear that you worked very hard to like, cover a lot of bases.There are two kids books that I enjoy, and I have and I read with my kids, but they talk about body positivity through metaphors There’s one that’s like, “we’re all works of art.” And it shows different paintings and different bodies in paintings. But it’s still sort of narrow in that sense, and very abstract because, you know, a child knows they’re not a painting. There’s that sort of distance. And there’s another one where the characters are all different, like literal shapes, like a triangle and a square. And that’s cool. But it’s like, why are we using a metaphor instead of the real thing.I don’t want to sound like I’m being critical those books because they’re very useful in their own way. But, you really are showing bodies, like human bodies, and it’s so great for kids, and for parents, to see these actual bodies. Were any of them based on real people or were they all fictional?TylerThat’s a really good question. I think because I was so careful about the spreadsheet and everything there wasn’t as much room for sneaking people that I know in illustrations, which is something that normally I really enjoy doing.VirginiaI could see that’s tricky with the bigger goal of this book.TylerThere is on the body hair page, there’s this girl with two braids with dark hair and glasses sitting under a tree and that was like, vaguely inspired by me when I was a little kid. Like, hairy legs, mustache. Everyone’s playing and having a campfire she’s kind of off to the side.VirginiaI love that little girl. I think I was also a little bit that girl. I think I told you over email, I really appreciated the scars page. Because again, my older daughter has a zipper scar, she’s got numerous scars from her various procedures, and she’s super proud of them. They’re part of her story, her little sister’s quite jealous of them. You know, there’s lots of “well, you didn’t get to have a feeding tube, so you don’t have two belly buttons in our house,” which is pretty great. But I often think about, you know, the representation of that and wanting her to see bodies like that. So it was really special, as I think the first children’s book I found that really showed that. So, you know, special shout out from the heart parent community, because we really need that.TylerIt’s so cool to hear from people who point out individual elements that meant so much to them.VirginiaWell, it just shows how hard you worked to think of all these different aspects of bodies that we need to see and that we don’t normally get to see. I’m curious to know, as you think about parents reading this book with their kids, and the kinds of conversations that might come up. What do you think we need to be talking to kids about in terms of bodies? Obviously, your book is sort of a great starting point for these conversations, but where are you hoping it will lead families with this?TylerI’m really hoping that people, families are talking about how different we all are, but in a neutral or positive way. A comparison I like to make a lot is, if you go to a flower garden, there’s all different kinds of flowers, big, floppy ones, little ones in clusters, and they’re all different colors. And we don’t think like, obviously this one is the best because of its features. The fact that they’re all different is what makes the flower garden so pretty to look at.I also talk about dogs, like dogs look so different. And we think they’re all cute. You see a really chubby dog you’re like, oh he’s so chunky, then you see a really lanky one, and they’re so cute with their limbs flailing around. And I would like kids and their parents to be able to notice that their body is different from other people’s. But that that’s cool, that’s what makes the world beautiful, that we’re all different. And then also that they notice when they see other people that look really different from them that like, it’s cool that they’re different.I think a lot of the focus of body positivity can be on just liking our own bodies, or liking our own bodies as they are right at this moment without gaining or losing any weight, or disability or any thing like that, or aging or whatever. And I think building empathy is a really important part of body positivity, and it can lessen fatphobia and all the things that come along with that, and racism, sexism, just like just thinking that it’s cool that we’re all different, and everyone should be included in spaces accessible for them.Virginia I think a lot about how with little kids in particular, we celebrate growth, for the most part, we celebrate that your body is changing. And then kids reach a certain age. And often it’s still pretty young, it might be just before puberty, or once puberty starts and suddenly the changes are bad. And that kicks off this whole lifetime of feeling any way your body changes, unless it’s becoming smaller, is a bad thing. And it’s so messed up. Both because it makes it more difficult to feel okay about your own body, and because of what it says about everybody else’s bodies, any body that is different than yours is somehow less than or you know, it creates these strange hierarchies. I love the idea of celebrating change and bodies because we all need that freedom to change.TylerIt doesn’t end in puberty, there’s a lot of changes that keep happening.Virginia Absolutely. I think that’s really useful.I think parents often really worry and this is a question I get often, what if my kid calls out something about somebody’s body, whether it’s, you know, that they’re using a mobility aid or that they have a different skin color or that they’re fat, calls it out in a public way and then that’s so mortifying, you know, what do I do with those kinds of moments. And I’m just curious if you have any thoughts about, you know, if we’re going to encourage noticing difference, how do we pair that with respect?TylerI wouldn’t ever want to speak over anyone in a community that’s more targeted by this kind of stuff. But in general, if your kid is like, wow, look at that person. They’re different, I think you can just be like, yeah, that’s great. That might have sounded sarcastic, and I didn’t mean it that way. Just, yeah, it is cool. That person’s hair is super curly, and yours is super straight. Isn’t it cool how hair can be all different shapes? And to just to not hush the kid away and make them think that it’s something bad to acknowledge that we’re different, because there’s nothing wrong with that.VirginiaAbsolutely. I think particularly white parents or particularly thin parents, anyone with a certain amount of privilege, has this idea that noticing the difference is going to be mortifying to the other person. But that’s actually their own internal biases, because what they’re really saying is it’s worse to be that way. So let’s not point out this bad thing. But if you can let go of the idea that it’s bad to be bigger, it’s bad to be brown or any of these things, then it is just different and different is good. I have a feeling the people reading your book, like the parents are having to do a lot more work than the kids. We all have all this stuff to let go of.TylerThe adults are the ones that have been like swimming in this diet culture soup for their whole lives.VirginiaYes, and trying to do the work, but it’s not easy work, you know, when you’re having to unpack stuff that happened when you were six with your dad doing sit-ups or whatever. It takes a really long time. But this is such a great tool.People are always asking me for other book recs, so if there’s another body positive book, either for older kids or just another book in this space you really love we always love recommendations.TylerYeah, for sure. I did a panel about body positivity with this author Shelly Anand, she wrote a children's book called Laxmi's Mooch.VirginiaOh, I don’t know this one.TylerIt’s about a little Indian girl who has hair on her upper lip. Mooch is a Hindi word for mustache. And she gets teased about it in school, and then she goes home and her mom tells her about all the women in her family that have this and all these historical figures like Frida Kahlo, and then the girl goes back to school the next day and is like, so excited about her mustache. And she’s like, I’m like a lion, or tiger or something. It gave me goosebumps. I can’t stop thinking about it. I think it’s great in general. But also, I had a mustache when I was a little kid. And it was something that would get pointed out a lot by other kids and sometimes adults. And it was really embarrassing. And I love the idea that it’s okay that you have this. You don’t have to hide it. But it’s like, it’s cool.I mean, I cannot imagine in a million years, if when I was little, I had thought that my little mustache was cool.VirginiaRight? If someone had given you space to embrace it. Oh, my gosh, that’s so powerful. I also love it from like, you know, fighting the gender binary perspective, like normalizing the idea that we can have all different bodies and that’s amazing. I’m really excited to check that out.Tyler, tell us where we can find more of your work where people can follow you, how we can support your work.TylerI’m on Instagram @TylerFeder. That’s my main space for posting art. I sell my art at roaringsoftly.com.VirginiaAnd of course, we’ll link to the book, we’ll link to all your books so people can check those out as well. And I’m so glad I got a chance to talk to you, this was awesome. And yeah, Bodies Are Cool is just a must have in every parent’s library. So thank you for your work. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions and sometimes answers around 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.Today I am chatting with Christy Harrison, a dietitian, host of the beloved Food Psych podcast and author of Anti-Diet, one of my favorite books, and the forthcoming Rethinking Wellness. Welcome, Christy!ChristyThanks, Virginia. So good to be here. VirginiaI’m so glad to have you on. Christy and I have been guests on each other’s podcasts over the years, so it is fun to be doing it again. Christy, I am sure most of my listeners are going to know your work because you are kind of a legend in this space. But why don’t you give us a little background on you and your work?ChristyLike you said, I’m a journalist and dietitian. I started my career as a journalist, and also had my own undiagnosed eating disorder at the time. It kind of made me obsessed with food, nutrition and health, and that’s what I sort of fell into reporting on. And that can really exacerbate disordered eating. Even people who don’t have pre-existing disordered eating, sometimes falling into those beats can create some disorder in one’s relationship with food. So I really struggled with that, but was slowly recovering and had a therapist and had some good people around me, supporting me to at least expand my horizons a little bit with food. I ended up working at a food magazine, Gourmet—RIP—and worked there for a couple years until it folded. And during that time, I realized that the magazine was maybe a little bit on the rocks, and the magazine industry in general was not a great—VirginiaNot a sustainable business model—Christy Yeah, not the most sustainable, and that has really kind of proven to be true. So I went back to school to get my dietitian’s license and get my master's in public health nutrition. And at the time, my goal was to be the next Michael Pollan, or like, Michael Pollan meets Marion Nestle. I wanted to write about sustainability and food systems and ending the “obesity epidemic.” I had really bought into that rhetoric. I think it came out of my own disordered relationship with food and how much I had bought into to diet culture, and specifically the version of diet culture that I now call the wellness diet, which was sort of birthed by the Michael Pollan paradigm. You know, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” which is enough to just drive a person up a wall, thinking about the minutiae of that. And of course, my thinking about calories and carbs, and all the sort of overt diet-culture stuff never really went away, either. So it was just a hot mess in my head.Fortunately, when I was in grad school, I started researching a book that I never ended up writing, but that kind of, in a roundabout way, became the basis of Anti-Diet 10 years later. And that original book that I was researching was about emotional eating. I considered myself an emotional eater at the time. I now can see that it’s because I wasn’t eating enough. When people are deprived of food, it makes them eat more in response to emotions, and it also can make them eat more and attribute it to emotions, when really it’s attributable to the deprivation itself, to hunger.I wasn’t really aware of all that. But I started to find research on restrained eating and the effects of that. And I discovered the book Intuitive Eating. And those things started to shift my relationship with food, especially the book Intuitive Eating, and I started to try to practice that and brought it into my therapy. Fortunately, I had been an intuitive eater up until the age of 20, when my eating disorder started. Luckily, no one had interfered in my relationship with food growing up, so I was able to have that intuitive relationship with food, I think largely because of thin privilege—which is the privilege of being thin enough to have nobody say, “you’re too big, you need to lose weight,” and also the privilege of having food security. Those things allowed me to keep on eating intuitively through my adolescence, and I think it was a little bit easier to click back into it because I had that base. It did still take a long time, it took years to really heal my relationship with food, get back to a place of intuitive eating. But I think having that sort of memory was helpful.Once I had gone through that I, you know, was now a nutritionist and soon to be full-fledged dietitian, and I worked for three years as a nutritionist at the New York City Department of Health. And that’s while I was recovering, and sort of re-learning intuitive eating. So the cognitive dissonance of what I was teaching and preaching to people, and what I was doing in my own life, started to be pretty clear to me. I started thinking a lot more about people’s relationships with food, and what makes someone a disordered eater versus having a peaceful relationship with food. And I realized that was the direction I wanted to go in my career. That’s what led me to the eating disorder field and to starting the podcast in 2013, and where I ended up now, I guess. Along the way, of course, I picked up more about Health at Every Size, and an anti-diet approach that I think is really necessary for working with disordered eating, but also for working with any client on any nutritional issue. People of all shapes and sizes, and people of all backgrounds really deserve to have an intuitive relationship with food and a peaceful relationship with food and not to be told what to eat or policed about their food choices.So that’s the perspective I come from now: How can I partner with people and support people through my journalistic work to reconnect with their own innate wisdom about food and nutrition in their bodies?VirginiaThat’s the piece of the conversation that I see missing over and over, when we look at the work of the Michael Pollans of the world or the wellness industry where it is today. There’s no recognition of the emotional piece of this, the oppression that many people face around their bodies and the way the world treats them for their bodies.ChristyIt’s really seen as education is the answer to everything. And I don’t know anyone I’ve seen as a client who hasn’t sort of “known what they were supposed to be doing,” right? They come in saying, you’re gonna tell me I’m bad. I eat this. I’m so ashamed of myself, I eat a lot of processed food, or whatever. People know what the “rules” are. The fact that they’re not following them speaks to the arbitrariness and messed-up-ness of the rules themselves.VirginiaAnd the unsustainability of them, ironically, given that it’s often framed as this effort to find sustainability.I got to know Christy when I interviewed her for The Eating Instinct. Her story is in chapter two, which was excerpted in Medium. When we first met, we both had these early experiences in the magazine world. I was at a magazine called Organic Style, so it was sort of in the same realm, but not a food magazine full on, but very much an incubator of a lot of this wellness industry stuff in the early years of that, and we both had these complicated journeys out of that space. So it’s kind of cool that we both ended up where we are.I’ve got some listener questions that I wanted to put your way. The first is getting at this intuitive eating versus processed food concept, which you sort of touched on a little bit there, and is something folks struggle with a lot. I get a version of this question all the time, but this person wrote: “I love the idea of intuitive eating, but wonder how it works with modern processed food, which is designed to keep us eating more and more. I have heard the processed food hijacks our body’s natural impulses, that sugar and white flour are addictive. I’m especially interested in this question as I get ready to introduce solid food to my baby.” A lot to unpack there.[Editor’s Note: You can read Virginia’s full response to this question here.]ChristyI get versions of this question a lot, too, and I think it’s fascinating because when I first was coming into the intuitive eating space, I still had a lot of that Michael Pollan baggage with me. And I thought, well, maybe there’s a way to bridge these two worlds and think about food politics and how “bad” processed foods are, but do it through an intuitive eating lens where we’re not demonizing anything. And through a lot of reflection on that, I sort of realized, it’s not really possible to bridge those two worlds because the Michael Pollan world is so rooted in—and I keep calling him out as the exemplar of this, but it’s so many people now, the whole wellness industry basically, now—but that world is so rooted in this concept that fat is bad, that eating certain foods makes us fat, and makes us inherently unhealthy, so we need to cut out those foods and it really demonizes certain foods and elevates others. I’ve come to see that that’s really a hallmark of diet culture, and very much a hallmark of this modern guise of diet culture that I call the wellness diet, which is really diet culture disguising itself as health and wellness. It’s still about restriction and deprivation and fatphobia, shaming certain types of bodies and elevating others, and shaming certain types of foods, both because of their perceived connection to higher weights, and also because of other baggage about those foods being “unhealthy” in and of themselves. So now I think that is just fundamentally incompatible with intuitive eating, because one of the principles of intuitive eating is make peace with food, and this full unconditional permission to eat all foods.What I’ve found and what the research bears out, is that when people are truly not deprived of anything, when they don’t see anything as bad or off limits, they paradoxically are able to modulate their eating in a way that is much more aligned with their body’s desires and needs. They’re not in this restrict-binge cycle, with particular foods or with food in general. There’s some research that I cite in my book about the effect of dietary restraint on people’s eating and even their brain activity in response to certain types of foods specifically like sugar, processed foods, you know, “processed” foods and highly palatable foods that are so demonized in our culture. What researchers found is that people who are restricted and deprived, people who are restrained eaters aka chronic dieters, do eat more in the presence of highly palatable foods, do eat more, get more brain reward from sweet foods [Editor’s Note: use of weight-stigmatizing language], and also eat more in the presence of food advertising, and also diet advertising. There are ads encouraging people to eat more foods that are delicious, and also ads encouraging people to eat less, or eat more diet foods, and all of those things dieters are actually more susceptible to doing. Dieters will eat more of the foods that they are told are “good” as well as foods that diet culture deems “bad” in the presence of that kind of marketing. And their brain activity in response to sweet foods is far greater. People who are not restrained eaters, people who are not chronic dieters, don’t show that same response. They actually eat the same amount in the presence of food industry and diet industry marketing, they have way less brain activity in response to sweet foods, they might still have some activity in the pleasure centers because, of course, sweetness is pleasurable. And we all deserve that, we all deserve to have pleasure in food, but there’s not this immense reward because there wasn’t the immense deprivation. When you’re more deprived of something, you tend to gravitate towards it more, and you tend to have a greater reward from that food. And then of course, the corresponding guilt afterwards.VirginiaThat’s so interesting, and what I’m just thinking about, as you’re talking, is how we so often hear this conversation demonizing highly palatable foods, processed foods, and demonizing food marketing for making us want more and more, but we don’t talk very often about how much that marketing is playing into the restrict-binge cycle. So much of the advertising around foods that are “highly palatable” or whatever you want to call it is sort of playing into that rhetoric that you should indulge, that message is not subtle at all in the advertising. And then the diet industry messaging is really the flip side of the same coin in terms of the marketing. We don’t think enough about how it’s not really the food itself. It really is this conversation around food that’s making us feel addicted to it or out of control around it.ChristyAnd I think people like Michael Pollan, and Eric Schlosser, and Marion Nestle—VirginiaAnd that new guy, Michael—ChristyYeah, yes. Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat.They all sort of make this connection, which actually, in research methods, we call the ecological fallacy, which is like “X thing happened in this community around a certain time, and Y thing also happened, so X was the cause of Y.” In this case, processed food advertising increased, portion sizes increased, and then “obesity” increased, and therefore, these increases in portion sizes, and the type of marketing, made people fat.My response to that is, if we actually step back and look at the cultural context, what was happening leading up to, most people will cite the 1970s as sort of when people’s body sizes supposedly started increasing. Diet culture existed for, you know, about 100 years before that, and really, in a concerted way for 50 years or so before that, and the market share of the diet industry was steadily increasing, and the number of people who were dieting and restricting really increased every decade from, you know, the 1910s, onward, 1920s onward, and reached kind of a fever pitch in the 1970s. So that was the context in which portion sizes also increased and food advertising increased. You have to think, well, what does that sort of mass food deprivation do to people? It makes them crave more food.So if the industry was, in fact, increasing portion sizes and so on, some of that may have had to do with increased demand from an increased number of starving or deprived people. People want bigger portions when they’re deprived of food. You have to sort of take it as a whole, right? We can’t just blame the food industry—and also, blaming anything for people’s body size is inherently fatphobic and stigmatizing. I think looking for a reason for why people are larger is missing the point. We really don’t need to be talking about weight in that kind of pathological way. But we need to talk about this cultural context that makes people think their bodies are too large, makes people fear fatness and demonize fatness and want to do anything to outrun it, including these really extreme, but sometimes also, “less extreme” or “light” or “healthy” diets. Any sort of restriction and taking yourself away from that intuitive relationship with food interferes with that innate connection with food that we’re all born with, and sets people up for that restrict-binge cycle and other forms of disordered eating and exercise.VirginiaYes to all of that. On a related note, the other thing I wanted to chat about is diet foods as a sort of cultural concept. I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how I continue to love Diet Coke, and also protein powder. I’m somehow more embarrassed about the protein powder. But anyway.Even though it’s been, you know, a good six years plus, since I went on an official diet, and I’ve been out of diet culture in terms of my own head for that long, these are foods that, once I stripped away the diet stuff, I just enjoyed them, and I just eat them without the diet mindset. When I wrote about this, there were a couple of really interesting responses. Quite a few folks said something like, oh, I don’t eat diet foods, I just eat small portions of the real thing I want. And that, to me, is diet mentality. Right? Christy I think it’s so interesting that people are saying, “I just eat small portions of the real thing.” There’s something about this need to limit, that is very much the diet mentality. Because why not just say, I eat however much I want of the real thing?In your case, I mean, I read that piece. And I thought it was really fascinating, the way that you sort of analyze your relationship with those products. Especially in the case of Diet Coke, where it’s something that you grew up with where you weren’t dieting when you were first exposed to it. It was like the taste, the just literal flavor of the diet version, instead of the regular version is what appeals to you.VirginiaBecause my family was dieting, but I was not. Like, they bought it out of a diet mindset for sure.