This is a special episode because we recorded in person! I traveled to New Mexico to see Corinne, have new Burnt Toast headshots taken and visit Meow Wolf with my kiddo and my boyfriend. It was a glorious trip and I'm excited to share some of the behind the scenes with you today.

In this episode we're talking about:

⭐️ Why it's so hard to have your photo taken.

⭐️ Thin friends not putting their fat friends on the grid.

⭐️ The art of a good selfie.

One audio note: our Airbnb in Santa Fe was an acoustical odyssey, so please bear with us on the sound quality.

You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

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Episode 241 Transcript

Virginia

We're recording in person from an Airbnb in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If the audio is not perfect today, it's not Tommy's fault. It's that we're doing it in an adobe room and that creates some echoes.

Corinne

We have covered the floors with soft things, but it's still very echo-y.

Virginia

So bear with us. This is only our second ever in person episode, so it's going to be a really fun one.

This is a Just Toast episode. As we explained on our previous Extra Butter episode, we're no longer calling it the Indulgence Gospel, although we always will in my heart.

We're trying to make it clear what kind of episode you're listening to. So if you are listening to this whole episode right now, you are a Just Toast subscriber, which means you are a regular paid subscriber tier. There's also our premium tier, Extra Butter, for a little more money where you can get behind every single paywall. Whichever tier you are, we're very happy you're here.

Corinne

We're going to talk about something we did yesterday.

Virginia

Corinne and I did something together for the first time.

Corinne

If you're a longtime listener subscriber, you may have noticed that we have no photos together.

Virginia

Except one we took in a hot tub two years in Hot Springs.

Corinne

Yesterday, while Virginia is here in New Mexico, we got some photos taken by a photographer named Molly Haley.

Virginia

Who is an old friend of yours.

Corinne

We went to middle school and high school together.

Virginia

Since we were doing a photo shoot, we thought, well, we've got to talk about photos on the podcast because it's a whole thing.

Corinne

Photos can be hard!

Virginia

I would amend that sentence and say photos are hard.

Corinne

Although your child would disagree.

Virginia

My 8-year-old keeps telling us that that's a silly thing to think and photos are great and they love having their photo taken.

Corinne

They're not wrong.

Virginia

No, it's a lot of stuff. A lot of diet culture noise. It's a lot of being seen, I think. Being perceived.

Corinne

Would you say that you've struggled with photos?

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Keri is an NASM certified personal trainer and a pain-free performance specialist specializing in beginner strength. She's a part owner of Form Fitness Brooklyn and has recently gotten into powerlifting. She just competed in her first sanctioned meet and won first place in her weight class.

Keri began her career in personal training after her own fitness journey transformed from aesthetic focused to working on feeling strong and capable in everyday life, a very Burnt Toast trajectory. Her training style involves feeling less focused on the number on the scale and more on how people feel. She's a firm believer in setting performance-related goals, such as feeling less winded after the dreaded subway station steps. Keri was featured as one of Self magazine’s Everyday Athletes and collaborated as a fitness expert in Shape, Self, Livestrong, and Women’s Health magazines. Her ultimate goal is to help cultivate an inclusive and welcoming environment in the gym, and for all of her clients to leave each session feeling strong and powerful.

Keri is hosting a pop-up strength class called Strong on Purpose in Houston, Texas on April 11th.

Keri joined me to chat about her relationship to fitness and movement, getting stitched by toxic gym bros on TikTok, misconceptions about fat personal trainers and so much more. We've also got answers to some of your listener questions. This is a great episode. I think you're going to get so much out of it.

Here is Keri.

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Episode 240 Transcript

Virginia 

We are really big fans of yours here at Burnt Toast. For anyone who doesn't already follow you on Instagram or TikTok, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your work and your relationship with fitness and movement?

Keri 

I am a certified personal trainer. I currently am a part owner at a gym called Form Fitness Brooklyn, which is a personal training studio. The reason that I'm here and the reason that I exist in this field is because there's not a lot of body diversity in the fitness industry. I wanted to be a part of helping other people feel seen.

I live in a larger body and I show up every day in this body and do a lot of really cool things with it because I want to and because I want other people to feel like they can, as well. My relationship with fitness is one of exploration, being curious about what I can do and trying to approach it from a viewpoint of being balanced in acknowledging the fact that no one is ever at one hundred percent.

I'm trying to make sure that I don't stress myself out too much trying to be perfect and just focusing on showing up as me and seeing what I can do. It has done wonders for my mental health and my physical health, because I'm showing up consistently.

Virginia 

I love that. I was just watching a reel you did about working out with a migraine, which as a fellow migraine girlie, I found deeply relatable. That feeling of, This isn't going to be the best, but it's probably going to make me feel a little bit better. And I'm annoyed about it, but I'm here anyway.

Immediately, I'm like, Why don't I live in Brooklyn so I can come to your gym? We need more body diversity. We need more of this whole ethos in the fitness space, for sure.

Keri 

Absolutely.

Virginia 

If I remember correctly, you went viral on TikTok. Some gym bro ... Oh, the gym bros of TikTok. I could do a whole podcast just on that, but we'll move on. A gym bro stitched you as an example of who not to hire as a fitness trainer - sorry, I can't even say that without laughing - then another less gym bro stitched him and schooled him on anti-fat bias. Then you made a response video. Am I remembering that narrative correctly?

Keri 

That's absolutely how it went.

Virginia 

How did you feel about all of that? Did you feel supported in that moment by the other guy's response?

Keri 

That's such a loaded question. I did feel supported, and at the same time, it is a little strange having people stitch your videos, whether it's to be positive or negative, and not reach out and tell you that they're doing it.

Virginia 

That feels like an etiquette breach, for sure.

Keri 

It feels like people are talking about you behind your back, whether it's positive or negative. So that was a little bit weird. However, I did feel supported in knowing that there are people in this industry who are not poisoned by the idea that the way someone's body looks tells you about them as a person, or that there is something wrong with the way that someone's body looks.

One person who stitched my video and had positive things to say, his statement really stuck with me. He said that 'The world is really big and there are people with all kinds of goals. And so Keri may be right for someone, even if she's not right for you.' I've really taken that with me because that's the truth.

Everyone has different goals fitness-wise, and you should have your own personal goals. But the world is very big and just because one trainer is not right for you doesn't mean they're not right for someone else and vice versa.

Virginia 

I've been on the receiving end of some gym bro critiques. I always think, Sir, I'm not for you. You are not for me. Why are you spending your time on this? How much am I bugging you just by existing that you needed to spend this time to make this video?

I'm not going to lie, there's something a little satisfying about the idea that I'm not thinking about him at all, but he is so annoyed he has to make a video about us. That feels like a little bit of a win maybe.

Keri 

Absolutely. I always think about like the fact that they're raising their blood pressure arguing with their phone because I'm not wasting my time arguing back.

Virginia 

And you know they're so careful with their macros and everything, and yet to risk it.

Keri 

Don't risk it. You're going to pass out. You should calm down.

Virginia 

We love your content. You make really great videos. I used to do a lot of video making. I took a long break from it. Getting back in the game is not easy. There is a lot of work that goes into making Instagram content and TikTok content. I don't think people understand that.

I wonder how you think about the importance of showing yourself working out in a gym because that representation, like you were saying, matters so much.

Keri 

I am very, I think the word that I want to use here is purposeful, about the way I show up in the gym and the way I show myself on social media inside of a gym.

Because I have Form Fitness, I don't have to go to a big box gym and workout. However, I do - one, because I like to get out of the space. And two, because I want to know what it's like for my client who's like, 'Listen, I'm really nervous about walking into this gym because I don't know what that's like if I'm just in this small room where I know that everyone views fitness and bodies the way that I do.'

I walk into spaces that make me uncomfortable so that I can feel what my clients feel. Then when I'm filming content, I'm also really not worried about "Can you see my belly outline?" "Is my arm fat hanging out of the bra behind me?" Because that's just bodies. They move and jiggle because you are moving. That's how that works.

I really try to make sure that when I'm posting online, I'm showing you that too because not a single person stops me in the gym and says, "Hey, your belly." No one would ever do that, and I want you to know that.

Virginia 

It's a lot like going to a public swimming pool in the summer and being like, Oh wait, it's just bodies. Everything we see online about getting in a swimsuit is actually bullshit because everyone's here just to cool off.

Keri 

The more that I have found freedom in that, the more I realize bodies are so beautiful because they're different. That's what makes them so beautiful. Why would I be worried about looking like someone else? There's so much beauty in my body.

The other thing that I was going to say about filming at the gym is my consistent showing up there has helped me make friends with people who don't look anything like me and have different goals than me. I posted a video about that a little while after the internet trolls started coming, about the fact that the people on the internet are not the same people who are inside the gym. The ones who are doing the work, who are showing up every day - they don't think anything like those trolls on the internet.

I have a lot of really cool relationships with people who look nothing like me and have different goals than me, but we're there and we're working hard. You can work on your stuff. I'm going to work on my stuff and no one is rude or nasty in any way. The gym can be a safe place and I want people to see that.

Virginia

I really need to hear this. I am a longtime home weightlifter and I definitely am getting to the point where the amount of weights I would need to buy at home is like, you know, the math is starting to not math.

As a fat woman, I have a lot of gym fear. As a formerly very un-athletic child, all my physical education trauma kicks in. It's so real. I have had some not great experiences in gyms, although as we're talking about this, I'm realizing I've had those experiences fat and I've had them thin. Some of it is just being a woman in a male-dominated space. Anyone listening who feels similarly terrified of the gym, I really get it. It's so real.

What you're saying is really helpful.

Keri 

I'm glad. At the end of the day, just walking outside, unfortunately we encounter some characters, but I think that when you feel comfortable in a space because you know that you belong there, you're able to focus on you. For the most part, that's what everybody else in the gym is doing, too.

If they're not, then that's a huge issue that has absolutely nothing to do with you. But if you are able to show up enough times to start feeling a little more comfortable there, then you won't be as worried about what other people around you are thinking, because nine times out of 10, they're only thinking, 'How many reps did I just do?' and 'Is my form right?'

Virginia 

'When do I have to leave to pick up my kid?' It's so true.

It is the deep irony of fatphobia that all the trolls are like, 'We're so concerned for your health, we're so concerned for your health.' And yet also fat people are made to feel uncomfortable in health-promoting spaces. Which is it guys?

Keri 

I had that happen literally today. I opened my Instagram and someone had commented on a video, "You're saying this is your favorite workout, but you're still fat."

Yes. This is the body I live in. And yes this is my favorite workout. You literally just repeated what I said to you.

But that's the thing, right? You're complaining that I'm not moving my body, and yet I'm showing you that I am.

Virginia 

Literally right in front of you. It's just a reminder yet again that you'll never get anywhere with internet trolls, and that's not who we do any of this for.

Keri 

Absolutely. That's right.

Virginia 

On a related note to just all the things you are doing in the gym, I think thin people don't always realize, but fat people are very strong. I feel like often people would look at me and not realize how strong I am, but I can carry the 20 pound bag of cat litter down the stairs to the basement. I can carry my third grader up to bed, which is a real accomplishment at this point.

What other misconceptions do you find people have about what fat people can and can't do, especially in fitness spaces?

Keri

In general, there's a lot of people with the idea that fat people just aren't athletic, don't have the ability to be athletic. I'm in the same boat as you. I did not grow up as an athletic kid. I did whatever I could to avoid P.E.

When we look at sports, and even the Olympics, when we see all of these bodies, some are fat bodies, some are smaller bodies, and they're all able to do all these amazing things. It's a reminder that the size of someone's body has nothing to do with their abilities. I think there are a lot of people who still don't realize that.

Virginia 

I think gracefulness is another one. People don't think fat people can be graceful in the same way or coordinated in the same way. Something I've really appreciated about your content is I think you move really gracefully. I think it's a narrative that we're sometimes in our heads about, especially forms of fitness that require faster movements or things along those lines.

Keri 

I'm thinking about jumping right now. That's a big one.

Virginia 

People have a lot of fear of jumping.

Keri 

Absolutely. And, you know, there are people in all sizes of bodies who experience joint pain. That's a thing that no one is exempt from. However, I think that when you learn what things your body likes and what things it doesn't, that's great because there are some forms of movement that you may choose to not participate in. I never want anyone to just assume that they can't do certain things. You don't know until you try. When you try, you also need to be able to learn how to scale up, scale back and figure out what feels right.

Virginia 

You have a great reel about making child's pose work in a bigger body. Sometimes this assumption of, 'I can't do this type of movement.' It's like, 'Well, maybe that's because you've only seen a thin body do it.' Actually, you totally can. It just looks different for your body.

Keri 

I love being the first person to show someone that a squat can be wider if you need some room for your belly because it's always such a light bulb moment. I'm sure it was the same for me when I first was starting out, but then when I actually widened my stance and was able to sit into it, it was like, Ah. It was amazing.

Virginia 

It feels so good.

Keri 

The realization that there's nothing wrong with your body. You just need to adjust.

Virginia 

On the flip side, what you were just saying about joint pain is making me think how sometimes we assume body size is the reason we won't be good at something. It's actually nothing to do with the body size. You're stiff, but thin people are also stiff. There are other examples of that too, right?

Keri

Absolutely. A lot of us are sitting at a desk all day long. We're hunched over a computer, hunched over our phone. All of these things create stiffness. All of these things result in maybe a little bit of joint pain for some people.

There's also the genetic side of things and medications. This has nothing to do with the size of your body. It's depends on the person type of situation.

Virginia

That's really helpful for people to keep in mind.

We're going to get into some listener questions, but before we do, I want to make sure we talk a little bit about rest, both literally and figuratively. Obviously, your body needs rest in between workouts, but in the world, especially right now, our hearts need rest, like we need rest. What is your relationship to rest like right now?

Keri 

I do not play about my rest. As someone in a field where I'm constantly people-facing and every hour that I spend with my clients is one where I want to know what's going on with you, I want to be there for you both in the workout and also just in life in general, so I feel like I'm giving a lot. I'm happy to do it, but I also need a moment to refill the cup.

I don't play about my sleep. I am asleep at about the same time every night. If there are times when I feel like I need to take more time for myself, I need a slower morning or I need to cancel some plans with a friend because I really need to be by myself, I do those things. I honor those things because I know that if my body is saying it, it probably means that it's been feeling that way for a little while, and now here's the little alert.

