Stay ConnectedBurnt Toast is your body liberation community. We’re working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants.
Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).
Copyright: © Virginia Sole-Smith
Today Virginia is chatting with Mary Carney, the founder of Towel, a new size inclusive lifestyle brand. Because a towel that doesn't wrap around your body is just a classic example of anti-fat bias in action. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSTowelMeet the towels: Ava, Joni, and GemmaTowel on Instagram BT episode on Old Navy's failed plus size promisesMia O’Malley on making sure your life fits your bodywe have mentioned chairsReally Big Towelthe viral pajamasMaddeningly, Virginia's jumpsuit seems to have sold out right before publishing, BUT there is a really good buy / sell / trade group for Universal Standard on Facebook. FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 106 TranscriptMarySo I got out of the shower last year and I had a towel and it didn’t wrap around my body. And I was like, enough is enough. Someone has to fix this. This is a towel. Something I use every single day. I was standing there, just out of the shower and I was like, well, some of my towels are in the wash. Some of them are a little bigger. This one happened to be one from childhood, ironically. But it doesn’t wrap around my body. And I know that I’m not the only person who experiences this. So in that moment, I was set. I was like, I’m going to make towels. It’s should be pretty simple. In hindsight it’s not simple, but…VirginiaIt really feels like it would be! It’s one piece of fabric.MaryYes, it does, right? It’s one piece of fabric. I was just like, “Why hasn’t anybody done this?” So in that moment, I decided to name it Towel because I was like, it’s so simple. It’s an essential. It’s pretty ironic, as well, that it is just one strip of fabric and yet, this one strip of fabric we have in our houses doesn’t fit many, many bodies. And so Towel was conceived.My first step, because I really love designing and branding is, was to build an Instagram and start to build community. What I realized then is that there are actually so many more people resonating with this idea than I even imagined. At that point, I think, it became about more than even towels. This is a community and these people deserve more in terms of access to essentials and clothing. For me, working in the fashion industry, I’ve seen small brands trying to start and know what’s involved. So, a towel is just one item to focus on. I was like, I think I can do that well, and yeah, here we are. So this past spring, we successfully funded a Kickstarter, which is amazing. We had 695 backers, and we raised just over $72,000.VirginiaWow. Congratulations. MaryThank you. VirginiaSo now the towels are going into production?MaryYes. So that round of funding was essentially to launch us into the industry, but also to get the production run started. I want Towel to be a lifestyle brand. There are many more items that we can expand on, but right now, it’s just towels. So yes, the production is happening. We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road, but I’m working with a great team to make it happen and they will hopefully be here within a month. We have things going on in the back end.VirginiaSo we are recording this at the end of July and your episode is going to run in August or September. So, as people are listening, towels will either be here soon or may already be here. You are very close to realizing your towel dreams if you are someone looking for this kind of towel, which I definitely am. I can’t even tell you how many nice hotels I go to and the towels are like a travesty, right? A travesty!MaryIt’s in every house, at the pool, at the spa. And because they don’t have it at the spa or they’re not provided at the hotel, that makes people in larger bodies have to do more work when they enter those spaces, right? They either have to bring a towel or they know that they’re going to prepare themselves to be uncomfortable. Maybe they bring a robe. I would love for one day where all bodies can go into spaces and they know that they’re going to have a towel that’s going to wrap around their body so they’re able to have that comfort that everyone else has.VirginiaYeah, anytime I’m in a nice hotel and the towel does not wrap around me I just think, how much am I paying? And I can’t dry myself? This is ridiculous.MaryNo, no, it’s crazy. I used to do a lot of road trips with my family as a child from the Midwest. I grew up with a dad who was in a larger body and I just remember as a kid, we would bring our own towels for him, or his robe. I think as a kid I didn’t quite understand it. And then when it came time, growing into teenage adulthood, you remember when your towel begins to not fit you. And everyone deserves to have that experience of it fitting, right? There’s so much emotion that go into it, as well. There is a lot of healing of child wounds in this brand for me.VirginiaDefinitely. MaryHopefully, for other people, too. I have a friend who has one of my samples right now. And she told me that the first time she put it on, she cried. She said it was the only towel that she’s ever had that actually fit her.VirginiaThat’s so powerful.MaryI think that this is something that is not only for the fat community and people in larger bodies, it’s for everyone. Because I want my children and your children to grow up knowing that their body is great and all bodies are good bodies, which is what Towel’s mission is. I think just having that message around the house is nice.VirginiaWhether it’s clothes or whatever it is, these things that we buy should fit our bodies, we shouldn’t be feeling like our bodies don’t fit into these spaces or fit into into these things. That’s such an important shift to make.MaryI’ve seen a couple of TikToks online where influencers have a towel wrapped around and it doesn’t fully close. And they say out loud, “my goal is to be small enough to fit into the towel.” And it’s like, let’s flip the narrative. It’s not your body, it’s the towel. VirginiaWhy do you have to meet the standards of this terry cloth?MaryLet’s just get better towels. And the same thing for jeans, pants, whatever. It’s not your body, it’s the clothes. So if the clothes don’t fit, let’s get new clothes, alter them, figure out a way. I know that’s not always accessible, but it’s definitely not your body’s fault.VirginiaWhat you’re saying is really pretty radical because I think capitalism, and retail, has trained us as consumers to think we need to fit into what is being offered to us. You’re talking about something that would overhaul a lot of industries, if the industry is shifted to thinking, “How are we making products that are inclusive for all people?”MaryYeah, absolutely. Old Navy specifically is one brand that comes to mind. I grew up lower middle class. Old Navy was kind of like my bread and butter when I was a kid. I loved Old Navy. I wanted to wear their swimsuits in the summer, and their bright, colorful campaigns, etc. I was really excited for their body diversity campaign.VirginiaBodequality was the most recent version. We did an episode on it.MaryWhen the Bodequality campaign came out, I was super excited, I was like, wow, this is beautiful. And I went into the store, and I tried on their pants and I was like, “Oh my God, these are terrible.”I will say, I’m definitely more critical of fit than probably your everyday person because I understand how clothing fits. I understand how they’re made and the technical fit aspect especially. So when I tried on my size, which I believe was an 18, and I had to go up to at 20 or 22 for me to even zip them, I was like, “Something is wrong here.”In that moment, it’s like, wow, I’m standing in this dressing room. I’m already in a vulnerable place, as we all are in dressing rooms. To be honest, I generally don’t even go into dressing rooms anymore. I don’t know if you do, but I buy my clothes online, I try them on at home, and I return them. But this day, I happened to be out and I was like, let me do it. And so I was in the dressing room and I think I had like five or six jeans and none of them zipped up in my size. And I’m saying that in air quotes, because sizing is all just—it’s all made up, all of it is made up. But the fact that they rolled out this campaign that was supposed to be accessible or they were saying, like, we are including all people. I know, because my background is in design, that it’s not my body, it’s actually that the technical design and the pattern making were wrong. But people don’t know that. They’re gonna go in, they’re gonna feel bad about themselves. Even if they do fit, they’re kind of uncomfortable.And anyways, at the end of it, we know it flopped, we all know what happened. They ended up pulling a lot of the sizes off the floor. I think that they ended up claiming that the community had failed them. But it was like, you failed us! We didn’t have clothes. And not only that, we were in a space where you actually made us feel worse about ourselves because your sizing was incorrect. VirginiaI just want to jump in quickly and say, it’s not that it’s a problem to be like, “I think of myself as an 18 and I’m in the 22.” The problem is the person who wears the 22 now needs the 24. And the person who wears the 24 doesn’t even have a size in the store anymore. That’s the problem when you need to size up.MaryExactly, exactly. When we have sizing standards, they’re all made up and it back dates even probably to like the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. And designers follow a standard. They follow their company standard and just as with any family, the company generationally changes. There are certain brands where you’re like, “Oh, I know that’s not going to fit me, because their size standard is not made for my body.”There’s also something that’s called vanity sizing. Vanity sizing is when they take a size that’s traditionally a larger fit and they put a smaller label on it. And so if you see the smaller size and you normally wear a bigger size, when you go to their store, you wear the smaller size. They’re using fatphobia to make you feel bad about yourself to shop at their store. And it happens all the time.It’s hard because I know sizing and I know pattern making, but there is this twinge of this old thinking that when I fit a smaller size, there’s a little bit of boost. You’re constantly deconstructing that. VirginiaThere’s a weird intersection, too, then, of the vanity sizing, which is training us all to think we wear smaller sizes than we do—using air quotes because sizing, as you said, is all made up—combined with the fact that in the plus size range, you’re sizing up because they’re claiming they’ve added those bigger sizes, but they haven’t made them big enough. It’s like vanity sizing in both directions or something. I don’t know, it’s making my brain hurt.Mary100 percent. Well, and that gets into extended sizing versus plus sizing, right? Extended sizing brands traditionally use a size medium or a median in their size range, and that’s traditionally on a straight size model. Then they’re going to grade the sizes up. They’re going to expand the sizes into plus sizing or their “extended sizing,” air quotes again. So that pattern is made off of a straight size body. Well, that doesn’t work for the extended sizing. So that’s why when you go in and buy something that you think is your size but it fits much smaller. It’s because of that extended sizing. Whereas in brands when they add in plus size, we can hope that they’re going to be fitting on a range of bodies, as well as plus sized bodies, and hopefully their pattern making is going to get better. VirginiaRight? Fingers crossed. Some brands are doing a much better job than others. And some brands really don’t seem to be trying.I had Mia O’Malley on the podcast last year—she’s a fat fashion influencer and talks a lot about fat life in general. She talked about how often when we get stuck in these bad body feelings and feeling really at war with our body, it can really help to step back and say, is my life comfortable for my body?I think what you’re doing with Towel is a great example of that because it’s really saying, do these things in my life support me? Does my chair at my desk fit my body? Does my car fit my body? Do my clothes fit, etc?I’d love to hear you talk about what else beyond Towel, what else do you want to tackle that comes up so often in this space?MarySo many things. I know you have mentioned chairs previously, and I would definitely love to eventually design a chair. I think for now I’m going to try and stick to the soft goods category and the next thing I’d like to tackle is robes.VirginiaOh, great. MaryI’ve never really had a robe that I like to wear. They’re either really silky and dainty and they feel kind of small and they always fall open. I tried to buy a robe from IKEA and it was their XXL and I think it still didn’t fit me, but here we are, right? So that is what I am going to tackle next, is robes.And beyond that, I think coming back to sizing standards, I really would love to help deconstruct the sizing system. There’s so much that we can do as a community when we all come together.There are definitely brands out there that are already tackling this, like Universal Standard does a really great job. They have all the sizes, their size chart shows their sizing versus standards that you see out in the world. They don’t break it up into categories, either. I think that’s another piece that I feel really is important is that people in larger bodies are already feeling othered because we can’t go into certain stores. And I think there are so many different terms and identifications that we as a community have used to empower us. But I think in terms of clothing, now, as we know, the average American woman is a size 14/16 or higher. So when you’re saying, oh that’s a medium, medium came because it was a medium size. Well, medium is not a medium is not the medium anymore.VirginiaIt’s not the medium of anyone, anymore.MaryNope. So we need to chuck out the system and create a new system. I think that’s a long line of work, but I would love to be a brand that champions that and helps move the pendulum forward.VirginiaThat’s amazing. Yes, we need this desperately. Can you do it tomorrow, is my main question? No pressure, Mary.MaryYeah, no, I would love to, I think the thing, too, is really giving people the tools to learn about their sizing and to learn about fit. I grew up in the Midwest, and I went to school in a really small town and Walmart was th…
Full show notes at the publisherYou’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting, and health. I am Virginia Sole Smith. Today I am chatting with Lindsey Guile. Lindsey is an Associate Professor of Art at Dutchess Community College, and a body and fat liberation artist. Lindsey uses large format drawing and ceramics to explore concepts of self image, body image and self worth through the lens of contemporary feminist theory. Her work has been exhibited at The Arnot Museum, The Dorsky Museum, The Birke Art Gallery, The Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery, Untitled Space Gallery, Women’s Work Gallery, The Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, and so many others. Lindsey currently lives in Poughkeepsie, and is someone I know locally through fat activism work here in the Hudson Valley. She is awesome! Seeing Lindsey’s eight foot tall drawings of fat bodies in person was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had since I started writing and thinking about bodies in the way that I do. We are putting lots of images in the show notes, so definitely check them out and definitely follow her on Instagram. But know that these images are not doing her work justice. The actual size and scale of these drawings is something you have to experience in real life. Lindsey is a total delight. I love talking to her about her process, about how she thinks about this work, and about the power of drawing bodies. So here’s Lindsey! PS. If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)Episode 105 TranscriptLindseyI am a self-described feminist, body neutral, fat liberationist, body liberationist, figurative artist. I know there are a lot of terms there, but there is a lot that I want to embrace. I work mainly in large-scale drawings that explore the idea of femininity from the feminine gaze. I have people who model for me, they can be clothed or nude. It’s totally up to them. I create an atmosphere that’s really based on consent. And I’ve been doing this regularly for about five years, although the series started about 10 years ago.VirginiaBring us back to 10 years ago. What made you say “I not only want to draw bodies, I not only want to draw people, but I would like to draw them eight feet tall. I would like them to take up all of the space?”LindseyHow often do feminine folks get to just take up space unapologetically? That’s one thing that really stuck in my brain in terms of size, is that I wanted them to really just command a room—quietly though, because I do draw versus paint. And I think painting, while wonderful, is a lot louder. I think there can be such a power and sometimes subtlety to drawing. But where it started was me white knuckling my way through my own recovery from diet culture and disordered eating which was just so difficult for me, especially when I was in my Master’s of Fine Arts program. I remember laying on the floor in my studio apartment having a panic attack, knowing that I could either continue to engage in diet culture or I could pass my classes. It took up so much of my brain power to do all that. And it got to the point where it just was not sustainable. I finally had to be like, I can’t do this anymore. I started following some folks online who were fat and I was like, look, these people are doing this. It’s okay, I can let this go. I’ve always been a figurative artist. I love drawing the human figure. So I was like, “You know what, maybe I need to draw myself nude.” I had always been