[Editor’s Note: Virginia’s dad says it was about dental health! Do with that what you will…] But that was not my introduction to it or my experience of it.ChristyRight, which is so interesting and different, because it’s like this second hand inheritance of diet culture, but you weren’t being pushed to diet yourself.VirginiaBecause I had thin privilege, I should underscore, because I was a thin kid. And so people weren’t expecting that of me. I was allowed to just experience the magic of Diet Coke. But also as diet culture has morphed into wellness culture, there is now this disdain for something like Diet Coke. Other people were saying to me, “Oh, I don’t let myself drink Diet Coke because of the chemicals or because of the aspartame.” Someone said, “Actually, that was something I didn’t let myself drink when I was dieting, because I was clean eating. And now I’ve reclaimed it.” So there’s layers upon layers, this sort of Venn diagram happening between our feelings about processed foods and our feelings about these diet foods. And in both cases, it seems to me that we’re really just food shaming, right? We’re still playing into this idea that there’s this hierarchy around food we need to ascribe to.ChristyEspecially with that idea of “chemicals” or that Diet Coke, or regular Coke, for that matter, can’t fit into someone’s plan because it’s not healthy, or it’s demonized by this strain of wellness culture. So I think there’s so many different ways that people can relate to it. Your experience is one way where you kind of came by that flavor craving, honestly, you know, you were introduced to it in a way that was, for you at least, devoid of diet culture, not necessarily for the people introducing it to you. But for other people, maybe that was a staple in their dieting days, or in their disordered eating days. And that’s complicated too, right. Because if it’s a disordered eating thing, someone is drinking a lot of caffeine to try to avoid eating, then maybe they need to wean off of those kinds of products for a while and eat more food, and not have that disordered behavior of using caffeine to mask hunger. But maybe for other folks, like you said, the person who wouldn’t allow themselves to have it in their orthorexia clean eating days, maybe the sort of way of breaking out of that and of challenging diet culture is to actually have it and to reclaim it. It’s really different for everyone.Then there’s a political consciousness that comes in that says, you know, I don’t want to buy something that has died on the label, because I don’t want to contribute to that. That’s another way of potentially relating to that, too. But then I think if you’re shaming yourself for what you really want, then maybe the real trick is to drop that political consciousness for the moment so that you can engage with the food you really want, so that you’re not creating this sense of deprivation or lack of permission with something that you really love. If it’s something you don’t really love, and you’re sort of like, take it or leave it, then maybe that’s a situation where you can say, I don’t go in for that stuff. You know?VirginiaWe were then talking about the diet foods that we’ve reclaimed and Skinny Pop Popcorn came up a lot. And I thought, oh, God, I’ve never bought that, and it’s completely a reaction to the word skinny. I’m just really turned off by this sort of overt fat shaming of that product. But while that’s sort of a logical response to that marketing campaign, it also means that I’m banning a food. As it happens, I don’t really like popcorn, so I don’t think in this case, I’m depriving myself of something I would love. But you can really overthink this one.ChristyYou really can but sometimes you just got to go with what you love. When I was in my orthorexia days, I never got into juicing or green juice, because it was kind of early for that, in the early 2000s. For me, the juicing trend didn’t really come until the late 2000s, early 2010s. But these days, occasionally if I see green juice on the menu or something, or just out somewhere, I’m like, oh, that seems really good. Like, I want that flavor. And I’ll sometimes be like, oh, do I want to participate? Do I want to buy from this company that’s like so gross and wellness-y, and that’s sort of against a lot of what I stand for. Sometimes I’ll be like, I don’t want it that much. And other times, I’ll be like, that seems really good. I’m gonna have it. So it can be case by case, too, how you’re feeling on a given day.VirginiaIt’s useful too to remember that the rhetoric around voting with your dollars, that really comes out of the alternative food movement and the wellness industry. And, you know, there certainly is some power to it, consumers have a lot of power. But certainly in my case, if I was like, I’m not gonna buy Diet Coke, because it has diet on the label, but I’m gonna buy a different soda, I’d probably buy regular Coke. So the same company would be profiting off my decision. And I just would enjoy my beverage less. So it’s useful to remember that your individual purchase is not rocking the boat. There’s so much guilt that goes into being an ethical grocery shopper, and a lot of that is more diet culture messaging. ChristyIt really is out of this sustainability, Michael Pollanized wellness-diet version of how we’re “supposed to eat.” We don’t have as much power as individual consumers or even as a block of consumers, as we’re made out to have. VirginiaUnfortunately, but it’s also somewhat freeing to realize that you can truly operate from that intuitive eating place and have what you love and not worry so much about it.The last question that came in that I would love help unpacking is a little more complicated. This reader wrote: “Okay, but what about diet foods you may not love, but which make you feel better. I am very sluggish and tired after eating rice. So I avoid it and make cauli rice. Not saying I love cauli rice, but I do prefer how I feel after eating it compared to actual rice. I don’t eat cauli rice with the intent to be dieting, but I’m aware of the impact certain foods have on me, and then make choices with that knowledge. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m attempting anti-diet culture properly.”ChristySuch a good question. There’s so many layers to that too, right?I don’t know where this person is in their intuitive eating process, but I think it takes years for people to truly be able to look at how they feel after eating a certain food without having it be colored by their diet culture beliefs about that food. In the case of something like rice versus cauliflower rice, it definitely raises a red flag for me. Where does this belief about how rice makes you feel come from? Is it actually because we’ve been fed so much about carbohydrates, and, as I’ve personally evolved in my own relationship with food — and I’ve seen this in clients too; this demonization of carbs, and this sense of like, carbs make me sluggish or make me crash or I don’t feel as good after eating them. But then over time, as the prohibition on carbs starts to fade, and you make peace with them, there’s the sense, like now, I actually am not satisfied by a meal or don’t feel energized after a meal if I don’t have carbs. And I think that’s really coming from a place of having gotten rid of all that diet cultural baggage about carbs and truly listening to my body and how it feels.Playing with that, asking yourself, do I even need to be thinking about this right now? With clients and people in my online course, I often say: Put aside questions about how particular foods make you feel at first and focus on the other principles of intuitive eating. Gentle nutrition, which is the 10th and last principle, is the last principle for a reason because it is so tricky. And gentle nutrition doesn’t even have that much to do with how particular foods make you feel. It’s also about building meals that are going to be satisfying and sustaining and snacks that are going to be satisfying and sustaining and learning how to energize and nourish yourself. There’s this misconception about intuitive eating, that probably comes from the wellness diet, that comes from the strain of diet culture that’s like, X food makes you bloated and Y food makes you sluggish. And you know, those words, sluggish, bloated, like—VirginiaThey have a lot of implicit fatphobia. And they’re vague symptoms. I don’t want to discount her lived experience of her body, but they are symptoms that are difficult to name and pin down and tie to a concrete thing. There are a lot of reasons you might feel sluggish and tired on any particular day, totally unrelated to what you’re eating.ChristyDiet culture has conditioned us to look to food as the source instead of thinking about how much sleep did I get, how stressed am I. So many different things can affect how we feel in our bodies, our level of fatigue, or energy, our sense of bloating and digestion and stuff like that. So I think kind of broadening the lens to what beyond the food is going on. We’ve talked previously about the nocebo effect or the converse of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is, you think something’s gonna make you feel better, and so it does, because there’s the power of that mind-body connection to actually help improve symptoms, like pain and fatigue and stuff like that. And then conversely, the nocebo effect is, you think something’s gonna make you feel worse, so it does.That’s not to say it’s all in your head, because I know how dismissive that can feel, because I have had so many health conditions and concerns myself that doctors implied were in my head when that was not the case. What I mean is that our thoughts about particular foods and other things, medications and such, do really have an effect on how we feel when taking that food or medication. Thinking about that in relation to this question, too. Can this person sort of think through how much of this maybe is the nocebo effect? And how can you change your beliefs about regular rice so that you’re not putting all this pre-existing baggage on it, that might end up making you feel worse after eating it? Versus if you can divest a little bit from those beliefs?Your relationship with rice and how you feel after eating rice might change.VirginiaI think I also just came away with a little sadness, where she’s saying, “I’m not saying I love this food that I’m eating.” I just want people to eat the foods that they love. If you’re not loving it, then I think it’s worth looking at why you’re making yourself eat it. That’s where I land at the end of the day. And I think that goes for, you know, any diet foods.ChristyAs you were talking, it sort of struck me how it’s this conversation about rice versus cauliflower rice, but also why not rice versus pasta, or bread? Is there something about that? Are you actually avoiding all carbs and thinking that carbs are bad. Or gluten? [Editor’s Note: Of course, all rice is gluten-free, but fear of gluten often leads to a broader fear of carbs.] Is there a belief about gluten that is sort of coming from that nocebo place or that wellness diet place too that’s making you avoid those foods? If the only option feels like it’s cauliflower rice, then I think there’s definitely some work to be done unlearning those negative beliefs about the other food. Of course, there’s a tiny percentage of people, like 1%, or less than 1% of the population, who has Celiac Disease and would need to avoid gluten. I’m not talking about that. But even people who do have Celiac, I think it’s worth working through the harmful negative beliefs you might have about gluten-containing foods so that you’re not demonizing anything in your mind, even if you’re not eating them for self care. Just allowing yourself to drop the negativity about particular foods can help you feel a little more grounded in your food choices. I definitely know some people with Celiac Disease who sort of rebel against that deprivation and restriction by eating gluten. And that’s not super helpful for their well-being, you know, that can be definitely physically uncomfortable and potentially harmful in the long term too. And so, you know, I think getting yourself to a place where you’re not in this restrict binge cycle is always helpful.VirginiaThat totally makes sense.Christie, thank you so much. This was a really super helpful conversation. I always love chatting with you. Why don’t you tell listeners where they can find more of your work?ChristyPeople can find more of my work on my website, ChristyHarrison.com, I actually do a weekly newsletter as well, at ChristyHarrison.com/newsletter. And I also have my book and podcast and all the other stuff I do there as well. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Today I am chatting with my good friend and neighbor, Melinda Wenner Moyer. Melinda, welcome.MelindaThank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.VirginiaFor folks who don’t know Melinda, she is a science journalist and author of a brand new book coming out a couple days after you listen to this, called How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t A******s. And she writes a really fantastic Substack called “Is My Kid the A*****e?”—much like the subreddit, Am I the A*****e?—where she helps us navigate these really tricky parenting questions.I wanted to bring her on today because a) her book is wonderful, and you should all go preorder it. But also because Melinda does a really great job breaking down the science on parenting to help us understand why our kids do the things they do and how the choices we make influence their behavior. And I found as I was reading the book that I kept thinking, oh, this is also about food. Oh, this is also about food.Melinda is actually the first person I’ve had on the newsletter who’s not fully in the diet culture space—not that she’s a pro-diet culture person!—but it’s cool to see someone else’s work in a different genre overlapping so much with the conversations we have here.So the book is really doing two things. I’m sure you’re getting all kinds of reactions to the title—it was a great opportunity to teach my own seven-year-old the word ‘a*****e,’ so thank you for that. But really, what you’re saying is: Parents need to understand that sometimes kids have to be a******s. It’s a part of growing up. They don’t have the skills that we think that they have. And they’re just going to be a******s sometimes. But at the same time you’re helping parents raise kids who don’t grow up to be permanent a******s in the sense of Donald Trump or Brett Kavanaugh. So can you explain that distinction a little bit?MelindaThere has been understandable confusion about the title and what I actually mean by ‘how to raise kids who aren’t a******s.’ What I’m really saying is ‘how to raise kids who don’t grow up to be a******s.’ Because as parents, it’s important for us to manage our expectations, and to realize that there is no such thing as a perfectly behaved kid.There are so many reasons for this. Kids’ brains and bodies are so very different from ours. The part of the brain that is responsible for planning and self regulation, and rational thinking, in general, is just not developed yet. And it doesn’t fully develop until kids are in their mid-20s, actually. So kids just don’t have the skills, like you said, to do adult-like things, like follow directions, or stay calm when they’re sad or angry. They also don’t have the muscle tone to do things like sit still at the dinner table for 30 minutes, which I learned when I was reporting my newsletter a few weeks ago. So they’re going to be doing things all the time that are out of line with what we would expect of adults and what we consider “good behavior.” And that’s because they really just don’t have the capacity for those things yet. So yes, kids are going to be a******s. Another part of that, too, is that a lot of what we consider good behavior is learned. It’s not innate, and it’s based on customs and traditions. These are cultural expectations that we have to teach. And it takes a long time. So, for instance, what could be more unnatural than using a fork? Our kids are not born knowing how to use a fork or napkins, that’s kind of a weird concept. Why not use your hands?These are customs we have to remember that are not natural and the way that kids learn about these kinds of customs is in a way by breaking them. They have to break the rules in order for us to know that we need to teach these things to them. They’re opportunities for us as parents to learn about what we need to work on with our kids. My parents live in this very posh community. And my son, I think he was going to like a tennis clinic or something, and the tennis pro came over and held out his hand to shake my son’s hand. And I had not taught my kid, he was like six, at that point, what handshakes were. And so he looked at this tennis pro’s hand and made a face and ran away. And of course, to the tennis pro, my kid is a total a*****e, right? Like, what could be more a*****e-ish than that? But I mean, I hadn’t taught this to him. How would he know what to do in that situation? They need practice. And of course, in situations like that temperament matters and other traits and differences that kids have, circumstances matter. Kids not being polite to adults in social situations, not looking them in the eye, not answering their questions—so much of that can stem from fear and anxiety, even if they know what to do, even if we’ve talked to them about what we expect. They just don’t have the capacity to function in the way we want them to. Shy kids are going to struggle more with those kinds of skills. We also have to remember, there’s so much variation among kids that make them excel in certain areas and be deficient in others. And they all have different starting points.So when we see two different seven-year-olds behaving very differently in a situation, we shouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that ‘oh, s**t, my kid was more of an a*****e than that other kid. And therefore I’m failing as a parent.’ We just have to remember where our kids are coming from.There was a very salient example of this, actually, yesterday, my daughter’s turning seven on Saturday, and we had a really small gathering with just four of her friends yesterday in the backyard. And some of the friends were from one school and some of the friends were from another school. They didn’t all know each other really well. And there was a moment where one of the kids was feeling left out. And I was really hoping my daughter would step up and go out of her way to be extra kind to this girl who was feeling left out. And what happened was another girl stepped up and did this wonderful thing and helped this girl feel included. And it was not my daughter. And I was like, Oh my God. I felt like I failed as a parent. Why isn’t my daughter the one doing this? But then I realized, okay, this is her birthday party. She’s been so anxious about it for like two weeks. She hates being in the spotlight. She’s got so much on her emotional plate that day. I shouldn’t feel bad that she couldn’t step up and do this.VirginiaShe’s probably not even noticing the other kid’s struggle, she’s dealing with her own thing.MelindaAll these circumstances matters. What I’m getting at is there’s so much that shapes the day-to-day choices that our kids make that we have to keep in mind when we’re thinking about our kids and how they’re behaving. But with the book, what I’m really trying to do is thinking bigger and broader than these little bloopers. How can we instill values, and virtues in our kids that will shape their choices and behaviors for the rest of their lives? They can make plenty of mistakes now, but how do we help them learn from them? How do we instill the kinds of priorities that we want them to have?It’s not so much, how do I make sure that my five year old doesn’t have tantrums? It’s how do I make sure that my five-year-old doesn’t grow up to be a 75-year-old man who throws tantrums like Donald Trump? How do I give them the skills to develop the emotional regulation and all of these other things so that over time, they become adults who are kind, good people who are fighting injustice instead of contributing to it. So that’s the bigger picture thing that I’m working on with the book.VirginiaIt’s reassuring, because I think anyone who is parenting young children has moments or days or weeks where you think, I am raising a legitimate sociopath. They have no compassion or awareness of other people. And you get into this in your chapters on racism and sexism, but: Kids say really awful things. This comes up a lot when we talk about bodies: kids call other kids fat, or use that word as an insult. Sometimes they don’t even understand they’re using it as an insult. So I think it’s helpful to understand that this is part of learning, and this is where the work is.Your book does a great job of giving parents tools to navigate those conversations. One area I found especially fascinating that intersects with questions my readers often have is the part about rewards. You explain that rewards can often be short-term fixes for behavior problems, but can hinder some of our bigger goals as parents. I get this question often because food is so commonly used as a reward. You know, we’re giving M&Ms for potty training, or teachers give out Starburst or other candy in class for good behavior. And from where I’m sitting as someone who’s concerned about kids overly fixating on different foods or giving too much value to foods, there’s a reason to be worried about rewards. Why don’t you tell us how you initially used rewards with your own kids? And how your thinking evolved on that question?MelindaIt’s such a big issue. And it’s gnarly. When my now 10-year-old was maybe six or something, we were struggling with some of his behavior. We went to see a psychologist who was firmly in the behavioral psychology camp, which is essentially to say, he really liked to use rewards. He suggested that we set up this point system with our son, and anytime our son did something that we thought was good or pro social, like he said, ‘Please,’ or ‘Thank you,’ or he helped his sister or cleaned his room, really anything. In that moment that he did it, right afterwards, we would say, two points for picking up that piece of trash and putting it in the trash can. And every point that he would get, we would keep track of it on a spreadsheet, and every point equalled one cent or one minute of screen time. And every week, if you’d gotten 100 points, you’d have 100 minutes of screen time, I can’t remember exactly how many points you would get over a week. But it helped us control his allowance, his screen time, and was supposed to be a behavior management system.At first, it was great. It did seem to solve these problems that we had: We didn’t know how to deal with allowance, we didn’t know how to deal with screen time. And it was this really nice system for organizing all this stuff. And his behavior started to improve immediately. We saw him doing stuff that he hadn’t been doing that was, you know, pro social and great and kind.I can’t remember how long we used it for, at least a year, maybe longer. But we started to see some ickiness surrounding it. You could see the wheels turning in his head. He would think about doing something good or kind or something, and then he would stop and say, “Will I get points for doing this?” And it became like this contingency thing where he’s only going to do it if he would get points. So I started digging into the research more.Originally, when I read some of the research on rewards, and I wrote a Slate column about it, and I was really under the impression that it’s not generally a good idea to reward kids for doing things they already like, but that it was really fine to use rewards to motivate them to do things they didn’t like. But I started reading all of the studies done on rewards back from the 1970s, even. And that’s when I was like, hmm, I think we need to stop this point system.There are a ton of studies that suggest that when kids are given rewards for doing things, it makes them feel controlled and manipulated. I mean, that’s essentially what we’re doing. They know they’re being controlled, and they don’t like it. Just like we don’t like being controlled or manipulated, they don’t like it. It removes the intrinsic value of the thing that we have rewarded them for doing so that it is inextricably tied to the feeling of being controlled so that they don’t really like it anymore, for itself. If they got joy out of being generous to someone and making them feel better, they couldn’t get that kind of intrinsic satisfaction out of doing good things anymore, because it’s tied up with the reward they were getting.In one study, researchers put drawing paper and markers in a preschool classroom and watched all the kids in the preschool classroom to see whether they drew with the markers. Then they took the kids who seemed to really liked drawing, and the next week they pulled those particular students out one by one and brought them into another room. For some of them, they offered the kids a reward for drawing. For the other kids, they just said, here’s some drawing materials, if you want to draw, you can, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. And so half of them were given rewards, half of them weren’t. And then in the third week of the study, they repeated the first part, they just had all the kids in a room with drawing paper and markers out. And they saw that the kids who had been offered rewards for drawing in the second part of the study were much less likely to want to draw in that third week compared to the kids who hadn’t been offered any rewards. So, once they had been rewarded for it, they were much less interested in doing it when they were given the opportunity. And there’s been research in adults that has shown this same pattern. So for whatever reason, it sucks out whatever sort of value that behavior had to the child inside, like deep inside of them, whatever value they got out of doing that thing, and just took it away, which is, of course, the exact opposite of the outcome we want.VirginiaThere’s a great food study I feel like I reference in practically every article I write, but I’ll recap here. It’s the “Finish Your Soup” study by Leann Birch, where they told some kids, if you finish your soup, you get dessert, and then they had other kids who were told they can have as much soup as you want, and you can have as much dessert as you want. The kids who had to finish the soup liked the soup less, they ate less of the soup, they really just cared about getting the dessert, whereas the kids who were freely choosing between the soup and the dessert actually liked the soup better and ate more of it.So it’s cutting off kids ability to find intrinsic motivation, or intrinsic pleasure in activities or in foods. And you know, parents might say like, well, they’ll never like Brussels sprouts, or whatever. But the truth is, you aren’t even giving them the option to like them, when you’re setting them up as just currency, or just this thing you do to get to the better thing.MelindaRight. In a different Leann Birch study, or it might have been the same one, if there was a second part, they just had adults pressure the kids to eat soup. And again, that’s a controlling impulse. And the kids feel controlled, and the kids who were pressured to eat a particular soup ate less of it than the ones who were just left alone. And that was really interesting, too.VirginiaPositive pressure, is still, pressure and rewards are positive, but as you said, it’s still a form of trying to control kids. And especially around food, we know, they do so much better when they can listen to themselves versus following these external rules. I also liked that you highlight in the book that even these sort of chores can be intrinsically satisfying, like, it can feel good to set the table or it can feel good to clean your room, and realize, oh, I like my room better when it’s not covered in all of my clothes or whatever. But we’re not giving kids that opportunity to experience that if we’re saying clean your room in order to earn your points or whatever. You also talked about this concern about making the rewards too valuable. And again, we see this happen so much with food, where kids are much more interested in the treat food and don’t want the other food. I’m curious if you saw that happening with screen time, as well, since that was sort of the primary thing you were using. I often feel like there’s a lot of parallel conversation happening around sugar and screen time.MelindaI mean, it’s tricky. I do feel like my kids have never not been obsessed with screens. Can I say there’s been a vast improvement since we stopped using the point system, especially because you have the pandemic in the mix? There’s so much conflation, right? We relied on screens so much this past year.But, when we used screen time as reward, it certainly led to a focus on screens. Every time my son did anything good, and we gave him a point, that that made him think of screens, so it just highlighted screens so much more at times when it was unnecessary to be highlighting screens. I feel like that probably does fuel the obsession with screens, if you’re constantly making this connection in your head. There’s also a lot of research showing that kids look to the world around them, to adults in power, to figure out how to behave, what to care about, what’s important, what matters in the world. I talk about this a lot in my chapters on sexism and racism, but they’re constantly making these observations. We are making choices for them that communicate that there are certain things that everybody likes, whether that’s screens or dessert, if we’re choosing that as the reward. That’s a really powerful way of telling our kids what matters and what they they should care about, too. And so it’s confirmation, again, to our kids, that sweets and desserts are the things that they should be obsessed with, because that’s what everybody cares about.VirginiaAnd if you’re then pairing this thing everybody cares about with lots of restrictions on how and when you access it, and what you have to do to access it, that is a perfect storm to set up a scarcity mindset. Which is going to make a kid more fixated on the sugar, more fixated on the screen, because they think of it as this thing that they have to be manipulated to acquire or they have to manipulate circumstances to acquire. I do feel like the pandemic threw a wrench in this, because a lot of us had pretty much like no limitations on screen time this year, and our kids still have lots of screen time. So there are obviously some nuances here. But I will say, when my older daughter spent several months in the hospital and had a Peppa Pig free for all—like we were watching Peppa Pig at three in the morning for weeks on end because she couldn’t sleep in the hospital. And it was like, what else do you do with a two-year-old in the hospital at three in the morning? We were convinced we had completely broken her and she would be screen addicted forever. But when she got back to her normal routine at home when she was healthier, she could play again. She could do other things, and the screen thing really worked itself out without us having to detox her or anything. She was just like, Oh, we don’t watch Peppa Pig breakfast, lunch and dinner anymore? This is fine.I’m hoping we’ll see a similar thing as people come out of lockdown and kids get back to school and camp and normal routines and we can replace screen time with the other things that they love.MelindaI agree. We went on vacation last week and and we just created a whole new normal surrounding screens, totally different from what the kids had had. And they were completely fine with it. They’re so adaptable. We put them in a new situation. And they recognize not everything is going to be the same. We’re not going to be able to use screens all the time, we’re going to be swimming more. And they were perfectly fine with it. It was really interesting.VirginiaI think if you had been like, this is going to be a completely screen free vacation, you might have gotten some pushback, because that would have fueled more of the scarcity mindset. But if it’s like, we are adjusting our relationship with this thing, they can handle that. The other thing I think about a lot is physical activity. I think we tend to use more pressure around wanting kids to play certain sports, wanting kids to be physically active. I’m reporting my chapter on doctors at the moment for the next book, and this comes up a lot in the way doctors push physical activity, this sort of very prescriptive, is your kid getting an hour of exercise a day? And it’s like, you just made exercise sound like the least fun thing in the world, when you’re like, is it 30 to 60 minutes.On the other hand, we want our kids to challenge themselves, we want them to learn new skills. One of my children loves rock climbing, and when she’s trying something, she’ll say, it hurts. And I’ll be quick to say, Oh, you don’t have to do it, don’t hurt yourself, don’t hurt your body. And she’ll be like, No, no, I want to push through and learn, and now I can do this cool trick. And I’m like, oh, right, there’s also something satisfying in pushing yourself physically, and I want you to enjoy that as well. So, how do you think about physical activity? How can we encourage kids to push themselves but not block the intrinsic motivation that feels really key to them finding movement joyful?MelindaThat’s a really good question. I feel like I have a lot of weird childhood memories that make it hard for me to be totally unbiased answering this too, I mean, don't we all. My parents made me play soccer when I was a kid, and I hated it. Like, I hated it so much. I felt so I was terrible at it. And I just remember being so ashamed that I kept not being good at it and letting down my team and my coach.Five years ago, I got my eyes checked by a developmental optometrist—my eyes were crossed when I was a kid—and he said, you know, you don’t have any depth perception. Then he asked, ‘Did you find that you weren’t very good at ball sports when you were a kid?’ I was like, Oh, my God, that’s why I was so bad. And that’s why I hated it so much. I literally could not see the ball the way other kids did. And it was so validating.Forcing kids to do activities that they just don’t like, or they know that they don’t have the aptitude for, is not necessarily constructive. But I will say, it depends on why they don’t like the activity. I think a lot of kids sometimes don’t want to do an activity because they’re scared, they’ve never done it before. It’s new, it’s scary. And sometimes, when kids have phobias or fears, you do want to expose them to the thing they’re afraid of, slowly, carefully, to help them get over that fear. Figuring out what their dislike is rooted in—fear of novelty, or just fear in general—sometimes it is good to push them out of their comfort zone and to help them learn that they don’t need to be afraid of it. If an activity isn’t rooted in fear, but lack of interest, or they just don’t enjoy it, then, I think that’s not necessarily constructive.I’m thinking about Angela Duckworth’s advice, she wrote a book called Grit. It’s a really interesting book, I talk a lot about it in one of my chapters, and she talks about the importance of pushing—not pushing—of encouraging your kids to try something that’s fun and hard, but they get to choose what it is. So they have some autonomy of choice there. And having them stick with something for like a semester or a year before they can quit, so that they have to get over any hurdles, but but the key thing is letting them choose it. There are so many kinds of physical activities, and our kids only need to find one or two that’s going to give them joy and provide the physical movement that their bodies need.I think as parents, sometimes we have expectations of what we want our kids to do, we want our kids to play a particular sport, because we did or, or because we think that they’re good at running, and therefore they should do cross country or something. And I think we have to realize that our kids might be different from what we were expecting and what we’re hoping and that we should let them have the choice. I remember really wanting my son to play music forever. Like I was really into music, and he started playing cello. And he was good at it. But he hated it. And it was so hard for me to let him quit when he did want to quit. We kept him in it for a year or so, but then when he wanted to quit, we let him quit. Because I didn’t want to force him and I think it was the right decision. It’s so hard for us sometimes because we have these ideas about what we want our kids to be doing. But it’s important to let them have that autonomy.VirginiaIt is a fine line but I like the idea of having them choose the activity and not privileging certain types of activity. Especially with physical activity, not privileging team sports. I mean, I say that as someone who never played team sports and hates team sports, and is possibly denying her children the experience of team sports, because they haven’t seemed interested and we haven’t volunteered it, it’s just not happening in our house.It might not be soccer for every kid. And that’s really okay. It might be just playing out in the backyard a lot, that might be the thing that they love, and maybe that turns into hiking or that turns into birdwatching, or who knows what. I’ve talked before about how we often privilege outdoorsiness over being an indoor kid. And there are lots of ways that these other sort of cultural beliefs around what’s a “healthy” way to live impact this conversation. I like the idea that it’s very child led, but if they do choose it, understanding that there’s value to them working through not liking it every week, and sticking out the semester, or sticking out the six weeks.MelindaWe have so many hang ups that shape what we think our kids are going to be good at and what we expect of them. My son wanted to play soccer, and he also doesn’t have depth perception. And I was like, Oh no, I don’t want him to play soccer, because he’ll be bad at it and he’ll feel ashamed, and it’ll be tough. But we let him do it and he loves it like, and he’s not as bad, he’s certainly not as bad as I was. I was totally wrong. This is now his joy. He loves soccer. I’m not going to tell him that he shouldn’t be good at it. But it’s so interesting, right? All the ways that our own experiences bias our choices and our thoughts about our kids and what they should do.VirginiaYes, definitely.So, steering away a little bit from food and movement, but definitely still about bodies, I wanted to talk about your gender chapter, which is excellent. You talk a lot about the importance of de-emphasizing how we talk about gender with kids. There are some really mind blowing statistics about how often teachers reference gender in the course of a school day, how often parents reference gender. I remember when I was reading an earlier draft of the chapter, we had this conversation, because I thought, I’m a really good feminist mom, and I’m raising two girls, and I’m raising them to be feminists. So I talk about gender, but in a very empowering way. You know, I’ll say, you’re a strong girl, when my kids do something physical. I certainly reference their gender, but never in a pretty little girl way, but what I thought was an empowering way. Reading your work, and then talking to you about it, I recognized that is a bit of a trap, that first, I’m assuming that I know what their gender is, which is not necessarily the case, and also, that I’m still over emphasizing gender. So let’s talk a little bit about why gender neutral language is so important with kids of all genders in terms of fighting this discrimination. And how that plays into how they develop a healthy relationship with their body.MelindaI’ll start off by saying, I definitely think it’s important to talk to kids about sexism and gender stereotypes. We should be talking to our girls about how unfair it is that girls are treated differently from boys. [Virginia Note: Melinda also writes extensively about the importance of having these conversations with boys!] We want to do this because they are seeing this already. To give you an example that still makes me angry. A couple years ago at the end of the school year, my son’s teacher gave out awards for each child, individualized awards at the end of the year. And I looked at the list, and it was awful how sexist they were. Almost all of the girls got awards for things like looking nice, being kind, or being a good listener. Four of the boys got rewards for being smart. It was just so disturbing. Kids are noticing things like that. The reality is these sexist stereotypes exist in their world too. And they’re being communicated to our kids through teachers, the media, sometimes us, inadvertently. So we need to talk about those things so kids recognize what they are and challenge them. We want the girls in that class to realize that when the teacher chose to give out those awards the way she did, that was reflecting her bias and not reflecting any kind of actual innate difference, because that’s really important for them to be able to ascertain. If we don’t make that clear to our kids, the easiest conclusion is, oh, gosh, I guess I’m just not as smart or girls aren’t as smart. And girls should look nice.VirginiaAnd it matters that I’m a good listener, because I’m a girl. The relationship implications of that are horrifying. Anyway.MelindaThere’s research, too, that shows that when kids are taught that the reason there are fewer female scientists in the world is because of sexism and discrimination, not because girls are less good at science, that those girls who were taught that become much more interested in science than girls who are not taught the reasons for this discrepancy. It gives them the confidence, they realize, oh, these differences are because our culture is screwed up not because of me or whatever innate ability I have. So screw that. I can do this, and screw our culture. It gives them more of a fighting instinct.So it is good to talk about discrimination, to talk about sexism, and gender stereotypes, to make our kids aware of it, but: When you look into the roots of these gender stereotypes, a lot of it has to do with this innocuous language that we use all the time surrounding gender. As I was saying earlier, kids are always paying attention to what matters in the world. And that includes what kinds of social categories matter, they’re like little detectives walking around making observations. And so if you think about it: What is something that we communicate about a person almost every time we refer to them? We don’t refer to their hair color, or their height or their skin color, but we almost always highlight their gender, because it’s built into our pronouns. Every time we refer to a person, we’re saying, he or she, or the lady or the man, and when we do this day in and day out, our kids notice it. Their inference is, well, gosh, gender must be a really important distinction, if my parents are referring to it 800 times a day, it must be that boys and girls are different in important ways. Why else would you do this?Add into that the fact that there are different bathrooms for different genders, different sports teams, different aisles in the toy store, different clothes, different toys in a happy meal, all of these things are emphasizing to kids that the two genders are different, and they’re very different. Where the problems begin is this idea that we are communicating day in and day out, that boys and girls are different in important ways. Then they take that inference, and, again, being these little detectives, look around the world. And they see that there’s a gender hierarchy, that’s very obvious. They see that there’s never been a woman president, that there are fewer women who are CEOs and senators and all the ways in which there is gender hierarchy in our society. And they see that and combine that with this idea that boys and girls are different. And they make this inference that well, maybe men are just better, and smarter. Maybe boys, and men, are just better and smarter. Both boys and girls make these come to these conclusions.There’s one study that breaks my heart whenever I describe it, involving five to seven year old girls and boys, illustrating that girls start internalizing that girls aren’t as good as boys when they’re about six or seven, which I noticed with my daughter. Researchers read a story to these boys and girls, about a very, very smart protagonist, like the story had a very, very smart protagonist. And it was described that way. Very, very smart. And then the researchers, after reading the story, said, okay, well, do you think that that really, really smart protagonist was a boy, or was it a girl? And when they asked the five year olds, all the girls said, Oh, it’s a girl. And all the boys said, Oh, it’s a boy. And that’s exactly what you would expect with in-group, out-group psychology, the group that you belong to, you think they’re better. That’s what you would expect. But around the age of six to seven, the girls started switching over and they would say, oh, the really, really smart protagonist is a boy. The boys just always said boys, of course, but the girls switched over. And that’s so heartbreaking, age six.VirginiaThat’s what makes me want to say things like you’re a strong girl, right? Because I think I’m subverting that stereotype that my daughter may have already internalized. But it sounds like I’m also reinforcing it, because it could be interpreted as, you’re strong for a girl or you are a girl who happens to be strong, unlike other girls.MelindaThe way I think about this distinction is that I try to not call attention to gender when gender is not part of the conversation I’m having with my child. If we’re talking about people doing something and it happens to be a girl, I try to de-emphasize gender and not refer to it when it’s not relevant.But I have plenty of conversations, especially with my daughter, about sexism and when I’m doing that, I certainly am talking about gender and I’m certainly saying you can do anything you want even though the world might tell you otherwise. And things like that.VirginiaYou can say you’re a strong kid. You’re a tough kid. The more I think about it, there’s no reason to use girl there. If your kid falls down on the playground, and is getting over a scraped knee or something, I can just say you’re a tough kid instead of, you’re a tough girl. It’s so weird that I do that now that we’ve had this conversation.MelindaBut if you’re in the middle of a conversation about sexism, then it’s different. You might be referring to the fact that she’s a girl, because sexism is gonna affect her. And she’s got to, you know, recognize it and see what see it for what it is.VirginiaIt’s also just reinforcing the binary. When I do that, it’s assuming that my three year old is a girl. As it happens, she has identified to us as a girl, but. It’s not creating a lot of air in the room for other genders who are not represented at all in these binaries. So, there’s that piece of it, too, as a reason to sort of like ease off the girl power rhetoric. It was a really helpful chapter and made me rethink this language.Well, this was a great conversation. Where can listeners find your work? Of course, everybody needs to go preorder the book right now, I am linking to it in the transcript. And it is out on Tuesday. So you don’t have a lot of time. But you should get your pre-order in!Melinda Pre-orders are awesome, they really make a difference. What might be easiest if I just give my website because if you want to subscribe to my newsletter, which is on Substack, there is a signup link on my website, MelindaWennerMoyer.com. It also has links to information about the book and pre-order links and all of those things. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. And today, I’m really pleased to be chatting with Anna Sweeney, who is a social-justice oriented disabled dietitian. You probably Anna know from Instagram where she is @dietitiananna. She is also behind the awesome “You’re Nicer With Carbs” t-shirts.I just ordered a shirt this morning, I’m super excited about it. Anna, welcome.AnnaThank you so much.VirginiaI’m really into the t-shirt. It took me a long time to pick a color. I might need more than one. It’s really good.Anna I am just digging on the mug. I use it as a communication vehicle. When I’m talking to people on Zoom, like, read my mug.Virginia Alright, now I need the mug, too!Why don’t we start with you telling us about you and your work?AnnaI am an eating disorder dietitian, I’m very fortunate to have dedicated the last, I think 13 years of my life to this field, which has become for me increasingly about social justice, in every single way. I’m so fortunate to have the following that I do on social media. I don’t know how that happened. But I am most grateful that it did. I’m just a multi-privileged person who is trying to use that privilege for good and make people a little bit uncomfortable in the process.Virginia I love it. It is not an accident that your Instagram has done so well, because you do a great job of communicating around very complex issues in a very thoughtful way. You have so much practical advice on there for people and you’re having really important conversations. So thank you for doing that.I also want to tell listeners how we first got to know each other. I interviewed you for my first book, which some folks will have read, but for folks who haven’t, Anna appears in chapter two of The Eating Instinct, which is called Chasing Clean. And it’s where I explored how the diet industry became the wellness industry, but is still the diet industry. Anna shares her own story of living with multiple sclerosis and the ways in which the wellness industry preys on folks with chronic conditions and promises miracle cures through food and diet. And she’s rolling her eyes.So debunking these kinds of myths and scams is still a big part of the work you do on social and it’s so important. But as someone else who also tries to do that, it can really feel like we’re playing whack-a-mole, because there’s always a new trend, a new celery juice or whatever. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on why that core message of “if you control your food, you’ll control your life and your health” is still resonating with people even when we see over and over that there’s nothing there?AnnaIf you are suffering by virtue of living with a chronic illness or just want to extend or enhance your life, or you are told by your doctors and your friends and the world that your body is a problem because of its size, it makes so much sense that the diet industry—which is really no longer the diet industry, it really is about that core value of “wellness”—preys on that. The messaging is really, really pervasive. There are going to be people who say, I did this thing, I cured myself, I healed myself of secondary progressive MS. Which is not a thing that you can do, because that is not how Multiple Sclerosis works.I am an educated person, and as my disease changed, I wanted to also heal myself of a secondary progressive disease, which I know is impossible but I tried anyway. And, you know, I think the messaging is so pervasive but also so shape-shifting. This is about morality, and if you’re not trying for this thing, well, then you’re not trying and you deserve whatever malady you get.VirginiaIt’s really preying on people’s very real fears, and processing the ways in which our bodies change, and that that can be uncomfortable and scary. And then there’s this industry that’s like, “I will take your fear, and I will attach a product to it.”AnnaAnd the really hard part about that—so the diet industry has billions of dollars backing it up. And then there’s the neighbor down the road telling you that her cat feels better because she took out gluten, or whatever. Which is crazy. If celiac disease affects 1 percent of the U.S. population, and in 2019, something like 40 percent of Americans reported eating “gluten free,” it’s not because people are actually gluten intolerant. It’s because gluten has been elevated as this thing that we can’t have. If you want to be a healthy person, you don’t eat wheat, or whatever.Diet culture and the wellness industry has so much money behind it. And I am trying really hard to actually articulate the difference between the industry and the culture, because I think the industry, that's the $74 billion. The culture is your cousins, your uncle recommending this thing. And the trickle down effect of sharing these practices that have been helpful or effective—and talk to me again, in two or three or four or five years and like, maybe you have a different feeling about a thing—but it’s contagious.VirginiaThat’s such an interesting distinction, the industry versus the culture. The industry is certainly helping to create the culture. But you’re right, there is this more informal way that these ideas get passed around and embedded that is important to identify. I know that’s what a lot of my readers often talk about struggling with, it’s the comment grandma makes at dinner, or the way that your dad talks about his diet. That sort of stuff is so insidious, because it makes it harder to put the blame where it belongs, which is on this industry, that’s under-regulated and running wild, because you end up mad at the person and not at the larger system.So, speaking of companies we can be mad at that. I’m hearing a lot of folks asking about Noom at the moment, and would love to hear your thoughts. We’ve been hearing for years: “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle plan,” or “it’s a lifestyle change,” and Noom’s whole thing is, “it’s not a diet, it’s psychology.” So Anna, what is it?AnnaWell, cognitive behavioral therapy is a really practical tool for changing behaviors. But Noom, suggesting that they are not a diet, it is about changing your brain—and I have to be really honest Virginia, I haven’t done a ton of digging because anytime I look at it, I’m just repulsed and I don’t want to play anymore.But everyone that has spoken with me about Noom has said yes, they said it was psychology, but I was also eating a very low number of calories in concert. So like, it’s “let’s use cognitive behavioral therapy to teach your body to semi-starve.”To me, this is the ultimate manipulation, speaking to people’s intellect. We acknowledge that the diet industry, as in conventional dieting, like SlimFast, their market share is in the shitter. That’s not a thing now. And in the 90s, it was a really, really, really big thing. But conventional diets like those are not selling anymore. So: Noom. To me, this is the ultimate gaslighting, where they say: You are so smart, you know diets don’t work; let’s change your brain. And we’re just not talking about the fact that it’s a semi-starvation diet. And there is one conclusion that follows semi-starvation diets. VirginiaI'm sure that’s resonating with a lot of people who have tried it and are sort of sitting uncomfortably because you feel like you got played, and I think it’s important to articulate that it’s not your fault, this is very powerful marketing. A lot of work went into figuring out how to manipulate you in this way.Anna100%. I don’t even know if Kurbo is still a thing, but when Weight Watchers presented Kurbo for young people; they are different, but it was the same sort of manipulation. Like, if you’re a good parent, and you have a fat kid, you get Kurbo because you want them to learn these skills. I don’t even know if Noom will let young people in, it’s certainly not marketed to young people. It’s marketed to people kind of in our age bracket. But it’s emotional and psychological warfare, because, you know, you’re not good if you’re not using your brain to starve.VirginiaThey’re also literally the same thing, because they both use the stoplight diet as their basis. So they want to both argue that they’re not diets they are, in fact, all about restricting calories and grouping foods into good and bad categories.