Virginia 

It's so important to listen to those alerts and give ourselves permission. I have a 7th grader and we're getting to those years in school where the schedule is getting really busy with play rehearsal and activities. She came home yesterday after a super long day. I know she'd had a test she wasn't quite ready for, she'd had rehearsal and I just looked at her and asked, "Do you want dinner on a tray in your room in your bed so you don't have to talk to anyone right now?" And she was like, "Oh my God, yes." And I was like, yeah, you need like no people time. You need total chill time for an hour and we'll see you in a bit.

Not that like my parents wouldn't have done that for me, but I just thought I like that I'm showing her, You pushed hard today. You didn't feel like going to school in the morning. You got there, you did the test, you did the stuff, but then you come home and you get to really prioritize rest as well.

Keri 

I want to circle back to what we were talking about at the very beginning when you mentioned that post where I went to workout, even though I had a migraine. I'm definitely learning how to honor when my body needs rest.

I think that rest is just as important as movement. There are some days where I have migraines and I decide I need to stay in bed. I need to put my headache cap on and no lights, everything's turned off. Then there are some days where I don't feel great, but I know that if I just go and I move slowly and I pay attention to what feels doable today and what doesn't, I feel a little better. I'm learning to not count the day where I don't go to workout as a failure.

That's something that's tough for me, but I'm learning it because I'm honoring the fact that if I don't slow down now, I'm going to burn-out at the end.

Virginia 

Recovering perfectionists unite on that one.

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Listener Questions

Virginia 

Let's do a couple of listener questions. A few folks in the Burnt Toast Chat had some fitness-related questions and we thought you will have great expert advice. First up, Sarah says:

I have started and stopped a mobility exercise program 3 times since November. I get into a groove and I find it really makes my life in my body easier (putting shoes on, easing aches and pains) and then (typically when my PMDD kicks in 😔) I have no energy or drive to do it. It's only 15 minutes 4x a week, purposefully not too taxing a commitment. I have had a poor history with exercise and totally stopped about 10 years ago. But as I approach 50 I feel stiff and sore and everything feels hard. I have a million reasons to keep going but I'm not. Any thoughts on how to stay consistent or weather the ups and downs of motivation? I also notice that when I'm doing it, I'm more aware of my body and thoughts of body dissatisfaction creep in, when otherwise I have become pretty comfortable with my size.

So, a lot going on there, but it definitely relates to this conversation we're having about rest and movement and when you need what.

Keri 

I want to talk about the motivation piece for a moment because what we know about motivation is that it comes in waves. I've found there's that initial motivation when I've decided I want to do this thing, I want to move my body more, and then it starts to wane a bit. Then maybe it picks back up when you see the payoff.

The payoff in this case being increased mobility. In that moment where you're not motivated anymore, it's really important to signal to our brains that we should still get the thing done. However, you should give yourself permission to scale it back. I think that four times a week for 15 minutes is amazing, but maybe you allow yourself to go for two to three times that week that you're feeling a little bit less motivation. It's important to do the thing because we see that it's making you feel better. However, maybe you're asking for too much in that moment where you're struggling.

Virginia 

I think even if you are like, 'Well, it's only four times a week. It's only 15 minutes. That feels so doable.' Bottom line is it's not feeling doable. Three times, two times, even one time is better than zero times.

Keri 

Absolutely. That's right.

Virginia 

That all or nothing mentality is such a killer with this kind of thing. What are your thoughts about the piece where she says that moving your body more can make you more aware of your body and bring up some of those negative thoughts?

I do think a lot of us, as we're working on body neutrality, whatever you want to call it, sometimes the easiest path through is a little bit of disconnection from your body because reconnecting can be painful when you're still working through some of that stuff.

Keri 

What has been helpful for me and several of my clients is to focus on performance-related things. Maybe that means there's a goal you set for yourself, even in the mobility area. Maybe it's "Can I do an extra rep of something?" "Can I work towards doing an extra rep?" "Can I work towards feeling a little less winded after I do a certain exercise?"

Paying attention to the progress you're making can be helpful. Sometimes we're only focused on 'This was so tough today,' or 'This was way easier two months ago than it is now, or two years ago than it is now.'

I would really encourage Sarah to find ways to pay attention to what her body can do and not what it's not doing.

Virginia 

When the shoes start to be easier to put on, that's a win. Celebrate that win.

I'm also rereading your question Sarah and I just want to say that you said you've started and stopped the program three times since November. It's March, so that means for about six months, you've actually been doing more than you're giving yourself credit for. Maybe you took some weeks off, but the fact that you've done it three times since November seems good. It's not nothing.

Keri 

Exactly. I work four days a week and usually those are the days that I work out. However, there are definitely days where the workout doesn't get done and that's just life. When that happens, when you know you've got to take care of the kids, or when work is just so stressful and you run out of time, that's not a failure. That's just life. We show up again the next day. It's never going to be perfect.

But I agree with you. I don't want you to discredit yourself and think that you haven't been doing a lot because sounds like you've been working.

Virginia 

Frame it less as quitting and like, this wasn't the week for it and now I'm back to it.

Keri 

We're pausing.

Virginia 

The next question is from Allison, who writes:

I'm really struggling in my relationship with movement right now. I feel better when I move. I have more energy and less back pain. I know intellectually that moving my body regularly in some way is beneficial to me and yet I am just really struggling to do it. I started PT in September for my back pain and it went away so quickly once I was regularly moving. Now my PT is winding down and because my work-outs are less frequent, the back pain is back. I am so sick of this discomfort and yet even that physical pain is not enough to motivate me to even go for a walk around the block. I'm a sedentary person. I am content with that, but I also want the longer term benefits of being a person who moves regularly. I really don't know how to just make it happen. Any advice is welcome. What worked? What clicked? Or is this like cooking dinner for my family every night where I have to just do it even though some days I'd rather just walk into the woods and not come back.

Very relatable about cooking dinner. I'll say that.

Keri 

What has worked for me has been finding forms of movement that I've enjoyed. I also want to give Allison credit for reaching out to a PT. That's something a lot of people don't think about, but when there is something like back pain and it's affecting your daily life, that is super important.

So kudos to you for doing that. I would see if you can explore some other forms of movement that you actually enjoy. Maybe it's dancing, maybe it's swimming, maybe it's yoga. Whatever it is, just finding something that is enjoyable, that really helped me to keep showing up.

Then, even when I wasn't motivated, I was still just slightly curious enough about like, What else can my body do? That kept me showing up. We said it a little bit in the last question, but it is annoying and good at the same time that when you start moving your body and learning how to listen to it, it talks to you a lot.

It starts speaking to you and emphasizing that we need rest and we need movement almost all the time. But like the whole cooking dinner for your family every night type of situation, every once in a while you're rewarded with the family sitting at the table and the meal's really good and the shoulders are bouncing as you're eating. That happens with our workouts, too. It's not every workout, but every once in a while you have a really good one where every once in a while you're kind of excited to go do it, and that is really what kind of has to tide us over until the next time we have a workout like that.

Virginia 

It's so interesting how, I think maybe because of social media or different narratives we get, we expect every workout to be like a Rocky montage of huge accomplishment and triumph. It's like, no, it's just Tuesday morning. Like, I'm just doing this and then I've got to get on a work call.

Keri 

Which is why it is important to try to find what you enjoy doing because most of them are definitely like, Let me just get this thing over with. I'm huffing and puffing and breathing hard.

Virginia 

I was going to also add that I think PT is amazing, and I think it's very normal to get bored with it because they are very repetitive exercises. Trying something really different might be fun and invigorating. If you can combine it with being with a friend. For some of us, joy in the movement itself is difficult, but you can pair movement with something joyful, if that makes sense. That can be super helpful. I have a standing weekly walk date with a friend of mine and even if I don't really feel like moving, I want to see her. I'm going to show up.

Keri 

I love that.

Virginia 

It is a tricky thing. I think both these questions really underscore this idea we have that once you figure out fitness, you're going to do that fitness forever. There should be a set it and forget it option, and that just really isn't the case with bodies.

Keri 

Not at all. Bodies require different things at different times. Also, our brains want different stimulation. It's ok to move around and find new things you enjoy. It's ok to be a beginner at said thing. It's ok to be bad at it, because as long as you are trying, that's really all that matters.

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Butter

Virginia 

We end every episode of Burnt Toast with Butter, which is what I call our recommendation segment. I would love to know, Keri, what is your Butter right now?

Keri 

It's women's sports. That's my Butter right now, in every form of it. I feel like we're seeing a lot more of women's sports being supported, which is so beautiful and it's so important, especially for young ones. I feel like if I had seen more women's sports being supported and spoken about when I was a kid, and seen all of the different body types playing all of these sports, I would've felt like I might've had a better relationship with fitness at that age, and also, more comfortable in my body at that age. It's so important to be seeing this right now.

Virginia 

Who's your favorite athlete?

Keri 

I love Ilona Maher. I'm also a huge basketball fan, so I'm loving everything women's basketball.

Virginia 

You and my mom. My mom's hardcore. I like it too, but she's all in, except she can't watch games live. She's a Huskies fan and she gets too worried, so she checks the score and then she watches it later, if they win by enough.

Keri 

I love that. I love that she knows herself.

Virginia 

It's too much pressure. She can only watch if she knows they're up by 50 points.

Keri 

Which is not hard for them.

Virginia 

Exactly. Huskies, they're doing fine.

My Butter, since we talked quite a bit about migraines, and you reminded me, I don't think I've talked about my migraine cap on this podcast yet. I have this - it's the dorkiest thing, but it's so great. It's this like black, thick, neoprene kind of fabric and it somehow stays cold, so you put it over your head and it covers your eyes. It stays cold and feels so good.

Keri 

It's so amazing.

Virginia 

They're game changing. They really are. I've had migraines since the '90s and I just got one of these last year, and I'm like, Where has this been all my life?

Keri 

A client of mine gifted me one, and it does look so funny. It is a very funny looking thing, but I put it on, I put on an audiobook and I was just knocked out and it was wonderful.

Virginia 

I often am like woken up by bad headaches, like early morning and I still want to get back to sleep, so I put that on and then I can like get another hour of sleep. It's good stuff.

Keri, thank you so much. This was such a delight. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support your work, even if we're not in Brooklyn, although I might need to make a field trip.

Keri 

I think you should visit. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at kharveyfit. You can also find me on the Form Fitness Brooklyn app, which we just launched a couple months ago. It's a strength training app that has workouts for three times a week. It's body diverse, so you get to see all of us doing the exercises that we're asking you to do, which is really cool.

Virginia 

I'm downloading it immediately.

Thank you so much for doing this. This was great.

Keri 

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at BurntToastPodcast.com.

Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram and Threads at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.

This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

This normally where we would say "Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark, " but today we're saying, "Welcome to Extra Butter."

Longtime listeners know that we used to call the Virginia and Corinne episodes "Indulgence Gospel" in honor of a troll comment. We still love the name and are having a hard time letting it go, but we wanted to make it easier to know what kind of episode you're listening to when you listen to Burnt Toast.

Burnt Toast has three membership tiers:

1. Burnt Toast free member 💛 (Free!)

2. Just Toast member 🍞 ($5/month or $50 annually)

3. Extra Butter member 🧈 ($10/month or $100 annually)

And Today we have an Extra Butter Episode! If you're listening to this episode, you're part of the premium tier, which means you're one of our favorite Burnt Toasties. You can get behind every paywall! Your support makes all our work possible and keeps Burnt Toast and ad and sponsor free space.

Today we are talking about:

⭐️ Fat fashion. Is it getting harder to shop?

⭐️ Virginia's bad boyfriend (J. Crew).

⭐️ How the oversized fashion trend leaves out fat people.

We're also answering listener questions about:

⭐️ Skinny jeans, yay or nay?

⭐️ Managing a wardrobe to fit weight fluctuations.

⭐️ How are we wearing layers during perimenopause?

To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

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Episode 239 Transcript

Corinne: 

Today we have a very exciting (for me) topic, which is we're going to talk about fat fashion, spring edition.

Virginia: 

Is it getting harder to shop?

Corinne: 

I mean, quick answer: yes.

Virginia: 

Absolutely. It's terrible out there. Is it the state of the world, is it retail, or is it both? We're going to get into how it's feeling like there are fewer plus-size options, and we're going to get into some of your practical questions.

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Today we are talking about:

⭐️ The new, skinny American Girl dolls

⭐️ Does taking a GLP-1 make you a better parent?

We're also answering listener questions about:

⭐️ The diet culture voice in your head

⭐️ Colonoscopy prep and the feelings it brings up

⭐️ Virginia's review of the Heated Rivalry books

You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

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Episode 238 Transcript

Virginia

Today we are catching up on some things we are mad about in March.

Corinne

Some people have been annoying us.

Virginia

We have a list, and you may or may not be on the list. First up is ...

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. 

Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.

Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala. In part one, we talked about bodies, race and gender. Today in part two, we're getting into sex, divorce and classy and trashy Butters.

This conversation is for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one.

One last thing! If you order Good Woman from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.

Here's Savala.

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Episode 237 Transcript

Virginia 

All right, we've got to talk about men a little bit.

Savala  

Do we have to? No, I'm kidding. I love them.

Virginia  

I really questioned whether we did. You write really well about men in this book. You articulate a lot about a certain kind of man that is going to be very familiar to a lot of our listeners. You call him the "voting booth feminist." Define voting booth feminist and tell us how that particular type of man, perhaps without realizing it, contributes to this narrative about what a "good woman" should be.

Savala  

Well, the voting booth feminist is alive and well, Virginia. I was married to one.

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Lindy is the author of four books, The New York Times bestselling memoir, Shrill, as well as the essay collections, The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually, and her brand new memoir Adult Braces, out now.

Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel and many others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast, Text Me Back!!! and the author of the newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film, Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state.

Lindy joined me to chat about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces. We get into her relationship to fatness, having people comment rather relentlessly on her marriage, why more best friends should start podcasts and so much more—including a quesadilla she invents in real time while we recorded. You are going to love this one.

This conversation with Lindy is so juicy that we're breaking it up into two episodes! In Part 1 we’re talking about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces, as well as her eating disorder therapy, being a public fat person and having people comment on her body and her marriage.

In Part 2, we're getting into non-monogamy, the benefits of being in a throuple, podcasting and so much more!

If you're already a paid subscriber, you've got both parts of the episode right here, right now in your inbox!

Everyone else: Join Burnt Toast today to hear the whole thing! Membership starts at just $5 per month and also gets you commenting privileges.

One last thing! You will want to read Adult Braces after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.

Here's Lindy West.

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Virginia 

We are here to talk about your new memoir, Adult Braces. My producer Kim and I both read it. We loved it. Like, crying laughing, full body experience reading this book. 