interested in being a nude model. But my body shape wasn’t what people drew when I was a student. So it seemed very cut off to me. One of my friends was like, “Hey, I think you need to draw yourself.” So I drew myself, collarbone to thigh. It actually hangs in my bedroom now, that drawing. And it was difficult, because I was dealing with my own body image issues—but then people were coming into my studio like, “Oh my gosh, like, look at the draping on the stomach from all the weight fluctuations. This is really beautiful. And this is such a great drawing. I love how you’re honoring that body.” I didn’t tell people it was me.VirginiaOh, that’s interesting. So you’re really getting their unfiltered response. They weren’t like, “Oh, it’s Lindsey so I should say something nice to Lindsey about Lindsey.” LindseyYeah. Then it was like a light bulb that went off, which was: I can use the system and the hierarchy of art to start flipping the narrative and draw fat bodies. And figures that are not just fat—although I think a lot of larger people come to me because I am larger, and it’s a safe space to start to tell people’s stories in that way. Also, having drawn myself and understanding how difficult it was to look at myself in that way, I think it gave me extra compassion for the people coming in, where I know this is a very scary thing for them to do.VirginiaSince you brought up drawing yourself, I’m curious to hear how that experience changed how you relate to your body? LindseySo I joke with people that the only time I’ve ever been small was when I was born because I was super early. I’m also just shy of six feet tall, so I’ve never fit into a certain beauty narrative. And even when I was the most engaged in diet culture, I still have always been plus-sized. To see myself there in this drawing and to see it as an artist and as the person who drew it was really profound. I did my first drawing of me on a large scale in 2019 and it was really nerve wracking to see that in a gallery and people interacting with it. I remember actually it was in a college I teach at, one of my students was like, “Does that look like the person?” and I felt like saying “Well, I don’t know, does it?”I guess it’s a little weird to put yourself out there, but I’ve learned to look at myself with the eyes of an artist rather than the eyes of the patriarchy and diet culture. It’s taught me a lot of kindness towards myself. I’m not saying I don’t struggle with it, but it’s given me so much more.VirginiaIt feels like a way of reclaiming your body.LindseyOne thousand percent. That’s actually a big theme for a lot of people I work with: Reclaiming their body in some way, shape, or form. Actually, I was telling a friend this morning I just started a new drawing of myself. I’d wanted to do one when I hit 40 and then I just wasn’t in the space to do it. But I’ve done a lot recently with therapy. I got a bunch of tattoos, a nose ring. I was like, “I think I’m ready to tell that story of me again.”VirginiaI was just thinking how tattoos are often another way people reclaim their body. And so many of your subjects have tattoos and you draw tattoos really beautifully. LindseyThe first tattooed model I drew, that’s specifically what she talked about. She’s a larger woman and she talked a lot about how people would stare at her and she decided that she was going to give them something to stare at. She has so many tattoos. In fact, it’s funny—she’s a dear friend now—she’ll be like, “Lindsey, I have more tattoos. When do you want to draw me again?” She’s also a tattoo apprentice so it’s like wrapping around.VirginiaLet’s talk about your process a little bit. I don’t speak Fine Art particularly fluently, but I do think there’s an image we have of figure drawing of the model being just this sort of amorphous body, right? It’s like men painting women because they’re beautiful and nothing else. They’re not people apart from the bodies. But your process is so different from that. LindseyI’ve been working as a figurative artist for for over 20 years and I’ve seen exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve even joked with my students that [the model is] a still life that breathes. And I realized I was still objectifying our models which, obviously was a problem. With my process, I usually use social media and I’m like, “Hey, I’m looking for models.” I explain the whole process, that you don’t have to be nude. It’s consent driven, so you can tell me—I had a model once who was like, I’m okay with being fully nude but I don’t want you to show my vulva. And I was like, perfect, not a problem, we’ll pose around it. So they reach out to me, we set up, we usually have a little bit of a chat. And I utilize the college’s drawing studio to photograph because I just don’t have room in my studio at home. And while they are up on a podium, that’s more for just so I can get the right angles. I try to create this atmosphere that is just really respectful. Usually, when they come in, they get to the level of dress or undress that they’re comfortable with. We get ready to start and I say, tell me about the story of your body. What are those things that have influenced you? They know that they can tell me anything. But they can also say, “Please don’t utilize this in an artist talk.” So I do tell them, “I’m going to give talks. What can I say? And what can’t I say?” And we go from there. Some models are like “I don’t know how to pose” and I say I just want something really natural, what feels comfortable to you? How do you like to stand? How do you like to sit? And a lot of times my goal when I first start in talking with them and just getting them comfortable, is so that they stopped noticing the camera.VirginiaI have a similar thing with hoping they don’t notice the tape recorder, so I can relate to that. LindseyAnd it’s also important to know that if at any point it becomes very emotional for them, which it definitely has, that I will actually put the camera down. Because I’m not there to exploit feelings. It’s happened a few times where a model was just so overcome with that moment that I set the camera down and they said “You can keep photographing.” I’m like, I want you to have this moment for you. So it usually takes about an hour to photograph. I zoom around, like I’m on the floor, I’m on a roll-y stool. I photograph all the models from below so that when you as a viewer are in a gallery and they’re larger than life, they look down on you. It’s very deliberate to put the viewers in a position of submission to the figures. It’s usually pretty subtle because I don’t want to smack the viewer side of the head with it. But I really want them to feel it. VirginiaI wonder is that vulnerable for your subjects? Because I’m just thinking of how women are trained to photograph ourselves and from below is never the angle that we’re told is the right angle.LindseyNo one’s really ever said much because I do explain why this is. They can also say, “I’m really insecure about this part of me or that,” and we’ll work around it in photographing. But I can also say, “well, let let me try this shot and then I can let you see if you want to see.” I think I’ve only had three models who actually wanted to see the photographs of them. Oftentimes they’re like, “I trust you to do what you do.” And we’ll go from there. Then I choose the image that I draw from. I haven’t had anyone complain yet because I usually find an image that felt like our session. I try to keep the technical aspects of a drawing out of it and just think, what did this feel like for them? Were they really tentative? Were they just really empowered? Were they somewhere in between? And go for it. There have been a few times where I’m photographing and I knew the shot the minute I got it. There was a model, she’d model for me once, and she was like, “Can I model for you again?” And I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” She came in. She’s like, “I don’t want to talk.” Okay. She was like, “I have some emotions I have to get out and I know you’re a safe person. I’m okay with you photographing it. And I’m just gonna move around. I’m probably going to cry. I just want to get it out.”VirginiaWow.Lindsey And she did it. And I knew the minute I took the photograph, it was just incredibly powerful.I work primarily in drawing because I feel that charcoal especially is just so beautiful. It’s very tactile. I wanted them to feel the hand of the artist in there. One thing that comes up is when people are like “Oh, people who don’t love themselves, they must stand in front of the mirror and like shake their stomachs,” or something like that. For me, it was very different. For me, I disassociated from myself. I just pretended I wasn’t there from the neck down. VirginiaPrior to drawing yourself?LindseyPrior to drawing myself. So I don’t go to hyper realistic drawing because I feel like I’ve been given such a gift by the people who model for me. I want there to be a sense of touch, that they’ve been loved and cared for, this image that they’ve given, and that’s one of the most important parts to me. That they know that in this space that they’ve been cherished and their stories are so important. And charcoal does that for me. I think it’s just very eloquent and can do a lot without telling people how to feel at least in the way that I handle it. VirginiaI was going to say there’s such a softness to your work, which isn’t quite right. There is softness to the bodies. The work itself feels very strong to me, but there’s a loving quality to it that comes through. I’m guessing that’s what you’re talking about here with the medium and wanting to be clear that this isn’t a photo of somebody’s body, even though you also are amazingly realistic. Like, the way you draw people’s tattoos is mind blowing. There is a level of insane precision here, just so we’re clear. But yes, it is clearly an artist’s view of someone, not a photo of someone.LindseyI love it when people bring up the tattoos. My piece “Brazen” is of the woman I mentioned earlier who talked about using her body to reclaim tattoos. I have three drawings of folks who are heavily tattooed. One I just finished this summer [above] and it probably was the most nerve wracking thing for me to figure out artistically. I thought I had it with the first two drawings I did. And then the one I just finished, the title is called “Unwavering” if people want to look it up. She has so many tattoos. Usually I draw the form of the body first, and then I add the tattoos on. I had to draw the tattoos first.VirginiaOh, wow. You put her body around her tattoos. That’s fascinating.LindseyAnd I was like, how do I do this? You’re drawing other people’s artwork.VirginiaSo no pressure there. LindseyYeah, no pressure, no pressure. And it’s on a 3D form. And all three of those models are tattoo artists.VirginiaSo they would know if you miss something. LindseyAnd they’re all good friends of mine. And I every now and then I’ll message them, like I did the model I just finished, I was like, “I kind of guessed.” She’s like, “I won’t tell anybody.” I’m like, “Okay, perfect.”VirginiaLet’s talk a little bit about the response to your work. I’m curious both what the models think but then more broadly, when you’re doing shows and showing your work, what kind of reactions do you get?LindseyYou know, overwhelmingly positive. I have not had a model say, “I don’t like it.” Probably one of my favorites was early on in the series, I had worked from a former student and she came to a show early to see the piece. She was crying in front of the piece and she said, “you made me look beautiful.” And I said, “I didn’t make you anything you aren’t already.” It’s funny because I’m a bit of an awkward person, socially awkward.VirginiaI mean, I disagree, but keep going.LindseyI project a lot of confidence. Years of working retail, right? But inwardly, sometimes I’m screaming “I don’t know how to interact.” But I love it when people are like, “I want to show this to my friend or my daughter,” or something like that. There’s been a few times though, where I’ve gotten a few like “ew, gross.” I had a small solo show here in Poughkeepsie and I was watching the gallery and a gentleman came in, and probably gentleman is a kind word here. VirginiaGenerous. Lindse…
Full show notes at the publisherToday Virginia is chatting with Anne Helen Petersen, author of four books and co-host of the Work Appropriate podcast, who also writes the newsletter Culture Study—and its recently launched little sister, Garden Study. We're exploring how gardening can be part of perfectionism and productivity culture—or its radical undoing. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes—including the director's cut of this conversation where VA and AHP answer all of your gardening questions. Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSthe reader surveythe Sunset handbookMonty Don as “gardening god” and fashion iconclematis pruning groupsgrowing vegetables for a lot of diet culture reasonsGreat Dixter and the Vita Sackville West gardenThe Optimization Sinkholerenovation culturediet culture happening in garden cultureDuluth Trading Co overallsoverall shorts from Targeta gardeners tool beltA Good House for Children by Kate Collinsthrow pillows from Anchal ProjectFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 104 TranscriptOur gardener origin stories:AnneI grew up in a house that had a ton of gardens. My mom’s a huge gardener. I grew up in really arid Idaho, not in the mountains—actually the lowest point in Idaho. But my mom had over 250 roses and a huge vegetable garden and all sorts of things and planted all of it herself because it was a vacant lot before we built our house. So, many of my memories as a kid are “oh, your mom’s out in the garden.” And I was not really interested in it at the time. I was not that kid was like, “Mom show me how to plant a pea,” or whatever. There were some flowers that I liked in the garden. I really loved the bleeding hearts. And then when I graduated from college, I came to Seattle and was a nanny for several years and I got so bored when we were out walking. You know, the two year old that I was walking with, we talked to about trucks and stuff like that.VirginiaThere’s only so much discourse there. AnneThis was before phones, so I couldn’t even be a bad nanny and look at my phone all the time. I just had my own mind. I would go on a walk 2-3 times a day in this little Seattle neighborhood and I learned all of the plants. The parents of the kiddo I was nannying for had a Sunset handbook, which is the bible of gardening out here in the West. Also, the house that I was living in at the time with my friends had a pretty substantial garden. I was like, okay, I’ll do some gardening out here and that taught me a lot about those plants. Then when I was in grad school, the first place that I lived in Oregon, I had a pretty robust vegetable garden that was really fun to do. And then I moved to Texas and I was like, I know nothing. VirginiaOh wow, totally different. AnneI tried to grow some things on my balcony. It was horrible, just abysmal, and I didn’t garden again. Then I did a little bit of vegetable gardening in Montana, especially during the pandemic, like a lot of people. But then I moved to an island off the coast of Washington that had an incredible, luscious garden that was really mindfully put in by the previous owners of the house. It has like 40 to 50 rhododendrons and azaleas that succession bloom. It has a climbing hydrangea that’s 40 feet tall and probably 40 feet wide. There’s several of them that come together seamlessly.VirginiaWhich is ancient, those grow so slowly! Rhododendrons and climbing hydrangeas are some of the slowest things to establish.AnneIt was probably planted in the 1960. And I’ve just fallen in love with gardening, like deeply in love with it, the last couple of years. VirginiaI love this.My origin story is also mother-related. My mom is British. Gardening is the national pastime there. And it’s a big part of mainstream culture in a way that it’s just not here in the United States. (See: Monty Don as “gardening god” and fashion icon.) So my grandfather was a really serious gardener, my aunt, my cousins, just that whole side of my family. And I wanted nothing to do with it, like, zero interest as a kid and a teenager and even throughout my 20s. You getting interested in plants at 24 I feel like is quite a child prodigy with gardening.AnneI really have to emphasize how much this had to do with having nothing else to do.VirginiaI went to college in New York City and then stayed in New York City through my 20s and so it was not really on my radar. But then we moved up to the Hudson Valley and when we bought our first house here, I was immediately overwhelmed because there was a yard. And then I had a friend that spring take me to lunch. I think we went to sushi and got sake and I was like, a little tipsy. And then she was like, “We’re going to go to Home Depot and look at seeds.” And I was like, oh, yeah, that seems great. And I got totally hooked that year. I started with a couple of pots and then by the end of the summer I was ripping up beds and remaking everything.AnneThat’s so funny that you started with seeds from Home Depot!VirginiaThe most basic gardening experts.AnneYeah, like, maybe not even viable, right?VirginiaNo, none of them. But I just needed a little toehold. I needed one little piece to feel doable and then it was like all this genetic predisposition kicked in. It turns out you turn 30 and all of your British gardening DNA becomes activated. And now here we are 12 years later and it’s my main hobby and obsession.I do think with gardening it feels like learning a foreign language at first. It’s not just naming the plants, also every plant has its own particular ecosystem and story and pruning strategy. I feel about it the way I felt about learning the New York City subway system the first year I lived there. I just had to plan on the fact that I was going to go the wrong direction and end up in Brooklyn all the time.AnneFor me it was go the wrong direction and end up on—what’s that little