[Editor’s Note: Here’s Virginia’s 2019 New York Times piece on Kurbo.]Alright, now I have some listener questions that have come in that I would love for you to tackle. So first up, and I wanted to give this one to you, because of your whole “you’re nicer with carbs” thing. And it just made me laugh because the whole email is: “What is the deal with pasta? Why is it seen as unhealthy?” This is from someone who loves pasta, I think, and I do too. So I really want to help reclaim pasta for this person.AnnaOur bodies have no judgment about where food comes from. If you are eating carbohydrates, by way of pasta, your body assimilates those carbohydrates the same way it assimilates carbohydrates from toast, or crackers, or chips or any other food that might be a little bit more neutral.What has happened to the pasta industry in the last three or four years is pretty bloody tragic. It has happened in the context of this stupid, sensationalized documentary about plant-based power lifters or something. [Editor’s Note: Anna is referencing The Game Changers, which we’re not linking to here because it calls itself a documentary but has been criticized for bias, misrepresentation, and cherry-picking.]And then there was this uptick in this desire for plant-based everything, which is just a prettier way of saying “be vegan without the ethical piece.”You don’t need chickpeas or beans or whole wheat or any of those things to have and enjoy pasta. You are allowed to just eat normal pasta. [Virginia Note: Which, by the way, is usually plant-based!]I am appalled by what has happened to the pasta aisle which used be exciting, because you can choose different shapes. Now it’s like, let me choose a different macronutrient profile to make sure that I’m rounding out my meal. If you are looking for a higher fiber pasta experience, maybe add some vegetables to the pasta. If you’re looking for a higher protein pasta experience, maybe add some cheese or proteins some other way. It’s so silly. Carbohydrates are the mainstay of our existence, right? We need most of our energy to come from carbs. What has happened is the vilification of normal white pasta, which is just pasta. This is an unfortunate trickle down of the diet industry suggesting that you need to healthify all of the things. It’s just not true. You body can handle pasta. It’s delicious. You should eat it.VirginiaYou really should. And for parents, kids love pasta, and then parents have all this guilt about how much their kids love pasta, but pasta is a great food for introducing other foods. If you’re trying to diversify your kid’s palette, pasta is the base of everything. In my house, at least, they have that sort of safety there, and then they can get more curious about other foods.AnnaAnd there are so many fun things that go with pasta! All of the things go with pasta. It’s sad to hear that parents feel badly about feeding their kids carbs like pasta, because again, our prefrontal cortex—you are making a decision about what you’re feeding yourself with your prefrontal cortex, but the rest of your brain and all of your cells have no awareness of where carbohydrate energy comes from. The last thing I wish for parents, is to be putting that much energy into a bowl of pasta. It’s just pasta, it’s the same as a bowl of cereal.VirginiaI love that. All right, so we have redeemed pasta for anyone who is feeling anxious about pasta, I hope you eat it after you listen to this podcast.Next question: This person writes, my biggest issue is stopping when I’m full. How would you recommend dealing with the impulse to eat past fullness?AnnaI think hunger and fullness and eating in accordance to those sensory-specific experiences is something that takes skill and practice. That being said, I think my first question to this person would be: Are you having enough food all day long? Like, when you get up in the morning, are you having breakfast? Are you having snacks? Are you having regular meals? Are you feeding yourself with food when you feel tired instead of having a cup of coffee? And are you actually feeling satisfied by the foods that you’ve eaten? If you are not, I am going to encourage you to eat more food and to eat more food that leaves you feeling satisfied at the end. For some of my clients that actually means taking a break from high fiber things if fullness is part of the equation or something that makes them uncomfortable. The most important thing is, are you actually eating enough food during the day? And I promise you, you need a lot more food than you believe that you do. You just you need more food.VirginiaAlso, feeling the need to eat “past fullness” can be either not quite understanding what fullness is. You may be sort of feel like you should be full but you’re not actually full, you just think you’ve eaten “too much.” And so you think you’re eating past this but you’re not actually eating past your own fullness. That comes up quite a lot too, I would imagine.AnnaI also want to say really, really clearly: Your fullness is different from my fullness, and your fullness on Monday in the morning is different from your fullness on Tuesday in the afternoon. We have to really regard our relationships with our stomachs similarly to the way that we regard our relationships with our bladder. They’re both stretchy muscles, sometimes you really have to pee, sometimes you’re like, I need to pee, because I’m gonna be in the car for a little while. And your stomach can be the same way.In regard to this question, I would totally experiment with a bunch of different foods and feeling through what feels more filling and what feels more satisfying. And I’m still coming back to you’re probably not eating enough during the day.VirginiaI think that’s dead on for sure. Okay, last one, which sort of ties us back to where we started this conversation. This person writes: “Even though I stopped dieting and believe in intuitive eating, the dieting thoughts are in my head, so often. Any advice for coping with relentless diet thoughts?” And I think this sort of comes back to that sort of onslaught of messaging we were talking about in some parts, but I’m curious to hear what else you think of in response to this.AnnaFirst thing, please have so much compassion for yourself. Even as you are working to step away from valuing these numbers or rules, it doesn’t mean they disappear from your brain. Some of this is about neural plasticity. So if there was a time when following diet plan rules felt like it was advantageous for you, you made a neural connection that said, I feel uncomfortable in my body—and I’m not sure that I’m actually speaking to this person, specifically, but I’m just using an example—I feel uncomfortable in my body. So I’m going to make this dietary intervention. And every time, they feel uncomfortable, they make that one specific, or doesn’t have to be one, it can be all of the dietary interventions that they have followed over a period of time. And so that thought pattern becomes instantaneous, it becomes a thing that you don’t think about.With regard to thinking about the fact that our brains are plastic, we are here and ready to learn new things all the time. And I’m going to ask your listeners, do you remember learning how to drive? I remember learning how to drive, you know, like hands at 10 and 2, get your mirrors, make sure your seatbelt is buckled, and turn off all the music, like no sound, focus, focus, focus, focus, focus. And I don’t think it was until I actually had my license, and my mother and father were out of the car that I was like, “Oh, I got this, this is fine.” But in this one practice, driving a car my proprioceptive sense, I go from being this like five foot something person to now being this two ton vehicle, and it’s really challenging. (Psychologically, it’s actually crazy that we let kids drive.)It’s so, so hard. Until you get to a point where you can drive and have something to eat and change the radio, and be looking at your phone. And I will tell you, I have done ridiculous things while driving a car. But it’s because my brain, from a neural plasticity perspective, I desired so much to have a license that and to be independent driving a car that I practiced, practiced, practiced. And now I can do a million things. Well, it’s not actually a million, but I can do several things while also driving a car and not think twice.[Virginia’s Note: This is not an endorsement of texting and driving! Please do not look at your phone while you drive.]It makes so much sense, if you have been embedded in the wellness industry, diet industry, and those beliefs and doctrines for so long, it makes sense that those automatic thoughts are going to show up. My ask for you and my ask for everyone is — and this is actually using a little bit of CBT, thank you, Noom — what would it feel like to stop the thought or even to recognize it and say, wow, this is a diet culture thought, and try and replace it with something else. You think, so there’s a diet culture thought, this is my healthy thought, or this is my self-care thought. It will not be instantaneous, right? Because one that has been built in there is based on wellness culture mumbo jumbo, but with practice, and dedication to, you know, finding the other side, I feel really certain when I say it is possible to turn down that that noise. Does it mean it’s going to go away entirely? No, not necessarily. But you can shift some of it. And be gentle with yourself, this will take time. And, you know, if you devalue those messages, preferentially replace them with something else. This is a practice thing, but your brain was trained to do the dieting things, you can also train it to do something else.VirginiaIt really does feel like learning a new language or driving a car in the beginning. I was terrified of learning to drive as a kid. I remember how hard and scary it felt. And then after I lived in Manhattan for 10 years, and then we moved up to the country, and I had to basically relearn that skill, it was also terrifying, and didn’t go that well that first six months, and there was a garbage can in my driveway that I backed into. So I think that's a great way to think about it, like you are learning a whole new skill here. It’s a really complicated skill, and it’s gonna take some time before it becomes even remotely automatic.AnnaAnd the wellness culture punch in the gut part is, you’re not likely to have your healthy self-care oriented practices mirrored back at you. There has to be some acknowledgment of the fact that doing something different is automatically going to put you in a special category. And so you’re going to have to come back to self-care first, acknowledging that everyone in your life is also prey to the industry in the same way that you have been.VirginiaIt’s like you’re learning to speak a language no one around you speaks, and then they’re going to keep speaking to you in their regular language and wondering why you’re doing something different. And that is really hard.Well, Anna, thank you so much. This was wonderful. I feel like we covered so many different topics. Let us know where we can find more of you and your work.AnnaI would love for you to come hang out on Instagram! I had no idea that I would love it so much there but it is like a creative outlet. I am @dietitiananna. I actually do respond to most messages. So pop in a question.I started Virtual Connection at the beginning of the pandemic, and I haven’t stopped it yet. So there’s a free hour of me answering questions on Mondays at three o'clock EST. I would love to see you there. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a 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, and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. I’m so excited today to introduce my guest, Marquisele Mercedes, or Mikey. She is a writer and doctoral student from the Bronx who is completing her PhD at Brown University School of Public Health, specializing in weight stigma, racism and critical public health studies. And oh my goodness, we need her work so much. I’m putting Mikey’s Patreon right here at the top of the transcript, because I hope everyone reading/listening will check it out and support her work. Welcome, Mikey. Thank you for being here.Mikey Thank you for having me!VirginiaThe first thing we have to talk about is the piece you did a couple weeks ago, a brilliant, searing takedown of Wegovy, the newest FDA-approved weight loss drug. Honestly, anyone who hasn’t read it yet, go read Mikey’s piece. One of the things that really jumped out to me is how the diet industry finances these drugs, because whenever we see these headlines, it’s presented as unequivocally good news. People may sort of know that scientists are required to disclose whether they have a financial stake in the research they’re doing, but—I have been reporting on this stuff for a really long time and I don’t even totally understand all the ways that the financial disclosure on a study does not tell the whole story. So why don’t you walk us through that a little bit.What does a financial disclosure do? And what does it tell us? What does it not tell us? And why, in the case of Wegovy, is there just so much more money at stake?Mikey The first thing to know is that to publish in most journals—especially those that have biomedical research—any journal that you try to publish in, if it’s peer reviewed, will ask if you have any financial conflicts of interest. But people who aren’t familiar with that process usually don’t understand that there isn’t a point at which the journal editors will say, “Oh, you have too much of a vested interest. We’re not going to take this article.” That doesn’t really happen. So, for example, there are three different authors on that Wegovy study that are employees of Novo Nordisk and then there’s also two that additionally hold stock, and that was not enough to not have this paper published.VirginiaSo it’s like: We’ll disclose it, but we’ll go right ahead and report this as unbiased science.Mikey Honestly, with a lot of areas of research, especially pharma or biomedical tech or whatever, having corporate ties is not a thing people really question. It’s definitely not a thing that journal editors question because it’s normal. So people are like, oh, okay, you’re a stock-owning employee of this of this pharmaceutical company. And you also receive fees from whatever and you invest actively in these companies, okay, we’ll note it at the bottom of this article. But it’s not like we’re not going to take your research, especially when it’s something like this. So there’s a lot of publication bias at work here too where, the medication had such distinct results, you know, an average of 15% loss of weight from participants’ initial weights, and a lot of people lost a third of their initial weight. When you have a result like that, it’s almost impossible for that to not get published, even in a journal like the New England Journal of Medicine, which is one of the most prestigious journals in the world.So you have publication bias on your side, because you got positive results, and no one in this area is really going to question whether or not to publish this on the basis of your financial conflicts of interest, they’re just going to note the conflicts of interest, and then go on and publish it anyway. On top of that, you have this culture within medicine, especially in biomedical sciences, where, you know, there are just certain forms of research where corporate influence is seen as okay. And a lot of the time, pharmaceutical companies are part of that culture. And definitely when it comes to weight loss.I’ve said this before: In science, there are some things that we get outraged about in terms of corporate influence, and others not. Like with tobacco. If a tobacco company tries to start an organization or a research foundation and do studies on the health outcomes related to smoking that may portray cigarettes in a less negative light, then people in public health especially are going to be pissed off about that. And they’re going to raise the alarm. But when it comes to Nestle funding research foundations, everyone’s like, oh, cool, private-public partnership, when it’s really private influence over what should be public work.VirginiaWhy that double standard? Why are we outraged that a tobacco company would do science to try to make their products seem safer, but not outraged that a pharmaceutical company will do science to make a drug they can sell and profit off of?Mikey Fatphobia. It’s literally just fatphobia. Public health is very proud of how it’s solved tobacco. It’s weird. They’re like, yeah, like, we managed to cut the smoking rate and blah, blah, blah. It’s one of the main examples that people use in health communication classes or science communication classes, when we’re talking about how to encourage or discourage people from doing certain things. Tobacco is the main example, as well as that health communication campaign, “Verb: It’s what you do.” Which actually wasn’t that effective, but that’s a whole other conversation.It mostly boils down to fatphobia. And I’ve found that’s amplified by the way that corporations have always been part of, the “obesity prevention” area. So it’s less jarring when something like this happens because it’s like, oh well, this is the way it’s always been done.VirginiaRight, you don’t question this whole system. It feels very radical to say pharmaceutical research should only be government-sponsored or that there shouldn’t be a capitalist stake in this. When I say it out loud, it seems quite logical yet also anathema to the way we are programmed.Mikey If you were to say that in a room full of like, researchers, I think people would be like, whoa, hold up. That’s a bit much.Virginia These corporations do have huge amounts of money, they do directly impact people’s health. If we could get them to put that money towards useful things like that could be a good thing. The problem is, they’re only putting it towards—Mikey Profit-making.VirginiaRight profit-making, and in this case, creating a drug that you and I both feel strongly is going to be more harmful than it could ever be good.Mikey Exactly. This is all aside from the fact that these corporations should not have the money they have anyway. So that’s a whole other thing, that we might not have enough time to get into.VirginiaYeah, that’s a whole separate conversation. But definitely worth noting.So let’s talk a little bit more about the drug itself. I mean, as you said, it’s had these “positive results” and people are reporting more weight loss while on the drug then you usually see in these studies, but you also talked in your piece about our short-term memory when it comes to this industry, and specifically weight loss drugs. So tell us a little bit about what we’ve forgotten about this drug’s predecessors that’s clouding our ability to assess this drug?Mikey If the diet industry was held accountable for all of its past failures, and not-delivered products, then it wouldn’t exist. Let’s be clear about that. The diet industry—and when I say the diet industry, obviously, I’m talking about manufacturers of weight loss drugs, but also like, companies like Weight Watchers, or individuals who actively profit off of selling weight loss, not necessarily as a thing that happens, but as a dream.VirginiaRight, a very important distinction.Mikey And that’s the distinction that I think is really core to this cycle. Somehow we are so drawn to the promise of weight loss, that we choose to forget that if you’re a fat person living in this country, you have probably tried more than one, more than multiple forms of weight loss, dieting, some kind of weird cleansing program. You’ve probably tried some of those things, if you haven’t, I think you would be in the minority of fat people.VirginiaMinority of all people but especially fat people.Mikey And I think the normalization of that activity, engaging in this collective fat hate, paired with the fact that like, there are tangible benefits to being smaller—and then also the fact that this industry has so many resources to make sure that we never forget that weight loss is a good idea—obviously, we’re sort of slowly seduced into forgetting the fact that most of us have definitely tried to lose weight and it hasn’t happened or it’s sent us off into spirals of disordered eating, or has had other kinds of negative implications on our lives. I think it’s really hard to remember that these things don’t usually work the way that we’re told they work because all those other things are happening.We’re constantly being reminded that fat is bad, constantly reminded that weight loss is good. And then we see that reified by all of this media explosion when something like this comes out. It’s being talked about as a game changer: “This is gonna change people’s lives.” There’s always, always, always, always a steady supply of people waiting in the wings to advocate for something like this on a large scale. Which, honestly, the application of a weight-loss recommendation or technique for community-level or population-level health, that’s f*****g unethical. That’s unethical as hell.We know that encouraging weight loss, encouraging body comparison, encouraging body dissatisfaction, does all kinds of messed up things to our health. And we also know that it’s incredibly rare that people lose weight and then sustain that weight. And we also know that the consequences of putting people into a cycle of weight gain and weight loss has serious implications on our metabolic health. And yet, it is completely acceptable to recommend those things on a community level, on a population level. And there are people in the medical community who will absolutely advocate for that. And there are lots of reasons why. And sometimes those reasons boil down to dollars, and it’s a really uncomfortable thing to sit with. Regardless of how much we complain about how bad healthcare is in this country, I think that a lot of us still hold on to the hope that the people who give us healthcare services have our best interests in mind. And being confronted with information that suggests the opposite, or suggests that the story might be a little bit more complicated, is incredibly uncomfortable.I strongly believe that people are the best experts of their own bodies. We live in these bodies every every damn day. We know when things don’t feel right. We know when we’re content. And when we’re at ease. The fact is that most doctors don’t know what to do with fat bodies. There are plenty of studies that suggest that doctors do not feel equipped to deal with patients that are “obese.” [Virginia Note: I summarized a lot of that research in this article.]They don’t know how to do nutrition education, they spend less time giving health education to people who are fat. A lot of the restrictions that fat people face, especially when they’re looking to get life-saving surgical procedures or transplants—there’s this idea that at a certain weight you are less able to get through that procedure. That is also something that I’m very sure is born from doctors just straight up not knowing how to deal with fat bodies. In medical school, a lot of cadavers when they’re fat, people are just like, “Oh, I have to, like, cut through all of this. Oh, my God.”Virginia So dehumanizing.Mikey And it also just turns treating fat patients into a burden from the get go. So, yes, people are absolutely, probably the best experts on their own bodies. But also, a lot of doctors don’t know what the f**k they’re doing when it comes to fat patients.VirginiaIt’s so important to highlight that. With this drug in particular, it had this initial 15 percent weight loss or up to a third weight loss, which sounds like some brand new achievement. But let’s talk briefly about what are the concerns about Wegovy?Mikey Someone who engaged in the study and was receiving Wegovy, is quoted in multiple articles about the medication, saying that she ended up gaining back most of the weight that she lost while she was on the medication, and then also lost some of it and then also gained some of it back. That’s the textbook definition of weight cycling. The fact that this medication is being heralded as this game changing diet drug—there’s nothing game changing about it. When you’re on it, it f***s with your pancreas enough that you are sent into a process of losing weight that probably is not healthy or organic or makes sense for your body. And then once you’re off the drug, you gain it back.Novo Nordisk has sort of perfected the playbook of taking one drug and finding that it has a side effect of weight loss and then just like, selling it in bigger dosages so that weight loss happens more quickly.They did this with another drug, Saxenda is just Victoza at a higher dosage. The only difference between them is the dosage and Saxenda is also specifically marketed as a weight loss drug whereas Victoza is not.VirginiaRight, it’s a diabetes medication.Mikey Right, it’s a type two diabetes medication, and it is very effective at doing that. But it’s not meant for weight loss. And then you have Ozempic which is the drug that they amplified the dosage of, to get Wegovy.So Victoza was the subject of a major 2017 federal case against Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk was ordered to pay $58.65 million to the federal government and state Medicaid programs for intentionally minimizing the risks of developing a rare form of cancer to physicians who would be prescribing this medication to their patients.I’m not saying that what happened with Victoza is what’s going to happen with Wegovy, that doesn’t even need to be the case for this to be just a failure and hazard to everybody’s health. The point is that if a company has a history of doing things for profit that intentionally did endanger people’s lives, maybe that company should not still be making things that people will ingest. Moving on from that, if we know that a medication has risks, like serious risks, even in small doses, and then you rebrand that medication into a weight loss medication…like, why, how was that allowed to happen?It’s really hard to find out if people from the FDA have taken corporate money. I’ve tried to figure that out, because I really didn’t see any other way for Wegovy to have been approved. It’s been a few years since a drug has been approved for weight loss by the FDA. So this is a big deal and I don’t know. I’m not sure if the FDA has ever approved a potentially risky medication, especially after a corporation has been found to have intentionally mislead physicians. I don’t know if that’s something that has happened before in history. But clearly, this is something that we should be worried about.VirginiaThere’s so many red flags, except none of them were being reported in any of the mainstream media.Mikey I’m sure you saw how the American Academy of Pediatrics like came out supporting bariatric surgery for tweens, and it’s the same thing. I was like, damn, NPR should be ashamed of itself, because—VirginiaThat story was a travesty.Mikey Like, how is it that the only risks focused on in that piece were like, trisks of promiscuity following weight loss? They were like, she’ll be socially relevant. Are you f*****g kidding me? VirginiaThe girl’s mom was against her getting it, but not because she was worried about the risks of the surgery, but because she thought she hadn’t tried hard enough to lose weight. And that was completely unexamined.Mikey Portraying that doctor that helped her get the surgery as a kind of savior, especially since that particular doctor is like, honestly, I want to I want to start like, I don’t know, I want to gamble basically on the chance that this specific doctor shows up in an article about weight stigma, because she’s always always always around. And she’s heralded by medicine as this crusader for dismantling weight sigma. And I’m like, what the f**k is so different about her from the people who are just more obvious about hating my body? I honestly find it more dangerous, that someone would hide their disgust for fatness in like, not genuine concern for my well being.VirginiaThe tell is always when they come around and say we’re helping these kids lose weight to avoid weight stigma. It’s like, that’s not how you fight stigma. You don’t fight stigma by taking the marginalized person and making them assimilate. That’s the opposite of fighting the stigma, that’s reinforcing the stigma.Mikey And then we can’t really rely on most journalists, at least to give us the the real on what is happening with these. I mean, a colleague of mine tried to write something about Wegovy, they really tried to get something published. And they were told that it was just too controversial. And I’ve pitched this to no less than 15 places and no one will get back to me. It’s ridiculous. I think that with how pervasive weight stigma is, it makes it seem like there’s no one that gives a s**t about it at all. But there are people like you, like me, like my colleagues, like fat activists, people that really do this every single day. They’re constantly thinking about weight stigma, how to dismantle it, constantly working to do that, but they get shut down at every single angle. And, it’s exhausting. VirginiaI often run into this attitude of “yes, we’re very worried about weight stigma, I guess it’s this terrible problem, but oh my God, ob*sity equals death. And that’s the real danger.” It’s almost like we have to sacrifice people’s mental health to fight this public health war. And I think that discourse comes out of the public health world. And it really is about how the diet industry has infiltrated public health discourse. So talk a little bit about that, how you see diet culture and fatphobia showing up in public health and how these two things got so enmeshed?MikeyIn terms of public health, I mean, I don’t see an area of research that is not impacted in some way by diet culture, by the diet industry. I’m doing my PhD in a behavioral science department. I’m surrounded by people who do behavioral interventions on obesity, and it’s just the most whacked s**t ever. A lot of people are completely disconnected from how certain areas of science really come to be, how certain areas of public health really come to be. And so when you try to say like, “Oh, hey, maybe what we’re doing in public health is shitty. Like to a lot of people.” When you bring that up, they’re just like, what are you talking about?This is research that I’m currently doing now for my own book proposal. Like, how deep do obesity prevention initiatives really go? A year ago I was reading Fit to Be Citizens? by Natalia Molina, who talks about Mexican Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 19th century, late 19th century, early 20th century, and their experiences being actively marginalized by the Los Angeles county and city public health departments. And it’s a really good read, I recommend that people pick it up. It’s very accessible language. Molina is a really, really good writer. But even in those health interventions that they would target towards Mexican moms in the early 1900s, late 1800s, a lot of that was critiquing their diet, and the way they ate. So even that falls into the parameters of an obesity prevention initiative. And that’s something wouldn’t necessarily be classified as one because it falls into the realm of maternal and child health, which is honestly one of the most fatphobic areas of research I’ve ever seen in my life. But I mean, it’s the same reason why that survey returned that ob-gyn is one of the most fatphobic areas of medicine. These things are not a coincidence. VirginiaWe like to police women’s bodies, mothers’ bodies, mothers of color’s bodies. It all needs to be policed and controlled as much as possible.Mikey We have to understand that critiquing people’s diets—especially people from other cultures—critiquing people’s diets, critiquing the way they feed their kids, critiquing their cultural foods, really became bolstered by public health initiatives justified by the faulty science that they put out to justify their bigotry. And now it’s a whole area of research. Now, that’s not just critiquing immigrant mothers, that’s