Lindy

Thank you so much!

Virginia

Do you want to give us a brief summary of what the book is about?

Lindy  

The book is about a road trip that I took in 2021 from Seattle to Key West and back, which I decided to do when I was having a crisis in my life. I needed to get away from my house, and I needed to get away from my family and my responsibilities.

I had found out a couple years earlier that my husband had a secret girlfriend, which was sort of illegal in our relationship, sort of not. That was quite a topic of conversation for several years, and we eventually figured it out. But then I was exhausted from a year of COVID and three years of non-stop couples therapy. I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left and I drove to Florida in a van that I rented. I slept in the van. I just wanted to be out in the world and be brave and alive.

The road trip stories are interspersed with chapters about my life before. A big message, at least for me, is that it's really easy to read my crisis as this monogamy/polyamory conversation, but when I think back on it, everything about my life was messed up before that. I had so many other problems, in my mental health, in the way that I managed my career, my life and my brain chemicals. I wanted to build a full picture of that, because I think the easy story is like, 'Oh, no good husband.' But it was a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of it stemmed from work that I had to do on myself, which is ultimately the only work that I can do. I can't do work on my husband.

Virginia 

Nope. A lot of us learned that the hard way.

Lindy  

Right! That was actually one of my problems. I was constantly waiting for my husband to transform into the person that I had imagined would be my husband, and that's not how people work.

Virginia 

It's annoying, but true. 

Lindy  

It's very annoying. The book is about all of those figurative journeys happening at once, and also my literal journey. 

Virginia 

It's spectacular. The van alone. I'm obsessed with the van. There's a mural on the outside of the van. It's incredible.

Lindy  

The van has a big, scary rabbit on one side and then a big, anxious sheep on the other side. The van was named BAAA, like the noise a sheep makes. I think I'm going to make some social media content out of this. I'm trying to be an influencer in order to promote this book. I want the van. I want that van. I want it in my possession.

Virginia

I was sad when you gave it back. 

Lindy

I know! Me too, and now the company has gone out of business. I tried to rent the van for my book tour and they don't exist anymore. Someone has that van. I think I'm going to do a social media campaign called "Help me find my van," so that I can buy it.

Virginia 

Burnt Toast listeners, if any of you have a van with a rabbit on one side and a sheep on the other, hit us up. Even if it's a different van with that art, I think Lindy would be interested.

Lindy

Yes. I will pay upwards of $1,000.

Virginia 

To get that van back. It was a sad moment. It was like the end of those movies with a person on a journey with an animal, and they say goodbye. It was like the volleyball in that Tom Hanks movie.

Lindy  

Oh, my God, yeah. I had to watch BAAA float away on the ocean. BAAA had really been there for me. BAAA is an old lady now. Maybe she doesn't exist anymore, because she already had 250,000 miles on her and then I drove her another 50,000.

Virginia

She was in her golden years. 

Lindy

She was in her golden years. But I think those Ford Transit vans are built to last, so I think someone has her. It turns out all the van companies are going out of business because I had a really hard time finding a van. I called three different companies that had all recently gone out of business, because #vanlife is not that popular anymore now that people have #donthavetowearamasklife.

Virginia 

They had a little Renaissance moment there.

Lindy  

I called this other company that was going out of business, and I was like, "Well, what are you doing with your fleet?" I know the all the terms now. I was like, "What's happening to your fleet? Can I buy one of your vans?" And he was like, "Yeah, they're $90,000." Sorry, excuse me?

Virginia 

It doesn't even have a rabbit on it, sir.

Lindy  

This van is blank. I think that if there's any hope for me getting a van, it's got to be old lady BAAA. If you're listening and you know where BAAA ended up, please call me.

Virginia 

I mean, I'm now picturing that BAAA probably has a new owner who also really loves her. There's going to be a complicated journey to restore BAAA to her rightful owner, which is you, but ...

Lindy  

Ok, now that you said that I don't want to take BAAA away from her new family.

Virginia 

Well, maybe it could be a joint custody situation, you know? Let's be open-minded to different family structures.

Lindy  

That's true. You're so right. God, that was very regressive of me.

Virginia 

But yes, I hope that you can be reunited.

Lindy

Thank you.

Virginia

Along with the story of BAAA, you talk about many vulnerable things in the book. One of them that I know our listeners will be really moved by is your exploration of having an eating disorder and starting treatment for that. It was just so relatable. Like when you wrote about reading through the list of nutritionists from your doctor, and only one doesn't mention weight loss. When you're looking for eating disorder treatment!

Lindy  

It's a snapshot of what most people are going to the nutritionist for: weight loss. That's what everyone's looking for, in every direction. So, I get it, but it was very frustrating. Luckily, the one lady that wasn't weight loss focused is the best person I've ever met, so it all worked out.

Virginia 

What was it like working with someone who was like, "Actually, you don't need to lose weight. You need to eat more food?"

Lindy  

It's been amazing. I mean, it's frustrating, because you still have the diet culture voice inside your head, even if you've done as much healing as you thought was humanly possible. I realized once I started working with her that some tiny part of my brain had been like, Once you see the nutritionist, maybe you will lose weight. Not that that was my goal. But there's always this little, dee de dee dee, then your life will be perfect. It's really hard to deprogram that.

Grace, my now therapist, just kept being like, "Your job is to eat whatever you want all the time." And I'd be like, "Yeah, but what if I want vegetables?" She was like, "That's fine, but you're not allowed to not eat candy." And I was like, "But don't you want to give me some kind of guideline for how to be perfect?" And she was like, "No, that's disordered."

Virginia 

That’s the opposite of what we're doing now.

Lindy  

I find myself still searching for someone to tell me how to live so that I don't have to figure it out. Unfortunately, the answer is listening to your body and learning how to know yourself. So I'm doing that instead. 

Virginia

She said joyfully.

Lindy

Again, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm not on a weight loss journey. I think after so many years of living untreated in diet culture, I don't have any kind of a natural relationship with food. And it is a lot of work to figure out how to listen to my body. So even from a non-diet culture perspective, I was hoping that some part of this therapy was going to be her handing me a worksheet. Even if the worksheet said "One piece of cake for breakfast, one piece of cake for lunch, one piece of cake for dinner." I just was like, Making the choices is triggering to me.

Virginia 

The decision fatigue! It's a lot of work, every meal. I have to, again, make the decision to eat and what to eat and how. All day long we do this??

Lindy  

I have to do the grocery shopping?

Also, when you've been shamed your whole life for those choices, making the choices is stressful. Now I feel like, either direction, I'm doing something bad. I'm either doing diet culture by choosing to have a salad, even if I want one. I still am like, Am I betraying myself? Or the opposite, if I choose to eat something sort of indulgent or whatever, then I'm doing fat person. Which is fine.

Virginia 

You have to negotiate it in both directions.

Lindy  

Yes! Except then I'm like, Well, but if I'm eating something decadent, is that just reactionary? Because I know I'm not supposed to do diet culture. So then do I even want this ice cream? I'm still, to this day, fairly lost. I'm way better than I was five years ago, and I've definitely figured some stuff out, which is just having routines. It's like, I have oatmeal. Done.

Virginia 

One less decision.

Lindy  

In the morning, I have oatmeal, and then I have certain staple things I keep around. I'm so angry that my head has been messed with to this degree. You know what I mean? 

Virginia 

Yes. And you were trying to navigate recovery as a public fat person, which brings a whole other layer. I have had a tiny fraction of what you experience, and it's bananas. The amount the world feels like they can engage with our bodies and have opinions and theories and comments and all of that. You doing it, especially when you first started doing it, was such a gift to the rest of us. You were really on the front lines. 

Lindy  

It's really hard, and that's the thing that I write about in the book. Obviously, the mean people are the worst. But there's a way that my fans feel an ownership over me that is a little bit ... not claustrophobic - I appreciate it, it's very loving - but also, I feel surveilled. I'm definitely being watched. People notice if my body changes, and that is confining in a certain way. It's hard to navigate, because you don't get to just have a private relationship with your body, which, to be fair, I voluntarily gave up because I said "I'm going to present my body for public conversation," basically.

Virginia 

I don't know that we ever have informed consent around that though. I don't think you could have known when you decided to publish that first essay in The Stranger what this would be like. You know what I mean? I don't think you could wrap your head around where it would have gone.

Lindy  

I can't blame the fans, especially since so much of this stuff was grassroots on the Internet. I used to be a fat girl lurking on Tumblr, taking from other fat people who came before me. I don't want to build a wall around myself and say, "No, you can't look at me, and you can't feel anything about my body, and you can't have any opinions or connection to it," because I did the same thing. But navigating of it is hard, and complicated.

Virginia 

It is complicated. I can understand, especially when navigating your own recovery and wanting to make choices for yourself, but feeling like people will feel let down. It's complicated. We all do it with other public figures all the time. 

Lindy  

Oh, I don't like it when famous fat people lose weight. I don't trust it at all, but I don't say anything about it. You know what I mean?

Virginia 

At least, not super publicly. Maybe in my own head.

Lindy  

Just to the group chat. "Oh, ozempic, got another one?" I'll send that text. I do have this fear that if eating disorder treatment and recovery did cause me to lose weight, because I changed my relationship with food in such a way that my body changes—which I don't know if that would happen or not, there's no way to know, probably not—but if it did happen, it's so scary to think that I could be perceived as having betrayed people, or that I'm one of those people that I look at and send to the group chat and say, "Oh boy." Which is why I shouldn't do that.

Virginia 

Sure, fine. Now that you're putting it that way, I suppose.

Lindy  

It depends on the person. Look, just don't take me on your weight loss journey. I don't need to hear about your journey.

Virginia 

That's really the key to me. People do what they do with their bodies, and that's fine, but I really appreciate it when a celebrity says nothing. If you start justifying and explaining it, odds are that you're causing harm to somebody.

Lindy

It's not that hard to not say anything.

Virginia 

Yeah, just have your body. That's fine. You do you.

Related to people dissecting your body online, another experience we unfortunately share is having our personal lives written about and commented on online, particularly in regards to marriage. In my case, my divorce. It made the Daily Mail, which is a real point of pride for me.

You write really candidly about your marriage with Aham in this book and there are many difficult parts. Did it feel like you were taking some control back over the narrative to write about it? How do you feel about how people might react once they read what you've written?

Lindy  

I wanted to take control of the narrative. People react so intensely to non-monogamy. It's very scary to a lot of people, and I get it. You're sort of promised an equation for happiness, which is one person loving you obsessively for the rest of your life until you die. Just the idea that some people might choose a slight variation on that —it's threatening.

And it's a slight variation. I am married to two people. It's just one extra person! There's just one extra. It's not really that different. If you think about it, being single is only one person away from being two people. Just one less.

Virginia 

Right. Every single person is basically married. And every married person is basically in a throuple.

Lindy  

Is it that weird? People find it very weird. There was so much backlash, particularly directed at Aham, but also at me. My body was a big factor in it. The way that people perceive our relationship is never disconnected from the way people look at my body. 

So when people started to clock that we had a third person in our marriage—my partner, Roya. I shouldn't just talk about her like she's a mysterious, shadowy figure—so much of the response was, "Oh, we see what's going on here. You're fat and ugly and gross, so he doesn't like you. He needed a thin woman so that he can actually be happy."

Virginia 

He had to trade up in some way. 

Lindy  

He had to upgrade, as any man would, because, "Unfortunately, you're disgusting, and that's why we're here to defend you against this evil man."

Virginia 

Yes, defend you —because this is from people who were your fans. That was what blew my mind [when you first came out]. I was like, But wait, you're a pro-Lindy person drawing these conclusions about her life. That doesn't make sense.

Lindy

Why are you being so mean to me?

Virginia 

You're so mad on her behalf. But she didn't ask you to do that.

Lindy  

Right? And you know who's not saying anything mean to me? Aham. You guys are being way meaner. 

So, I don't know. It just felt like I wanted to get some definitive version down on paper, even though people are still going to do the same thing: take it and run with it, fill in the blanks. Everyone became a body language expert. People are obsessed with being the genius who read between the lines and could figure out what wasn't being said. We're in the age of conspiracy. I get it. But you can't actually just look at a picture of some people on the Internet and figure out what isn't being said. 

I couldn't even capture it in the book, because part of it is me and Aham sitting at the dining room table doing couples therapy over Zoom every week for three years. How do I put that in the book? It's so much work. 

People keep asking me, "Why are you so hard on yourself in this book?" Some people think I'm too easy on Aham. People keep telling me what my feelings are, and that I'm this naive person who's been duped. Or that I don't really understand, I can't really see, what's been done to me. 

I wanted to get my feelings down in hard copy. I can't excavate Aham’s feelings in my book. When I tried to, I cut it because it sounded like I'm begging the audience to co-sign that it was ok for me to stay, that I'm allowed to stay in my marriage. It feels like rationalization, and I don't want to do that. 

Virginia

You don't actually need our permission. 

Lindy

I don't actually need anyone's permission. But what I can do, and what I have the authority and right to do, is put down in excruciating detail my process and the things that I came to realize about myself, and the ways that I had been a part of the toxicity in our marriage. The ways that I had been in denial, and the ways that I had not been taking care of myself, emotionally, psychologically and in a million different ways. 

That's what I have to work with. I'm also, in my personal life, a passive, shy person. I have this childhood wound of being talked over and not given the authority to speak on my own experiences, and not feeling capable of asserting myself. That's a lot of what this book is. I'm hard on myself because I found it fascinating. I found it so illuminating to realize all of these ways that my brain had been warped, and I thought it was rational. How interesting to come to a realization that these things that you thought were a given actually, maybe you were wrong. People read it as me being really cruel to myself, but to me, it felt really healing to excavate all those things and figure them out. I hope it's not a grind to read.

Virginia 

No, it's definitely not. I found it more healing than you being hard on yourself.

I mean, there are moments—and I think this is, you know, this is me being a fan for a moment—like we love you Lindy. We've been rooting for you for a long time. There are moments where I would think, Oh no, Lindy. I want to protect you. I don't like this. But then you would have this breathtaking insight about yourself, and I'd be like, Oh, shit. Ok, well, that makes sense.

That was my experience of reading the book. These moments of feeling defensive or protective, and then being like, Oh, mind blown. 

Lindy  

Thank you. I was just going to say, I do keep having this little feeling of, if you read the book and you're like, I can't relate to this because she's so hard on herself, well ... it sounds like you've never been fat.

Virginia 

Or in therapy of any kind.