island? If you take the F, you end up on that little island.VirginiaRoosevelt Island! Yes. It’s because it was this thing that was put together with no master plan and it’s just like, it is what it is.AnneI still feel that way about so much with gardening, too. Clematis still scare me so much. VirginiaOh yeah, with the pruning groups. How do you ever know what pruning group you’re in?AnneType one, two, three!VirginiaSo, we were both at one point vegetable garden gardeners. And now we have zero vegetable gardens.Well, I have some tomatoes. AnneNot even tomatoes. The closest I get is rosemary. VirginiaTell me, why is it not vegetables anymore for you? What are your main garden passions at this point?AnneI loved vegetables when I was starting out because I think it is a great entry point. It’s a lot more straightforward. It’s like, I plant the spinach seeds at this time, you can see it in the books.VirginiaIt’s very mapped out. AnneThere are great books that show, here’s when you plant the spinach seeds, here is when you plant these other things. There are a lot of things, though, that I think oftentimes frustrate people because there are just there are vegetables that are very hard to grow. Carrots! Really hard to grow.VirginiaRight! Shockingly hard. AnneAnd we in the Pacific Northwest, we have great weather to grow a ton of crops, but bad weather to grow a lot of the fun stuff, like peppers. You can’t grow any sort of melons really, like maybe you get one. You can grow hard squash and that sort of thing. But most people, just like everywhere else, just grow a billion zucchini and then drop them off at everyone’s doorstep.VirginiaI will not grow zucchini. AnneI think also there was something lovely about planning every year. But then also like there was a lot of work, too. And every year is an empty bed. VirginiaYeah, that’s true.AnneMost of my containers are annuals with a couple perennials, like each pot has maybe one perennial. So I wanted that space for things that were there during the winter, too. That’s the other thing. I think as you continue gardening, you figure out that in the winter, when I feel so gloomy and sad, I want to be able to look out the window and see something.VirginiaYes, the winter interest of it all. You talked about that in a recent piece. It is the funniest phrase. And yes, it’s all I want.For me, there were two pieces to giving up vegetable gardening. One was we were not eating a lot of the stuff. I realized I was growing vegetables for a lot of diet culture reasons, right? And a lot of the Michael Pollan, foodie, mid 2000s - 2010s stuff that I was then ready to get out of.But two, it didn’t feel as satisfying creatively. With perennials and annuals, you play around much more with color. There are a lot of design elements. For me gardening is more of a creative expression. I don’t know, we can unpack that, maybe that’s very bougie and privileged, but it’s what actually I love about it.AnneFor beginners: A perennial is a plant that comes back every year and an annual is a plant that thrives for a season and then dies.We recently had a conversation in one of my newsletters about why would you plant annuals if they die every year? But a lot of gorgeous, gorgeous plants—especially plants with a lot of color—are annuals and that’s part of why people plant annuals.VirginiaAnd they bloom the whole season, usually. Whereas perennials, like lilacs, it’s an amazing two weeks. And then the peonies are an amazing two weeks. There are a few perennials, like my Oakleaf hydrangea shrubs will bloom for a longer stretch but a lot of perennials have this brief spectacular moment and then they’re done. Whereas annuals can then tide you over.AnneAnd I’ll say, too, that I think part of the reason I vegetable gardened in the first place was that I could justify it as like I’m saving money by growing vegetables.VirginiaYeah, sure.AnneActually, I think when I garden in grad school, there was some truth to that because I would eat the same thing all the time. The fact that I had two zucchini that I could take from a plant basically every day for two months of the year, yeah, sure. Although, zucchini are really cheap.VirginiaReally inexpensive. AnneTomatoes, maybe a little bit more. There actually are all these calculators and stuff in different books that show you which plant saves you the most money. Like growing this saves you the most money.VirginiaI do think tomatoes are one, once you’ve invested in the raised bed or whatever. There are a lot of sunk costs to gardening. But sure, if you have a place already to put them, buying a couple of seedlings or starting from seed if that’s your ministry—it’s not mine. Buying a couple of seedlings for $4 at the beginning of the season and then you will have pounds and pounds and pounds of tomatoes, but you will also spend lots of time watering and fertilizing and all of that has a value as well. AnneWhen I was very into vegetable gardening, it’s no mistake that it was also during grad school when I was very invested in productivity culture. Like if I wasn’t working on something, my leisure had to be work in some capacity. And now as I’ve tried to divest myself from productivity culture, I am so much more open to like, I’m just piddling around, just doing stuff. Even if I’m the only person who sees it, it doesn’t matter.VirginiaLeisure can be just having something pretty and enjoying it. It’s easy to look at your garden and see only a to-do list at a certain point. But instead, just enjoying going out and doing a five minute like deadhead or the small little things. Just that puttering around is something so soothing and regulating to me about just like the quick evening garden putter or the early morning garden putter. It’s so nice.AnneCharlie, my partner says if he doesn’t know where I am in the house—because we both work from home—at least in the summertime, he’s like, “I know, you’re just out with your plants.” And sometimes it will be that, oh, I just went to take the garbage out and I’m just looking at my dahlias.VirginiaMy kids know the same thing. They know to come find me in the garden, always. And a lot of it is like, “I’m going to check the mail” and I’m just out there.AnneI find it’s so useful when I’m concentrating on something. I have days that are writing days where I’ll sit in one spot for a long time just trying to pound out a draft of something. And I used to check Twitter during that time. But now I’ll go out and I’ll look at my flowers. It really scratches an itch in a similar way.VirginiaI agree! Without the nasty screen hangover part.AnneRight, because I’m still looking for things that have changed. And I think you could actually honestly do this if you had like three pots on your windowsill. Like, plants change so much. They change overnight. They change over the course of a day if they’ve been watered, right? There’s just so much that you can look for, not to sound weird and boring. You and I have talked a little bit about this. I think about how it’s kind of like a puzzle to figure out.VirginiaI was thinking about how I’m doing less jigsaw puzzles right now. I realized the other week it’s because it’s garden season. It is this constant puzzle and there is a lot of constant troubleshooting, like why is this not happy here?I’m in the Hudson Valley. We live on a small mountain, so it’s very rocky woodland. It claims to be zone six, but it really behaves more like a zone five because we’re up a little bit. And lots of shade. Lots of rocky soil, lots of dry shade. In my first garden, we had a Victorian with a small, sunny lot in town. It was such a shift to come here and figure out gardening in a rocky, woodland-y kind of place. But that has been really satisfying too, I’ve actually really gotten into shade gardening here.AnneI should say that I am in zone eight. And I live on the water—it’s not fancy! There’s a lot of sand from the sandstone that’s the native rock here. And there are a ton of native plants everywhere you look just because it’s a very rural island. I live next to two houses, but the native stuff is taking over all over the place. This is, I think, kind of interesting and something that people don’t always talk about with gardening. The county regulations, especially with our island, are very specific about what you can and can’t plant on the shoreline. VirginiaYeah, that makes sense. AnneWithin so much distance of the shoreline. I have a grandfathered in lawn that you could never get away with planting now, but I’m slowly getting rid of it. VirginiaBecause you need more garden space!AnneTotally, I am slowly tearing out the grass. Like, what if I just make a little bed over here? VirginiaWhat if this one just got a little wider over here?AnneYeah…
Full show notes at the publisherIt's time for your July Indulgence Gospel! Corinne is here. We’re getting into power lifting, sugar-y breakfast cereals, long hair rules and lots of fat swim talk. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon.If you are not a paid subscriber, you'll only get the first chunk. To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.Also, don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctors, or any kind of health care providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!---VirginiaYou’re listening to Burnt Toast. This is the podcast about diet culture, anti fat bias parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.CorinneAnd I’m Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run @selltradeplus an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus sized clothing.VirginiaIt is time for your July Indulgence gospel. We have a whole bunch of your questions. I also have a really good hate mail to read and a really good butter.CorinneThis is also a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber. It’s just $5 a month or $50 for the year.VirginiaAnd a quick disclaimer as we are getting going here: We have a live studio audience today. My five year old is home because camp was closed because we have like crazy flooding in the Hudson Valley today. We are safe, we are just stuck at home. So she’s here. She is listening to Melon’s House Party which is a competing podcast she’s choosing to listen to right now.CorinneProbably superior. VirginiaThere’s a talking couch, we don’t have that. So we may have a few interruptions and/or background noise because sometimes the episodes are very funny. CorinneOh, amazing. VirginiaBut Corinne, you need to talk to us about weightlifting.CorinneYes! So last weekend was my weightlifting meet, which I’ve been periodically talking about for months and months and months, it feels like. it went really well. I got second in my weight class and it was fun. It was really fun. I was so glad I had a coach guiding me through. And as a full adult approaching middle age if not fully middle aged, I just don’t have a lot of occasions in my life where I’m that nervous. I was like, Oh, I feel like I’m going to the airport. That’s what it feels like in my body right now. VirginiaOh, I get that. I get that for sure. The only thing I have is when I do public speaking because there are so many logistics. It’s not even the actually getting up and doing the thing, but it’s the what are you wearing? What time do you have to be there? Will you be on time? Will something go wrong?CorinneAnd what if I get up there and I throw up or something?The way it works is you do these three lifts: Squat, bench press, and deadlift. They do them in flights. So, I had to get there at 8 but I wasn’t going to be even doing my first lift until like 11:30. So I just had a few hours of am I going to start crying or vomiting? I felt really weird.VirginiaSo what did you do? Did you sit and watch other people and feel nervous?CorinneYeah, I watched other people just to try and prepare myself, psych myself up. And I sat and looked at my phone, you know, just the stuff you do to try to calm yourself down. But you start warming up at a certain point, and as soon as I started warming up I just started pouring sweat.VirginiaI mean, that seems appropriate.CorinneYeah. I mean, I was exerting myself. But also I was like, Oh, I’m really nervous and I’m just dumping sweat. I think if I had to do it again, I feel like I should have like, eaten more in that time. VirginiaThat makes sense.CorinneBecause I was just so nervous. But it did end up just going really well even despite that.VirginiaAnd you said “next time!”CorinneYeah. Yeah, I would do it again.VirginiaThat was one of the most asked questions as we were gathering questions: How was the meet and will she do another one?CorinneYeah, it was really fun. It was so cool to see other people doing the same thing. And there were definitely other fat bodies or larger bodies.VirginiaThat’s really powerful.CorinneAnd there was also a good audience. I had a bunch of friends come, my mom came.VirginiaOh, nice.And you also had your fat pool party! I would like an update on that. CorinneYes, we did fat swim! It was really fun. My main complaint about it is that it wasn’t long enough. I could only rent the pool for two hours and two hours felt like I was just starting to get to know the people that I didn’t know. Maybe next time I would plan something for after. But yeah, it was really fun. And also a good reminder that even if you live somewhere where you feel like it’s small and like you know everyone, there’s always people you don’t know. VirginiaAnd there are people in your community who are probably so grateful that that happened and they could go to it. Do you know what I mean? We hear so often, how do I make that community? Or how do I find fat friends? This is a gift. Oh and I was going to ask about your swimsuit!CorinneOkay, so that photo is actually not from fat swim. It was just from being fat at a pool with a friend.VirginiaIt was technically fat swim.CorinneYes. It’s a picture of me and my friend, I’m wearing a bright green swimsuit and she’s wearing a pink swimsuit. And both of the swimsuits are from Good American.1VirginiaOh, wow. CorinneWhich, I’m a little like sorry about the Kardashians, but they’re good.VirginiaThe colors are amazing! CorinneGood colors. They’re a knockoff of that Youswim brand that has that kind of crinkly material which is so nice. But I feel like Good American’s sizing is better.2 They also have a ton of styles. I’m wearing a cami style top. There’s a more bra style there. There are just tons. There’s a dress thing, which we’ll talk about later.VirginiaTalk to me about level of boob support, because this is my constant struggle with swimwear.CorinneI posted that photo on Instagram and I got a lot of people replying being like, “wow, these bottoms actually look high waisted!” and the bottoms are really high waisted. But for me, the problem is usually the top not the bottom. There’s no support beyond just the thing. But I will say, my friend in the photo, Robyn A. Frank, amazing painter, has really large breasts and seems to be comfortably wearing it. I wouldn’t mind an extra inch or two of length.VirginiaAlways! Just another inch or two! Would it be that hard? CorinneI know. If you look at it, it almost like looks like I’m wearing a full like one piece. It almost overlaps. But I want the fabric to go under my boobs and not just over it.VirginiaI always just want the neckline to come up a little bit higher. You don’t want every swimsuit to be a full cleavage experience.CorinneA little turtleneck!VirginiaOr just like crewneck! I don’t know. CorinneYeah. We have more swim questions coming up, so maybe this is the wrong time to talk about it, but the other thing I’ve been discovering this summer is that I really like a long-sleeve swimsuit. You don’t have to wear sunscreen! VirginiaWell, we will get into that when we get to the swim questions. But I feel like you’re having such a fun summer with your meets and your pool parties. CorinneIt has been a good summer. How’s your summer going?VirginiaI’m a little bit of a puddle today because we dropped my nine year old off at sleepaway camp yesterday for the first time. She’s gone for two weeks. I’m so excited for her. She is ready. She’s jazzed. She’s gonna have a great time. And I feel like I have a celebrity crush. I keep checking the website where they upload photos to see if there are any photos. It’s like just lunchtime on her first day. There are no photos yet. I’m like maybe they will post some breakfast pictures?CorinneOh my gosh, this is so cute.VirginiaI’m stalking my own child on the internet.CorinneI have so many questions about this. How far away is she? Does she have friends there?VirginiaYes, it’s about an hour and a half away. It’s in the Catskills and we picked it because my friend Melinda Wenner Moyer who writes Is My Kid the Asshole?, our daughters are really good friends. So her daughter is going and then another really good friend of theirs, whose mom is also our best friend. So we picked it to send the three girls together and they are in a cabin together.And we got there in time. They all got top bunks. I mean, you talked about your pre-meet anxiety, my anxiety about whether we would realize this vision of three top bunks in the cabin. You don’t even know. Like the parent text threads about what time we should leave and do we have time to stop for lunch?CorinneOh my gosh.VirginiaAnyway, they all got top bunks. And I think they’re going to have a good time. But yeah, it’s big for me to have her be away for two weeks. But then fortunately, my younger child’s camp was closed today. And I have her right here in the room with me. So I am still very much with with a child.Alright, we’re going to do some questions. CorinneSo here’s the first question.I'd love some thoughts on the relationship between diet culture and table manners. My kids are 6 and 9 and my partner really struggles with mouth noises (just to set the... table for you) and I feel like table manners are still a major pain point at dinner time. I don't care so much about table manners in a formal sense because who among us knows what fork to use at a fancy restaurant. I mean issues more like kids eating so fast or so loud/smacky, scraping teeth on forks and spoons, etc. Also, despite