obesity prevention research. Like that’s a thing like that has journals, that has grants, that has clout. So it goes really, really deep. And it's not just relegated to the areas of research that look at eating, it’s also about physical activity research. And also people who do research on racial health disparities often fall back on like fatphobic racist logic for why some people are healthy and why others are not.Virginia Say more about that. Mikey I mean, so first of all, there's the enduring, long-lived fallacy that race is biological, which it is not. But when you make race biological, and you essentially make culture something inherent to an individual, then you can make the case that their way of eating and their way of cooking is an inherent pathology. And some people don’t even bring race into the picture, they’re just like, oh, you know, some cultures are just so unhealthy, and we need to help them. And all of its b******t, because of how malleable and subjective it is, like, now quinoa and avocado are seen as super foods like, now it's okay that people of color were the ones who like, really eat them.VirginiaAnd collard greens..Mikey And kale and collard greens. Yeah, like, f**k off, like, whenever I see something like that, I'm just like, this is how I know that none of this is really rooted in anything but our internal hatred for certain kinds of people. When you start to look at things through that lens, it’s a really depressing lens. I don’t recommend doing it all the time. But it’s often the perspective that I use when I’m thinking of things like Wegovy, because I’m like, who is benefiting from this drug being approved? Who is benefiting from what it does in the meantime, and also, who was benefiting from what happens afterwards? Because I remember, someone made such a wonderful comment when I first put out my article, and they were just like, this is going to lead to a whole generation of diabetics, the way that this messes with people’s insulin production. That’s a consequence that I think will happen. Even if a few years from now the FDA is like, this is not a thing that should have ever been approved, by that point, the damage is already done. And since it’s fat people that are going to be prescribed this drug, right, that just feeds into the idea that fatness is inherently inherently pathological. Thus the cycle begins again.VirginiaThe last thing I want to talk to you about is the how all of this stuff plays out in food culture. A lot of my listeners are parents, so I get a lot of questions around kids and processed foods, and there’s a lot of fears around processed foods. I want to hold space for the fact that parents are under a huge amount of pressure to feed our kids perfectly. But I think it’s very useful to unpack how much the anti-processed food argument is rooted in fatphobia and racism and classism. There are a bunch of new studies that came out this week looking at processed food and kids’ diets and then immediately linking them to health problems. There’s this never ending onslaught of research in that area, much like with the weight loss drugs, and we see these headlines and we think, Okay, well, there it is, salt, sugar and fat is so bad for us. You know, processed foods, the ultra processed foods are so bad for us...Mikey This is more of a new thought, but I wonder about the utility of making certain kinds of foods that are more widely available to people of color, especially Black people, low-income black people, I think about the utility of marketing those foods as something health conscious, respectable people shouldn’t be eating. Who benefits from that? A lot of the discourse that demonizes certain foods over others is honestly some form of marketing ploy to push some kind of new form of eating, whether that's clean eating or, or being like, oh, we all have to be vegan, or we all have to eat clean, or we all have to buy organic foods, you know, whatever that means. The way I see it, the more we impose hierarchies on food, there will always be certain foods that we have a fixation on, because those are the foods that we shouldn’t be eating. In terms of parenting, I feel like that is so relevant.When I was younger, my fixation on eating more and more, first originally stemmed from hunger, because like, I was restricted, you know, in terms of my diet. I have always lived in a fat body at any age. And so when it came to the point where restriction was an enforceable thing, that was when I became most fixated with food. I didn’t become fixated with, you know, ultra processed food, or like, that wasn’t the thing that I really even gave a s**t about. When I was a kid, I was like, I want to eat more of the food that I had for dinner, because I was still hungry. And I live in this body, and my body is telling me that it needs food. And eventually, that fixation moved away from being something that I physically felt was necessary, and more a compulsion that I had to fulfill. Because if I didn’t have it, it meant that I had let some kind of need go unfulfilled. And that caused me a lot of distress. So when we talk about ultra processed foods, I feel like especially in areas of parenting, we’re just like, how do we make kids less fixated on these foods? How do we make kids like these foods less, you know, like, marketing for these foods is all bright and colorful and draws people in. And kids are always told not to eat them. So you know, they might like them more, but I honestly tell people to start with their relationship with the food they eat on a regular basis. The idea that food abuse starts with foods that are, you know, “unhealthy” I feel is misinformed and incorrect. But it’s something that so many of us feed into. And it’s extremely prominent in literature that is targeted towards parents, because just because of the way that a lot of these foods are age-coded. Is there a reason why Lunchables and other forms of prepackaged ultra-processed foods are so bad? I think that’s a conversation worth having. But I also think that a lot of the time, it’s a distraction.VirginiaI think you’re articulating a key tension I think about a lot which is: The processed food industry, much like the diet industry, could certainly use more oversight, could certainly stand to have someone coming in and saying hey, stop with the predatory marketing tactics, stop disproportionately marketing communities of color, stop disproportionally marketing to kids. All of that would be super, and is really important. But we often lose that nuance, and it becomes: these foods are bad. You are bad if you feed them to your child. And it’s so much more complicated than that, these foods in and of themselves are not terrible, it’s the excessive marketing and the way that’s done in this disproportionate way that is the problem. Mikey It’s the way that these foods give in to the fixation we already have about eating. Like, if I'm a child, and I am already thinking about food, and then I am suddenly bombarded by food marketing, those are things that feed into each other. It’s not like food marketing started my issues with food.VirginiaBecause if you hadn’t been restricted, you could have navigated the marketing much easier.Mikey Do not restrict kids. I hear things like, Oh, well, if I don’t restrict my kid, then they’ll eat whatever they want, until they’re sick. And, you know, sometimes we need to have that experience. You need to have that outcome in order to be able to learn from that experience.VirginiaIt’s part of learning how to navigate these foods. And if you restrict your kid around them, they will have that experience at a friend’s house on a play date or something, you know, they will, it’ll happen one way or the other. Mikey And we have to think about how the fixation that we have on ultra processed foods in general, and the insistence that we eat a certain way that’s cleaner, healthier, blah, blah, blah. All of those things just demonize other people.VirginiaRight.Mikey That’s where a lot of that comes from, it comes from the inherent distaste that we have for poor people, for fat people, for Black people, who are often more often than not forced into a position to buy foods that fall into the category of processed or ultra processed, because of the fact that they have restricted access to resources to buy other kinds of foods.This is literally just another way to push bigotry and enforce hierarchies. And the more we think about it like that, then the next time, you know, it’s easier for us to be like, well, this thing is telling me that unless I have this prepackaged meal, that will help me lose weight, then I’m a bad person, it becomes easier to unpack that and point out why that’s b******t when we understand that these are not fueled by health promoting goals. They’re promoted, they’re fueled by profit seeking goals that are also amplified by division and bigotry.VirginiaSomething I often think about when parents are articulating these anxieties to me is: How much of this is honestly about your concern for your child’s health, and how much of this is about your concern for your perception as a parent? I’m thinking about kids lunches, and the standards for kids lunches have gotten just, you know, there’s supposed to be like four types of produce and a rainbow and you know, it’s insane. And it’s all white ladies on Instagram, performing their parenting in this way and performing their white savior lady thing, right?MikeyPerformance is a crucial social tool, right? But it’s not a thing to base your lifestyle on. Like, it’s okay to be like, oh my god, I made this really cute lunch for my kids. This sandwich looks like a face and it’s smiling. And I can’t wait to talk about this with like, the other parents that I know. That’s totally cool. The thing that’s not okay is taking those values that you have around that sandwich and applying it to how you’re treating your human child.VirginiaAnd that you’re then judging the other parents such as myself who are packing Uncrustables for our kids lunch, right?MikeyI have Uncrustables because as a semi-functioning adult, If I don’t have them, I might not eat anything. They’re amazing. I also want to say that just because you’re a parent doesn’t mean that you’ve resolved your own issues with food, so unpack that s**t. Figure out your hangups around food and how you might be projecting those onto your child. Because, you know, a lot of the times, we’re guided by these conventional nuggets of wisdom, but those conventional nuggets of wisdom are just trauma that we’re still holding onto.VirginiaSuch a good point. Mikey, thank you so much. This was an amazing conversation.Mikey Thank you for having me. I don’t usually talk about this kind of stuff.VirginiaTell us all of the ways that people can follow you and support your work. MikeyOn Twitter, which I spend way too much time on, I’m @marquisele. On Instagram I’m @fatmarquisele. I'm also on Patreon: patreon.com/marquisele. I’m currently working on a fat studies public health syllabus. So if that’s of interest to anyone, I break down a lot of what we’re talking about right now, in terms of how fatphobia became a thing, especially in the sciences. And if there are some concerns or questions that you have around fatphobia, I’m always always always taking questions through my website. And those are the subject of my semi bi-weekly newsletter I put out through Patreon as well. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

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. I’m a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture and the author of The Eating Instinct, and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. I am so thrilled today to be chatting with Aubrey Gordon. Aubrey is the author of What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. She is @yrfatfriend everywhere on social media, and the co-host of the very beloved Maintenance Phase podcast. Aubrey, welcome.Aubrey Thanks so much for having me, it’s a delight to talk to you. As always. VirginiaI’m delighted, and I know my readers are going to be so delighted. So I’m bringing you on to talk about the concept of thin privilege, because I think, this is a concept that’s very hard for folks to wrap their brains around. Whenever I talk about it on social media, it inspires a lot of angry comments, a lot of defensiveness, and just a lot of feelings that come up around this concept. I’m hoping we can unpack that, and discuss how parents can explain thin privilege to our kids. Because part of the problem is that people haven’t heard of thin privilege, and now they’re grown up. So let’s start with the basics. What is thin privilege?AubreyI would say thin privilege is how folks benefit from a proximity to thinness. So whether or not you feel like you yourself qualify as “being really thin,” the closer you are to looking thin, the more thin privilege you get. Congratulations! And that includes many fat people, right? I have more thin privilege at about 350 pounds than someone who’s fatter than me does. The idea is that the closer that you get to thinness, the more you actually don’t have to think about your body or your size in terms of how other people relate to it and treat it. You may think about it quite a bit internally, but most of your struggles with your body relate to internal challenges and not to institutions rejecting you, or individuals treating you differently.So, someone with more thin privilege than me might not have to worry about strangers on the street shouting “hey, fatso” at them. Or they might not have to worry about whether or not a doctor will agree to treat them. Or they might not have to worry if they get on a plane, will they be allowed to stay on that plane, or will they be escorted off the plane without a refund and without recourse. It doesn’t mean that folks in smaller bodies don’t have challenges to work through with relationship to body image. I think it’s really important to note that thin privilege is about how other people treat you, not how you feel about your own body. So you can still have profound body image struggles, but that doesn’t change how other people treat you, even with body dysmorphia, even with eating disorders, even with whatever you’re working with. Other people still perceive you as a thinner person and treat you as a thinner person, regardless of how you perceive yourself.Virginia I think that distinction between your own emotions about your body versus how the world perceives your body is crucial. And that’s what makes it hard for folks who feel like, “I’m miserable in my body, so how can I have thin privilege?” But it’s all the things you just said, it’s that you can move through the world freely, even though you might be tormented in some way by your body.AubreyIt can be upsetting and call up defensiveness in the same way that talking about any kind of privilege can. As someone who has grown up white and middle class and remains white and middle class, I have been told consistently throughout my life that my accomplishments are my own. I haven’t really had to look at the ways in which the wind is at my back, right? And the ways in which structures are built to support me specifically as a white person and a middle class person. And I think this is a similar thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re less accomplished. It doesn’t mean that you don’t struggle with your body image, it doesn’t mean that anything inherent about you has changed. It just means becoming more aware of the ways in which the world receives your body.VirginiaSo I was reading some of your writing about this (and I’ll link in the transcript to all the many fantastic articles you’ve written on thin privilege [like this one and this one], and one statistic that really jumped out at me was that just under 50 percent of American adults tried to lose weight between 2013 and 2016, according to the CDC. And you noted that white people and people with higher incomes were the most likely to be engaged in weight loss efforts, meaning that those of us with particularly pronounced privileges are the ones most likely to be engaged in activities to try to reduce our size. Is thin privilege something that already privileged people are actively seeking out?Aubrey Absolutely. Part of that, to my mind—there’s less research on this, this is all just me spitballing—but, to my mind, that is tied to the very explicit history of racism broadly, and anti-Blackness in particular. It’s tied to how we think and talk about fatness and fat people. It’s also tied to our relationship between class and fatness. Overwhelmingly, we are met with these media caricatures of fat people as being poorer than thin people, we are met with caricatures of fat Black folks, particularly as being the most abrasive of fat people, right? And most domineering or least intelligent or whatever—it sort of supercharges any of our existing associations with a community. So, yes, thin privilege is something that we seek, and it’s something that we seek in order to escape the ways that we actually do see fat people being treated: frankly, significantly worse than thin people. So folks will feel defensive of and disconnected from a sense of their own privilege, while at the same time on some level, kind of consciously cashing in on it or trying to figure out how to gain more of that privilege.Virginia I was talking to Deb Burgard about this a few years ago, and she said, a lot of the body positivity movement is small fat women trying to get their white privilege back, trying to move themselves back up the ladder, in a way. The intersection of all of this is fascinating, and uncomfortable. It’s hard to look at how we’ve benefited from these systems.AubreyI also think the hard thing about bodies is that we do live and operate in a culture that makes absolutely all of us feel like garbage in our bodies. Like 100 percent of people. It’s set up so that all of us feel bad. And part of the challenge is that we conflate how we feel about our bodies and how we’ve been made to feel about our bodies, with how much privilege comes with being in that body. And we’ve got to do a better job of disentangling those things, which will allow us to actually honor both of them more.Virginia Let’s talk about thin privilege with kids. I see this coming up in a couple different ways. One example that I talked about recently on social was a friend shopping for softball pants for her 8-year-old daughter, and finding that her daughter can’t wear the same uniform that her peers are wearing.AubreyThat’s so—listeners cannot see my face. But it’s a sad, bummed face. VirginiaI was a thin kid. I never had to think about whether the uniform would fit me. Or how that becomes a barrier to participation. If you’re the kid wearing sweatpants when everyone else is wearing the uniform, you don’t feel like you can play the sport in the same way. What other ways do you see thin privilege show up for kids?AubreyI think a big one is the built environment. For me in middle school and high school, those desks with a chair attached were like a real special kind of hell. I couldn’t flip the desk down, I would just have to sort of like, sit in the chair with the desk flapped up, which was like a little flag waving like, “Hi, everybody. I’m the fat kid. Hello! Look over here.”So I would try and write on my knee. And my notes were kind of garbage. It just made things—not insurmountable, but it was more difficult than it should have been.It is rare that schools or teachers are outfitting schools—and the same can be true of parents at friend’s houses—with furniture, knowing the weight capacity and that sort of thing. I ended up opting out of a lot of playdates with friends and physical games. I remember going to laser tag, and there was a point at which I stopped going, because I thought the laser tag vest thing wasn’t going to fit me anymore. So I stopped going to friend’s birthday parties. There is sort of a social isolation element that comes with all of this stuff. And I think, you know, it never would have occurred to me at the time. But boy, oh, boy, like just a thimble full of awareness from anybody’s parents could have gone just miles and miles and miles.VirginiaWhat should that look like? A lot of my readers are parents. Some of them are parents of fat kids, a lot of them are parents of thinner kids or kids with degrees of thin privilege. How do we talk to our kids about this concept? How can we be more mindful of exactly what you’re saying: thinking through the logistics of the birthday party, thinking through the logistics of the sports team, or whatever it is to make environments more inclusive for kids?AubreySo I come to this conversation, not as a parent, but as a very proud and engaged aunt. So a grain of salt from a guy who’s not taking care of kids around the clock. But I do think that talking to your kids about, “Do you think everybody can do this? Do you think everybody would be comfortable doing this? Who do you want to have there? Oh, I’m not sure if this kid could do that.” I think this works around size, I think it works around disability, I think it works on a lot of stuff.I have, as you can imagine, been very open with my niece and nephew both about what I do and what I write about, and why it matters. And I felt nervous about it, because it feels sort of “controversial” or high stakes or something to talk to kids about body stuff. But as with talking to kids about trans issues, or race, or disability, or any sort of social issue, they are totally down. And it has opened up this vein of conversation that I don’t think I would have had with them. My niece, who’s now 14 will come to me and be like, “My friend is constantly telling me how fat she feels, and I’m actually fatter than her, so it feels really bad to me. But I don’t want to take away how she’s feeling, but also she calls her little brother ‘fat’ as an insult.” So we have these pretty rich conversations to unpack all of those competing things.Because when you just sit down with a kid and you’re like, “Listen, man, sometimes people are fatter than other people. And sometimes people are mean to people who are fatter than other people or think that they don’t deserve the same things. And so we’re going to do a little looking out for fat people. What do you say?” That’s pretty much it and I don’t actually know a kid who isn’t moved to be a helper. So just tapping into that goes a long, long way.VirginiaI’ve found that in talking to my own kids about body size, they can use the word fat in this very unaffected, natural way that is so beautiful to me, as someone who had to go through the process of reclaiming it. It’s like, this won’t be something you have to reclaim. This will just be a word for you. Oh!AubreyI feel like the conversations that I have with folks who are parents is with parents who are not fat, raising kids who are not fat, right? And they’re really nervous that they’re going to have the thin kid who’s calling everybody fat.The way that I’ve handled that is to just be like, “Hey, this is a totally neutral word. Some people get their feelings hurt by it. So check in with people about what words they’re okay with. And then if they're okay with it, you can use it, it’s fine.” Creating even a sliver of daylight between what the word itself means and how people experience that word, can help kids navigate that. We do this all the time with words related to your private parts. There are lots and lots of times that we’re sort of teaching kids about when and whether words are appropriate. And this is another one of those.Virginia I also think you can talk about bodies in a really positive, normal way, and also teach your kids that we don’t talk about the bodies of other people, just like we don't touch the bodies of other people without their consent. If your 5 year old yells it out in a grocery store, that’s a great opportunity to say, “Hey, you know, we don’t actually yell out people’s physical characteristics in public, because you just don’t know how that’s gonna land. But it doesn’t mean that their bodies are bad. It just means that we respect that people’s bodies belong to them.”AubreyI think a totally neutral parallel is: You don’t show up at a party unless you get an invitation to that party. It doesn’t have to be like loaded and heavy. You don’t take a book from the library, if you haven’t checked it out and made sure it’s available. There are lots and lots and lots of ways that we check on something first before we go ahead and do it.VirginiaThose are great examples. So steering away from kids for a little bit: You talk a lot about fat people having these different levels of thin privilege, and why it’s so important to articulate the difference between what I as a size 16 experiences versus what you experience. And that’s something that the body positive space, the Health At Every Size space, we haven’t always been great at doing that. The small fat ladies like myself have done a lot of damage, and we have some karma to work off. So I have a question from a reader that’s actually a little more about health privilege than thin privilege, but I think they’re very related and I would love to get your take on this.She writes: “I’d like there to be more conversation about fat people who do have chronic health issues that medical professionals insist are brought on by how we eat or how we move, particularly diabetes, which is the dirty word of our culture right now. So many people dealing with this health issue are given poorer care because of the fatphobia of their doctors. Having this disease is like an open invitation to be judged and demeaned. The discourse stressing that it’s possible and even likely to be perfectly healthy and fat, while true, leaves out those of us who aren’t ‘perfect’ or ‘healthy in this paradigm. This is more of a screed than a question.” AubreyThere’s so much to unpack and I’m so deeply glad that this person wrote in about this, because this is a thing that I feel extremely passionately about. When we’re trying to defend ourselves against anti-fat bias and anti-fat attitudes and behaviors, the thing that is most tempting and the easiest to do is to grab on to the closest other privilege that we have, and go: I might be fat, but I eat really healthy and I shop at the farmers market; or I might be fat, but I workout all the time, and I have a gym membership; or I might be fat, but I’m perfectly healthy, and my blood work is probably better than yours. All of which makes sense as a desire to defend ourselves.When we do that, what we’re saying is that fat people who are disabled and chronically ill are not deserving of the same things that we’re deserving of. That’s not necessarily our intention when we say those things, but that is the function. It sends a really clear exclusionary message, in the same way that when thin women tell me that body positivity is only for people who are happy and healthy, which is sort of code for, like, not fat, right? So, not you, everyone else can feel okay about their bodies, but not you, is sort of what we’re doing when we say that we’re perfectly healthy. And we’re reinforcing the idea that our perception of someone else’s health is acceptable data to use in deciding how to treat that person. And it is, I would argue, categorically not.I mean, what we know about diabetes is that it is—well, I should start out by saying, what we don’t know about diabetes is almost everything. Just to be real clear: Everybody everywhere is walking around out in the world, like, “Oh, you just have to not eat sugar and not get fat and you won't be diabetic.” Currently, the research is reckoning with, do you get fat because you’re diabetic, or are you diabetic because you’re fat. And there’s some data showing that your body might actually hang on to fat, as it becomes insulin resistant, pre-diabetic and diabetic, right? So we might actually be thinking of it in a completely backwards way. We also know that it’s linked to the stress of experiencing discrimination. So all of that judgment about being diabetic, or maybe becoming diabetic, is rooted in ableism. It’s rooted in these kinds of misconceptions. I’m starting to dive into that research now, and I’m realizing the degree to which that is all categorically false. We are all walking around with this weird false sense of superiority like we’ve all outsmarted diabetes. And anyone who has been forced to take that deep dive knows that that is not the case. We think of it as an earned fate, and we talk about it as something that fat folks should have thought about before they got fat and stayed fat.VirginiaIt all ties back to this belief that we have to dismantle that fat is a behavior. That this is all a choice, that it’s all an option that you checked off on a list of like, yes, I will take fat and I will take diabetes.But attaching moral virtue to things that have to do with your genetic and socioeconomic and other lotteries of life really just doesn’t make sense.AubreyThere’s a sociologist named Robert Crawford, who coined this term in the 1980s called healthism, which is about the ways in which we seek out these signifiers that we are people who are seeking health, so we can perform that for people. I would say we are in a real boom time of healthism. Like people are Instagramming their celery juice, they’re wearing athleisure clothes everywhere. People are opting for things like Peloton and Equinox, right? And all of these see-and-be-seen things are very class coded. They are not just a way of saying I’m healthy, but a way of saying I’m healthy and I have disposable income. So it’s worth thinking about creating a sliver of daylight between what is your actual current health status, and what are the things that you are either judging other people on or seeking to be judged on in a particular way, positive or negative? That feels really important for all of us, regardless of size, and regardless of ability.VirginiaThat leads me to my last question. Another reader wrote in and asks: What do I do as a thin person to be an ally in all of this? I think when we’re talking about thin privilege, that’s an important piece of it. But she also says, when I talk to my friends in bigger bodies, do I acknowledge my privilege? Or is that unnecessary? This question also comes up from people who want to post about, like some workout achievement, but the performative aspect of that makes it really icky. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on some of that.AubreyI’m also curious to hear yours. I would say, in talking to friends, and folks that you have close social relationships with, ask them how they want to talk about it. And then do those things. Ask them what kind of support that they want and need and do those things. If they say, God, I’m getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, and I feel really nervous about it, you can say, what makes you feel nervous? Do you want me to go with you? Do you want moral support? Should we check in afterwards, and like get cocktails so you can decompress? What would be helpful? I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to already know what the right thing is, and to know how to read somebody else’s mind. And there’s enough difference in experience and desire here to be able to say, what’s helpful here? What are the words that you use to describe your body? What are the words you’d like me to use? Do you want to talk about this stuff? Do you never want to talk about stuff? You tell me. I think just opening up that conversation is a really great starting point.The other thing I would say—I’m in my office right now, Virginia can see it, there is a guest bed behind me. We just replaced the bed frame. I made weight capacity a priority for it. It’s our guest bed and I found a really inexpensive bed frame that is rated for up to 1000 pounds. So now I know, whoever comes to see us, they can stay in our guest bed. So thinking about stuff like that, like when you’re in the market for chairs, or for a bed or whatever, being mindful of like, does this chair have arms? How close together are they? Could somebody fit into these? What’s the weight capacity? Do I know who it’s built to fit? It will make it harder, but it’ll make it harder in a way that it’s already hard for fat people.VirginiaClothing is my other one on this. Something great that thin folks can do is support brands that are somewhat inclusive. I mean, it’s impossible to support brands that are fully inclusive, because they don’t exist, but to whatever extent that’s possible. I had an unpleasant interaction yesterday with a small fat woman who was asking for, oh, where should I look for summer dresses, and I suggested some plus size brands, and she was offended. She was like, “I mean, I’m not that big. I don’t need that.” And I thought, oh, I can’t talk to you about this anymore. I’m putting up a boundary, we’re done. Because, it’s okay, you can be at the smaller end of a clothing line just as much as you were otherwise at the upper end of the clothing line. Why is that somehow a problem for you?AubreyI think this actually gets us right back to thin privilege. That is someone who, in that moment, was like, “You are aligning me with fat people, I know how people think about and treat fat people, I will be over here with the thin people, thank you. How dare you.”VirginiaEven though I’m barely fitting into these clothes, and I’m complaining because I don’t have good options. But I’m going to be over here, you know, cramming into that size 14 or whatever.When it comes to talking about personal experiences, I do think there’s an argument for people not performing workouts on social media. And certainly not performing weight loss on social media, because you just don’t know who that’s going to be triggering for. And if you’re talking about your struggles, maybe don’t talk about it in the “I feel fat” way. Because that’s saying, I don’t want your body, and that’s really harmful to people.AubreyI also think asking for consent about that stuff is important, too. Like, “I’m having a bad body image day, are you up for talking about it?” Getting consent both for fat folks, for people with eating disorders, for all manner of folks, is a helpful thing. And doing that in a way that checks yourself in the process, not just for the person that you’re talking to, but also for your own perception. Like “I’m having a really hard time finding clothes that fit,” and “I know people who wear larger sizes than I do, and I can’t imagine what it’s like for them. This is so frustrating, right?” So at least you are in the process acknowledging the experience of either the person that you’re talking to or fat people more broadly. It broadens the conversation, even if you’re talking to another thin person, to reintroduce the awareness that you ideally have, but maybe don’t carry with you into those conversations. I will say there are, on a personal level, few things more frustrating to me than when a thin person sees me—a thin person who feels badly about their own body—and will go, “Look how fat she is, she must feel terrible, I gotta tell her all of my insecurities, and all of my bad feelings about my body.” Which then translates to me as, okay, this person hates their body and they must be absolutely repulsed by mine. So then it’s like, oh, great. Now everyone feels terrible. What have we accomplished here? Everyone feels worse? Cool.The other thing that I would say on the body image front is that there’s actually quite a bit of research into negative body talk. When we talk about our own bodies in a negative way, when we talk about other people’s bodies in a negative way, we think of that as being a thing that like, expels and gets rid of, and vents a lot of that.Virginia...and bonds us to other people...AubreyYeah, and bonds us to other people. The research actually shows the exact opposite, that it worsens our own mental state, it weakens our relationships, it leads to less sexual satisfaction, it leads to weaker friendships, it leads to all of these things, just when we talk about it, not how we feel to begin with. But when we give it more air time, it expands to fit the space that we give it. And it doesn’t only impact us when we talk about it, anyone within earshot experiences those negative outcomes. So I think it’s also worth thinking about body shaming as a pollutant. What’s the pollutant that you’re putting into the environment? Is it in a well ventilated area? Does everybody know that it’s being polluted? Like, how do you want to go about this? I also just think this is another one, sort of like the diabetes stuff, where we are pretty sure we know how this works. And the research shows us that it is in fact, you know, maybe the opposite.VirginiaThat thing you thought was so helpful is making everything worse.Aubrey For you and for people that you care about.VirginiaTo bring it back to parenting, that’s why the number one advice I give parents is please do not narrate your own body stuff to your kids, you are directly passing that baggage on to them at that point.AubreyAbsolutely. And I think it’s important for parents to note, there’s been a teeny tiny bit of research on this, you probably know it better than I do at this point, that it is actually just as powerful a negative force for kids to hear their parents talk negatively about their own bodies as it is to hear their parents talk negatively about their bodies. Your kid is not distinguishing between when you say that they are too fat versus when you say that you are too fat, or when you say that their thighs are hideous, or when you say that your thighs are hideous. Whatever the things are, right? Those have the same impact. That’s really tough to hear. It was really tough for me to learn. It feels so hard to be like people are honestly struggling, and the impacts are still tough.VirginiaOn the flip side, there is also a nice study (that I wrote about here), which showed that when parents who are struggling stopped talking, the kids did better. It’s nice to know there’s something you can do and that you can find a therapist or somebody else with whom you can have that conversation and your child is not that person in your life.AubreyOr a friend who consents, or whatever the framework needs to be, just like a consensual relationship that is about that thing. Totally take it there. It doesn’t mean you have to never talk about it. It just means being more mindful about when and whether and with whom?VirginiaWell, I could talk to you all day about this, but I know you have an appointment. Thanks so much for joining us!AubreyThank you for having me! This was a treat. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the now-weekly audio newsletter! It’s like a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. And just in case you don’t like listening (or that’s not accessible to you), I’m including a transcript (lightly edited for clarity) below.Audio newsletters are now coming out every Thursday. But starting next week, they’ll be for paid subscribers only. If you’d like to be one of those people, click here. If you’re wondering what “paid subscriber” means, read all about it here.VirginiaHello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions (and some answers) about fatphobia, diet, culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture. And I’m the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.Today I’m really pleased to be chatting with Anna Lutz, a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders and family feeding in Raleigh, North Carolina. Anna also blogs at Sunny Side Up Nutrition and co-hosts the Sunny Side Up Nutrition podcast with Elizabeth Davenport and Anna Mackay. Welcome, Anna, it's so good to have you here!AnnaI’m so glad to be talking with you today! Thank you so much.VirginiaI’m bringing you on today to talk about growth charts. I hear from parents of kids who are low on the growth chart and are getting pressured to move them up higher, and of course, I hear from lots of parents whose kids are in the 90/95th percentile and are being told that this is a huge problem.And I think there’s a weird mindset, which I see from both from parents and pediatricians, that somehow our goal is to get everyone into the 50th percentile. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what growth charts are supposed to do? And what are the misconceptions that you see coming up about them?AnnaThe way I like to explain growth charts is that they are made up of data pulled from thousands and thousands and thousands of children, that gets put into a chart that we can read, as a visual representation. And each time your child goes to their doctor for their well child visit, they’re plotted on this chart. And so if you take your eight-year-old to the doctor, they’re plotted, weight for age, let’s say it’s the 25th percentile. All that means is if you had 100 eight-year-olds in a room together, 75 of them would weigh more than that child and 25 of them would weigh less. So it’s putting them on a bell-shaped curve at that moment.What we know is, over time, most children follow their own curve. So for example, this child, most likely, from age two to 20, will most likely fall somewhere along this 25th percentile. Now, there are exceptions to that, and we can get into that. But I think you hit the nail on the head. Growth charts do not mean that we’re all supposed to be at the 50th percentile. All it does is look at a population of kids, and see where does your child fall? And their point on the growth chart is just information.VirginiaBreaking it down like that, it makes me realize that it also really only tells you this one data point about your kid. And we give this data point a huge amount of weight, right? I mean, we think this says whether they're healthy or not healthy, but the way you’re explaining it, it’s got nothing to do with that.AnnaExactly. And, you know, it’s going to depend on, are they in the middle of a growth spurt? You know, what is happening at that particular moment, when you happen to take them to their well child visit? Did they just have a stomach bug for the last two weeks, and they’ve lost some weight that they’re going to regain pretty easily in the next month or so? Well, that plot point is going to look really different than if you had taken them to their well child visit a month from now. So I really like to help people see it as information that we can interpret. I think there is some value in it. But sometimes we misinterpret it, and put too much value on it.VirginiaAnd you and I have talked before about the way growth charts were constructed. In terms of the populations that they’re based on, they don’t necessarily represent kids today that well.AnnaRight. The CDC growth charts that we all are using came out in 2000. So now, they’re 21 years old, and they were based on data that was collected before that, clearly. I’m not sure what the plans are for making new growth charts, but just having that information is important. They are really big sample sizes, so that's a positive thing, you know; they were created using data from lots of children from that time period, across the whole United States. But again, if we’re taking one child, and we’re comparing them to a huge population, again, it’s just information. If you're thinking about a very specific demographic, it may not make sense to compare this child in a specific demographic to the whole United States population.VirginiaWhen I looked it up, I saw that the data for the BMI-for-age chart was collected somewhere between the 1960s and the 1990s. And it was predominantly white kids that were in their samples at that point. So again, this is going to be very not reflective of lots of kids today. Let’s talk a little more about when kids fall off their curve, or jump up their curve, all the different negative ways that it gets talked about. You mentioned something like a stomach bug should not be cause for alarm, puberty is another time where kids often appear to be losing their curve or their trajectory in some way. So talk a little bit about why that’s not a time to panic.AnnaRight around puberty, a few years before, a few years after, there’s—for both girls and boys—a jump in height and a jump in weight, and the rate of height gain, and the rate of weight gain is higher. But again, these growth curves are all based on averages. If you have a child that goes through puberty earlier than average, their increase in rate of weight gain and increase in rate of height gain is going to be earlier. So it’s going to look like they’ve veered above their growth curve. And if you have a child that has a later onset of puberty, they’re going to look like they start to fall off their curve, because they’re not gaining in height or weight at that same rapid pace that this average visual representation shows. What happens is, usually, after puberty, the child kind of goes back to where they were. And again, that’s typically, every child is different.VirginiaI hear from lots of parents, and I’m sure you do, too, that around age 10 is when the pediatrician says, “Well, let’s think about a diet” or, “we’re concerned about this big jump they’ve had.” And it’s sounding like what you’re saying is, first of all, a) diets for kids are always a terrible idea, and b) this may not be any kind of problem, this may just be where they are. AnnaWith a 10-year-old, you might not know yet that this child is going through an earlier puberty. It just might be this kind of “jump in their growth curve” that’s the first indication that they might be going through an earlier puberty. And that’s not all that abnormally early, just earlier than average. So yes, we all need to take a deep breath and trust that the body knows what it’s doing. And, you know, growth curves, I like using them, because I think they can give us some information. But I don’t think we need to kind of hold them up as the be all, end all. VirginiaI had a question from a reader saying her kid had always been in the 60 and 70th percentiles, and when they went in for their checkup, post-pandemic, he’s jumped up to the 80th percentile. I think this was a six year old. And the pediatrician was immediately very alarmed about this and immediately jumped to, you know, it’s all the junk food, it’s the pandemic, and the way there’s so much snacking and went to this whole place with it. That feels like several leaps. What are you hearing right now, in terms of how people’s fear about the “pandemic weight gain” is fueling this?AnnaI feel like it’s putting blinders on us trying to talk about what’s important. You know, I think people’s weight changed during the pandemic. First of all, you know, you and I have talked about this, but: Kids’ weights were supposed to change. So first of all, yay. But, for children and adults whose weight went up maybe more than “expected,” I don’t think that’s the conversation that needs to be happening. We need to look at how are we all doing with our mental health, how are we doing with taking care of our bodies? I would expect for people’s weight to change in a year that our schedules changed so much. So what I worry about is how this hyper focus on that change over the last year is keeping us from having the conversations that we need to be having about how the pandemic has affected all of our mental health and well-being.VirginiaAbsolutely. So this may be a symptom of something going on with your kid, but the solution is not to cut out snack foods. That’s not going to deal with the underlying stuff.AnnaExactly. That’s how I like to think about it, this information from a growth curve is some information. It’s like a little flashing yellow light, like something might be going on, let’s be curious about it, it could be an indicator of something else. But we can’t only try to just turn off that light, and then assume everything will be okay.VirginiaIt’s like, if your “check engine” light comes on, saying yes, I will be putting duct tape over that!AnnaExactly. That doesn’t solve it.VirginiaI’m interested too in how often I hear that seeing kids in a higher spot on the growth curve immediately translates to a conversation about food. This actually happened with my younger daughter who’s always been on the higher end of the growth curve. And when she was around, you know, 18 months or so, my husband took her in, and it wasn’t our usual pediatrician. I think at that point, she was 90th percentile or wherever she was. And immediately, the pediatrician looked at her spot on the growth chart and turned to my husband and said, “So is she eating a lot of white foods?”Anna18 months old? Virginia! Goodness gracious.VirginiaI knew you’d love that. By the way, at that point, she was a very eclectic eater who tried everything. My other child, who’s in a small body, tends to be the “white food kid” in our house. And this is not to shame white foods—they’re great! But he immediately saw her body size and made this assumption without asking questions, without gathering more information. And, you know, it was a baseless assumption. I think naming that as what it is, which is fatphobia, is really important.AnnaIt is. There is research that shows that children in larger bodies do not eat more than children in smaller bodies. [NOTE FROM VIRGINIA: This research can be found here, here, and here.] This assumption that because someone’s in a larger body, the pediatrician then needs to figure out in what way that child is “eating too much”—it’s not even based on any fact that children in larger bodies do eat more. It’s just amazing that that’s exactly where we all go. And, to be realistic, unfortunately, that’s how pediatricians are being trained right now. Their whole training needs to be adjusted.VirginiaYes, it really does. I’m going to link in the transcript to the letter that you’ve put together that parents can take to their pediatricians. But let’s talk a little bit about how parents can take the focus off weight in these appointments. What are some strategies for navigating that?AnnaI really like to encourage parents to ask their pediatrician not to discuss weight in front of their children. You know, these concepts are super abstract. They’re confusing, even for adults. So if you have these two adults, the doctor and the parent, sitting there looking over a chart saying this is too big, this is too little, what’s going on? Is your child eating too many white foods? It can be super confusing and scary to a child. The whole message is: There’s something wrong with this child that the doctor is so worried about, that the parent needs to figure out how to fix.There’s the letter that I wrote with Katja Rowell on our website that you can email to a doctor, or you can print it out and hand it to them. What I’ve done with my children is—I said it verbally when the children were younger, and then before I take them in to their well child visit, I send a quick message through the patient portal. And I just say: “As a reminder, please do not discuss weight in front of my children. If you have any concerns, feel free to print out the growth chart and we can talk about it privately.” And I’m still amazed that when that conversation is taken out of the visit, so much more important stuff can be discussed.VirginiaBecause then you can actually talk about things like mental health and these other factors. I think that’s great. For someone who hasn’t had a chance to do that, or the message didn’t get through, which can also happen, and it comes up during a visit anyway, is there language you like to use to help change the conversation, shut it down? What do I say in the moment, if it’s coming up in front of my kids?AnnaThat’s a great question. I think I would say, “That is not something I’m concerned about, but we can talk about it later if you’d like.” I’d say something like that, or I would say, “I’m not concerned about how my child is growing, let’s move on to something else.” I do want to acknowledge, I have a lot of privileges—I mean, my kids’ doctor knows what I do for a living. So there’s a lot of reasons that I feel comfortable doing that, and it might be harder for other people. That’s one reason we wrote that letter, to make it a little easier. You can hand it to someone and the research is all laid out. But any way you can steer the conversation to something else is helpful. And if the doctor is not open to it, is it a possibility to find a different doctor? Again, that might not be a possibility, but consider it.VirginiaAnd if they go the food route? The mom who wrote to me was saying the doctor’s immediate comment was “no more juice boxes” without asking how often they even have juice boxes. You as a dietitian can navigate that really easily, but what are some talking points we can use? How do we push back? I think the food shaming is hard because you feel very attacked. It’s “oh, God, I’ve been caught out doing this bad thing.” And it’s hard in the moment to remember that there are no good foods and bad foods. How do I communicate that to a doctor? Anna That’s a great question. I think coming up with a line that feels true to you ahead of time can help. So could it be, “I’m not concerned about my child’s eating.” It could be, “if you want to talk more specifics about my child’s food, we’ll need to talk about it later or on email.” But not getting into the nitty gritty of all those questions about—I just went last week, you know, it’s the juice, it’s the “how many fruits and vegetables are they eating? Are they drinking milk?” And for a more sensitive child, they’re gonna start to latch on to these messages.VirginiaYeah, I’ve heard that kids will come home and say, “Mommy, the juice is bad.”AnnaExactly: “Why are you giving me that, I don’t understand?”or “I don’t eat enough vegetables.” For a sensitive kid who maybe is a “pickier eater” and they hear the doctor saying these things, it can feel super scary. If you are worried about your child’s eating, then maybe say, “Is there a referral you could give me? Is this a conversation we could have later?” I just don’t think it’s appropriate to have it when your 4, 5, 8, 9 year old is sitting there.VirginiaOne line I started to use is “she’s really good at listening to her body.” I kind of figured this out when my older daughter was going through her early feeding challenges, and as we were getting to sort of firmer ground with that, that’s how I’d answer the nutrition questions. And now I do it for my younger daughter, too. Because I feel like that way I’m not even getting into it with you about fruits and vegetables or juice or anything, it’s just, “she’s really good at listening to her body.” And then whatever food shaming the doctor said, at least my child has heard me affirming that they trust their bodies.AnnaThat’s awesome. VirginiaIt’s been helpful. I can see the doctors looking puzzled, but that’s a little bit enjoyable to me.AnnaMaybe you’re planting a seed?VirginiaYes! Well, thank you so much, Anna, this was a great conversation, I think there’s lots of really helpful stuff in here. Where can people find more of you and your work?Anna Check us out at sunnysideupnutrition.com, that’s where we write about simple cooking and family feeding. And then also the Sunny Side Up Nutrition podcast.You’re reading Burnt Toast, a newsletter by Virginia Sole-Smith. Virginia is a feminist writer, and author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Comments? Questions? Email Virginia. If a friend forwarded this to you and you want to subscribe, sign up here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

The “Myth Busters” Series In this week's episode we are switching gears from busting myths about adult bodies and chatting about kids bodies by busting the myth...that “kids today aren't healthy!” This myth is one that most parents are so confused by: are their kids healthy? Is the food we are feeding our kids nourishing them? Are kids today too sedentary? Should parents be DOING something about their kids health?  This is obviously a complicated myth to completely pull apart with multiple layers about the food industry, weight and BMI, and the overarching concept of health, so we touch on all of these but focus on how this myth has narrowed pediatric health to just diet and exercise. We are going to give you a brief history of this myth's origins and then we are interviewing a passionate myth buster on kids health: Virginia Sole-Smith, author of The Eating Instinct and the newsletter Burnt Toast. A healthy child is more than the number on the scale: it is a child who can be in their body with confidence and self-respect, regardless of their abilities, size, race, or socioeconomic status.   Connect with Virginia: https://virginiasolesmith.com Social media: @v_solesmith For full episode information and links discussed in the episode, please go to www.momgenesthepodcast.com. To connect with the Mom Genes community, check out our Instagram @momgenesthepodcast or Facebook group: Mom Genes The Podcast. Please email us your questions or thoughts for future episodes at momgenesthepodcast@gmail.com If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to take a screenshot and share it out on Instagram and tag @momgenesthepodcast. We will be sure to share your comments and re-posts in our Instagram stories! In order to not miss a single episode, SUBSCRIBE and please give us a RATING and REVIEW on iTunes! The information presented in this podcast does not replace individual therapy or nutrition recommendations.