Lindy  

Congratulations on never having low self-esteem?

Virginia 

Must be neat to always be so sure. Are you maybe a narcissist?

A lot of what I saw in that narrative of "Lindy's the victim. He's trading up for the thin woman." is that this is so many fat women's core fear, right? So this was people projecting their own stuff of,  'This is what's going to happen to me. My husband's going to leave me for a younger, thinner woman.'

Lindy  

And that's rational, of course. That's what they do! I get it, because that was my fear. That's why I didn't want to do it. I was like, I know you're just waiting to upgrade. But in retrospect, it doesn't make sense. If what you were waiting to do was upgrade, why would you not just leave me?

People talk to me as though, I'm still, to this day, being victimized. But to me, it was so healing to be brave and step through this veil into this other relationship structure and discover that Aham does not love me less. He didn't leave. I don't have less of him. He was telling the truth about, at least, how he feels about me.

I was always so paranoid about that, and I always had so much doubt about it. People read it, and I get it, of course. Most people feel like they are barely holding their husband back from running off and being evil.

Virginia 

But if that's the case, there is divorce. I just want to say to everyone in that box, there is this other path. You don't have to stay with that guy.

Lindy  

If you're worried about that, please get a divorce. You will love it. 

Virginia 

It's so great. It's real rad. 

Lindy  

Look, I don't trust men either. I get it. I have the same wounds and the same anxieties. That's why I resisted so hard for so long. But I also didn't want to not be with Aham, because we have a really, really special relationship and I couldn't imagine ... I mean, I did eventually imagine, actually, there's a chapter cut from the book called "If I'd Left" about all the stuff I would have done. 

Virginia

Ooh, I am intrigued. 

Lindy

I'll tell you about it, but mostly it was a list of the different animals that I would acquire. 

A big part of this whole journey—I've said "journey" so many times—Aham tried to do it right. He brought it up day one. He said, "This is non-negotiable if we're going to be together." I said, "Ok, sure." He tried to talk to me about it over the years. I avoided the conversation. I would throw a fit and cry and hyperventilate. I could not handle it. 

When I found out that he was seeing someone else, he said, "I think we want different things, and if that's the case, we need to not be together."

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Part 2 is for paid subscribers only.

To hear the rest of our conversation with Lindy West, go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith and join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You don't want to miss this the second part of this conversation.

Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.

This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. 

Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more.

I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together. 

This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read.

There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one.

One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout.

Here's Savala.

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Episode 235 Transcript

Virginia

Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Savala  

I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness.

So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better. 

I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt.

I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write about in Good Woman, stems from that experience of dieting, and then breaking free from dieting in my thirties.

Virginia  

That is the best intro I think anyone's ever given themselves on the podcast. 

Savala

Oh, stop. 

Virginia

No, really. I love that you are like, 'Let me own this part of my story. This is the origin point. And then now let's get into the conversation.' That's fantastic. 

We are here to talk about your exquisite new book Good Woman: A Reckoning. It is a collection of 12 essays about what it means to be a woman. It's this incredible blend of memoir, reporting and history. I would love you to read us the first paragraph, just to set the stage for everything we're going to talk about.

Savala

I'll just take a quick second to set it up a little bit.

I'm trying to take a critical and very skeptical eye to all the ways that women and girls are socialized to be good. Almost from birth, right? In our particular culture, good means agreeable, quiet, serving of others, all the things that probably would pop into any woman's head when she hears the idea of a "good woman" or a "good girl." I'm trying to unpack and destroy some of that socialization in my own life, and think about what lies beyond it. To kick the book off, there's this very short essay that's sort of a manifesto. I think of it as a huge bell that rings to open the book.

Here's the first paragraph.

I refuse to be good. This is a matter of survival, not inclination or mood. I refuse to be easy and I refuse others preferences. I refuse to be amicable and I refuse to appease. I refuse to go along and I refuse to agree. I refuse to do what I was trained to do. Instead, I choose whatever lies beyond my social conditioning, even if I'm still looking for it, still spurring it into being. This is work of the mind, cerebral and tough. This is work of new language, new concepts, new intonations and my thinking must expand to fit the scale of all existence. It is also body work, work that is nailed to my flesh. It is gestating of new bones, an anointing of muscle and fat. It is passing through the stomatous black opening of my own cervix to the bright field, waiting on the other side in the wilderness. It is a lot to take on. But I welcome the challenge and the mystery and the darkness. It was in darkness that the universe was made. It is in darkness that each day is made new.

Virginia  

Thank you. That was incredible. Really, it was.

Savala

Thank you. 

Virginia  

I loved how you opened the book because it encapsulates so many of the themes that you then go deeper in in every chapter. One of the biggest themes of refusal in the book is around the body. You write about how Black women's bodies in particular are constrained, controlled and made not their own. I really, really want people to read this because we don't have time to talk about all the history you go through and it's so well done. You trace this narrative from Sarah Baartman and Sally Hemings all the way to Nicki Minaj, connecting so many dots. It's really powerful. What has and what hasn't changed when it comes to how Blackness and fatness are policed for women?

Savala  

I love this question. We could probably write a doctoral thesis or dissertation on this question alone. So I'll just sort of share what comes to mind, a sort of smorgasbord of thoughts that come to mind when you ask this question. 

The first thing is, there's an overlap when we talk about Blackness and fatness in this culture. The very first point to make is that everything here is cultural. Not all cultures treat women's bodies, Blackness and fatness the way we do. That's the page on which everything else is written. 

It's interesting to me that when we talk about Blackness and fatness, the stereotypes overlap, right? Both fat people and Black people are viewed in this culture as out of control, lazy, kind of greedy, having a hyper appetite. Either being hyper-sexualized or de-sexualized. You either have the kind of va-va-voom, or the 'friend, never the leading lady' when it comes to fatness. With Blackness, it's the same thing. You either have the video vixen - this kind of hyper-sexual Black woman in a music video - or the mammy.

It's interesting to me that the stereotypes overlap so much, and maybe the most powerful way they overlap is that they're both undesirable. They're both things in our culture that you should try to get away from if you can. You should try not to be too Black or too fat in our culture. So to me, as a woman who's fat and Black, it's kind of a one-two punch. They work together. The stereotypes overlapping tells you there's some relationship in our culture between these two things. And as you say, it goes way, way, way, way back in this country. It goes to chattel slavery, where Blackness and fatness started to be policed together and associated together, very literally.

I talk about this in the book - there's a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, which you might consider the Vogue or Good Housekeeping of today. Sort of fashion, but also home-y stuff. It was the biggest magazine in the antebellum country. And they talked all the time about how white women should stay thin or else they might start to be Black, like they might start to be looked on as if they're Black. There's another article from that magazine that says, "If a white woman gets fat, she might as well put herself in Black face."

You can't see it if you're listening, but there's a lovely eye roll from Virginia.

Our culture has long braided these things together. That's the history when you think about what hasn't changed. I think they are still braided together. When we think about what has changed, from my vantage point, there was maybe five or 10 years where it felt more ok to be fat, and more ok to be Black. It was the like ascendance of Lizzo, you know?

Virginia

A brief shining moment. 

Savala

It was a shining moment. There was also the George Floyd moment. There was a political reckoning with Blackness that was refreshing. I guess maybe it wasn't even five years. It was a brief window. Now it feels like we're in a backlash. It feels a little bit like the more things change, the more they stay the same. We had this moment of a collective leap towards something like liberation. 

Because of politics and because of the capitalistic nature of the pharmaceutical industry in this country and GLP-1s being so, for now anyway, profitable, we're seeing a real backlash to both fatness and Blackness. That lands on women really hard, because of how women are tied to our bodies in this culture in a particular way. So I guess I would say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

The silver lining being that because we did have these few years of something like enlightenment, the first sun rays coming over the mountain, there are a lot of people who have a much higher capacity to talk about what our culture does to fatness and Blackness than there were 20 years ago, right? So that's a silver lining, I think. 

Virginia

Yes, I agree with that.

We see these moments of women claiming their bodies and claiming control over their bodies, and then facing tremendous backlash. You talk about the Nicki Minaj album cover that she was taken to task for being too sexual, too graphic, etc.. She was like, 'It's my body.' 

Savala  

'It’s my body.' Also, it's no worse than a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and everybody likes those. 

Virginia

Yes, they sure do. But those are skinny white lady bodies. 

Savala

Those are skinny white ladies, not voluptuous Black women.

Virginia  

There are these moments where we have the conversation. Whereas if she hadn't had the album cover, we wouldn't have had the conversation. But I'm with you on how it's not enough. The backlash feels so brutal right now. But I do hang on to those moments.

Savala  

I do, as well. The comfort of a backlash is that you know you were doing something right. You can't make a quilt with one stitch. You have to put a lot of stitches in. So we have to keep stitching as far as our own liberation goes. The backlashes will come periodically, the tide comes in and out, you just try to keep inching it forward. I'm hopeful that we will continue, ultimately, to do that.

Virginia  

And keep reminding people where we've been. I really appreciated your post on Instagram this week. There's been so much talk about ICE as the gestapo and you were like, 'Guys, it's not the gestapo, it's slave patrols.' It's our own country. It's our own history that's coming up again here.

I should note for listeners, you're hearing this in March, but we recording this at the end of January, right after all of the violence and murders in Minneapolis. 

Savala  

I understand the urge to look to other countries and the violence in other places, and it's gestapo-like, you know. It's certainly fair to think about a comparison. But to completely ignore the fact that we actually invented this stuff.

Virginia  

That the gestapo guys learned it from us.

Savala

One hundred percent. Exactly.

Virginia

They've been watching what America was doing.

Savala  

Yes, and it's sad to own it, but it's a necessary step, and managing it and moving beyond it is to hold it close and see that it's our own stuff. It's like an individual who wants to grow and improve. They have to own their shit. 'Oh, this is my shit. I have to work on it.' It's the same. It's just at the level of culture.

Virginia  

As a country, we have to own our shit, and some of us are doing more of that than others. 

Well, on the level of the individual, you write a lot in the book about growing up as a fat little girl, being put on diets so heartbreakingly early and then continuing to pursue thinness throughout college and early adulthood. Now that you're on the other side of that, you write about how abandoning the pursuit of thinness feels like becoming a non-woman. I really was interested in this idea of the non-woman. I would love to talk about that a little.

Savala

There's a quote I love from a scholar, Sander Gilman, who studies fatness and gender. You might know this quote Virginia, some of your listeners might, too. He writes that dieting is a way that women show they understand their role in society. Part of the way that women remain and become legible in our culture is by practicing and performing privately and publicly dissatisfaction with their bodies and the pursuit of a better body, which generally means a thinner body, a more toned body, or a "healthier body."

When you do those things as a woman, people get it. They understand you. They don't have to make any inferences. They don't have to wonder what you're doing. It's instantly obvious. When I talk about how much people rely on that sort of vocabulary to understand women. When I talk publicly at schools about this, one of the first things I do in my talks is post a before and after photo without the words "before" and "after." I ask people to raise their hands if they know what it is. The room could have 300 people in it and everybody raises their hands. They know exactly what they're seeing. That's what I mean when I say that the performance of dieting, or body improvement, or body shame, publicly and also privately, makes you readable as a woman to the culture. People can literally read it instantly, the way you can read a stop sign. 

When you stop doing that, when you stop dieting, exercising in ways that are meant to control the shape of your body, the weight of your body, all that stuff. When you stop using that vocabulary to bond with other women, when you stop policing what other people eat. When you stop doing those things, people don't get it. There's some level on which you're no longer performing the role of a woman. That's what I mean when I say that you become a non-woman. You become this other entity, that, let's be clear, exists in other cultures. It has existed in this culture to some extent, in various pockets of it, but that's what I mean. You step outside of the mold, and then people aren't quite sure what to do with you. 

Can I give a quick example? 

Virginia

Yeah, please. 

Savala

I work with a fabulous team of people I love and adore at UC Berkeley. One of them had a birthday, so to celebrate, I brought in a box of fabulous French pastries. We have a little birthday party and we invite lots of people to come by and pick something up if they want to. Every single person, every person, who came in the room said something, and they all happen to be women, something like, 'Ooh, I worked out this morning. That's how I that's how I earned this.' Some version of, 'Oh, God, I shouldn't. I had a bagel for breakfast,' or, 'I'm gonna cut it in half because I think I'm gonna have a big dinner tonight.' I was the only one who didn't. At some point I said, "Come on, guys. Let's just let the food be food. We don't have to earn our food here."

Virginia  

You don’t actually have to publicly perform. 

Savala  

You could have heard a pin drop, Virginia. 

Virginia

Oh, I'm sure.

Savala

It was like I said something in a different language. People don't know how to read the moment anymore. They don't know how to read me anymore. It's so disruptive. So that's what I mean about becoming the non-woman. In that essay, I then go on to talk about the joy of being a non-woman. I don't mean this in the sense of gender identity, I mean it in a more metaphorical, philosophical way. I very much identify as a woman.

Virginia  

Right, but you're rejecting these expectations and this narrow definition of womanhood.

Savala  

One hundred percent. It's a little experiment. If listeners want to try that, I'm sure most of your listeners are already at least one foot in the door of not dieting anymore, but if they want to try performing something else and seeing how they become no longer instantly readable in the space, they'll know what I mean.

Virginia  

It's interesting because it's about how you simultaneously become more visible because you're doing this uncomfortable thing no one knows what to do with, and you're rendering yourself more invisible because you're no longer saying Yes, you can identify me as a sex object. Yes, you can identify me as young and thin and pretty and all the you know. So then it's like, 'Oh, we don't know what to do with her.'

Savala  

Totally. It's a spotlight. It's like, what's that? There's some rubbernecking that happens and you can be in the mood to deal with it or not. It's not like I always will say something when I'm around little pockets of diet culture. But in that moment, there were 12 or 15 people who came through and it was every single one. 

Virginia  

Can we not just eat the pastries?

Savala  

Yeah. And if you don't want one for whatever reason, that's ok. 

Virginia  

Don't tell us why. Just don't eat it. It's fine.

Well, that's a great example too, because that's also the kind of modeling that I'm sure you're conscious of doing in front of your kiddo. There's a line in the book I really loved where you write:

My child is my child, carrier of my histories, and I worry she'll be particularly vulnerable to dieting. In order to fortify her, I build a home life free from diet culture. 

This is, of course, a huge focus of my work. It's why I wrote Fat Talk.

Savala

It's the bread and butter, if you will.