our efforts to include them in meal planning, present a range of safe options at the table, my oldest will still grumble about the meal we've made, roll eyes, or act generally put out if it isn't one of the (VERY FEW) acceptable meals for her. Will this ever end?VirginiaNo. It won’t ever end. Well, it will end with all of our deaths. CorinneWow, really going there. Just to remind everyone out there, everything will end at some point.VirginiaThere is a sweet release. But I mean, bottom line, my kids are the same ages, almost six and almost ten. I’m right there with you. It has not ended for me yet. We are working through things like no feet on the table. We are working through things like sitting in your chair while chewing. The eating so fast, the mess, the scraping, all of this. We discovered the other day that we can make weird noises with straws. Like, it’s just never ending. Melinda has a great piece that she wrote about why table manners are not really age appropriate for kids a lot of the time. Of course, you are working towards this goal and you are modeling table manners yourself, hopefully. But we have to adjust some expectations about what what we will get out of them in terms of behavior at the table. She did a lot of really interesting reporting. A lot of it is that sitting at the dinner table requires a fair bit of core strengths and motor planning and coordination. If you think about it, just sitting upright in a chair and like moving your fork around and your plate around, and kids, especially at dinner, later in the day, they’re tired, they just don’t have it together in terms of coordinated physical movements at that point in the day. And when you think about how many adults would rather eat on their couch in front of the TV, I think that’s a relatable concept. I also lack core strength by 7pm. So that’s one big piece of it. I think the other big piece is if there is anxiety over what’s for dinner or that’s feeling high pressure in any way, then like you’re going to see the behavior, the manners, kind of go out the window as they’re responding to that. So it’s a good opportunity to check the other dynamics about what’s happening. But mostly, it’s just awful. And I’m sorry. And I’m there with you. That’s what I’ve got.CorinneYeah, I was trying to think of strategies that parents could use to steel themselves for, like how annoying it is. Like, is it more annoying to you because you’re really tired and hungry? VirginiaYeah, absolutely. CorinneCould you have a snack or wear ear plugs? Is that so awful?VirginiaI think those are both great ideas. I would also say, if there’s an adult who’s more triggered by the visual of how the kids eat, have that person not sit facing the children. Rethink your seating. Because what often happens is the parents start micromanaging how the kid is eating and then that just makes it all worse, right? You’re fussing at them to put their cup here or keeping syrup on the plate is a big one, all of this stuff. Finding ways to rearrange your seating a little bit, so you’re not having to look at it, is helpful. I think parents really overestimate how long kids will sit at the table. I think it’s really normal for kids until they’re pretty old, unless they are very food motivated children and it’s like their favorite meal, to not want to spend that long at dinner. A 15 minute meal is quite an accomplishment, honestly. So that can help. And we have a no feet on the table rule. Like that seems fine. I think that’s a reasonable boundary have.CorinneAnd when that comes up, you’re just reminding everyone that this rule exists.VirginiaJust remind everyone that we have to take our feet off the table. But just know that you are going to be saying it forever.It’s also because some of the customs don’t make any sense to kids, right? You’re trying to teach them this whole language that they don’t know. They don’t know why it bothers people. Kids aren’t grossed out by their own feet. So they don’t understand why that would be a problem. It is this very abstract thing you’re trying to explain. That’s all I got. It’s terrible.I will read the next question. Yesterday my son (9) asked for Honey Nut Cheerios, but I generally buy regular Cheerios. My husband told him to add honey to his cereal and he thought that was pretty great. I did too. But the next day he asked why we can't just buy Honey Nut Cheerios. He said that having honey with cereal was the same as just buying Honey Nut Cheerios. I didn't have a good answer for him. I told him the truth is that I don't buy sugar cereals because my parents didn't buy sugar cereals except for treats. If I'm being honest, I also have in my head that starting off the day with too much sugar isn't good and will make him "crash" at school/ camp. When we are on vacation I let him choose any cereal he wants to keep at the grandparents' house, probably creating a scarcity situation for him. I bake and we have plenty of sugar items in the house, but somehow this is a food rule I can't get rid of and not sure if I should, because it seems so unhealthy. Which I know is diet culture, but just can…
Full show notes at the publisherWelcome to Part 2 of our two-parter on Ultra Processed Foods! Virginia is chatting with Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist who specializes in responsive feeding and anti-diet, body affirming nutrition. Her work centers on helping parents and families end inter-generation dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She runs the Substack and podcast Can I Have Another Snack?, and is the author of two books; Just Eat It and How to Just Eat It.If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSPart 1 of this series Laura's three part series on UPFsVirginia on processed foods here and thereresponsive feedingepisode with Naureen HunaniLaura Thomas on sugarMichelle Obama’s legacy on kids and foodFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 102 TranscriptVirginiaOkay, so we’re going to dive into some of your questions now, and Laura is going to help us think through all of this a little more.Can our bodies really differentiate between ultra processed foods and less processed foods?LauraIt just depends. I could go to the store and buy some shop bought cookies, right? They would be considered ultra processed. I could bake virtually the same cookies at home and they would be called processed cookies, but the way that my body responds is probably fairly similarly. VirginiaRight. To your body, it’s all a cookie.LauraSome of the pushback around ultra processed food from within the nutrition community is that the label of “ultra processed food” doesn’t tell us anything about the qualities of that food that can’t be explained by more traditional metrics that we would use within nutrition.I’m thinking about things like energy density, intrinsic fiber, glycemic load, and added sugar. All these tools that we already have to determine how our body will respond to something can just as easily tell us how our bodies will respond. I don’t think there’s anything special about ultra processed food in and of itself, if a food has lower fiber regardless of whether it was made in a factory made or made in our house, it’s going to respond slightly differently in our bodies. It’s more about the overall properties of a food, rather than where it’s processed. VirginiaYour body is not like, “This is a Frito Lay product and I can tell because I’m having a different reaction.”LauraNo, but it can be like, “well, this is an apple and therefore, it’s actually not going to provide me enough sustenance to keep going,” right? We have receptor cells in in our gastrointestinal tract that tell us about the nutrient density of the food. And spoiler, if you’re not eating enough food, it’s going to send that feedback and it’s going to start pumping out more hormones that ramp up your appetite because we don’t have enough. So, our bodies can tell foods apart to some extent, but that’s not exclusively processed versus ultra processed foods.VirginiaThat’s probably the thing bodies are least focused on, in a way. LauraYeah, it’s like, “Is this meeting my needs.” VirginiaAny links that you’ve come across in your research between ultra processed foods and mental health?LauraThis is something that I didn’t go into specifically, but it’s something that I tangentially read around. Mental health is so multifaceted that it’s really difficult to tease apart what is the effect of our diet versus what is the effect of some of these other variables that mean that we are eating an ultra processed food diet in the first place. Does that make sense? Like, because we’re having to work three jobs to make ends meet and we don’t have time to cook a meal from scratch. Both of those things independently could have an impact on your mental health.VirginiaRight. But it wouldn’t be because you’re eating the ultra processed food that you have the mental health outcome.LauraIt might be because you’re having poor sleep. And the narrative is that we’re to blame for our mental health when we need to be really conscious of these broader structural influences over mental health.VirginiaSuper important. Okay, this person writes:I have a kiddo with ARFID and almost all safe foods would be considered ultra processed foods. How much is too much of a single ultra processed food?LauraIt’s really hard to say without having a bit more information there. But what I would say is that kids with ARFID can do really well with a fairly limited diet. I would always get it checked out with a pediatric dietitian, preferably one who specializes in responsive feeding so that you can check for any gaps.When it comes to kids who are neurodivergent or have feeding differences, their diets are never going to look like typical eaters. There are going to have to be accommodations made for that and I think there’s a little bit of grief bound up in that for parents. But those kids need accommodations and acceptance rather than stigma and being coerced or forced into feeding therapies that might actually cause more trauma and more harm.I know you did an episode with Naureen Hunani and she is the go-to person when it comes to feeding neurodivergent kids. So yeah, go listen to that. But I think you can do well on a fairly limited diet. If you’re worried, get it checked out with pediatric dietitian who can help you plug any gaps with supplements. And then think about a responsive plan for introducing new foods and that has to be child led as well.VirginiaI will just also add—I don’t have a child with ARFID, but I do have a child with fairly significant feeding differences. And there are definitely times where there is one food that is making up most of the meals. But I have learned that anytime we get overly hung up on that food, we only add to the stress of that dynamic and push her further from us and risk making her feel incapable in some way that’s not helpful.My solution as a parent in this has usually been to really make peace and embrace whatever the food is, and make that our starting point, and then think about what can we add on? How can we make them feel like they have access to this safe food, and how can we add on to that versus worrying about limiting or creating guardrails around that food?LauraYeah, that felt safety piece is so important.VirginiaSo important.Okay, next reader question:How much should we worry about added sugars and things like bread, pasta sauce, etc?I think this is drilling into that gray area of the ultra processed food category where these are the foods we do really rely on and then we get worried about what the ultra processing might be doing to them.LauraI think this is tricky. I’m also writing about sugar a lot at the moment. So it’s the convergence of these two in my head. Because I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with picking a lower sugar pasta sauce or lower salt, provided that you’re not stressing about it and it’s not impacting the taste or flavor and you enjoy it. For example, if I’m going to be making a sauce out of a peanut butter, I might choose the one that doesn’t have added sugar or salt in it, because I’m going to be adding stuff anyway. VirginiaAnd you want to control the flavor.LauraBut if I’m straight up eating it, like, yeah, I’ll have the Jif. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with looking at that if that doesn’t stress you out. If you’re newer to intuitive eating and that is going to be a bit of a headfuck, then leave it alone.I can’t speak to the US, but in the UK, they did a really interesting study where they compared ready prepared supermarket foods with recipes that were made at home using cookbooks written by chefs like Jamie Oliver and people like that. They found that storebought foods were lower in salt and saturated fat and higher in fiber than some of the things that we made at home.VirginiaWow! Plot twist. Jamie Oliver did not love that, I bet. LauraWell, we do not love Jamie Oliver. VirginiaNo, we do not. LauraThat’s a whole other podcast episode. What I would say is that putting pressure on the food industry to up the nutrition standards of foods like these common everyday foods—I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. And it might overall contribute to population wellbeing without us each individually having to micromanage our own food and worry too much about the minutiae. Certainly in the UK, a lot of food companies are responding to that. So yeah, I don’t worry too much about that.What about you? What are your thoughts on that?VirginiaI never think about it at all. I was actually thinking about what I buy and —I have no idea. I honestly don’t read nutrition labels. Ever. I don’t find it useful to me. I think about how foods taste. I’m feeding a family where several people are fairly rigid about their brands. So, if it was lower sugar or more sugar, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t be the thing that could decide it for me. I had stages in my life where I thought a lot more about it and it was always a gateway to restrictive thinking. So, for me, it’s much more helpful to just think about what I want to be eating and the flavor combination. And yeah, I may eat something and notice, oh, this tastes sweeter than I enjoy. But I don’t then look to see how much added sugar is in it.LauraAnd I don’t, from a nutrition perspective, recommend that we get hung up on the minutiae of detail. And so yes, if that doesn’t feel good for you, definitely not. But if you’re more in a gentle nutrition place, or especially if you are managing a chronic condition where you have to think about these things—VirginiaFor sure, I don’t want to be dismissive of that. I think my approach to gentle nutrition is thinking about foods that sound good and about overall variety, versus drilling into the numbers. That may not work for everybody, though.The other piece of it for me is if you are not in a restrictive mindset around these foods, it kind of doesn’t matter what the numbers on them are because you’re both not restricting them and not eating “too much” of them, with all of the caveats around the concept of “too much.” Do you know what I mean? There’s not anything in my house where I’m like, “this is all like eat so it’s really important that I understand what it contains,” because I’m eating a lot of different things. LauraYeah, I think if you’re overall getting some variety, whatever that looks like to you, then we don’t have to worry about these things in specific detail.VirginiaThis person wrote:What is the difference between ultra processed foods and processed foods? Is it just a health halo, but they are still convenience foods?Which says to me that this person is now worrying about the entire category, or really both category 3 and 4, according to the NOVA System, and worrying that the less processed foods are also under a health halo and somehow should be avoided? I don’t know. Maybe I’m misreading the way they wrote this question. What do you think?LauraWell, I wonder if they are using the colloquial understanding of processed versus the NOVA nomenclature, whereby everything is processed. Like everything that you eat from scratch is processed. That’s what I wonder, is if some of the confusion was coming from there.VirginiaIt also sounds like they’re wondering like, “Okay, well, the just processed foods, the bread or the pasta sauce or what have you, is it just a health halo?” I’m picking up on a negative framing of the idea of convenience foods here. LauraThe pasta sauce and bread that you’d buy from the supermarket would be ultra processed. And so you’re thinking the fear is around those foods specifically?VirginiaShe’s saying, "is it just a health halo, but they are still really convenience foods?” I guess my take is: It’s fine if they’re convenience foods. That doesn’t make them bad foods.LauraNo, cutting down on labor and time and all the things, to me that’s a really valuable thing. Convenience is not synonymous with it’s going to cause cancer or whatever it is that they’re thinking about.VirginiaIt’s making me think, too, the “health halo” concept is one that comes up a lot where people are using it to expose, like, “here’s a product that’s marketed as if it’s very healthy, but actually, it’s not healthy,” right? Like, that’s the concept of the health halo, that this is a food that is saying it’s low in cholesterol. It’s also just often misleading, like, they’ll put “low in cholesterol” on bananas, and you’re like, but who ever thought they were high cholesterol? Like, what are you talking about? LauraLike gluten-free water. VirginiaExactly. So, you’re right, that it’s a misleading health claim. But it doesn’t actually mean that the food is unhealthy. It just means they’re overstating certain aspects of it.LauraI get frustrated with health halos not because they’re inherently good or bad foods or healthy or unhealthy, it’s the manipulation from the food industry. That annoys me. I’m being marketed to and I don’t like that. I don’t want that. It can be exploitative in that water doesn’t have gluten in it anyway, but now you’re putting a premium on it.The other place that I see health halos is with like veggie straws for kids. A lot of kid foods. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with those foods, but they’re just chips. Let’s just call a spade a spade.VirginiaYeah, that’s helpful. Okay. So the next question is:What is the impact of ultra processed foods on A1C and cholesterol? I truly believe that all foods fit, but I have to watch both of those numbers.LauraI didn’t research this specifically, but there was an interesting study that they did at the National Institutes of Health where they did a randomized control trial. It was only over two weeks, but they compared a group of people, I think it was 20 people total, so maybe 10 people on an ultra processed foods diet and 10 people on unprocessed diet, eating a lot of salads and stuff like that. Then they crossed them over and they swapped diets for two weeks. They looked at certain biomarkers from people after each arm of the trial. They found no difference in blood glucose response between an ultra processed or an unprocessed food diet.Now, there’s kind of a caveat because in the ultra processed food diet, they did supplement with fiber, which we know will help level out blood glucose levels. So, we don’t know exactly. But if you were overall getting a decent amount of fiber, if you’re combining foods that you know are going to affect your blood glucose level, like foods that are higher in carbohydrates with some fat and protein, again, thinking about that gentle nutrition aspect of things, then I think you’re g…