Welcome to Burnt Toast, a newsletter from Virginia Sole-Smith, which you can read about here. If you like what you read today, please subscribe and/or share it with someone else who would too.Time for another audio newsletter! It’s like a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. 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.This conversation builds on my previous piece on how to dress our post-pandemic bodies, which might have changed a little or a lot over the past year and a half. If you missed Part 1, you can read that here.VirginiaHello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast! This is a newsletter where we explore questions, and some answers, about 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. And today, I am chatting with Shira Rose, who is an amazing eating disorder therapist, activist and body positive style blogger who really gets fat fashion. About two weeks ago, I wrote about this topic, and you guys had a lot of questions. So I am bringing Shira on to talk more about all of this. Welcome, Shira!Shira Rose Thank you. It’s so good to be here.VirginiaI should also say that Shira and I are also In Real Life Friends, not just Internet people. We met when I was reporting a story on weight stigma and eating disorders. And then we bonded over our mutual love of puppies and giant chocolate chip cookies and many other things.Shira Rose Oh my God, I miss those Levain bakery cookies.VirginiaOh, yes. Okay, Shira, I’m excited to talk to you about clothes. But before we get to that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you became a body positive style blogger in the first place and a little bit about what clothes mean to you?Shira Rose I think a big reason why I became more into fashion than the average person was because growing up in a larger body, I had no access to clothes. And so I remember being a teenager, and dressing like I was 70 and 80, which is not what a 15 and 16 year old wants to be doing. And that was just another way that I felt different. I mean, I already felt different cause I was bigger than everyone else. And the world let me know that that wasn’t okay. But then on top of that, I couldn’t even dress in a way that reflected who I was. And I don’t think people understand it. It’s like, “it’s just clothing, it’s not a big deal.” It is a big deal, when clothes become another way that you’re different in a world that already makes you feel like your body is wrong for being larger. So I think not having that access made me feel just even more uncomfortable in my body, more isolated, more separate from everyone else. And so it was really important to me that I try to make my blog as inclusive as possible so that I’m never another place where people feel like they don’t fit in. And then, of course, I’m a therapist, and I treat people with eating disorders as well as being in my own recovery. And so Health at Every Size, and intuitive eating, and fat positivity are topics that are incredibly important to me.Virginia Totally, that makes sense. You’ve shared some on your socials and on the blog about how, as you’re progressing in your eating disorder recovery, clothing becomes complicated at these different points. There’s a lot that clothing sort of continues to bring up. And you recently had a pretty big deal event of burning some old clothes that were too small and that you had been holding onto for a long time. So, tell us a little bit about what that was like. And, you know, how you’re feeling about clothes right now?Shira Rose I’m kind of glad you asked me this question because I feel like social media maybe portrays this idea that I just burnt these clothes, and it was so cathartic, and it was so liberating, and now I feel better and I can close the door and move on. And the reality was that I didn’t feel this like I had some aha moment, when I was burning my clothes. I felt sad the whole time. Then I locked myself in a bathroom and cried for two hours. It was really, really hard. And just to be clear: A lot of people that have eating disorders do not lose weight, and their eating disorder is still valid and severe and is worthy of getting help. I want to put that out upfront. But with my eating disorder, I did go from being in a larger body to being in an average to small body. And it was a small body that I was dying in, but I was congratulated for every step of the way, because I finally looked the way people thought I should look. And [now in recovery] losing access to the clothes that I had in that smaller body is really hard. It’s once again a reminder again that my body is different and I can’t just walk into a store and find clothes that fit me anymore. And that’s been really, really, really hard to contend with. I think fashion has come a little bit of a way since I was a teenager, but now people are like, “Oh yeah, but these three stores exist! Everything’s great!” And that’s not the case.VirginiaLike it’s three stores, compared to the world.Shira Rose Exactly. So at nine out of 10 stores, I’m not going to find clothes that fit me and I’m saying this as somebody in a small fat body, so it’s significantly harder for someone that’s in a mid- to super-fat body who literally has access to maybe 10 stores total in the entire world. And if that’s not your style, too bad, that’s all you have.VirginiaThat is your style, because that’s the only clothing you can put on your back.Shira Rose Yeah, unless you learn how to sew somehow. So I think it’s been really hard. But it was important for me to do that. Because I think leaving the door open is risky. When I have the clothes in front of me that are too small, I can be like, “Well, I know how to go back and fit into them.” But I really want to make sure that that’s not an option. And I want to close as many doors as I can to my eating disorder. And so it was important for me, but it’s still really, really hard.Virginia That’s interesting. So for you, it was not this sort of cathartic release of the eating disorder. It was more of like, a tool for protecting yourself and protecting your recovery. But then, of course, there’s all this grief that comes with that.Shira Rose I mean, there’s definitely also the drama of lighting it on fire! And just to be clear, I donated and sold nine gigantic bags of clothes. This was just stuff that I couldn’t sell or donate. But yeah. I would have liked it to be cathartic, but it wasn’t quite that. You know what it was, it was working really hard to let go of an eating disorder that I’ve had for 22 years. There has been a lot more grief with that than I expected.Virginia I think so many people listening to this can relate to how clothes can kind of symbolize and hold those feelings for us. I think that’s very relatable and very real. So now I have some questions from readers. And this is more practical shopping stuff people are struggling with and because you are so plugged into particularly plus size, fashion and fashion in general. And it’s weird that we separate them out, they should be the same thing.Shira Rose I wish. One day.Virginia So I thought you would have some really good ideas for people. So, the first question, this person writes: I wear a size 22 US women’s sizing and tend to dress very casually for the most part. I feel very frustrated by how many garments are made with extremely thin, clinging material, or polyester blends that look ratty after a few washings. But I don’t even know where to look for good quality plus size clothes. A few people have suggested Universal Standard, but their casual stuff also tends to be made with thin, drapey, clingy material, any idea of somewhere else I can look?Man, that polyester blend is the worst, and it is everywhere.Shira Rose It really is. And I think what’s hard is that you can’t go, most of the time, you can’t walk into a store and touch things and feel them and try them on. With plus size fashion, you’re kind of limited to ordering all the things online and then trying them on and then having to return, if you have the energy to do that.VirginiaUntil your credit card explodes.Shira Rose Yeah. So Universal Standard is a great place, but there are going to be some things that are more clingy and some things that are not. And it’s really about looking at the materials of the clothes, and then maybe ordering a few things and trying them. And if you have the energy returning the things that don’t work. Some other brands that I thought of were WRAY or Nettle Studios, because they’re the more sustainable brands, which I found have better quality fabrics. But they are very specific styles. So if that’s not your style, then you might not love it. But I just wanted to throw out those options. I would just look at the materials, and also just try all the things on.VirginiaThat makes sense to check the fabrics. I do find that plus size clothes, you tend to see less of things that are just made with just cotton or just linen and I don’t know if that’s because they think they’re creating a more comfortable fit? Do they think stiffer fabrics are harder to fit to bigger bodies? I don’t know what the behind-the-scenes math is on that, but it is very irritating. Okay, next question: I would love to hear about navigating swimsuits and activewear. I love swimming, but it’s hard to find a plus size training swimsuit, almost everything is cut to be very modest, which means I can’t really move around, those high cut legs make it so I can actually move around and kick. Similarly, I would love to wear sports bras and racerback tops for hiking or yard work. But I’m not sure where to start, particularly with how expensive activewear can be.And I’ll also add that I feel like the flip side of plus size swimsuits is that they’re often very cleavage-y and there’s no boob support. It’s like one or the other. And that’s not great for being active either. Like if you’re me, and you’re chasing your kids around on the beach, and you don’t want your boobs falling out in front of everyone.Shira Rose Okay, so I have good news and bad news for this question, I think. I’ll start with the bad and go to the good after, so we can end on a high note. But when it comes to swim, I don’t know if it’s even worse this year because of COVID, but there really are not a lot of options. I can throw out the ones that most of you have already heard of, which are Torrid, Eloquii, Swimsuits for All. And then maybe department stores that might sell a few plus size swimsuits. But to be honest, they’re not that great. I mean, I haven’t found great options that I like, at all.VirginiaI’m gonna add Lands’ End swimsuits. Which I think I told you that once and you were like, “those are mom swimsuits.” And they kind of are, but actually like, I have a really cute navy blue one with a little eyelet lace ruffled trim, and it’s not too cleavage-y. I don’t know that it would be good for active swimming. But yeah, they definitely have more sporty options, too. And they have very inclusive sizing.Shira Rose You reminded me, I did see a cute little tie-dye, colorful one from them that was not that bad. If you’re into that.VirginiaAnd like, if you just want like a basic black situation, Lands’ End has a good, solid selection.Shira Rose I think they go to 24? I don’t know exactly. We could probably check afterwards. VirginiaI can put that in the transcript with their ranges. [UPDATE: They go up to size 26.] Did you say you had any good news?Shira Rose Oh, yeah. The good news is that I feel like activewear has some really cute things and they’ve come a long way. Some of my favorites, I would say Girlfriend—and they're sustainable too, which is nice—they go up to 6XL. Day Won, they go up to size 32 and they have some really cute pieces. And then Superfit Hero goes up to 7XL, which is really nice. And then if you want a more budget-friendly one, I would say Old Navy. They go up to 4XL and people really actually like a lot of their things. So I feel like there's a lot more going on with cute and comfortable activewear.VirginiaWhich is great, that's huge. That's a big change. Okay, next question is: “What can I wear that isn't a tunic and leggings but also is a tunic and leggings because that's all I wear?” I love this question.Shira Rose This question makes me laugh and like, you do you, first of all! I would think of ways maybe to spice up the leggings, if that’s something that you’re comfortable wearing. So maybe finding really comfy, cute jeggings or finding leather leggings for more of the winter/fall.VirginiaI thought of your leather leggings for this! You have really cute ones.Shira Rose Thanks, I don’t know that those are still going to fit, but hopefully I'll find a good replacement.VirginiaYeah, they were great.Shira Rose Anyway, so you could spice up the legging game. If you are into dresses, maybe try a comfy, flowy oversized dress and you have a tunic look. And then depending on what your thighs feel like, I always wear bike shorts underneath for comfort and for no horrifyingly uncomfortable chafing. But you know, also, if you like wearing leggings and tunics, that’s fine too.Virginia I also think that kind of outfit combination gets demonized as a “fat girl outfit.” And I think we need to reject that. Because it can be really freeing to find a uniform that works for you. And that feels good on your body. And then you can just like get three or four or five versions of it and like have your week figured out and remove the stress from your life, it can be so helpful. And I feel like not getting hung up on is this outfit on trend is helpful. f it feels good in your body then just go with that. I think that's great.Shira Rose Exactly.Virginia The last question we're going to do is: “Jeans for a bigger belly that stay up?” I have this question. This is like the story of my life with jeans. If you are more of a—to use women’s magazine terminology—“apple-shaped person.”Shira Rose Yes. We are fruits. VirginiaYes, exactly. But a lot of women’s jeans are assuming an hourglass figure, so the waist cuts in. So if you’re not shaped that way—which I’m not—you end up having to buy bigger to fit your waist, but then the legs are too big, so you’re just like constantly yanking them up. It’s a whole journey we’re on.Shira Rose That is like the literal story of my life. I have tried on more jeans this month than I’ve tried it in my whole life, which isn’t saying much considering I grew up in a cult and didn’t wear jeans, which is a whole other story. But oh my God. [AN IMPORTANT NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: Shira asked me to add that she regrets her use of “cult,” here. She writes: “I don’t feel that way about the religion as a whole but my specific upbringing made me feel that way at times. I’m sorry for using that word and honestly, if I could take it back, I would.” —VSS]Okay, this is a weird find that’s only helpful if you’re under size 18, but I love my Express jeans. They have these knit ones that feel like leggings but they look like jeans and they have cute styles. I feel like a lot of jeggings are kind of boring, but they have cute ones but you have to be under a size 18 so it’s not going to be accessible for everyone. And then honestly, this is also again, not ideal, but the Old Navy jeggings that have the elastic top. So you wouldn’t want to wear anything tucked in for that because that’s not the cutest look, unless that’s what you like. And they’re cheap, but they they stay up pretty nicely. And so any jegging type of jean that has that elastic top.VirginiaLike the Rockstar jeggings?Shira Rose Yeah, but only some of them have that top so look for those. But also like Liverpool denim, like, a bunch of different jeans have that kind of style. And those seem to hold up more because they’re more like the legging style.Virginia Another reader recommended the Gena Fit pants from Eloquii. So I can include that link that’s not Shira-endorsed or me-endorsed, we didn’t try it, but someone liked them. And I actually have a pair from Universal Standard that I like. The problem there is I’m really between two sizes, and so it’s like the smaller pair actually works better but only after it stretches out a bit out of the wash. This is kind of my jeans journey.Shira Rose I’m in the same boat, too, by the way. It’s so annoying.VirginiaIt is! Because the bigger pair feels really comfy straight on but then two hours later, you’re yanking them up because they’re stretching out and falling down. Anyway: Tunic and leggings sounding better and better. Well, Shira, thank you so much, this was super helpful. Why don’t you tell our listeners where they can find more of you and follow your work because you are often posting so many great fashion finds? An then also, all your other work on eating disorders, which is so important and I want everyone to know about it.Shira Rose Thank you. You can find me on Instagram and my blog theshirarose.com and Twitter and you know all the socials and if you specifically want to find out about more of my work as a therapist, that’s www.shirarosenbluthlcsw.com.VirginiaAwesome. Thank you so much, Shira!You’re reading Burnt Toast, a newsletter by Virginia Sole-Smith. Virginia is a feminist writer, and author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Comments? Questions? Email Virginia. If a friend forwarded this to you and you want to subscribe, sign up here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

As pandemic restrictions relax, many people feel pressured to lose weight they might have put on during quarantine. Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture and author of the book The Eating Instinct and the newsletter Burnt Toast, talks about ways resist negative societal pressure and to be kinder to our bodies.