Virginia  

It is the bread, yes. We'll get to the butter, but it's definitely the foundation of Burnt Toast. Deliberately, I'm more likely to say, 'Let's just eat the cake,' or 'Eat the dessert' when I know my kids are listening, because I've got to model the other way. I've got to model the non-woman for them.

I would love to know what are some of the little things you do to get the anti-diet, parenting stuff in?

Savala  

Well, the number one thing, and this will be very familiar to the Burnt Toast crew, is I, myself don't diet. That's number one. I don't pursue intentional weight loss, and I haven't since my daughter was about six months old. That was breaking point when I started to look for a different kind of life. Not only do I not diet or pursue intentional weight loss, I never, not once, have ever spoken ill of my body or complained about my body in front of my daughter.

It's funny when you're raising a girl because on the one hand, I want my daughter to feel beautiful and I want to speak a sense of beauty into her. "Oh, you're so beautiful." And I want to talk about myself through the lens of beauty for that reason, too. On the other hand, you don't want to over emphasize beauty and teach them that that is a super meaningful currency that they have to ... you know what I mean? 

Virginia  

It's like, 'You are beautiful and it's the least interesting thing about you.' You're holding both of those with both hands all the time.

Savala  

All the time. So I speak well of my body, but try not to do it in a way that feels too "cover of a magazine" oriented. There are other little things like, we decant food in our house so most of it is not associated with "nutrition information."

And we talk about nutrition information, because she picks it up in the world. But in our house, it's just in the container. I make a point of letting her choose how much she eats. I tend to take on the responsibility of picking what's on offer, and then she chooses how much. But we've mix that up as she's gotten older.

I fill my home with physical media, like figurines, statues, posters, books that have all kinds of bodies, especially fat bodies, because I want that to feel normal and celebrated for her. I want her to see fat bodies depicted as beautiful, wonderful things, not just as things we try to move away from or punish. It's good for me, too. Almost anything that I practice for myself, I practice for her, in an age appropriate way. 

Including being really playful. It doesn't all have to be political. I talk in the book about this one episode where my daughter was probably about four or five years old, and she wanted some chocolate chips after she had already had dessert. Initially, I was like, "No, you had your ice cream. We'll have chocolate chips another time." And then I was like, I want some chocolate chips. I said, "Actually, yeah, let's have some chocolate chips." We each had a little handful, and she said, "I wish I could have more." And I was like, "I think one is enough." And then I was like, "Actually, let's have more." And we sort of did that playfully a few times. She still loves it. She remembers it was such joy. My goal there was to have a little fun, but also to celebrate appetite, and take this moment that we often are taught to read as personal failure - going back for a little more - and change it into something that was fun and goofy and totally fine.

Virginia  

Celebrating pleasure. Yeah, let's have more. It tastes good tonight. Let's do it and not feel like we have to put guardrails around that.

Savala  

Exactly. I look for moments like that, and I'll say, who knows what the future brings, but my kid has a really joyful, non self-conscious relationship with food that involves eating all kinds of things, including broccoli and kale, and with her body. Who knows what the world brings? Well, we do know what the world brings. We know what's coming, but she has a foundation that's much better than mine was.

Virginia  

Yeah, such a different foundation than what you had. And that has to do something. I have to believe that.

Savala  

Yeah, it has to. It has to. And I must say, obviously, your book inspired me and was part of my inspiration in how I approached feeding my kiddo.

Virginia  

I'm so glad it's helpful. Yeah, I mean, it's always a work in progress, but it is really rewarding when you see kids having that ease and not overthinking and not getting caught in those in those traps that we do. 

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Butter

Editor's note: We're splitting Savala's interview into two episodes, so tune in to part two on March 19 to hear Savala's "classy and trashy" butters.

Part two will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this the second part of this conversation.

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Virginia

All right. Well, this was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Just tell folks where we find you and how we support your work.

Savala

Oh, it's been a serious joy to be here. I could do it all again. 

The best way to support my work is, of course, to buy Good Woman: A Reckoning and share it with the women in your life that you love, and maybe even the the men in your life that you love.

Virginia

I agree with that. 

Savala

If you can't buy it, you can get it at libraries, or borrow it from a friend. Obviously, as an author, I'm interested in book sales, but mostly I'm interested in the ideas in the book doing good in the world. So read Good Woman.

If people want to hang out a little bit, I'm on Instagram at savalanolan. SavalaNolan.com is my website, which is another way to get in touch with me. I totally welcome that. I love doing book clubs, talking to readers, all that stuff, so if folks are interested, they should reach out.

Virginia  

Thank you, Savala. This was such a joy.

Savala

Thank you, Virginia. The pleasure was mine.

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Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.

This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!)

We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴

🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

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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! 

Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team.

Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday.

Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville.

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Episode 233 Transcript

Virginia

We have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin. 

Kim

Hi, hi, hi. 

Virginia

We are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting.

Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her.

Kim  

I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions. 

Virginia

Truly harrowing.

Kim

I'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet.

Virginia  

Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced?

Kim

230,000.

Virginia

230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on
Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you.

Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions?

Corinne  

My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work?

Kim  

When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now. 

That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?"

So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise.

Virginia  

Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive.

Kim  

When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff.

That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life.

Virginia  

That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this.

Corinne  

Yeah. I was a regular listener.

Virginia  

Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people.

I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space?

Kim  

For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on. 

And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was. 

And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing.

Virginia  

She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine.

Kim

Oh right. I forgot about that, her original handle.

Virginia

Dances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix. 

Kim  

There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people.

Virginia  

Yeah, it's so true.

Corinne  

Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from? 

Kim  

Oh, this question.

Corinne

If you want to skip it ...

Kim

It brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it. 

Virginia

It's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory.

Kim

In 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me. 

Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore.

Virginia  

A blonde-ish mule.

Corinne  

I would consider you blonde. 

Virginia  

I still would consider you blonde. 

Corinne

Also Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus?

Virginia

I am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn.

Corinne

This is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn.

Kim

John, my husband, is a Capricorn.

Virginia  

I don't know what that means. 

Kim

We're very compatible.

Corinne  

Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon.

Virginia  

Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology.

But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is. 

The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you.

Kim  

There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name.

Virginia  

I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure. 

Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore have any pets?

Kim  

The bookstore has so many pets. We have shop dogs. Ann famously has a dog, Nemo. He appears in most of the videos. Before Nemo she had a cute little guy named Sparky, who I loved so much. There's a back office staff and they almost all have dogs and bring their dogs to work. 

Virginia

Love this. 

Kim

There's one bookseller who has a dog, but she's on maternity leave, so we're a little bit short on dogs that are out on the floor, but in the back office, it's dog central. 

This is my second time working there. I worked there in 2019. I've mostly been self-employed and worked from home for a really long time. My mood was starting to get dark and my therapist suggested it would be nice to have some socialization and to leave my house one or two days a week. I was friendly with Parnassus, so I asked, "Is this a thing?" And they were excited, so they hired me to be a part-time bookseller back in 2019. Then the pandemic hit and they closed for a long time and it just didn't make sense anymore. 

I went and did a whole other job for a few years and left that job last year and went back to the bookstore. Same thing. I still work from home and I work at the bookstore one or two days a week.

I do actually love a million things about it, but my favorite thing this round is everyone I work with is 24 years old, give or take. I love them so much. It is so invigorating to be around a whole staff of 24 year olds. They all love their parents. They have really good parents. They're mostly queer, which makes it extra nice that none of their parents were bad. Their parents are super accepting. They're all really smart and they're all funny. The things that are funny to them are so strange. There are all these long running jokes about, like, which Muppet are you? That's a fun thing for Gen Z.

Virginia  

That sounds delightful. I mean, I think bookstore people are just the best people and the most charming weirdos. And I love hearing that 24 year olds love their parents. Because even though my oldest kid is 12, and we have a ways to go, fingers crossed we'll get there.

Kim  

Yeah. Our generation, not so much.

Virginia  

It's not a given. Let's put it that way. It's not a given.

We're going to do a lightning round of fun, goofy questions so we can all get to know you better. Corinne, why don't you kick it off?

Corinne  

All right, first question. Tell us about your pets.

Kim  

Ooh, I have two official pets. I have two cats. They came in at different times. They're both street cats. One is Nomi. He's kind of a Siamese cat. The other one is your regular striped street cat. His name is Benny.

Virginia

And you have an owl in your backyard. 

Kim

I have an owl. I live in the country, so we have deer, turkey, owls, hawks, a skunk and a lot of snakes.

Virginia  

Nice.

Favorite hobbies? I know from Instagram you are into collage making and you are into puzzles and I'm here for both of them.

Kim  

Yes, you are part of my puzzle journey. I knew that you got that table and you were doing them, and I thought, Ooh, that seems relaxing. We moved into this house last year, and I thought, Who am I going to be in the country? I'm going to be someone who does puzzles, and I'm going to get a puzzle table. And I did.

Virginia  

It's so relaxing. The best.

Kim  

The collage thing is new. I went to a divorce party and we were doing blackout poetry collages. I had never heard of any of this. I had the time of my life and my friend was like, You can just do this at home. And so now I do.

Virginia  

Corinne was nodding because Corinne is cooler and of course she knows what black out poetry collages are. I do not. 

Corinne

I think you do, as well. 

Virginia

Is it like what Kate Baer writes? Like blacked out words? Okay, that is cool. I love that.

Corinne  

Kim, tell us your favorite comfort food or snacks.

Kim  

I've needed a lot of comfort this week. My go-to is chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. You do need carbs when you're this stressed out because your body's trying to slow you down and get you to rest and sleep. So there's been a lot of tendies in my life.

Corinne  

Are these from a specific restaurant? Or the freezer section?

Kim  

This week they're from a grocery store. There's a proliferation of chicken stuff here - the Nashville hot chicken. Truly, everywhere you go, there's hot chicken and there's tenders. The driving force of Nashville is chicken tenders.

Corinne

Sounds like heaven.

Virginia

Burnt Toast retreat in Nashville?? We just eat chicken tenders for three days? Start planning it now. That sounds great. 

Favorite thing you wore recently, and what makes it your favorite?

Kim  

Let's talk about jeans. I don't know what we're supposed to be wearing anymore. I am still comfortable in skinny jeans.

Virginia

It's okay. This is a jeans safe space.

Kim

I'm locked and loaded in those high-rise, skinny jeans. But that is not what we're supposed to be wearing anymore.

Virginia  

They're real mad at us for still wanting to wear them.

Kim  

Let me tell you what the people I work with wear. It looks like I work with the Insane Clown Posse. They are wearing jeans so big and baggy it blows my mind. So I thought, Let me try. I bought a pair of - everything comes from Big Undies - I bought these Old Navy barrel jeans and I feel nuts in them. But I wore them to work and everyone was like, That's what you're supposed to look like! I've never been more uncomfortable in my life than when I wear these jeans. 

Corinne  

You realize you're going to have to send us photos, right? We're going to be texting your co-workers to take secret photos of you. 

Kim

Oh, my God.

Virginia  

We're going to need a photo.

Kim  

I went to a museum recently and wore those Old Navy barrel jeans - light wash, I will add - very uncomfortable.

Virginia  

You went right into the deep end of that swimming pool.

Kim  

I went in. And then I have this Universal Standard shirtdress. They have them in white and black. It's just a button up, floor length thing. I wore that, obviously unbuttoned from the waist down, and then I have those Crocs Dylan platform clogs.

Corinne  

My God, this is very chic outfit. 

Kim

I have the ones that are like clown shoes.

Corinne

They're platform Crocs.

Kim  

I wore that to the museum and I think it's the coolest I've ever looked, but it's the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life.

Virginia  

So cool though.

Corinne  

Dying to see it. 

Kim

It's my only outfit. Everything else is workout clothes.

Virginia  

You have one outfit. You're set. 

I mean, jeans are a whole conversation. That silhouette and changing from how we've been programmed, I feel you. But even wearing something where you're like, I know this is cool, but it feels so different from what I like. The way the trends have changed. I do feel like that is one of the oddest things about getting older - suddenly realizing the clothes are so unfamiliar. Corinne is the baby of the podcast, so she might not be able to relate to that.

Corinne  

Kim, how old are you?

Kim

I'm 49. I turn 50 this year.

Virginia  

Ooh, exciting. When's your birthday? 

Kim

It’s a whole thing. I'm working through it.

Corinne  

Wait, what if you guys have the same birthday?

Kim  

I'm May 20.

Virginia

I'm April 30.

Kim

Oh, you're an April Taurus.

Virginia  

And that means a thing?

I feel that it is a whole thing about clothes. You're just like, It's making less and less sense. I'm trying, but I don't know.

Kim  

It's hard. I think we're just supposed to feel stupid.

Corinne  

Well, not to change the subject, but how do you feel about brownies? Are you an edge, corner or center of the pan person? 

Kim

Center. I can't deal with the edges.

Virginia  

Same. 

Kim

It needs to all be the same texture.

Virginia  

You've got to pair up with your edge people so that you can get the brownies you want.

Corinne  

Following up that groundbreaking question, peanut butter in the fridge or pantry?

Kim  

Pantry. I didn't know anyone put it in the fridge. But during the storm, we stayed at a hotel for eight days, and then we moved into someone's empty house, and they had their peanut butter in the fridge. I was like, are we supposed to be doing this?

Virginia  

Yes, that's what the Lord intended. I am.

Corinne  

I am also a fridge peanut butter person.

Kim

Are you supposed to?

Virginia  

Not from a food safety perspective, but it spiritually feels correct to me. It feels like it should be cold. I threw this in here because it was a recent poll on Burnt Toast and the people were against me on this. 

Corinne

Oh, wow. 

Virginia

When my boyfriend moved in, he was like, Why is the peanut butter in the fridge? What's happening? You're insane. And I was like, well, let's check with the public, assuming that my Burnt Toasties would rally around me. Instead they were all like, What are you doing? 

Corinne  

The only open stuff in my pantry is crackers and cookies. Open stuff goes in the fridge. 

Virginia

If it has a lid, it needs to be cold.

Kim

But what about hot sauce?

Corinne

Fridge.

Virginia  

Yeah, in the fridge.

Kim

We do, too. But I have started to think i'm not supposed to because, at restaurants, it's just on the table. 

Corinne

This is true. 

Virginia  

You have a good point. I'm not saying it's correct, but I'm saying it's correct. 

Another favorite Burnt Toast question that a reader submitted that we think is very fun to ask people is, which liquids would you want shooting out of your fingers? If you could have fingers that shoot liquids.

Corinne  

Each finger can be a separate liquid.