Full show notes at the publisherWelcome to Part 1 of our two-parter on Ultra Processed Foods! Virginia is chatting with Laura Thomas, PhD, a Registered Nutritionist who specializes in responsive feeding and anti-diet, body affirming nutrition. Her work centers on helping parents and families end inter-generation dieting and body shame, and work towards a greater sense of embodiment and ease in their relationship with food. She runs the Substack and podcast Can I Have Another Snack?, and is the author of two books; Just Eat It and How to Just Eat It.If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriberto get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSLaura's three part series on UPFsVirginia on processed foods here and therelabor rights violations for Amy’s workersFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 101 TranscriptLauraI am a Registered nutritionist. I’m based in London, I did live in the States for a while, which is why I’ve got this super messed up accent. All your listeners will be like, where is she from? I grew up in Scotland, lived in the States, and now live in London.I split my time between clinical work, which is focused on family nutrition—I do a lot of work around responsive feeding in kids who have feeding differences, working with families where they’re just stressed about mealtimes with their kids, and also helping parents sort through their own stuff with food and body image. And then I also run a Substack called Can I Have Another Snack? which takes up a lot of time, as I know you know. VirginiaYes. So I basically begged you to come on the podcast to talk about your three part series about ultra processed foods. This is one of those topics I get so many questions about.I’ve reported it out a little bit here and there. And I definitely feel, just as a person in the trenches feeding kids, that I have figured out my own values around this, which is helpful and we may get into talking about that. But I’m not a dietitian or nutritionist. I haven’t done a deep dive of the literature. So when I saw you were doing this series, I was like, thank you, Laura!So everybody, your homework is to go read all three pieces and subscribe to Can I Have Another Snack?. But just as a starting point:Laura, what is an ultra processed food? And why is it so hard for us to agree on that definition?LauraI don’t think we can talk about the definition of an ultra processed food without talking about the NOVA classification system. There are a few different classification systems that have attempted to try and nail down what exactly an ultra processed food is. But what has been most widely accepted in the literature and what we’re seeing a lot of the studies and the headlines coming out about now is something called the NOVA classification system that was developed in 2009 by this Brazilian dude called Carlos Monteiro. NOVA really annoyingly does not stand for anything, it’s not an acronym. That really fucks me up.Carlos is nutrition researcher, he and his team came up with a system whereby he defines four different levels of food processing. So I’m going to walk you through the four different groups. Group 1 is called “unprocessed foods.” This includes anything from a plant, an animal, or a fungus. So that could be fruits and vegetables. It’s eggs and meat. It can be grains, like oats or rice or wheat. It can be chilled or frozen fruits and vegetables without salt or oil added. Basically, it’s any raw ingredient that you could buy from the supermarket or that you could pull straight out of the ground or pick from a tree, that kind of thing.VirginiaSo, oats but not oatmeal or oat bars? Like, just the oats.LauraExactly that, but that’s an important clarification.Then within this unprocessed foods category, there’s this minimally processed subcategory, which are things that are pickled or fermented from those raw ingredients. So, that’s group one.VirginiaI feel like they’re already finding weird loopholes that pickled things are part of group one, but okay, keep going.LauraHonestly, it’s a minefield.Group 2 are processed culinary ingredients. So these are ingredients that are derived from group one. It can be oils, from like olives or sunflower. It can be salt, spices, herbs, lard, butter, honey, maple syrup, that kind of stuff. They’re kind of like extracts or derived from those group one, minimally processed or unprocessed foods.VirginiaGot it.LauraGroup 3, you can think of as group one plus group two, mixed together. And these are called processed foods. It can be anything from fresh bread that you buy at a bakery to cheese that has been fermented and goes through the whole conversion from milk into cheese.But also, it includes virtually anything you make yourself at home or anything that you would buy in a restaurant, right? Because it’s taking those fresh ingredients, plus those culinary ingredients like salts and fats and sugars, and transforming them into what you and I would recognize as a meal.So I think the point that I want people to understand is that the vast majority of the food that we’re eating, even if we’re cooking it by ourselves at home from ingredients that we’ve picked up at the farmers market or the periphery of the grocery store or whatever, unless we’ve gone and pulled a carrot out of the ground, it’s a processed food.VirginiaProcessed is just another way of saying cooked. Like, processed foods are meals. LauraYeah. Pretty much, unless you’re eating a raw apple.VirginiaAs a meal.LauraIt’s not even a snack. But if you’re dipping your apple in some peanut butter, that’s a processed food.VirginiaGot it. Okay.LauraSo then we get to Group 4, which is ultra processed foods. Now, they’ve tried to pin down a definition, but there are a lot of different criteria. And the bar for what constitutes an ultra processed food is actually really low. So in terms of a technical definition, an ultra processed food is a food that is derived from Group 1 foods. So for example, whey or casein protein that is taken from milk or gluten taken from whole wheat flour—these things would be considered an ultra processed food. So, an ultra processed food is something that contains ingredients derived from whole food products or contains additives that are intended to either imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of food. So, already it’s such a vague definition. VirginiaAgain… cooking.LauraVirtually anything that you would add to a food to make it taste better, those are part of the definition. Another part of the definition is the type of processing that a food has undergone. So things like hydrogenation, extrusion, molding, these are not things that we’re doing at home really, in our kitchen. So it’s essentially anything that is made in a factory, like cornflakes or Cheerios have to go through some sort of extrusion process. A granola bar has to go through like a molding process. So again, some of these common everyday foods are actually ultra processed foods.The third criteria for what constitutes an ultra processed food is that it has to be a branded food product. That means that it comes in a package. It’s convenient. There’s little or minimal cooking and it is marketed somehow at you. Whether that’s through the packaging, whether that’s through a nutrition claim like a health halo type thing. The food manufacturers are doing what they can to try and get you to eat that food.VirginiaRight. Okay.LauraSo there is this really big vague definition which means that the bar for what actually counts as an ultra processed food is really low. You could argue, for example, that a natural peanut butter, which has been pulverized within an inch of its life, you could argue that that’s an ultra processed food.VirginiaThat’s funny, one of the reader questions was, “Is the smashed natural peanut butter better for me than Jif?” And what you’re saying is that they would likely be in the same category. LauraThey would both be ultra processed foods. So it can end up lumping really disparate foods together. So, like I said, Cheerios and supermarket bread that you might buy or bagels, or whatever it might be are alongside like Haribo. I’m trying to think of an American appropriate food.VirginiaCheetos. Flaming Hot Cheetos. LauraYes, exactly.VirginiaSo that is really interesting because it does show all of the media conversations around ultra processed foods are trying to alert us to these threats, like this is this dangerous category of foods you need to be cutting out—which we can talk separately about, like, is that even a helpful strategy for nutrition? But that’s the goal is to fear-monger around all of these foods. And what you’re saying is: If you were really going to use the definition that they’ve laid out, you’d be cutting out like 75 percent of the grocery store.LauraYeah, pretty much. And I think it’s interesting that you say that it’s creating a lot of fear and stress about the food and anxiety about the food that we’re eating, which I think is true. But one thing that I keep coming back to is that NOVA in and of itself wasn’t designed as a hierarchy. But we, in our twisted diet culture brains, have weaponized it as a hierarchy. Because if you think of it from a nutrition perspective, like I said, lard is in Group 2. White rice and white flour are in group one right now. I’m not saying that they’re a bad food, but I don’t think we would also argue that they’re like a health food. But they’re in Groups 1 and 2. So we’ve kind of manipulated it into a hierarchy, but that’s not necessarily what it means.VirginiaIt’s sort of like what we’ve done with growth charts, right? Like, growth charts are just meant to track what percentage point your kid is relative to their peers, like they’re bigger than 80 percent of kids or they’re only bigger than 20 percent of kids. And we attach all this meaning to what those points mean and where’s the good part of the growth chart to be.Well, poor NOVA, I feel bad for Carlos that this work got distorted if that was not the intention.LauraI think he has a part to play in this because he really has pushed this agenda in Brazil. Now the NOVA classification is being used alongside or is sort of amalgamated into the dietary guidelines of Brazil, which I don’t I don’t think is a helpful move.VirginiaIt’s clear from the way you’ve explained the categories and which foods end up in which groups, but it feels important to say very clearly that ‘processed’ is not synonymous with ‘has no nutrition,’ and that actually processing foods is a good thing to do in order to eat, right? LauraAll forms of cooking are process. So unless you want to go down some raw vegan path, you can’t really avoid processing your food to some extent. Now, advocates of NOVA I think would say that’s a bit of a red herring because what we’re actually talking about is this additional level of processing, this ultra processing phenomenon.But even within that category, I think there are merits to processing, even ultra processing, our foods. One of the things that happens when we process food is we extend the shelf life of it. And that means that we are wasting less food overall which I think we would all agree is probably a helpful thing.Industrial food processing also reduces foodborne pathogens. It reduces microbes that would spoil food and make it turn rancid faster.It also significantly cuts down on the time and labor that it requires to cook a meal. And for me, as a parent, and I know for you as well, that’s huge. VirginiaIt’s really everything, honestly, for me personally. Limiting the amount of time I spend cooking dinner is the thing that enables me to eat dinner with my family at night.LauraBut it’s not just super privileged white women that have a lot of nutrition knowledge who benefit from ultra processed foods. I’m also thinking about kids with feeding disorders that would struggle to get all the nutrition that they need without processed foods. I’m thinking about elderly or disabled people who can maintain a level of independence because they can quickly cook some pasta and throw an ultra processed jar of pasta sauce on that and have a nourishing meal. I’m thinking about pregnant people who otherwise might not be able to stomach eating because of morning sickness and nausea—which we know lasts forever, not just the morning.There are so many groups of people that benefit from ultra processed foods and they just seem to be missing entirely from the conversation around these foods.VirginiaSo often there’s this message, “We have to just get poor people cooking more, get them cooking more.” But if you live in a shelter, you don’t have a kitchen. If you are crashing on a couch with family members, in a house with lots of different people and it’s not easy for you to get time in the kitchen. There are so many different scenarios where cooking is not a practical solution and having greater shelf stability is very important.LauraIt also says a lot about where we place our values, right? And who is making decisions about where we put our values, because it’s not everyone’s value system to spend more time cooking from scratch, right? And buying fresh ingredients and spending more time in the kitchen.There’s a line that Carlos Monteiro wrote in a scientific paper and I legitimately cannot understand how this passed peer review because it’s so much about judgment rather than objective scientific argument, where he basically is saying that ultra processed foods prevent families from eating together. And he talks about ultra processed foods as though they’re the undoing of family meals.VirginiaOh, Carlos. No, no, no, no, no.LauraAnd aside from the fact that for me, and I think for you, and probably a lot of people listening, ultra processed foods save family dinners.VirginiaLiterally how I’m achieving it. Literally how I’m getting it done. LauraBut again, it’s like who’s determining how we should be eating and you know what our values are around food and eating? VirginiaYou have a great line in part two of the series:My argument is not that we don’t need to change the food system. My argument is that the headlines have leapfrogged science, allowing people in places of power and privilege to create fear and shame about the food we eat. This keeps us focused on food as the issue, rather than the social, political, and structural forces that shape our lives and our experiences of wellbeing.It just feels like exactly what we’re getting at here. We are letting this one set of values and this real laser focus on food as a moral concept get in the way of actually thinking about people’s lives.LauraAgain, the conversation is just reducing our health a…