On this week’s episode: Elizabeth, Jamilah and Dan debate if an indoor-loving mom needs to suck it up, sign her kid up for soccer, and actually go to games.  Then, Jamilah sits down with Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and author of The Eating Instinct and Burnt Toast, a newsletter about parenting while navigating diet culture and fatphobia. They talk about helping kids develop healthy relationships with food and their body, especially when parents are struggling with those issues.  In Slate Plus: Is there a gender divide in your household over who does more of the cognitive labor? Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on MADAF each week, and no ads. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Recommendations: Dan recommends watching Office Space.  Jamilah recommends Vosges’ Smoke and Stout Caramel Chocolate Bar Elizabeth recommends getting your kid a CamelBak Mini M.U.L.E. Listener Recommendations: Slumber Party Predicament Edition, if you wanted to listen to the full advice for the mother who lost her daughter to stillbirth.  Perfectly Imperfect Family by Amie Lands. Someone Came Before You by Pat Schwiebert. The Invisible String by Patrice Karst. Sun Kisses, Moon Hugs by Susan Schaefer Bernardo. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.  Wish by Matthew Cordell. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes.  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode: Elizabeth, Jamilah and Dan debate if an indoor-loving mom needs to suck it up, sign her kid up for soccer, and actually go to games.  Then, Jamilah sits down with Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and author of The Eating Instinct and Burnt Toast, a newsletter about parenting while navigating diet culture and fatphobia. They talk about helping kids develop healthy relationships with food and their body, especially when parents are struggling with those issues.  In Slate Plus: Is there a gender divide in your household over who does more of the cognitive labor? Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on MADAF each week, and no ads. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Recommendations: Dan recommends watching Office Space.  Jamilah recommends Vosges’ Smoke and Stout Caramel Chocolate Bar Elizabeth recommends getting your kid a CamelBak Mini M.U.L.E. Listener Recommendations: Slumber Party Predicament Edition, if you wanted to listen to the full advice for the mother who lost her daughter to stillbirth.  Perfectly Imperfect Family by Amie Lands. Someone Came Before You by Pat Schwiebert. The Invisible String by Patrice Karst. Sun Kisses, Moon Hugs by Susan Schaefer Bernardo. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.  Wish by Matthew Cordell. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes.  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Burnt Toast, a newsletter from Virginia Sole-Smith, which you can read about here. If you like what you read today, please subscribe and/or share it with someone else who would too.This week, I’m trying out my first audio newsletter! If that’s a confusing concept for you, I get it. Technology is so extra. Think of this as a podcast in your email. You can listen to the episode right here and now, or you can add it to the podcast player of your choice and listen whenever. 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. I’d love to know what you think of this conversation, and of the whole audio newsletter idea — should we do more? (Leave a comment or hit reply to let me know.) I really miss my old podcast (more on that below), and I’d love to bring you more of my conversations with favorite researchers, activists, weight-inclusive healthcare providers and other writers I love.For now, here’s my conversation with Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. She answers your questions about picky 1-year-olds, ice cream-shaming 3-year-olds, raising intuitive eaters with food allergies, and more. Virginia Hello, and welcome to the first audio version of Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I’m a feminist writer and author of The Eating Instinct. And joining me today is Amy Palanjian, the creator of Yummy Toddler Food. Amy, welcome! Amy Hello! Virginia Thank you for being here with me. For those of you who don’t know, Amy and I are also best friends. And we are co-hosts of the currently-on-hiatus podcast Comfort Food. But Amy is also many other things. So Amy, why don’t you tell people about yourself and your work? Amy Sure. So my primary work right now is on YummyToddlerFood.com. I do recipes, feeding advice, sanity — sanity for parents with little kids...Virginia I thought you were gonna say “sanity” full stop. And I was like, that’s amazing.Amy I wish! I am also the author of a kids cookbook called Busy Little Hands: Food Play. And what else? I have three little kids. I live outside of Des Moines, in Iowa. And I’m, you know, so tired of cooking like everybody else.Virginia And she’s not getting a dog because we were just talking about that and about how I have a dog that maybe I shouldn’t have. But she’s smarter than me. So I mean, we used to do this podcast Comfort Food, and we hope to someday do it again, when there’s not a pandemic, and we have more reliable childcare than we have in our lives these days. But if you guys like this conversation, and you want more of me and Amy, you can find, I don’t know, like 80 episodes or so, that we did over at ComfortFoodPodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I’ll do that plug. And of course, all of Amy’s work is YummyToddlerFood.com. So the reason I wanted to have Amy on is because lots of folks have been sending in questions that are very small-child-specific. And while I have parented small children, I don’t consider myself an expert at feeding them. But Amy, not only parents them, but also, you know, has helped thousands and thousands of parents figure this stuff out. So the first question we’re going to answer is one that I think every parent has, at some point, which is: My baby used to eat everything. And now at 13 months, 15 months, 19 months, it seems like she’s dropping foods every week. Am I really supposed to just let her decide how much to eat?Amy Well, you don’t have to... but you maybe should. Okay, so this is an incredibly common question. I think the thing that most parents don’t realize is that 1-year-olds grow less slowly than they did as babies. And so they are naturally less hungry, even though they are more mobile and all over the place. And so your baby, as a baby might have eaten all sorts of things, because their hunger and just what else was going on in their life was very different. And now as a toddler, they may be less hungry, and more interested in all the other things that they now realize they can do. And so parents often see this as picky eating, when, if they’re just less hungry, they’re not going to eat as much or as many foods. And it can sort of snowball, if you then put yourself in the position of trying to figure out what they’ll eat. Because even if they’re not actually hungry, they may still eat some favorite snacky foods because those are easy to eat. And they’re comforting, they taste really good. But they may not eat other foods that you want them to eat. And so then you’re like narrowing the list of foods that they may eat. So what I recommend instead is just continuing with the Division Of Responsibility, which, if anyone follows Virginia, you probably know what this is. But it’s where it’s clearly delineated what your job is, at meals, your job is to decide what’s served, your job is to decide when the meal is and where it happens. And then we leave the kids to decide which foods and how much of them to eat, if at all. And by doing that, you really free yourself up from worrying about how many bites they took. Because as you know, as an adult, if anyone tells you how much to eat, or ask you to eat more or less, you’re going to have an immediate emotional reaction that is very disconnected from actual hunger. And so the less we can make that happen with this age, in particular, when all they really want is control, the better. And I think the saner everyone will feel during mealtimes. That may mean that your kids eat a lot less than you expect. But it also means that you’re not going to be fighting with them to get them to take a certain amount of bites at every meal.Virginia Which is exhausting and crazy-making. Amy And I think too, if you can consider what they’re eating over the course of a week or even two weeks, it’s probably going to look a lot better than what they didn’t eat for lunch today. Because they may eat a ton of breakfast and then not eat a lot of dinner. Or every other Tuesday, they may eat seven meals. There’s no one right way for kids to eat. And I think a lot of times, we’re trying to force them into this mode of eating certain amounts of food groups at every meal. And that’s just not the way that kids naturally eat.Virginia Yeah. And this phase can go on for many years, we should say, too. I mean, I have a 7-year-old, you have an 8-year-old, and we still see, you know, not this exactly. But versions of this from time to time. So don’t feel bad, if you’re listening and have an older kiddo still in this phase. Amy Well, and at least as they get older, they can verbalize more. And you can suss out what the true issue is. With 1-year-olds, it’s really hard because even if they can talk, they cannot always use the right words, or explain things exactly. And so it’s the combination of all of those challenges that make 1-year-olds tricky. And also, it can just be really jarring for parents to give their kid dinner, and then they just don’t want any of it. Virginia Yes. It is super maddening. For sure. Okay, that is really helpful. And for anyone who’s like Division Of Responsibility?! I will link to some stuff in the transcript. So those words that I just said, probably have a link on them if you’re reading this, and you can learn more. So okay, next question. And this, I think, is going to kind of build on what we were just talking about: How do you get kids to eat the stuff their body needs without them thinking all the "other stuff" is bad? One of mine won’t eat veggies unless I sing each body part saying thank you, like her eyes sing thank you when she eats a carrot.I don’t mean to be laughing at the mom who sent in this question. But I do feel like you’re making your meals harder than they need to be? Or perhaps just more musical. Yeah. Amy over to you!Amy So my initial response is: How do you know exactly how much their body needs? Does anyone know exactly how much anyone’s body needs? Virginia It’s not X number of carrots achieve eyesight. Amy Right. I think when we see portion size recommendations, and we see charts, and we see plates with servings on them, we assume that that is the perfect amount that our child needs. But it may or may not be. And so a lot of times we’re chasing these very arbitrary amounts that may or may or may not be what our kids actually need. So I think it’s very difficult in the culture that we live in, to not feel this pressure. Because we’re getting it from all sides. Like all day long, I feel like my inbox is filled with pitches for kids products that are like going to do all of you know, all of the things.Virginia Get them into Harvard and make a ton of money. Amy You know, I see products developed by neuroscientists. But food doesn’t really work that way. And so I think, honestly, if you just don’t worry about that, and you serve a range of foods, with a range of flavors, and a range of textures, and colors, you’re going to get all of that stuff in what you’re offering your kids without having to do math, without having to count grams, or percentages of vitamin A. And it’s much more pleasant to, to come at it from the side of, “food is delicious, in all of these many ways.” How can I prepare this in a way that that’s easy for my kids to eat? That has a flavor that they like, and that I want to eat, too? You don’t need a master’s degree in nutrition science. I think we’ve like lost the plot a little bit on what matters, sort of big picture when we’re feeding our kids. Because this anxiety is not helpful to anyone. It’s not helpful to that mom, I bet she’s not enjoying her meals, and it’s certainly not helpful for that kiddo. And those nutrition messages for little kids are incredibly confusing. And I just think are beyond comprehension for the age group.Virginia Agreed, agreed. That said, if the carrot song was really good, I kind of want to hear it? But yeah, I feel like, unless you’re, I don’t know, very musically inclined, this is maybe more work than you need to be doing. But I think what this question kind of also gets at, and that you’ve touched on a little bit, is that we have this idea of how our kids should eat, which is not based in the reality of how kids really eat or how most families can really manage to eat. And it really mostly comes from diet culture, right? It comes from, as you said, these people sending press releases for crazy products, or the influencers we see on social media claiming that this is the perfect way to eat. So can you connect the dots on some of the subtle ways you see diet culture showing up but family mealtimes?Amy Sure. A big part of it is the control. It’s the question of, can I really just let my child eat fill in the blank, and really trust them to eat according to their own hunger. It's the doubt. We just don’t believe that our kids are capable of this. We’ve been told that we’re not capable of it. And so why on earth would we trust tiny little kids to do something that we can’t do? And so that’s one thing. Another is the pressure to have, quote, unquote, balanced meals. I remember seeing a post that was like, “an apple is not a balanced snack,” and you have to add all these other things. And that’s great. But that doesn’t mean your kid’s going to want to eat all those other things…Virginia Or sometimes you just want an apple, right?Amy And that’s not a bad thing. Just because you don’t eat a protein at every meal or snack, does it mean that you’ve done something wrong? I think about all of those subtle messages about the way in which we’re serving foods, that some things are not right, or that some things are not good enough. I mean marketing, yes, is one thing. But I sort of think that the way that we talk to each other about food is even worse. It’s the way that someone in your family, their relationship with food, might influence you, in ways that are less overt than a message on a package about it not being junk food or something. It’s much harder. That’s sort of a depressing road to go down, because it’s harder to deal with. But I think the subtlety of those messages that we’re hearing, just in our day-to-day life, are really hard to block out. And they really make feeding kids confusing when it doesn’t have to be.Virginia Yes. I think, as parents, we often need to sit with: Am I really worried about my kids intake here? Or am I worried about how I’m being perceived as their parent because we tie so much of our self-worth as a parent to their eating performance in a way that’s problematic. And if it’s more that you’re like, “Grandma’s gonna make a comment” or “my friends’ kids all eat XYZ and my kids don’t.” I think that’s a good way of being able to tell that this is more of a cultural noise thing.Amy I mean, even just think about — well, this isn’t gonna apply to you, because I know you don’t care about this the way a lot of people do. But let’s say, you have a meal, like a dinner, and there’s no vegetable —Virginia It is Wednesday at my house. Continue.AmyFor many, many people, the immediate feeling is that you’ve somehow failed, you somehow didn’t do it right. And that meal is incomplete. But that’s not true. I think, if we’re trying to check off boxes of “I got my protein in today, I got all of these like macronutrients,” I just think we're going to make ourselves crazy. VirginiaEspecially with kids who, as you said, their intake varies over a day over a week, like this might not be a day when they’re eating vegetables, right? Amy I have sometimes have to almost force myself to just give them mac and cheese. And to just prove to myself that everyone is fine. Sometimes you just need to see it to believe that it’s fine. And then the next day, your kids might eat all the broccoli. You know, there’s other messaging around like feeding babies, where if they eat certain foods as babies, that will [supposedly] prevent picky eating, or if you feed them a certain way with solids, you’ll skip the picky eating phase all together. And it’s not true. And it’s incredibly damaging to parents who have more challenging kids, because it just sets you up to feel like you did something wrong.Virginia Yeah, totally. I think that’s so true. It’s really sad. Okay, this question is maybe a little bit diet culture and a little bit manners, and I just didn’t even really know what to say, so I’m making you answer it. Okay. She writes: Before COVID, I met my boyfriend’s cousins and their children for the first time. It was a birthday party celebration with lots of food. I had a piece of cake and was also offered a packaged ice cream sandwich, which I accepted. [Virginia: That sounds like a great combination.] The 3-year-old daughter of one of the cousins took it from me to put back in the freezer, because I already had a piece of cake and two desserts wasn’t healthy for me. I was pretty shocked but didn’t insist on eating the ice cream sandwich. I haven’t seen them since. But I expect we’ll get together late this summer when we’re all vaccinated. If a situation like this happens again, how would you suggest I handle it?Amy Maybe you invite them over and have a dessert bar, and everyone gets to eat as much as they want? Just, take it to the other extreme? I don’t know. I mean, I totally understand like, in the moment, that would be difficult to react to if you had no inkling that it was coming. Virginia Yeah, if a 3-year-old just stole your ice cream sandwich and also shamed you for it. Yeah.Amy I think, if it were to happen again, you can say something like, “These both sound really delicious to me, I’m going to eat them!” The End. Or “This is what I’m having for dessert!” The End.Virginia I like that you’re making it about your own choice versus like, needing to sort of chastise the child who, let’s be honest, is being pretty rude in that moment.Amy Mind your own business?Virginia Yeah. But you don’t want to make it into a parenting thing. You don’t have to parent that child around this issue.Amy Right. I think that that’s where you would probably get into a very murky territory. But if you can just claim it as, “This is mine. It is not yours, and you don’t need to worry about it.” I mean, then that goes with anything that’s on your plate, or your life, or whatever. Virginia So many of us are thinking about family gatherings that haven’t happened in a long time now. And I hear a lot of folks worried about, “my mother always makes this comment about what I eat,” or other relatives weighing in on things. So it’s helpful to just be able to set that boundary of what’s on my plate is my business. Amy Yeah, I always like to do a very short sentence, and then change the subject. So, “This is what I’m having. What color are your shoes?”Virginia That works for mothers and 3-year-olds. Amy Because 3-year-olds are really great at redirection. You can totally change the direction of their attention.Virginia It’s so true. Just ask a completely random other question.Amy “Where is your baseball bat?”Virginia “What are you being for Halloween?” Never mind that it’s summertime. Yes, absolutely. That’s really great. For parents — it’s hard to give advice for parents in that situation. But I mean, as a general rule, like, do you feel like it’s important to communicate to your kids that we don’t comment on other people’s eating habits? And is that something you are aware of teaching them? Or has it not really come up?Amy So we don’t really have comments at our table about the amounts that other people are eating. But we do have a lot of the “that looks yucky” type of comment. So we do regularly talk about how, you know, everyone gets to decide what they think is delicious. “This tastes really delicious to me.” And my 4-year-old will now use that language of “This tastes...” Usually “this tastes yucky to me,” which, at least she’s owning that as a specific thing. She’s not casting the blame more broadly. Because you want your kids to be able to go to school and not be judging other people’s food. So I think definitely working on that a little bit at the table in your own house when it comes up can be helpful. I mean, we’ve had like, only Christmas meals with extended families. We have not eaten anything with anyone else in a long time.Virginia Period. This is reminding me, I’m trying to teach my kids to say “This is not my favorite,” rather than “I hate it” and putting their heads down and sobbing as sometimes happens. And I realized the other day, my 3-year-old is mishearing me because she sat down and said, “This is my favorite! I’m not eating it.” And it’s about my pasta sauce. So it really hurts. Because my sauce is amazing. But yeah, “This is my favorite! I’m not eating it today.”Amy I do often have to remind the kids that not every meal will be their favorite and that it is okay for sometimes it to be mommy’s favorite, or other people’s favorite. And that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the meal or that it’s bad, but we can eat the fruit on the side or whatever. Virginia Yes. There will always be something you can eat, but it might not be your favorite tonight. Yeah, I’ve recently announced that Tuesday is the night when I cook whatever I want because I felt like, we were getting into a slippery slope of all the meals being just their favorites. Which — you should serve your children’s favorite foods. That’s not a bad thing. But you know, Monday night is pesto pasta, that’s their absolute favorite. And Mondays are tiring, and I don’t want any fights at dinner on Mondays. And Wednesdays is taco night, which is their other favorite. And so I was like, you know what, Tuesdays are going to be whatever I pick. And it’s going to change week to week and they don’t love it. But they’re coping.Amy If I’m making one of my favorites, I almost always serve flat bread on the side. Because then I know that they have nothing to complain about because they like bread. Yeah, and usually the things that I want to make myself have Indian sauces or things, and so a flatbread kind of makes sense. Virginia I keep a lot of packages of dinner rolls in the freezer for this purpose. Other than occasionally, they get sick of the favorite. That really screws you. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing. My kids are quick to fall out of love with their favorites and have new favorites. It’s hard to keep up. Okay, the last question is: How do I do Division Of Responsibility when my child has food allergies? This question has come in a bunch of different ways. I’m not going to read them all, because they’re all very specific. But I think what people are generally struggling with is, you’ve got this one big, scary food your kid can’t have. And somehow that feels like it’s blurring the lines of this responsibility question.Amy I mean, I guess there could be an issue, if like your kid was allergic to dairy, but you still kept dairy in the house? How do you not make them feel excluded? Is that the question?Virginia I don’t exactly know what the intent of it is. But I think it’s probably something like that, like, “Can we serve ice cream, with dinner or whatever, if one kid can’t eat it?”Amy I mean, I think you need to have a replacement for it, you need to somehow make the playing field fair. So you need to lean on other types of things that the kid can eat, like, make a list of all the delicious things that that everybody in the family can eat, put it on the fridge, where you can look at it. And then maybe like, when your kid is at school or at daycare, that’s when you can eat some of the other foods that they can’t eat. But I think make them feel like they are part of the family. And they’re a part of your food experience as much as possible, rather than making it their issue. And I think a lot of families are really good at this. I mean, there are so many products now that make this so much easier than even just a few years ago. So I think you just do Division Of Responsibility in the same way. But you have to just rethink what the foods are a little bit. Virginia That makes sense. Often the tone coming across in these emails, and certainly this is something I remember dealing with when my older daughter had more medical food issues, is: Often there’s a lot of anxiety about growth with a kid who’s got a lot of allergies and whether they’re eating enough, And so maybe this is also about, “Can I trust their fullness?” And I feel like, for the most part, the answer is absolutely yes. You can still trust your child to know their hunger and fullness even if they can’t eat certain foods. Right?Amy Yes. If there is a medically indicated reason that the kid can’t feel their hunger or their appetite levels are skewed because of medication or some other issue, you want to talk to your doctor and find a feeding therapist who is trained in those specific things. Because navigating that alone is going to be incredibly challenging. But otherwise, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to trust your child with whatever the food is, whether or not it has nuts or doesn’t have nuts. And you know, I think on the growth issue, this is a whole other topic. But if your child is growing, even if it’s not like leaps and bounds, if they are growing, if they’re meeting their milestones, if they seem happy, if they seem like themselves, you probably should just leave them alone. If they’re dropping off of their growth curve, and your doctor is really concerned, that’s a different issue. But just because you’re at the lower end of the growth scale, or the higher end, doesn’t mean that there’s a problem.Virginia Yes, absolutely. And I’ll put some links to folks that Amy and I both really trust if anyone is looking for feeding therapy help along those lines. [Check out: Helping Your Child With Extreme Picky Eating, Thrive By Spectrum Pediatrics, and Responsive Feeding Therapy.]But yeah, I think the fundamental message of even if this is a kid who’s got certain foods they can’t eat, and maybe that means you’re worried about their overall nutritional makeup (because you’re having to skip out on certain food groups) — still, working on how to trust their hunger and fullness cues is going to be super, super important. You know, maybe even more important for a kid who’s got to navigate food in a slightly more fraught way. Amy Yes. And if anyone’s looking for like specific substitutions that you can’t find it just email me and I’ll poll my Instagram community because someone recommended a dairy-free parmesan today that I didn’t know about. Virginia That’s awesome. And check out Amy’s website, because all her recipes always have notes about substitutions you can make if you need to take out a common food allergen. She’s amazing at figuring this out.Amy Well not 100%. But I try! Virginia Well, okay, you aren’t 100% amazing. Maybe not 100% of the recipes have this, but I have noticed this as a recurring theme. Amy, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Again, I’ll put links in the transcript to YummyToddlerFood, and to our old podcast archives for anyone who wants to go down that rabbit hole with us. Amy Thanks for having me!You’re reading Burnt Toast, a newsletter by Virginia Sole-Smith. Virginia is a feminist writer, and author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia. Comments? Questions? Email Virginia. If a friend forwarded this to you and you want to subscribe, sign up here: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

This week I am joined by New York Time Journalist & Author of The Eating Instinct, Virginia Sole-Smith. ⁣ I really wanted to discuss how an Intuitive Eating approach works within families and how parents navigate concerns about perfect eating, childhood weight fluctuations and body image concerns. ⁣ ⁣ Find out more about her work: ⁣ www.virginiasolesmith.com ⁣ Follow @v_solesmith ⁣ ⁣

In this episode of the Rise Parenting Podcast I got to connect with my oldest friend, Christina, around her transition to motherhood, how she prioritizes her daughter, work, her relationship with her husband and also her own self-care. We talk about her work as a therapist at an eating disorder clinic and her own journey with an eating disorder. Christina shares her knowledge and experience raising a daughter in a world that praises a particular image of beauty and how she is learning to model positive body image and food neutrality to her 3-year-old. We also talk about intuitive eating and Christina shares some resources that she uses as a parent and therapist. Resources referenced in our conversation: RIE Parenting - https://www.rie.org/ Hand in Hand Parenting - https://www.handinhandparenting.org/ Eating Instinct - https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Instinct-Culture-Image-America/dp/1250120985 Food Psych - https://christyharrison.com/foodpsych Kristin Neff - https://self-compassion.org/ Eating by the Light of the Moon - https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Light-Moon-Relationship-Storytelling/dp/0936077360/ref=sr_1_2?gclid=Cj0KCQiAtf_tBRDtARIsAIbAKe1pIfJezaolzAR-9PXT8I7ngAgdVO3wCcAzgGZBNFgp8YVVXLBlG10aAh84EALw_wcB&hvadid=241928639678&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9032096&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=6859831975507454716&hvtargid=kwd-3757510470&hydadcr=22567_10346631&keywords=eating+in+light+of+the+moon&qid=1572931937&sr=8-2 Body Respect - https://www.amazon.com/Body-Respect-Conventional-Health-Understand/dp/1940363195 Podcast Music: England by Pictures of the Floating World, License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/legalcode

Virginia Sole-Smith--author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America and co-host of the Comfort Food podcast--joins host Carter Umhau, LMHC to share the story of how the feeding issues that arose for her newborn daughter inspired a new way of thinking about body trust and the diet industry in America. Virginia and Carter talk body image, parenting, feminism, and what it means to relearn your own “eating instinct.”   The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America: https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Instinct-Culture-Image-America/dp/1250120985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548431931&sr=8-1&keywords=the+eating+instinct virginiasolesmith.com Listen to Virginia on the Comfort Food podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/comfort-food/id1418097194?mt=2