Virginia  

But also, if you don't want to think of five, it's fine. If you're like, I just want a Coke finger. That's all I need.

Corinne  

It could also be a liquid that's not something you drink.

Kim  

Like what?

Corinne

Gasoline. That's my new best answer. I would want gas to be able to shoot out of my finger.

Kim  

I did just had to buy a generator. I hope this episode doesn't give me PTSD when I listen to it in a month and remember how traumatized I am from the storm. I'll be like, Why did I keep mentioning generators and hotels?

Ok, I think it would be iced coffee, like a cold brew; Pamplemousse La Croix; honestly, orange juice. Love orange juice. Love an acid. That's it. Those are my three. I'm not a soft drink person.

Corinne  

Well, are you an electrolyte person?

Kim  

Oh, my God. I've been dying to talk to you about this. No, they're fake science, Corinne.

Corinne  

Well, fake science works for me.

Kim

No, I'm not. I used to be.

Corinne  

Talk to me when you come to high elevation.

Kim  

You know what? Honestly, that's fair. I have been in your part of the country a lot the last few years. We have to go to L.A. a few times a year. During COVID we couldn't fly, so we started driving, and now we are obsessed with driving cross-country.

Corinne  

Oh, wow. We really should talk.

Kim  

I didn't know you yet, but the last time we were in Albuquerque I told Virginia I wanted your phone number to ask you where to get a breakfast burrito. 

Corinne

Oh, my God! Yeah, you should have!

Virginia  

Corinne always has that intel.

Kim  

But no, the high altitude, that's legit.

Virginia  

I'm excited to have another electrolyte skeptic in the podcast. That's going to be helpful for me.

Virginia  

The beverage I will never be needing less of is Diet Coke. Are you pro or con Diet Coke, and if you are not pro Diet Coke, what do you drink?

Kim  

I'm pro Diet Coke, especially with pizza. I drink one on the days I'm at the bookstore. I just need one halfway through to keep going. I do love Diet Coke. I just wake up and drink coffee. That's typically it for the day, but if I'm out to eat or if I'm at work, I drink a Diet Coke. 

Virginia

Yeah, it's a nice little treat.

Corinne  

I just learned that there's a difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero.

Virginia  

Obviously! There's a huge difference!

Corinne

But what is it? No one can really articulate it.

Virginia

The taste.

Corinne  

But why are they making two zero calorie Cokes?

Virginia  

Diet culture.

Kim  

I think it's gender. I think they think women want Diet Coke and men do not.

Virginia  

Men are drinking a manly Coke Zero? That doesn’t sound more masculine.

Corinne  

But what is the difference? Is it different sweeteners?

Virginia  

I am Googling it to get to the bottom of this. "Coke Zero aims to replicate the classic Coke taste using a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium." Diet Coke uses only aspartame.

Corinne  

So it is the sweeteners. They both have caffeine?

Virginia  

They both have caffeine. They both are calorie-free and sugar-free. Diet Coke is where you want to go for that pure aspartame hit, which is what I'm looking for. 

Corinne  

Speaking of Diet Coke, any other diet-y foods or habits that you've reclaimed?

Kim  

Recently, I've started eating Uncrustables, which I hadn't had for a long time. When I was doing Iron Man training, that was what you'd take on a long bike ride. So I've associated that with needing to refuel during workouts. But I've started eating them again.

Virginia  

They're so good. A great purse snack. I like to have one for errand running.

Kim  

I've also started doing that. I just throw them in there. They're great because the purse thaws it out.

Virginia  

Yes, exactly. I put it between my sunglasses case and my wallet. It gets nice and toasty.

Kim  

And honestly? Yogurt. I quit eating yogurt for a long time, but it turns out you can have yogurt for fun.

Corinne

Yogurt is good.

Virginia  

Especially if you can have the full fat yogurt.

Kim

Oh, my God. Game changer. I bought it on accident because they were out of the one I buy. I was like, Oh, it never occurred to me to switch.

Virginia  

The one thing RFK, Jr. and I agree on is full fat yogurt. The one overlap in our otherwise completely disparate Venn diagram circles.

Kim

That disgusting, broken clock of a man.

Virginia  

Any diet-y foods or habits that you'll never touch again that you're like, Nope, that ship has sailed?

Kim  

Turkey bacon and turkey sausage. 

Virginia

Let that go. Just, why?

Kim

I'm just going to eat pork if I'm going to eat pork. Oh, Lean Cuisine. Never bringing that back. All kinds of snacks. I could never eat a pretzel again for the rest of my life.

Corinne  

Oh, wow. I love pretzels.

Kim  

Or unbuttered popcorn. All those zero point foods.

Virginia  

The ones that I hear people fully reclaim are cottage cheese, but again, pivoting to full fat cottage cheese. Rice cakes surprisingly have a lot of devotees. That's one where I'm like, No thanks. People like the crunch. I don't know.

Kim  

The exercise stuff I remember more. All of that has just gone away. 

Corinne  

Never going to do another Iron Man? 

Kim

No, I am not. I just take little walks.

Virginia  

So much better.

Corinne  

Do you have any current favorite TV shows?

Kim  

Oh, my God. My favorite topic is television!

I am watching The Wire for the first time. I watched season one and I'm obsessed with it. I'm going to start season two as soon as I have internet in my house again.

I am a middle-aged white woman, so I love RuPaul's Drag Race. I am its main demographic. I'm watching that right now. There's a new season. And I'm watching The Pitt.

Virginia  

I can't watch The Pitt because of medical trauma, but I do think I would like it. I need a website that gives me spoilers, so I can pick and choose which episodes, then I can do it.

Corinne  

Our last question is what are you reading right now?

Kim  

Ooh, I'm reading Lindy West's next memoir that's about to come out in March. It's called Adult Braces.

Virginia  

🎉 Spoiler, but Kim did get Lindy to come on the pod soon. So get excited, folks!

Kim  

I've read all of her books. I think this is her fourth book and second memoir. Man, it's blowing me away. I love her writing, and this is beyond anything she's written before, not to disparage her other books, but this is a whole new level of vulnerability. It's so good. I'm reading Heated Rivalry, also. 

Corinne

Oh, fun!

Virginia  

I have both of those on tap to start as soon as I finish what I'm reading right now. I can't wait to read Lindy, and I can't wait to read the Heated Rivalry books, which I ordered from your friend's bookstore, Tropes & Trifles. 

Kim  

That's awesome. My friend Lauren owns that bookstore. She's great. Her bookstore is great.

Virginia  

It felt like a really good way to support Minnesota, and also my own need for more gay hockey after Corinne got me into Heated Rivalry.

Corinne  

Finally! It took so long. 

Virginia  

It did. People were so mad.

Kim

It took longer than it needed to.

Virginia

I know. I just missed it somehow. And then I was like, Okay, I'm here. I get it.

Kim  

I'm in a romance group chat. One of the people in the group chat is Lauren, who owns Tropes & Trifles. The first episode hit HBO, the group chat lit up. They all just said, "All of you, watch it now."

Virginia  

Like, just stop what you’re doing.

Kim

We have to talk about this collectively. So I watched it in real time. It was a mandate.

Corinne

Amazing.

Virginia

Delightful.

🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

Butter

Virginia  

Well, this was so fun. I'm glad we got to chat with you more. Before we wrap up, of course, we have to get you to give us some butter. What do you have for us?

(Editor's note: my mind went blank, so we skipped to Corinne and then came back to me.)

Corinne  

I'm going to recommend a book that I'm reading right now and really enjoying. It's called Long Bright River, and it's by Liz Moore, who wrote God Of the Woods that a lot of people read last year. I've been listening to the audiobook version and it's great. It's kind of a detective/crime situation, but there's a lot of twists and turns, and finding out things about the main character that you didn't know at the beginning. I'm really enjoying it. I'm also not quite done, so if something crazy happens at the end, don't blame me. I think I have only an hour left, so I feel pretty confident recommending it.

Kim

Do you know it's a TV show, too?

Corinne  

Oh no, I didn't, but that makes so much sense. I was listening to it and thinking it would make a great show. What is the show?

Kim  

Same name. It has Amanda Seyfried in it.

Virginia

Oh, I love her.

Kim

It's a great cast. It's actually a great show.

Corinne  

I'll have to check that out.

Virginia  

I love that book. Kim, do you want to go next?

Kim  

My butter is boba. I somehow had never had it even though there are great places all over Nashville that have it. But back to chicken tenders, near the place I live now, there's a little strip mall and it has a chicken tenders restaurant and a boba place. They're the only two things there. I went over there and they were so nice. They had me taste a bunch of stuff and they made me an iced coffee boba with a brown sugar top off. I'm obsessed with it. Anytime I'm there - it's actually across the street from where I am right now. Will I get one today? Yes, I will.

Virginia  

I think you need one after our morning.

Kim  

Why did I wait so long for boba? It's so fun and delicious.

Virginia  

I have to confess, I don't think I've ever had it.

Corinne  

This reminds me that there's an amazing TikTok of some guy trying boba for the first time.

Virginia  

I will endorse an item of clothing. It's fast fashion, which we know makes for a problematic butter, but I know I'm going to stand by this one because it is the third time I've bought this cardigan. It is the pranayama wrap from Athleta. I wear the 2x. It's roomy on me, but it only goes up to 3x. It's not a super size inclusive brand, but Corinne just said she doesn't care.

Corinne  

I never said that. I feel like a wrap is a flexibly sized item of clothing.

Virginia  

I agree. Athleta is a brand that frequently makes me mad because Old Navy is making plus sizes. You're the same company. The same as with Gap!

I am at the point in winter where my perimenopausal self is cold and hot at the same time, and I can't wear my sweaters because I'm so sweaty. It's a real thing. You just get to a point where your sweaters are too warm, but it's still cold, and what are you going to wear?

I've been getting more into the sweatshirt space, but even some of them are too heavy. This wrap is a really good one. It's lightweight, but it's warm, and it comes in different colors. I got this purplish-blue color on sale and I'm living in it.

My butter is a layer that you can actually be warm, but not die in.

Corinne

Amazing.

Kim

I support that.

Virginia  

Thank you, but I do acknowledge that it is not a great brand, and I would like them to make larger sizes.

Kim, this was a delight! Tell folks where they can follow you, at your website and the name you don't like.

Kim  

The Blonde Mule everywhere is me. As I mentioned, I bought that name.

Virginia  

She owns it.

Kim 

It’s easy to find me. TheBlondeMule.com is my newsletter where I write about books and pop culture. When I've got the bandwidth, I write essays. And then @TheBlondeMule on all the platforms.

Virginia  

You'll also find her in the Burnt Toast comments and Big Undies comments. And know that she is working a lot of magic behind the scenes here. You'll probably hear from her more every now and then, as well. 

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Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.

Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.

This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow us on social! 

Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.  

Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies.

Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders.

Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism! 

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode!

Listen to hear about:

⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life

⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture

⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole life

Plus, serious stuff, like:

⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress

⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse

⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for February

To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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! 

Lauren is a psychologist, a fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a certified eating disorder specialist and approved consultant for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She's also a Certified Body Trust Provider and directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA, a group practice in Los Angeles. Lauren is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder and a co-author of the brand new The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders.

Lauren joined me to chat about how she and her colleagues have been working to make eating disorder treatment less fatphobic, because, yes, that really needed to happen. We also get into why it's feeling harder than ever to treat eating disorders, or live with one, in this era of RFK, Jr., MAHA and GLP-1s.

Plus what to do if your child is hiding food, lying or otherwise showing signs of developing an eating disorder. When do you intervene? And how do you do so in the most supportive way possible?

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Episode 231 Transcript

Virginia

I am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time.

Lauren

Comrades, for sure. 

Virginia

I've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions.

Lauren

I should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating. 

Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied. 

But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments. 

So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive.

We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work.

Virginia

Can you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in eating disorder treatment, or just don't know the world well, it's like, 'What do you mean eating disorder treatments are not weight inclusive? Isn't that where you go to feel better about your body?' Give an example of what CBT used to do that was harmful, and how you've updated it.

Lauren

When I was trained in CBT, I always thought it was a non-diet approach, because the focus is on regular eating and including all foods. So the center of the model is still good. But some of the fatphobic elements that were in the original treatment were - one was this insistence on regular weekly weighing and the client knowing their weight. And that if the therapist refused to weigh the client weekly, it was the therapist's own anxiety and avoidance of tolerating the client's distress over being weighed. But if you're in a bigger body, being weighed is more than just exposure. It can be traumatic. 

Virginia

Yeah. 

Lauren

We don't need to put people through that, where every week they see their weight. So that's one of the first things that we eliminated. 

The other thing, there's behavioral experiments with a focus on challenging what they call the broken cognition. The broken cognition is this belief, and again, this was developed on primarily thin, white women who had the belief that if 'I eat a cupcake, I'll gain five pounds.' The behavioral experiment was to have them eat a cupcake, weigh them before and weigh them the following week, and prove that they didn't gain five pounds, but that's also hugely fatphobic. Because you're trying to prove to people that it's all in their heads, that weight stigma is not a thing.

Virginia

Well, and you're saying, 'Look, the scary, terrible thing didn't happen.'

Lauren

Which reinforces that that's the scariest thing.

Virginia

Even what you're saying, weighing folks in bigger bodies can be traumatic, not because inherently it's bad to be in a bigger body, but because if you're in a bigger body and you've been weighed in medical settings, you've had that number weaponized against you for so long. That's the trauma you're alluding to. 

Lauren

Yes, exactly.

Virginia

I see, so it was a lot of methodology around weight numbers meant to reassure thin women that 'Don't worry, you won't get fat.'

Lauren

Exactly.

Virginia

Which really leaves out any fat person with an eating disorder, and doesn't really do the thin women any favors either.

Lauren

Right. Because it just reinforces this fear that weight gain is the worst thing that could happen to somebody.

Virginia

That's fascinating. It sounds like a lot of very much needed updates and a really terrific resource for folks. I saw in the back of the workbook under Resources, you listed Burnt Toast as one of the newsletters with an online community dialogue. It means a lot to have us spotlighted in this way. We do work hard to have our chat rooms and safe spaces in the comment section for folks coming for support. You also listed a lot of folks that we love and look to as leaders in this space: Christy Harrison, Ragen Chastain, Rachel Milner, Sabrina Strings, Bree Campos, Chrissy King, etc. How do you think about the importance of community in the work you do with your clients as you've been reframing CBT in this way?

Lauren

We are big fans of yours and all the people you've named, and it was really important to us because here we are, three white women with privilege doing the updating of CBT and we wanted to take it further. 