Full show notes at the publisherIt's time for your June Indulgence Gospel! Corinne is here and we're celebrating our 100th episode. We've got answers to your questions about Ozempic, dahlias and leggings, plus a lil' hate mail and of course, Butter. If you are already a paid subscriber, you’ll have this entire episode in your podcast feed and access to the entire transcript in your inbox and on the Burnt Toast Patreon.If you are not a paid subscriber, you'll only get the first chunk. To hear the whole conversation or read the whole transcript, you'll need to go paid. Also, don't forget to order Fat Talk: Parenting In the Age of Diet Culture! Get your signed copy now from Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the USA). You can also order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Kobo or anywhere you like to buy books. (Or get the UK edition or the audiobook!) Disclaimer: Virginia and Corinne are humans with a lot of informed opinions. They are not nutritionists, therapists, doctosr, or any kind of health care providers. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions they give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & BOOKSThe Wellness TrapVirginia's first bookOTHER LINKS@selltradeplusTarget linen shortsamazing local flower store ParcelHealth at Every Size health sheet for liver conditionsour episode with Christy HarrisonMarci EvansEmily Fonnesbeckthe episode where Mia O'Malley came onjeans scienceGlennon Doyle, on how the clothes were policing her bodyUniversal Standard next to naked leggingsRoya leggingsI make videos where I eat snacks while I read thema video with my car full of plantsnow to enjoy my 25 cent tomatoSolomon’s SealA Way to GardenGarden StudyGatorade cucumber lime flavorNuun electrolyte tablets@theblondemuleJoy the Bakera lovely shot of a bunch of booksthis little cartCREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 100 TranscriptVirginiaYou're listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, anti-fat bias, parenting, and health. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.CorinneAnd I'm Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run @selltradeplus an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.VirginiaIt is time for your June Indulgence Gospel! We are going to answer your questions like we do every month. We are going to read a little hate mail—I have a fun one teed up for you. And we are going to celebrate! Because this is the 100th episode of the Burnt Toast podcast. CorinneWooo!VirginiaThat's wild.CorinneThis is also a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you'll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.VirginiaCorinne, how are you? I'm happy you are here with me on this auspicious occasion.CorinneI am so excited that it's the 100th episode! It's fully summer here. It's hot. It's Pride. I am trying to find shorts. VirginiaAre you finding any? Or are you frustrated in the shorts journey?CorinneI'm both finding and frustrated. For some reason I'm feeling like all the shorts I wore last summer I don't like anymore. It's not that they don't fit. I just don't like them anymore. VirginiaI had a similar reaction. I had the Target linen shorts from last summer.CorinneThey just haven't held up?VirginiaNo. It's not the highest quality linen, I guess.CorinneI do find that sometimes with fast fashion stuff, the next season it's dingy.VirginiaYeah. But happy Pride! Are you doing any fun Pride things?CorinneI am! I'm going to an ice cream social on Wednesday which I'm very excited about. And I think I might also get a tattoo. VirginiaWait. Tell us everything.CorinneAt Dyke Night.VirginiaOkay, the mom in me is like, you’re getting a tattoo in a bar? Have you checked it out? Are they reputable?CorinneI don't know if you recall, but I got COVID at Dyke Night.VirginiaI am recalling that, Corinne.CorinneSo it is like, a disease vector.1VirginiaHave we just done like a little background search on this tattoo artist? High quality needles?CorinneThey do seem cool. But yeah, I will wear a mask.VirginiaI will wear a mask, but I will let you put needles in my body.CorinneYes. So I think it'll be an exciting week!VirginiaAre you a big tattoo person? Do you have a lot of tattoos?CorinneI do. It's funny that you don't know that. I have a fair amount of tattoos. I don't have a ton on my body but I have some on my limbs. VirginiaNice. I am the only millennial who doesn't have a tattoo. Because I'm very scared of sharp needles.CorinneWell, It's not too late.VirginiaI know. I've just never had a thought of, that is what I would like. Do you know what the tattoo is going to be?CorinneIt's a flash event which means that they have pre-drawn stuff. And it's a bunch of weird cute little creatures. VirginiaThis sounds delightful.CorinneI’m excited to get a little creature tattoo. How are you doing?VirginiaI am good. It is it is Pride here as well. It's also high garden season for me. May and June are like the months. So I'm just gardening as much as I can now that the book stuff is calming down. I planted too many dahlia tubers this weekend. CorinneOh my gosh. VirginiaIt's gonna be a whole thing. First of all, I just want to say Corinne is being all cool and getting tattoos and I'm now going to tell you a nerdy gardening story. We are who we are. It's fine.CorinneGardening is very cool.VirginiaSo I failed to successfully overwinter my dahlia tubers is how this story starts. Just so we know how much coolness is involved. I just dumped them in the garage and never packed them up properly. There’s a whole process you have to do. So I killed all my dahlia tubers, and in a panic, because I love dahlias, I ordered a bunch online and ordered way more than I needed. Then that order was delayed infinitely and I thought they weren't coming. So I bought some locally from my amazing local flower store Parcel. I planted all of those and then my online order arrived. So now I have 66 dahlia tubers in my garden. Too many. I was sticking them anywhere.CorinneIt sounds like it’s going to be awesome though.VirginiaI don't know. I'm late getting them in the ground. We're having a drought already. We'll see. And it was a ton of work to plant them all. But yes, I'm on a dahlia journey this year.The most important thing—and everybody who listens to this podcast, please hold me accountable on this. This November when they freeze, please say: Virginia, dig them up and store them properly. Because you have now spent all the money on dahlia tubers and you cannot ever buy them again. CorinneIt sounds so labor intensive though. VirginiaIt is very labor intensive. But they're not inexpensive. And I have now bought them twice.Alright, let's do some questions!We are going to start with a couple of health questions. CorinneYes, here we go. I have recently been diagnosed with a mild case of fatty liver disease. When talking to my GI, who was more compassionate than I expected, he discussed dietary changes I should make to reverse some of the damage over time and maintain a healthy liver. As the mother of a new baby, I'm strongly incentivized to be as healthy as possible to be around for my kid. As a fat woman with a recently healed relationship with food and a firm anti-diet Intuitive Eating approach to life, I'm struggling to find the balance between “this is a diet” and “this is necessary for my health.” Can you make a recommendation for how sick folks can approach adjusted eating regimens in a way that is both effective and respectful of their journey and their own relationship with food and their bodies?VirginiaOkay, so I want to say before we get started: We are not doctors. We're not dietitians. You are here for our informed opinions. Standard disclaimer. Also, I am not an expert on fatty liver disease and I did not report that out. So we're not going to talk specifically about what your protocol should be or is this the right thing to be doing.What I really want to talk about is how this happens with all kinds of health conditions, where you get told you have to cut out a food group or make some diet adjustment in order to deal with a physical health ailment. How do you do that in a way that's supportive and not triggering and not pushing you back into a diet-y place?CorinneYes, that makes sense.VirginiaSo I would first do some research and see how necessary the dietary adjustments are. I think they're often prescribed—and again, I don't know about liver conditions, but they're often prescribed as a knee jerk, one-size-fits-all kind of prescription, without a lot of nuance as to whether it's really necessary for you. The research often isn’t as clear cut as we would like.So, you might ask your doctor: “Is this dietary change something you would recommend for a thin person with this condition as well? If not, what treatment would you give a thin person?” Just to understand the landscape of are they doing this as a stealth way to prescribe weight loss for you? Or are they doing this because they see a clear-cut relationship between x foods and this condition?CorinneI do know that there is a Health at Every Size health sheet for this condition. That might be a good place to start with what does the research say about what helps.VirginiaRagen Chastain and everyone who works on those does such an incredible job pulling them together. They have a bunch of health conditions covered so that's a really good starting point, anytime you're getting a diet or weight loss prescription from a doctor to understand, what is the other take?But okay, let's say that you do have to make the diet adjustment, like it does seem clear that this is the right thing to do. What are your thoughts on how you do that in a non-triggering way?CorinneIf you decide that you do want to make dietary changes, which I do think is a choice, you could always work with a nutritionist who is aligned with your values around that. If you are someone that struggles with restriction or food stuff, which it sounds like you are, dieting might not be healthy for you. You're kind of balancing—Virginia—two health conditions.CorinneYeah. VirginiaI think it's important to be clear with your doctor if this feels unsafe for you. Let's name that and let's make sure that your doctor is aware they're suggesting something that may be unsafe for you. What supports are they going to put in place? Or what other protocols can they consider that would be safer for you?I think that can be hard to do for folks who don't have a diagnosed eating disorder. It can be hard to do even for folks with a diagnosed eating disorder because often doctors don't care. And don't ask about it, or they're so focused on this little piece of your health, but they're ignoring the bigger picture. But if you don't have a diagnosed eating disorder, it can be this very vulnerable thing where you feel like you're saying, “But it just makes me sad,” and that that doesn't feel as important. There's this urgency of your liver numbers or your A1C is in jeopardy and we don't have time for your feelings. So I just want to name that your feelings in this really matter. You're not being high maintenance, you're not being fussy. This is actually really hard to do.CorinneYeah, definitely. The other thing that I have found helpful with stuff like this is if your doctor says “don't eat X,” sometimes flipping it to be not, “I can never eat Oreos again,” but to be, “I want to eat more vegetables,” or whatever. So you're thinking of adding rather than restricting.VirginiaI think that's a super helpful shift to make. I have a child who was on a medically required fat free diet for a period of time. And you lean into making what you can eat as delicious and amazing as possible. And you make sure that you're trying to take an abundance mindset towards it. Not letting it be a stepping stone towards more restriction. Instead it's like, “I'm restricting this one thing, but here's what I can eat. What do I love here that I can eat? How do I get the most delicious and abundant versions of what I can eat in my life?”CorinneYes. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.VirginiaAlright, you want to read the next one?CorinneI've just started using Mounjaro as a way to combat type two diabetes. And I wonder what is a good way to discuss / explain this to my children? Because the reality is I'm using it to lose weight and reducing blood glucose levels is almost more of a side effect. Drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro and the like have overwhelmed the media. But how do we discuss a medical intervention like this with children? I don't want it to be a secret, but I also don't want to toxic conversation around size.VirginiaOkay, free list. That is where we leave you!If you would like to hear our response to this very complicated question and the whole rest of the episode, you’ll need to go paid. EPISODE CREDITSCo-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer: Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe.Theme Song: Farideh.Video Editor: Elizabeth AyikuAudio Engineer: Tommy HarronFollow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith. Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!
Full show notes at the publisherToday Virginia is chatting with Kyle Ganson, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work who studies eating disorders in boys and young men. This is an episode a lot of you have been asking for—we don’t talk enough about boys and how they struggle with all of these issues. If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes.Content Warning: We talk about specific disordered eating behaviors and eating disorder symptoms in this episode. If any of that is going to be tricky for you, feel free to skip.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSChapter Nine of Fat TalkCanadian Study of Adolescent Health BehaviorsJessica Wilson on Burnt ToastCloud Cuckoo LandTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 99KyleI’ve long had this experience of being in clinical spaces with women with eating disorders and just wondering, like: Where are all the guys? What’s going on here? This is not what I hear when I talk to other males about their bodies or how they feel about themselves or their eating practices. It didn’t really align with what I was hearing with my friend groups or people I would speak to. That led me towards the path of researching eating disorders among the male population.VirginiaSo we met when I interviewed you for Chapter Nine of Fat Talk about your research on dads and their role in eating disorder treatment. I have to say: That chapter really did require me to put aside a lot of my own biases and preconceived notions and to realize I had been assuming that eating disorders were an exclusively female or gender-nonconforming experience. Which is very incorrect.Let’s talk about that a little bit. Why do you think we are so quick to assume that these are issues that men and boys just don’t struggle with?KyleIt’s such a great question and you’re certainly not alone with those preconceived notions of how we think about eating disorders. I think if people who are listening also have that thought or are surprised by that, I think that’s totally okay and totally normal.I think there’s a couple of different factors here. One of them is certainly just media and how we’ve described people with eating disorders in popular culture has often been mostly women, mostly affluent females, white females, young females, adolescents, young adults. So that’s number one. And secondly, I think another piece of it is research and clinical spaces, which obviously do reflect a bit of the culture but also reflect what we see in the culture.Consider the diagnostic criteria for anorexia: Up until very recently, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual actually required amenorrhea, which is loss of periods, in order to be diagnosed with anorexia. So, a male prior to 2013 actually could not be diagnosed with anorexia because they technically don’t lose their period. So, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle that we often overlook and don’t think about.Males are just less likely to complain about their bodies, talk about their bodies, get support around body image and food, just because the spaces where we treat people are not so much focused on the male experience. And again, that’s changed a bit more recently. But it’s still a hard process to get males in the door. And last is socialization. It goes back to culture of course, too, but females are often more socialized to talk about feelings and food and body. Whereas males—and I think we could talk about gender as being a lot more diverse than that—but males are a lot more focused on the performance of their bodies. When you watch a sporting event, you always see statistics about males bodies, like how big they are, how strong they are, how fast they can run. Whereas females are much more criticized based on their physical appearance as far as aesthetic purposes. I think that kind of differentiation also allows males to fall into this different bucket where they may not be perceived as having a problem because that male is just exercising to become faster in their sport or stronger in their sport or to be able to lift this amount of weight or have the six pack abs. I think that’s a little bit different than the female experienceVirginiaThat feels like a really important reframe. So, you’re saying women and girls are subjected to these aesthetic standards about bodies. Men have maybe less of the aesthetic focus and more of the output, the what can your body do? What can you lift, all of that? But that is allowing us to ignore that that can also be a driver of disorders.KyleTotally, absolutely. I think that’s a big part of it. And not to say that males don’t experience aesthetic pressures! I think you’ve probably seen more of that recently, especially since the advent of social media. And obviously, males have been sexualized in popular culture, as well, of course.But I do think that generally it’s a lot more based on how male bodies can perform. That does drive some of the behaviors that they engage in, like excessive exercising or use of performance enhancers, which, again, obviously has an aesthetic approach to it. There are aesthetic purposes and aesthetic repercussions, I’d say, but there is also a lot of driving for performative aspects of their bodies.VirginiaI’m just thinking how often we normalize men’s relationship with exercise because we’re like, “Oh, they just really care about their running time.” That allows us to ignore the fact that there might be something disordered about caring that much about your running time or your triathlon performance or whatever it is. We’ll be like, “Oh, but it’s not about body image so it’s not the same thing.” KyleSame thing with eating behaviors. I think we often overlook binge eating among males. I’ve heard this a lot in my prior clinical practice or even just in social and family relationship conversations. Like, “oh, he can sit down and eat a whole pint of ice cream and it’s no big deal.” That actually might be a bingeing behavior for that young male but because we socialize it as like, “He’s a male. He’s got a fast metabolism because he’s growing. He’s a teenager,” it becomes very okay for that behavior to happen and we just overlook it. Whereas, again, not to generalize, but if a female was doing the same behavior, there is probably a lot more emotion attached to that. That would be perceived as problematic, right? Like, “you can’t do that. You can’t eat that much. That’s not okay.” And I’m using quotation marks here—it’s not what I actually believe. But that would be framed in a very different way.I think that opens doors for males to engage in behaviors without much support and it does lead to this idea of males not even knowing they have a problem. They might engage in that behavior every night or a couple of times a week. In some of the qualitative interviews that we’ve seen, they don’t even know they have a problem. They’re like, “I just thought this is what I did.” And that’s a big problem. VirginiaNo one ever investigates the underlying stuff. What is the restriction