It was really important to us that we learned from people with more marginalized identities. We negotiated with our editor to have sensitivity readers and we had people advising us on some of the things that we might not have been as aware of, like food insecurity, gender considerations, and the experience of people in larger bodies. As references, we tried to include some of the thought leaders that we've really learned from. 

Community is super important in this work because we're asking people to go against the grain of society. Many of the people that come to us for help with eating disorders are people in larger bodies who have been told by medical doctors and people in their lives to lose weight. And then they come to us and we say, 'Well, you're not eating enough.' And they think we're kind of crazy to say that. 

It really helps when you're asking people to do this work, which is so hard, to have other people in their lives who are supporting this. Many people don't have people in their personal lives who are anti-diet. Where do you find those people? A lot of it is online and in podcasts. I always tell people it helps, even if it's you and me and the person listening to the podcast. They're hearing the interviewer and the guest and there's two other people who are in this world with you. 

Virginia

That's right.

Lauren

It helps a lot. And I do think that is the missing piece for people in bigger bodies who experience disordered eating - they don't have the support.

Virginia

Especially right now. We're in a really dark cultural moment. You know, just like a swirling vortex of badness in a lot of ways. So it feels even harder, because what the federal government is telling us, what we're seeing in the news, etc, etc, is also running counter to what will actually promote healing. 

To that end, I'd love if we could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your work in this dark time. We just had RFK’s latest USDA dietary guidelines come out.

Lauren, how are you feeling about the new food pyramid?

Lauren

Sadly, I feel like I am not going to be able to retire anytime soon. The culture just propagates and perpetuates disordered eating in so many ways. Obviously eating is so much more individualized than just following a guideline, but what I can say is that I have never seen a person with binge eating who was not restricting their carbs. 

Virginia

That’s really interesting.

Lauren

Carbs are basically the building blocks of what we eat, and they should be. A lot of the people who complain of what has now been popularized as the term "food noise," are not eating enough, and especially not eating enough carbs or starches. I expect that we'll see many more people coming in saying, 'I'm preoccupied with thoughts of food,' or 'I'm bingeing,' or 'I'm emotionally eating.' In our work, and what our workbook focuses on, is 'Are you eating enough regularly throughout the day? Are you including the various food groups? Are you eating enough starches and fats?' That's the mainstay of recovering from an eating disorder.

Virginia

Feeding your brain.

Lauren

Your brain needs glucose to think logically.

Virginia

Yeah, and not just at the tiny bottom point of the pyramid, but throughout the day. This is something I've learned from you that I want to make sure we say really clearly, because I think it's something people know but lose track of in their own work on these issues. Often folks come to you and say, 'I binge eat. I'm out of control with food.' When you start working with them your take is quite different.

Lauren

Right. All the eating disorders are really driven by restriction or not eating enough, and it's true that most people come to us and think they're eating too much. They're complaining about emotional eating or binge eating. 

As a cognitive behavioral therapist, one of the things that CBT therapists do is ask people to keep records. Early on I was taught to have people record what they're eating, and that really offers an insight into what's going on. In my group practice, we do a lot of training of more junior clinicians, including graduate students. It's really exciting to me when I have a graduate student who's been with me for a couple months, and I say, "Well, what do you think the diagnosis is?" And they'll say to me, "Well, I'm waiting to see the food records because the person's complaining that they're eating too much." But they know from having been through this a few times, that when you see what someone's eating, you see a lot of restriction, a lot of skipped meals, a lot of very sparse meals. 

People really do think they're eating so much because the culture is so focused on eating these very low intakes, and that's been kind of normalized on social media by wellness culture. People are really shocked when we tell them that they need to eat more, and that is the biggest part of it. Regular eating is kind of the antidote to all disordered eating. In our workbook, we're always like, 'Are you sure you're eating enough?' And I don't want to reinforce dieting by teaching someone strategies to prevent binge eating when they're not eating enough because I'm not going to be successful at that. Because that's the hunger drive and that's what keeps us alive. People may have short term strategies that work, but I definitely don't work on stopping the binge eating or the emotional eating until someone is really eating enough.

Virginia

Eating enough to support the idea that you would eat less at this one point in the day.

Lauren

And then most often, a lot of the binge eating and emotional eating decreases once people start to eat more regularly at meals and snacks. The food noise goes down.

Virginia

Let's talk about food noise. The rise of GLP-1s has really popularized that concept, but also, I would say, as you noted, misdefined it in many situations. How is all of that discourse impacting your work with your clients right now?

Lauren

It's definitely impacting us. We are seeing a lot of people coming in on GLP-1s, or contemplating GLP-1s. We always need to distinguish people who are on GLP-1s for medical conditions versus people on them solely for weight loss. 

One of the problems with being on them for weight loss is that they're on higher dosages, and that's where you get more side effects. We do get some people who come in complaining of binge eating or emotional eating, and then they're on a GLP-1 and they suddenly have no appetite. It's harder to get them to eat enough throughout the day.

Virginia

Right. If you're trying to go back and say, 'Wait, let's look at where you're restricting,' and now they can't access any appetite to eat.

Lauren

Or they're nauseous and throwing up. 

Virginia

Oh, God.

Lauren

We have been successful in a number of cases in helping our clients advocate for their doctors to actually lower their doses. Sometimes that helps, but there's a lot of nuance, right? I think we don't know enough about the full impact of these medications. Might there be some benefit for people with eating disorders in certain circumstances? Maybe. But it's a scary thing, and it definitely makes our work harder when we're focused on trying to get people to eat regularly throughout the day.

Virginia

That concept's been getting a lot of media attention, GLP-1s as an eating disorder treatment. But it sounds like you have major reservations about that idea.

Lauren

Because it does the opposite of the work we're trying to get people to do. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the best validated treatment. It was developed in the '90s and there's a lot of research to support it. The model is regular eating, including all foods, not being restrictive. And symptoms typically get better. We know that with weight loss, most people don't keep weight off long term.

Virginia

Right, and most people aren't able to stay on these drugs long term is also what we're seeing in a lot of research now.

Lauren

We do see some people who have been on GLP-1s and then they go off them and their weight is increasing and maybe the binge eating is coming back and starting again. It's a bit of a quick fix. That doesn't solve the problem.

Virginia

It's just rooted in that old thinking of binge eaters must eat too much, take away their appetite, solve binge eating, as opposed to what you've been steadily making the case for. And all the evidence is showing binge eaters are responding to restriction. And so a drug that encourages more restriction, how would that long term solve binge eating? 

I would love to also talk a little bit about managing eating disorders and disordered eating in kids. You specialize in teenagers. Whenever I have a reader or a friend, as I now parent a middle schooler, reach out with concerns. I'm always like, 'Check out. Dr. Mulheim's work. This is your first stop.'

You're a big proponent of Family Based Treatment, FBT, for adolescent eating disorders. On your website you wrote, "I do not believe that parents cause eating disorders, but I know they can be an important part of the solution. Hence, I'm an advocate for the inclusion of parents in the treatment of their children."

Let's talk a little bit about how parents can help. What behaviors and symptoms do you take seriously? How do you be part of that solution?

Lauren

The first thing is that eating disorders in children and teens is harder to spot than you think. My advice to parents is, if you have concerns, definitely check them out. Some of the signs we see are stopping eating certain foods, eliminating dessert or not eating meals and saying they've already eaten. We may not see weight loss in in a child or a teen. They may just fail to gain, because remember, they're supposed to be gaining over time. Sometimes they're growing and they're not gaining, and that's the equivalent to weight loss in an adult. 

We also see things like social withdrawal. What looks like depression, poor sleep, or loss of interest in activities. It can look like depression or anxiety. Or complaints of stomach aches. A lot of parents go down the gastrointestinal route, trying to figure out what's going on. It can be very confusing. Family based treatment is a wonderful evidence based treatment. It was developed at Stanford and it's a manualized treatment that basically allows teens to recover in the home. Because traditionally, teens were pulled out of the home. Parents were blamed. There was this saying about how it was always the mother's fault.

Virginia

Of course. Clearly.

Lauren

Clearly following on the trend of the schizophrenogenic mother, the autistic mother.

Virginia

We cause autism. We cause eating disorders. 

Lauren

That has really perpetuated. I still meet people who say it must be the parents. I try to remember we're all in this culture and parents are doing their best. Parents are getting diet messages from all these other health professionals in our culture. I try to remember that they become the messengers of the cultural message. There is often dieting in the home, but does that cause eating disorders in itself? No. And we see that because not all siblings develop an eating disorder. A lot of parents diet and their kids don't develop eating disorders. We have to give parents a chance. The great thing about FBT is it's done through family meals and normalizing eating all foods. It's a great chance for families to come together. 

I find it very powerful when the parents are unlearning their diet culture with their teens. They're able to do that. Sometimes it's a little bit of a hard wake up call, but most parents can get on board pretty quickly. It's really powerful when you see a whole family change the way they've been eating. It gives the parents a chance to learn the information. Whereas if the teen goes off to residential, the family doesn't come along and then the teen goes back into that home, so it's challenging. It's a lot of work for parents because they become the treatment team. 

Virginia

It is a lot of sitting at the table with a kid who doesn't want to eat, which, any parent, regardless of whether they've managed an eating disorder, can tell you that's a nightmare. That's really hard to do and often it can feel counter to some of the other messages we get. If you're looking at the Ellen Satter model of feeding kids, it will be very much not forcing kids to take bites, and in FBT, when you have a kid refeeding after a lot of restriction, you do have to require them to eat. And that feels really strange. 

Some of the interviews I've done with families who've done this, it is so moving to hear the parents work through their own stuff and come together in a different way to support the child. It's pretty transformative.

For parents who are noticing some of the early symptoms, like hiding food, or kids may be lying about what they're eating, how do you recommend parents manage things in those stages? Like, okay, I'm keeping an eye. I'm probably going to talk to the pediatrician. Probably going to, you know, do I need to level this up? And also, how do I react in the moment to some of this stuff?

Lauren

With as much compassion as they can, and in a non-shaming way. If you think that you know your kids are lying about what they're eating or hiding food, we really want to just encourage them to eat more with you. Which, again, this comes back to all eating disorders require people to eat more. If someone's hiding food, maybe they're not getting enough at meals. If someone is refusing to eat meals, they're not getting enough at meals. It's a good chance for parents to be more watchful, to try to make sure that meals are eaten and that teens and children have access to a variety of foods. That they're getting their nutritional needs met. 

A lot of parents, again, because the cultural messaging is so intense, think people should be eating less. If you've taken care of a growing teen, you see how much they need.

Virginia

How much your grocery bill has increased.

Lauren

Parents may not be aware that their teens are supposed to be going through growth spurts. I do some trainings with Rebecca Peebles, who's an amazing pediatrician, and she emphasizes how teens are supposed to gain about 50 pounds as they go through puberty. Where are you going to get that weight if you're not eating enough. The growth pattern for a lot of kids is to grow out before they grow up. There's supposed to be this weight gain. We observe teens who are starting to gain weight to fuel this growth, and then someone panics, whether it's the pediatrician or a parent or the child themselves, and they start to restrict. That's the prime time for when anorexia can strike. If they had been left alone, they would have just gained and grown. Now you have to do all this work to get them back to that weight so that they can start to grow again. 

Virginia

I think that's so helpful to normalize. This is what we want our kids to be doing. I'm parenting middle schoolers and I am shocked sometimes how fast a group of 12 year olds can empty the snack cabinet or the ice cream freezer, but this is what we want them to be doing right now. 

When you see that hiding food behavior, parents often think they need to correct that behavior, instead of stepping back and thinking about what led to the hiding. And is this a food that you've given a message they shouldn't have as much of? Or as you're saying, are there other parts in the day where they're not getting enough? I also think a lot about the schedules these kids are under. They're at school all day, then they're going to sports or play rehearsal. My kid was out of the house for 12 hours yesterday. She was starving when she got home, and if you are coming with a diet mindset, you might be alarmed by that. But it completely makes sense that she didn't have enough time to eat during her school day and needed to make up for it. 

Lauren

Yeah. 

Virginia

Well, this is so helpful. Your work is reassuring and grounded. Whether folks are dealing with an active eating disorder or not, if you're parenting teens, if you're working on your own stuff with food, Lauren's work is an incredible resource. The workbook is really great, so thank you for that.

Lauren

Thank you. 

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Butter

Virginia

So we wrap up every episode of Burnt Toast with butter, which is our recommendation segment. Do you have any butter for us today?

Lauren

I've been having a lot of fun with gardening fruit trees in Los Angeles. It's been really fun. I just recently pruned a peach tree to get it ready to hopefully bud and produce fruit. Peach trees have to be shaped in a certain way. You don't want the central leader you've got to have key branches. So I studied, and then you have to reduce the fruit, which is very sad.

Virginia

Oh, you have to cut off baby fruit. 

Lauren

You have to cut off baby fruit because otherwise it just produces too much. You want to select which peaches are going to get bigger. That's been fun. And I'm growing an avocado tree. Pretty soon I have to go outside and spray it with sugar water to encourage the bees.

Virginia

Amazing.

Lauren

To hopefully pollinate it. I love that. I've been hand pollinating my passion fruit vine, which is a whole other thing.

Virginia

I am so jealous that you can do all of this outside. I am currently raising a indoor orange tree because I live in New York and it is 20 degrees today. It is stressful. I have to tell you, Lauren, I don't think she's living her best life right now. I mean, who among us is in this time of year, but I just added a humidifier because I got a hygrometer. She was starting to lose leaves and her humidity was only 22% because it's so cold, even inside my heated house. It's so cold and dry.

So my butter is going to be my humidifier for my orange tree. I'm hopeful, because she's got fruit on her, and it's starting to ripen, but she's dropping leaves because the air is too dry. It's high stakes over here right now with the orange tree.

Lauren

Being able to grow outside. 

VIrginia

It's more logical than what I'm doing, but I just love the idea of fruit trees. We do have, in my garden outside, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, all that stuff. But I wanted year round joy.

Lauren

In California we have to get the no freeze hours berries.

Virginia

It's a whole different world over there. Fascinating. Well, yay! Here's for fruit trees for everybody! I don't know if I want to recommend everybody get an indoor fruit tree, because it is quite a project, but she is bringing me a lot of joy, as well as I'm stressing and over there filling her humidifier twice a day.

Lauren

Right? It’s a lot of work to take care of these trees.

Virginia

But I'm on it.

Lauren

I'll be back spraying my avocado tree with sugar to invite the bees.