that led to eating the pint of ice cream? No one is peeling back those layers for them in the same way.Your research has looked at some of the the behaviors that boys tend to engage in and so many of these things are just the vernacular of modern diet culture concepts, like cheat meals, bulking and cutting, intermittent fasting. What have you learned about how boys engage in this stuff? I’m also curious how we start to differentiate between what’s the culture and what’s the disorder—when maybe it’s a little bit all one and the same.KyleThe last part of that question is the never ending conundrum of what we’re trying to figure out. These behaviors that I’ve focused on have been very common in the popular culture for a while now, like cheat meals, bulking, cutting, intermittent fasting. For those of those listeners who don’t know, I’ll explain each of those as I go through them. Cheat meals are essentially a deviation from a typical dietary practice, generally more restrictive in some senses, where you might not allow yourself to eat like an entire pizza in one sitting or two or three Big Macs in one sitting. That is what the cheat meal is, it allows you a single meal, where you can “cheat” based on your restrictive diet.Now, in the muscle building community, cheat meals have actually become a catalyst for muscular growth and caloric overconsumption, again, to boost one’s ability to build muscle. I think that even goes for popular culture figures, like The Rock has often posted on Instagram his cheat meals, like what he eats. Social media has obviously been a huge driver of cheat meals. You can search #cheatmeals and see people’s images of what they’re eating.VirginiaGuys, don’t search it. It’s not worth it. But yes, it’s all over TikTok.KyleWe actually asked people their engagement, like what did they do? How much did they eat? Things of that nature. And what we found was actually 60 percent of boys and young men, aged 16 to 30 said they engaged in at least one cheat meal in the past year. That was pretty high across the sample. It was 54 percent or so for girls and young women and about 50 percent for transgender and gender expansive people. So it’s pretty common for people to engage in at least one cheat meal.And generally the foods that people are engaging in were sweet foods, calorically dense foods. We found that the people who engage in cheat meals were much more likely to experience eating disorder attitude and behaviors, in particular binge eating. So you can likely imagine that experience of a cheat meal is a binge eating episode where they might feel a loss of control. They might experience guilt as as consequence of engaging in the behavior. And then, of course, there’s oftentimes compensatory behaviors attached to that, as well. Participants reported engaging in compensatory behaviors, like purging. So it’s definitely wrapped up in that experience of eating disorder pathology. VirginiaIt’s so interesting because the concept of the cheat meal or the the rhetoric around it is very much like you’re giving yourself permission to enjoy these foods that you have restricted the rest of the week. Now you get to have them with no consequences. And it just goes to show how much the bias is all baked in. You can’t actually escape the consequences. Because if you weren’t restricting the whole week beforehand, you wouldn’t need the cheat meal, right? You wouldn’t need to frame it as this day of sin or whatever.KyleIt goes into a lot of things you’ve written about and talked about. Like, just allowing yourself to eat the foods that you want to eat alleviates you from this idea of having to engage in a “cheat meal” in order to eat the pizza. Allow yourself to eat the food that you want to eat, right? And hopefully avoid some of these problems that might be associated with it.VirginiaLet’s talk about bulking and cutting. Those are terms I hear and barely know what they are. KyleBulking and cutting are also very common in the muscle building community. Generally, it’s a similar sort of dietary practice where you oscillate between a bulking phase, which is generally a period of time where you consume more calories than you need and it’s coupled with muscle building exercise. So generally, people are weight training in this time and the point of it is to bulk up, to increase your muscle mass. And then that switches to what would be called the cutting phase, which is basically the opposite. It’s a caloric restriction and that then allows you to reduce the body fat you might have gained during the bulking phase without losing too much of the muscle mass that you’ve gained. VirginiaIt just sounds like so much to keep track of and manipulate and to constantly be objectifying your body in that way. I’m just feeling sad for people.KyleIt does include a lot obsessiveness around food and only allowing yourself to eat at particular places, kind of interfering with social activities, things of that nature. There are lots of problems attached to it for sure. We found that 50 percent of boys and young men reported engaging in at least one bulk and cut cycle in the past 12 months. So again, a pretty high percentage of them are manipulating their body in some capacity through bulking and cutting phases. And again, not surprisingly, we looked at different associated factors with bulking and cutting, and not surprisingly, eating disorder psychopathology, attitudes, and behaviors were associated with it. VirginiaLet’s quickly talk about muscle dysmorphia, because that might be a newer term for my audience. Can you define that and talk to us specifically about how it shows up for boys?KyleMuscle dysmorphia has previously been known as reverse anorexia, which might be the most easy way to understand it, even though it’s maybe not the best characterization. It’s the pathological pursuit of muscularity. The “reverse anorexia” part comes in because people with anorexia usually see themselves as larger than they actually are whereas people with muscle dysmorphia actually see themselves as smaller than they actually are. So, someone with muscle dysmorphia is actually usually quite large, quite strong, quite lean, quite cut, but they see themselves as being too small. It’s actually a specifier of body dysmorphic disorder. So it’s not really an eating disorder, per se, though it has a lot of eating disorder qualities to it, of course. The body image component, and a lot of dietary practices and pathological behaviors aimed at increasing musculature and strength.VirginiaWhat do we understand about treatment for it?KyleThat’s a great question. There is just a very, very, very small amount of literature on clinical samples of muscle dysmorphia. It’s actually a huge problem in the research community and the clinical community that we just don’t actually know what the best way to treat people with muscle dysmorphia is because we just don’t have a lot of clinical data on them. Most of the studies on muscle dysmorphia are gym goers or bodybuilders—again, not surprising those people would be at be at most risk for muscle dysmorphia.The study that I did, we did look at muscle dysmorphia. It’s one of the first real studies to look at an epidemiology sample like a community sample of young people and ask how does muscle dysmorphia present among that group. Again, not clinical muscle dysmorphia, but the symptomology, which would be like that drive for muscularity, appearance intolerance as it relates to one’s muscles, and then also functional impairment. So, how does their behaviors, their body imag…
Full show notes at the publisherToday Virginia is chatting with Jo Piazza, best selling author, journalist, and podcast creator. You might know her from her awesome podcast Under the Influence, or her very excellent Substack Over the Influence. And her new book, co-authored with Christine Pride entitled You Were Always Mine, just came out this month.Remember, if you order Jo's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriberto get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes.Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKS@jopiazzaauthorJo's other books:We Are Not Like ThemFitness JunkieOther book recs:Jasmine Guillory’s booksRosaline Palmer Takes the CakeBig Girl by Mecca Jamilah SullivanGet a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia HibbertOur Little Kitchen by Jillian TamakiStarfish by Lisa FippsBodies Are Cool and Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler FederMisc & Butterwhat do I do with my best friend who’s dieting and I’m sick of hearing about it?Navigating Chick-fil-A“Those who don’t cook don’t get to complain.” the video for Waterloo Weed Family OrchardsThe Whispers by Ashley Audrainice cream bowls from East Forkstyle section cover story about East ForkThe Mugsthe bitty bowls FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 98JoI keep telling everyone, I’m warning them in my interviews, that I didn’t realize until right now that all of our books—the titles use a lot of pronouns.The first one is We Are Not Like Them and this one is You Were Always Mine. The one that we’re writing right now is I Never Knew You At All. So I’m really fucking it up in these interviews because I’m like, You Were Never Ours. What?This one is You Were Always Mine.VirginiaYou Were Always Mine, a book about pronouns?Well, I think it’s just a wonderful, wonderful book. I could not put it down. I’ve been doing a lot of heavy nonfiction reading and it was just so what I needed after burnout on other kinds of reading. I just spent the last four days with you both and it was delightful.JoThank you, I really appreciate it. That’s what we wanted. There’s a lot of heavy shit in the world right now and this book brings up things to think about, but we also wanted to give people a soft place to land for a little while. VirginiaI’m a little bit of a fragile flower and I can’t do trauma porn at all, but I like books with substance and that deal with issues. I want there to be a name for this type of book because this is what I’m always looking for! Where it’s about real issues and real people and complicated stuff, but I’m not traumatized reading it. I’m crying in like a cathartic positive way. JoYes, and not in an I-want-to-lock-myself-in-the-dark-and-not-come-out way. VirginiaNot in an I’m-now-going-to-have-intrusive-thoughts way.JoWhich is a different cry.VirginiaIt just is. So, the book is out. We’re very excited about it. Everyone needs to go get it. But what we’re actually going to talk about today is the importance of seeing women enjoy food in fiction.JoI think about it so much. I’m starting to dive into fiction with my daughter, right? She’s three and a half but this is where you start to read chapter books to them. This is where you start to parse out what kinds of things do I want in my daughter’s head? What kinds of things have been in my head for the past 30 years?And I was a big fan of the standard 90’s chick lit. Bridget Jones, Emily Giffin’s books, all the Jane Greens, loved them. And I feel like for so long in commercial women’s fiction, when they talked about food at all, if they talked about food at all, it was in a very restrictive way. Bridget Jones is the worst offender and it’s one of my favorite books.VirginiaThe calorie count of a banana, I will never not know that. I didn’t know it before I read the book.JoRight? And now you will always know it. We tried to satirize that in my novel Fitness Junkie, to just send up how ridiculous this world can be. It’s a shift to simply normalizing women loving food as much as we love food and as much as I adore french fries and potato chips and steaks. I don’t want to think in terms of diets and calories and seeing that on the page. In You Were Always Mine it was it was important to us that Cinnamon just love eating, without hitting the reader over the head being like “she loves it.”VirginiaIt’s not an annoying trope.JoIt’s just like, you’ve got some like shrimp sizzling in butter on the stove and eat it and then have sex. Amazing! All of the pleasures for you. You deserve all of that. That was really important to both Christine and I.My next book is set in Sicily and my main character for that is a butcher. She owns a steak restaurant. I’ve been writing food porn for the past year and now all I want to do is read more books where women are enjoying eating. VirginiaI mean, it would be a crime to set a book in Sicily and not have food porn.In You Were Always Mine the food stuff is not the main focus of the book at all. It’s this nice detail of her character that you get to see her enjoying food. I don’t think it gives away too much to say she had a hard childhood, food scarcity is something she’d experienced. So there’s some nuance to her food story, too. It’s not just loving it for the sake of loving it. You really invest in her loving.JoYou have this and you can really enjoy it. Christine and I, we’re two women who love food and love eating. We’ve celebrated every one of our book milestones at a delicious, amazing restaurant. It’s funny because when we found out that our last book was a Good Morning America book club pick—they tell you six months in advance and then they’re like, and by the way, it’s a secret.VirginiaOh, I wouldn’t do well with that. JoWell, we didn’t. We totally failed. We immediately left Christine’s apartment in Harlem and went out to one of our favorite pizza places, ate all the pizza and drink all the tequila and told Tiffany, the bartender, that we were a Good Morning America book club pick.VirginiaI feel like Tiffany could keep a lid on it, though.JoI don’t think she told anyone. VirginiaShe was probably like, “that’s great.”JoShe’s like, “I don’t even know what you mean. But here’s some more parmesan fries.”We get our best writing done while we’re eating meals together. I think that that is because our books do have to deal with hard conversations sometimes. We talk about race and we talk about friendship and class and those things. I think the best conversations happen over meals, when you sit down and you share food and you can just be open and free and give each other grace. And so most of our books have been written over meals and meals that then end up in our books. VirginiaSo you’re literally sitting there with your laptops and your food.JoLaptops open and french fries and burgers. This is why we keep writing books together, because it’s really fun. VirginiaIt’s delicious. That’s a great writing process. There’s often writing that I need to do with a snack—I’m big on the chocolate chips at the desk, that’s a real power through when I’m trying to get many thousands of words done quickly kind of thing. But now I’m like, oh, I have been not putting enough thought into this. JoI also write a lot, when I’m writing solo, in restaurants. I’m in Philly and Philadelphia is just such a good restaurant city. But After COVID when I was locked up for so long, there’s so many restaurants that I missed. So I take myself out to lunch a couple of times a week, and I’ll try a new restaurant from the best of Philly list and just take my laptop. That’s an hour and a half where I’m enjoying a new meal and I’m writing and it’s so much nicer than just sitting at a desk. It’s awesome. VirginiaWell, that’s incredible. That’s leveling up the coffee shop writing experience, which I was never very good at. I get distracted and the chairs aren’t comfortable. And the stress of holding your table. But in a restaurant, you can get up and go to the bathroom and not worry that people are going to steal your stuff without having to negotiate with someone. JoExactly. My entire literary life and the past two years has been very infused with delicious food. VirginiaAnother irritating trope that comes up in fiction with women and food where they are eating to delight a man. Gilmore Girls is an example I’m thinking of, which is not a novel. But the way that Gilmore Girls eat and men marveling at it, which is really irritating to me. And like marveling that “you’re thin and you can eat this way,” and all of that. There was like a little of that where like her husband comments on her eating, but doesn’t really understand it because it’s got this whole backstory. So I loved how you played with that trope there. I thought that was really smart.The other thing that I loved was the way she eats with her best friend. There’s a great scene of her and Lucia sharing the popcorn watching a movie. Food as this tool of bonding between women is really cool. JoOne of my favorite things is the picture of Lucia on Cinnamon’s phone is a picture of her eating peanut butter out of a jar at 3 in the morning. VirginiaSuch a good detail.JoThey bonded because they both eat peanut butter out of a jar at 3 in the morning. So that’s the picture on each other’s phones. And I’m like, yes, that is me. That was my friend and I, we bond over those little, tiny things. VirginiaThere’s a lot of stereotypes about women being very diet-y together and going to the restaurant and only ordering salads and “are you going to get dessert? I don’t know if I’m going to get dessert.” And all of that. And what a delight not to have that. JoWhich I had in some of my past books, too. I know that I did, like looking back at them. And I don’t know if it was a case of just imitating what I had seen, imitating what I see thrown at us in culture generally or what I thought that I should be writing. I just don’t think I was nearly aware enough of it until I had my daughters. And it’s one of those things like, Oh, I’m nearsighted and I put on glasses and now I see something. Now I do see it and I’m glad that I can see it. I think so many things about how we write about women need to change generally. But that is one of the things that I don’t think gets talked about enough. VirginiaIt’s a fine line, too, because a lot of times women’s friendships have this diet component. This is a common question I get asked, like, what do I do with my best friend who’s dieting and I’m sick of hearing about it? So it makes sense to incorporate some of that. I was also interested in the character of Daisy, who is the other protagonist of the book, and who’s in a bigger body. There’s some discussion of her weight loss attempts. For listeners: I want to be clear that it’s not pro “Daisy needs to lose weight,” there’s no weight loss narrative arc, but there are references to that being part of her past.I was curious if you want to talk a little bit about how you thought about Daisy in all of this. JoDaisy in our book, she is in a bit of a bigger body. Daisy has a pregnancy that no one around her notices, so really one of the only ways to get around that was to have her start out in a bigger body, and as a person who usually wears bigger clothes. But Christine and I wanted to be as sensitive as possible when we were writing Daisy. Because I struggle with my weight. Like, I can go up and down four or five sizes over the course of a year. Struggle is the wrong word, but I fluctuate. So we didn’t want Daisy to be a caricature. I never wanted anyone to look at any pictures of Christine or me and be like, how dare they write Daisy? And we never want Daisy to be fixated on diet culture.We want to Daisy to feel strong. Daisy wants to be a pilot. She’s been told for so long that’s something that’s ridiculous. Like, how will you sit in the front of a plane? And we wanted to break down that stereotype, too. But then Cinnamon and Daisy bond over eating french fries. And Cinnamon is like, “Oh, I saw her working out? What should I do? Like should I not offer her French fries? Screw it, I’m buying her French fries. She loves french fries. We’re gonna eat our french fries together.”VirginiaI thought it was very thoughtfully done. I admit, I had a moment of like, is this two straight-size authors writing about a fat person? There was that travesty of The Whale. And I want to be real clear, this is not in that category at all. She’s a very nuanced character and her weight is not the barrier to what she wants in her life. She’s not sad, not pathetic. She’s super complicated. JoHer life is hard, but it has nothing to do with her weight. That’s the thing. And I’m happy for Daisy at the end of the book. I am happy with where she ends up. VirginiaAgreed. JoThat’s another conversation I think that authors need to be having more of, like how are we sensitive as we write characters and what characters should we be more sensitive as we’re writing? I don’t think that there’s enough talk about when we’re writing about size and bodies, especially when it comes to women.VirginiaI think there’s a few folks doing it well. I think Jasmine Guillory’s books have done a lot to center protagonists and great food scenes. But who else do you think is doing it well?JoI was going to say Jasmine. Because still not nearly enough authors, I could not tell you that I read something recently where I was like, “oh, yeah, they nailed it.”I’m constantly looking for more and I don’t see enough. Who else are you seeing? VirginiaRosaline Palmer Takes the Cake was one that was a great food book. The protagonist is straight size—they don’t really talk about her body at all—but it’s sort of styled on The Great British Bake Off.JoI haven’t even heard of this.VirginiaCorinne Fay, who works on the newsletter with me, told me to read it. And she was right.There are great food scenes because they’re making these elaborate cakes all the time.A book I really loved for body stuff was Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, which is about a teenager growing up in Harlem, a Black girl who is fat. I mean, it’s a tough read, because her mom is very directly and abusively putting weight loss on her a lot of the time. But it’s ultimately incredibly empowering. And there are a lot of really interesting discussions of what her size means for her moving through the neighborhood, how she’s perceived by other Black people, how she’s perceived by white people. It’s just one of those books you can’t stop thinking about.JoI think Jen Weiner’s evolution in writing about size. Because she always has…
Full show notes at the publisherToday Virginia is chatting with Martinus Evans, the author of the brand new bookSlow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. He runs Slow AF Run Club, a running community for folks to run in the bodies they have, and is @300poundsandrunning on Instagram.Remember, if you order Martinus's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSMartinus on the cover of Runner’s WorldMartinus naked in Men’s HealthPioneers Run CrewLauren LeavellBlack Girl SunscreenHoka shoesSlow AF Run Club Merch (sizes XS to 6X!)the season of book launchFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!Episode 97MartinusAlrighty, so, good morning, good evening, good afternoon to wherever you’re at in the world! My name is Martinus Evans and I’m a fat runner. I said it. I said the F word.VirginiaWe love it. We say all the time here.Martinus Hide your kids, hide your wives because we’re gonna say a lot of F words. I’m talking about fat.VirginiaWe can say the other ones, too.MartinusWe’re gonna say a lot. I’m a fat runner. I’m also a run coach. I’m the founder of a community called Slow AF Run Club. We have about 10,000 members worldwide. You may have seen me on the cover of Runner’s World, you may have seen my naked body in Men’s Health. My journey and my goal right now is to get 1 million people to start running in the bodies they have right now.VirginiaAnd we are here to talk about your awesome new book, Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. Tell us your running origin story.MartinusI was working at Men’s Wearhouse on my feet all day, commission sales in hard bottom dress shoes. Walking on concrete, like it’s carpet with concrete at the bottom. So, I start to develop some hip issues, which one would think would happen if you’re walking on concrete for 10 hours, right? When I go see my doctor who sent me to an orthopedic specialist, as I’m sitting there running down all the things: “Hey, Doc, I used to play football, currently working at Men’s Wearhouse. I’m on my feet all the time. My hip hurts like hell.” And he’s like, “Oh, I know what’s wrong with you.”Me: “Okay, what’s wrong with me?”Him: “You’re fat and if you don’t lose weight, you’re gonna die.”VirginiaI mean, just not even dressing it up at all. Not even pretending.MartinusTell me how you really feel. So I was like, I know I’m gonna die one day, but whats that got to do my hip? VirginiaI’m here for hip pain.MartinusSo then he goes on this whole thing of like you’re fat, you need to start walking, your stomach is a pregnant woman, all this other stuff. Like, “You need to get healthy.” And I just got fed up with his ass talking. So I was like, “I’m going to run a marathon, screw you, screw this. I’m going to run a marathon.” He laughs at me and tells me that’s the most stupidest thing he heard in all of his years of practicing medicine and then he went on to say if I did attempt to run a marathon, I’d die on the course.So I am fuming. I want to bless him with these hands, but I know that’s not generally accepted anymore. But I stormed out the doctor’s office. I’m ruminating about this experience. I’m driving home and I drive past a running shoe store, make an illegal U-turn, go inside of there and tell them I need shoes and I need them now. They get me some shoes.I then go home and in my apartment complex, there are three treadmills, two of them are already filled up with gazelles. So I’m inconveniently sandwiched between two gazelles who are running like bats out of hell. I’m sizing them up. One guy is going like 10 other guys going like 9. I think to myself, I can at least go 7. Fifteen seconds later when I pick myself up off the ground…Y’all, I fell. I fell off the treadmill. The treadmill rejected me or my body rejected it.VirginiaIt was a mutual rejection. It was not happening that day.Martinus It was like two magnets, polar opposites. Rejection. I was on the ground. The treadmill was still running. And I was mortified. So, I gathered everything and got the hell up out of there with tears in my eyes and thinking to myself, maybe this doctor is right.And when I got home, I had this tattoo on my right wrist. And I reached out to get the door and I see my tattoo. The tattoo says “no struggle, no progress.” This is a nod to the 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass. It goes something along the lines of:If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.And Frederick Douglass goes on to say that the struggle might be a physical one, it may be a moral one, it may be a mental one, but there needs to be some type of struggle in order to get progress with power. So, that speech always resonated with me as a younger child. Like, damn, imagine just sitting there like, “Fuck yes, we’re going to war. Freedom!” I want to be there.I got this tattoo when I was pretty young and all of that was going through my head as I reached for the door knob, and I was like, Okay, I know what I need to do. And the next day, I went back out there, and the day after that, and the day after that, and ended up running my first marathon about 18 months later. And ran eight marathons since then, and 100 other different distances.VirginiaThat’s incredible. You said in the book you don’t remember that doctor’s name. I really, really hope he sees the book and he sees your Instagram and he just he knows in his heart what he did. I think he does. So you started because you wanted to prove the doctor wrong. But when did you really start to love running? And what do you love about it?MartinusOh, my first race. Before then I’m pretty much training in a vacuum. I’m going to run early so nobody can see me because I’m still embarrassed in my body. Mortified. So I sign up for this 5k and I get there and I’m like, Alright, I know I’m slow so I’m just going to park myself in the back. So I go way back, Virginia. I go where there are moms with strollers and Golden Retrievers attached to them. I thought a mom and a stroller and two golden retrievers was going to run faster than me.And then the gun goes off and I’m like, fuck, these moms and strollers are in my fucking way! I thought they were going to run faster than me. And as I’m continuing, I run past people and run past the moms. And then I run past like the people who are walking. And then I started to run past people who are actually running. And like, that’s when it hit me. I said holy shit, I’m doing this running thing.VirginiaYou are doing it.MartinusAnd when I crossed that finish line, I had the biggest smile on my face because it hit me. I was bitten by the running bug that day.VirginiaAnd you were passing people, I’m assuming, who were thinner, who had that “runner’s body” that is obviously bullshit. MartinusI was shocking people. Like, imagine you’re running, you’re in your groove and this fat man runs past your ass. You’re like, “Wait a minute, I need to run faster.” So that was happening, too. People would be like, “Holy shit, I need to run faster. He’s running fast. I need to run faster.” I’m like, I’m just living life.VirginiaKeep up if you can. I do want to talk about that, because a huge barrier for so many fat runners, for Black runners, for anyone running in a non-traditional runner’s body, who isn’t the gazelle on the treadmill, is this experience of feeling unsafe running in public places, of not wanting to go to the gym with the treadmills or go to the park because of what you’re going to experience. MartinusYeah, let’s talk fat talk. This is something I had to experience my whole life. One of the experiences that that will be for the next book is when I was 10, or 11, I wanted to play Little League football. However, there is a weight limit like there is an age range. So like, age 10 to 12, or 9 to 11, and there’s also a weight limit that goes with that. So they put you on a scale.VirginiaNo! I’m already mad.MartinusThey put you on the scale in front of everybody. And if you’re over a certain weight, what I experienced was a coach saying, “get that man a garbage bag.”VirginiaTo do what with? To put that terrible scale in and throw out?MartinusI wish! They made every kid who was over the weight limit run in trash bags to sweat the fat off.VirginiaAnd you are how old?Martinus10 or 11? No older than 12. So it’s something that I had to experience early on in life. It’s a great metaphor for life. You’re fat, you’re overweight, you’re over this arbitrary weight, but you’re not old enough to go to the next to the next age range.VirginiaAnd then when we talk about the stereotypes of fat people being unathletic and lazy. Could it be because we aren’t allowing them on the teams and they’re running in trash bags?MartinusImagine internalizing that. Like, literally inside of a trash bag, you’re running. You put the trash bag on like a little shirt and poke holes in it. You’re a running trash bag. Kids are yelling at you, laughing, pointing, calling you garbage kid.So as I get older, I have to be a lot quicker on my feet because as you get bullied, there’s two ways you can handle this. You can either accept it and cry. Or you can fight back. Martinus was the one who fought back and also talked shit about somebody. So, like, you called me fat. I’m gonna find that one thing about you and I’m going to harp on it. Your shoes are dirty, your mama is ugly, whatever, I’m going to let you know, right? So as I get older and I’m out running, and I’m dealing with the stuff, these are some of the things that I’m also dealing with. People are honking their horns, people calling me fat, yada, yada, yada. And one of the things that I have to do is fight back. When they go low, we go high. Screw that, sometimes you got to troll the trolls.Virginia It’s true. It’s really true. MartinusSometimes you got to troll their ass back and that’s the that’s the mode that I tend to take. Somebody honking at me in their raggedy ass car, let them have some of their own. You’re fat? Your car is raggedy. But this is where mindset comes into play, right? One of the things that I do as a coach is to provide psychological safety so that the people that I am coaching are able to be able to fail or stumble along the way as they are embarking in his new journey of fitness.VirginiaTell us a little bit about what that looks like.MartinusWhat that looks like is like letting them know that obstacles and rising up in the face of adversity is a good thing. Because for a lot of people, they think it’s a bad thing. Like, oh, I face adversity, I’m slow. Here’s the thing I always get is “I started running. And then I got a little tired. And I started walking. And I felt absolutely horrible that I had to walk.” And then I come in and say well, what was wrong with that? Did you start running again? “Yeah, I did.” What the fuck? Like, let’s celebrate that then.It’s that thing of letting people know that it’s okay to bumble and stumble and figure this thing out. Because you’re doing something with your body that you have not been A. celebrated to do and B. you’re kind of stifled. Like being a plus size person, you may have even been stifled with your with movement because you haven’t had the liberty to actually explore the things that your body might be able to do. You got to explore and figure all this stuff out. So that’s where providing psychological safety is letting them know that it’s okay.It’s almost like, imagine the kid who’s like riding a bike for the first time. They ride the bike, you let it go. They lose their balance. They fall, they scrape their knee, they are going to cry. They’re going to be like, “Oh, I don’t want to ride this bike anymore. It’s horrible. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this.” But as a good parent, or as a good coach, you’re going to be like, “Okay. Let’s cry it out. You done crying. Okay, now let’s get your ass back on that bike.” Right? Right.The same thing is true with physical activity. Alright, you did it. You got a side stitch. Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, you got shin splints? Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, oh, you got delayed onset muscle soreness? Great. Let’s figure this out. But guess what? Your ass is going to continue to move. That’s the approach that I take. We’re going to fall off.Somewhere around us being grown it starts to be embedded in us like that doing something and then failing or not getting it right on the first time is a bad thing. I think it’s school. I blame school.VirginiaYeah, I think school is a lot of it. I’m thinking like when a baby’s learning to walk, they fall a million times and people aren’t like, you should stop trying to walk. You know what I mean?MartinusImagine that, watching a baby trying to walk and saying, “Screw you, baby. You suck. Damn you for trying to walk.”Virginia“You’re a fat baby who can’t walk.”And yet, we have this narrative that then kicks in of somehow, if I have to stop to walk during my run, that’s a moral failing. Like, walking and running are morally equivalent activities, right? Like, if you’re walking some of it, if you’re running some of it. If you are slow, that is still running. There’s no need to be attaching all these values to it. But it does seem like the culture of running at large is so built on that paradigm and you are really challenging an entire paradigm here.MartinusYes, I am. Here’s why. If you’re not an elite athlete whose life depends on winning prize money, and going to the Olympics, all of us are then paying for a participation medal to participate in a parade.VirginiaI really love relabeling marathons and other races as parades. That is what they are.MartinusDepending on some municipalities, when you go get the permit is literally a parade permit. So we are all paying to participate in the parade and to get a medal at the end if there is a participation medal. So if that’s the case, then none of this shit matters, whether we get there slower than the the elite runners or the last person because we’re all participating in this parade.VirginiaTalk a little about course time limits, because that’s a really clear way that not everyone is allowed in the parade. MartinusIt is a big problem. Last time I checked, my money is still as green as som…
Full show notes at the publisher
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