Virginia

You know what? There's also something to be said for an obsessive hobby right now to just give you a little thing to focus on. I can do this. I can spray this tree with sugar water. Because there's a lot we can't control. So you know what? Fruit tree farming seems like a great use of energy. 

Lauren

And then you get to eat them. 

Virginia

Yes, exactly, and that's what I'm really excited for. And make delicious beverages and whatnot.

Lauren, tell folks where we can find you. How we can support your work.

Lauren

My website is https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/. That's where my group practice information is, and my books are listed there. I have blog with a lot of resources for people with eating disorders, and for parents. My books are available wherever you buy books. They're both by New Harbinger Publications and The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders is available now.

Virginia

Amazing. We'll link to all of that. Thank you for being here.

Lauren

Thank you so much for having me.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.

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EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow us on social! 

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Episode 230 Transcript

Virginia

So today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions. 

Corinne

This is kind of my favorite type of episode, 

Virginia

Same. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news? 

Corinne

One thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry. 

Virginia

I haven't watched it. 

Corinne

Okay, but do you know what I'm talking about?

Virginia

Well, I'm just going to Google it real quick.

Corinne

Oh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend.

Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly.

Virginia

Oh come on, it’s a sports thing! 

Corinne

There is so little sports. Let me just tell you.

Virginia

Okay...

Corinne

If you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn. 

Virginia

Oh! Okay.

Corinne

It's based on, like, gay romance novels.

Virginia

Ohhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend.

Corinne

And I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together. 

Virginia

Obviously.

Corinne

It's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie.

Virginia

So okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters? 

Corinne

I'm invested. 

Virginia

You're invested.

Corinne

It's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry. 

And you see their butts a lot.

Virginia

Well, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay.  

Corinne

Then you've probably read the novels.

Virginia

I may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me. 

Corinne

There's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey.

Virginia

 You have learned nothing.

Corinne

 There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know.

Virginia

Oh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup?

Corinne

I don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever.

Virginia

Delightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight. I really do feel like you maybe need to consider a Buffy watch at some point.

Corinne

Next time I have 47 hours unscheduled weeks.

Virginia

I mean, you can chip away at it too. It's on Disney Plus! Oh wait, you probably don't have Disney Plus.

Corinne

My bad. 

Virginia

No that's fair. Well, it's been very fun we're in season four now for the Buffy fans in the audience. And it's going to start getting a little more violent. I'll have to feel it out. But I think we're, at the point of no return.

That's a good TV update. Have you been reading anything good? I read a book that I think you liked, and I don't think I liked it. But I think I'm in the minority. 

Corinne

Which book?

Virginia

Heart The Lover by Lily King.

Corinne

Oh, my God, you didn't like it?!

Virginia

No. What am I missing? 

Corinne

What didn't you like? 

Virginia

I felt like they were all so annoying and pretentious. Is it because I was an English major, so I don't like English majors? We're just pretty annoying, with all the literary references. Okay, we get it. You are boys who read books. I was just like, why would you sleep with either one of them? I don't get it.

Corinne

Oh, fascinating. I mean, I was just sobbing for the entire second half.

Virginia

It does get sad in the second half, but I didn't like him, so I didn't care?

Corinne

You weren't invested.

Virginia

And it's not hard to get me invested in a health journey of any sort! I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but—okay, spoiler alert! We're going to talk about it with spoilers, so that we can really get into it. If you didn't read that book, you'll want to skip ahead about a minute and a half. 

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SCROLL TO NEXT SET OF BUTTER EMOJIS TO AVOID SPOILERS!

Okay, I thought it was real weird that she gave a kid up for adoption, and then was just like, "But I know she's fine. It's fine. It's all fine." And yet she was so worried about the kid she did have who had health issues. I mean, of course she was worried about him— but she had just mentally been like, that one's fine. I picked good people. They had a nice photo. So I know she's having a great childhood. That was really weird to me. 

Corinne

I mean, I felt like that seemed like the decision of a young, stressed out person,

Virginia

Yeah, maybe. And how she keeps talking about it is meant to be a trauma response?

Corinne

It was a questionable young person decision.

Virginia

Yes, definitely. But it felt weird that she would never reflect further upon it as she got into her own motherhood. I'm not saying she was wrong to give the baby up for her adoption. I also think abortion exists, and that would have made sense. But I'm not saying she should have kept the child. I just thought, don't you think you would have gotten any more nuanced in your feelings about it as the years went on?

Corinne

The book is her getting more nuanced about it. Right?

Virginia

Not really! Not about the baby. She's like, Yeah, she's fine. I mean, she finally tells him about it, but.

Corinne

I don't know. I think she was kind of in denial about it, or just avoiding it, and then the book is her coming to terms with it. 

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END OF SPOILERS

Virginia

Well, I just felt like everyone was pretentious and unlikable. And it feels like everyone loves this book so much, and I don't know what I missed. 

Corinne

Have you read her other books? 

Virginia

No, this was my first Lily King, 

Corinne

Okay, because there's also, like a connection to one of the other books. 

Virginia

Well, I'm not going to read it because I didn't like any of these people. But Corinne loved it, guys, so if you love it, if you've read it, let us know in the comments!

I was just surprised. This is the first time I've ever not liked one of your book recs.

Corinne

I am a little surprised, but I think maybe I'm primed to like those college, academic group of kids books. That's a genre I really like.

Virginia

 I think it's a genre I don't like. I think I actively dislike reading about people in college.

Corinne

Yeah, it's interesting, because I'm not like, looking back fondly on my own experience at that time. Yeah. I think I just like, enjoy the dynamics. Did you read A Secret History? 

Virginia

No, 

Corinne

I love that book. So I feel like, this was maybe tapping into that.

Virginia

I think I just think academia is very pretentious?

Corinne

Isn't one of your parents a professor? 

Virginia

Yes I was raised by professors. 

Corinne

So maybe there's something there. 

Virginia

Three out of four of my parents have worked as professors. So yes. I grew up in academia.

Corinne

Okay, well, none of mine have.

Virginia

Well, I am now reading The Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's about this woman, who's sort of lost  in her life and moves into a convent. And I keep thinking "Corinne would really like this book." 

Corinne

It does sound good to me. 

Virginia

I don't know if I like it, but I do think you would really like it.

Usually I'm a big do not finisher if I don't like a book. And I will say Heart The Lover was a snappy read. So I kept going. Because I was like, well, Corinne loved this book, so I'll keep reading to find out when I'll love it. And that was never, but it was a fast read, and this one is too. I'm moving through it quickly, but I think I do need to really root for the characters.

Corinne

That's funny. I have a conversation like this a lot with my mom, because she doesn't like books where the characters are too flawed. We always say it like, if she doesn't like them, she, doesn't want to read it.

Virginia

I am okay with flawed, but they have to be flawed and likable.

Corinne

They have to have redeeming qualities,

Virginia

And maybe some awareness of their flawedness in a interesting way?. I don't know. I don't need them to be good people, but I guess, endearing? And in these two books, I'm not finding anyone that endearing. But they are interesting, all right. 

Corinne

Well I'm also extremely curious to hear about your 30 Day Strength Challenge.

Virginia

Okay, yes! So despite the fact that in our New Year's Day episode, I was like, "We're not doing any January fitness challenges!" Three days later, I was like, Oh, I'm doing a fitness challenge.

It's a challenge created by friend of the show, beloved podcast guest, Anna Maltby, who writes the How to Move newsletter. And she has a 30 day strength training challenge going on this month.

And I saw it, and I love Anna, but I wasn't going to do it. Because I was just like, oh, I'm not going to do that. And then my friend Mary texted a bunch of us and was like, "I really want to do the strength training challenge. Who's in?" and I was like, "Oh, all right, sure, I'll do it with you!" And, it's very fun. It's getting me to work out consistently five days a week, which I never do!

Oh, let me pause and say, we're going to talk some specifics on weights. If you don't want to hear numbers, skip ahead. Man, I'm just getting people to fast forward through this whole episode! We're done with book spoilers, but we might mention weight numbers. So if you don't want that... skip ahead again.

Corinne

And just to clarify, you mean weight lifting numbers. Not body weight numbers.

BUTTER EMOJIS AROUND WEIGHT TALK

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Virginia

No, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with body weight. I am not doing this to lose weight. I am doing this to support my friend who wants to do the challenge, and because I kind of liked the idea of seeing what it would feel like to increase my weight training for a month.

Corinne

So, my question is: It's a 30 day challenge, but you're not doing strength workouts every day for 30 days, right?

Virginia

No, Anna makes her programs very customizable, so you could really do anything. You could do one workout a week and be like, "This is my 30 day challenge." She lets you make your own plan. 

She does include a suggested schedule, which is six workouts a week, but only three of them are weights. It's three days of weights, two days of cardio and then a Pilates day. I'm trimming it down to five days.

[Post-recording correction: It's actually 2 days of weights, plus a "core and conditioning" HIIT workout where only one move involves a weight. Plus 3 suggested cardio and Pilates days.]

And my main goal for this is to see: Is this helping me reliably carve out a few more workout windows in my week? It's getting me to try out days when I wouldn't normally do a workout., and see, does it make sense with the schedule? If so, when I'm done with this challenge, then I'll reflect on, do I want to keep this schedule? Do I want to do go back to two days of weights but do a little more cardio? I'm kind of just using it as, a see how it feels to do more weights and more workouts. To see how it feels to do more movement, and then think about what kind of movement I think I want to keep doing.

Corinne

Cool.

Virginia

 Yeah. it's been fun so far. I did print out the little calendar and write down my plan, and I've been giving myself little stickers. So we love that. I'm only a week into it at this point, so it could all fall apart. But I think Anna's so good at creating challenges that aren't about losing weight. She says this is more prescriptive than her usual work. She is encouraging you to make a schedule and stick to a schedule, to give yourself some accountability, which I think can be interesting. But there's no weight loss goal.

She really wants people to feel empowered to develop weightlifting workouts they do on their own, not with the aid of a video. And I love you Anna, but I'm not going to do that. I just want you to tell me what to do all the time. 

Corinne

Totally. 

Virginia

I don't want fitness mental load, but I am following her advice to, keep track of how much weight I'm lifting. And then to see over the course of the month, if I can increase that weight. So right now there are some moves where I only use 10 or 15 lb weights. Can we go up to 20 or 30? We'll see!

Corinne

I spoke to someone else who is doing this challenge. They were very sore!

Virginia

Yeah, I'm pretty sore. Yesterday, we did a weights workout, and there was one move that required bands, and we didn't have bands. And two of my friends came to do it with me. So we substituted side planks for those moves, and it turned out to be quite a lot of side planks, and my obliques are real unhappy, But, you know, it's like, the good kind of sore where you're like, Oh, I did a thing, yay.

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WEIGHT LIFTING TALK OVER

What about you? How's power lifting going these days?

Corinne

it's going good. I kind of haven't been going very much, because it was just December. Like, did I go at all in December? I feel like maybe just the first week or two.

Virginia

but then you were driving to Oregon and back.

Corinne

Yes, my mom was here and we traveled. So I'm kind of, getting back into it after a little break. And that's always a little hard. For the first couple workouts back, you're like, Oh, I'm weak.

Virginia

Or I like to reframe it as, Wow, I can really feel like I got a hard workout without doing too much.

Corinne

So that's where I'm at. Beginning again! 

Virginia

Well, it is the time of year for that. And also, I support everyone not doing workout challenges. One of my friends who's doing this challenge, as of this recording, has yet to do a workout even though we're six days in because she has Covid, poor thing.

So I think it's really good to do these things, but not do them in a overly obsessive way. Oh and I have a low key goal for myself this year of improving my flexibility. I really would like to have an easier time getting off of the floor. 

Corinne

Is that related to flexibility or not? 

Virginia

I think it's a combination of flexibility and strength. If I think more about my glute muscles, I can get off the floor more easily. But there is also some reaching involved, and I don't know there's mobility, for sure. And I feel like as I've been getting stronger, I've also been getting a little stiffer. And getting off the floor is hard. 

Corinne

Yeah, it is.

Virginia

And it's not a moral imperative, but I end up on the floor a lot because I have kids, so I would like it to be easier to get out of that position.

Corinne

Maybe you need to get rid of all your furniture.

Virginia

That's the thing. That's what we'll do.

Corinne

Because sometimes I sit on the floor when I'm watching TV. I don't know why. I'm just more comfortable. So maybe I should just get rid of all my furniture.

Virginia

Probably that's the next logical step. 

Corinne

I am not sitting on the couch while I watch TV. 

Virginia

But make sure to keep it in your neighbor's house or your in-laws house. 

Corinne

My auxiliary house.

Virginia

So you can go work on it during the day.

For folks who are like, what are they talking about? This is a reference to an episode we did where we looked at is everything a diet, and we looked at an article from Dwell by a man who had given up all of his furniture in service of his family's health. And we're here to say you don't have to do that. Chairs are great.

Okay. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is my new orange tree.

Corinne

Wow. This is an indoor tree.

Virginia

It's an indoor tree. It's my favorite thing I got for Christmas. My mom got me an orange tree, and my eight year old has named it Olive Piper. So it is Olive Piper, the tree. 

Corinne

Olive the orange tree. 

Virginia

Don't overthink it. But it has two oranges on it! They're green, but I'm tracking them turning orange. My mom has an orange tree, and she's been getting lots of oranges off it. And I think she has better light than I do, but I'm really optimistic. It's an exciting new thing to obsess over.

Corinne

 That's really exciting.

Virginia

And if we do get oranges, how thrilling will it be?

Corinne

It seems like an orange tree would smell good.

Virginia

It doesn't smell like anything right now, but I think maybe once the fruit ripens.

Corinne

Or I guess I was thinking of flowers,

Virginia

Oh yes, Well if anyone does indoor citrus, hit me up with your tips. Because I don't know a lot about it's life cycle, I'm worried about how much to water it, all that kind of stuff.

Corinne

I wonder if in the summer, you can put it outside.

Virginia

Well, my mom strongly advised against it. She tried that and it was like an orange tree crisis. I guess citrus trees are prone to bugs and funguses and so if it's happy, just keep it where it is, just keep it happy. It's pretty big, too.

Corinne

Should we do some questions?

Virginia

Let's do some listener questions.

Corinne

All right. The first one is, 

What should I say to a friend when they are complaining about their own body?

Virginia

Oh, these are always such annoying moments. Truly, just annoyed for you. 

Corinne

I think there are two sides here. One side is: It's clearly bothering you. And the other side is: Can you empathize with your friend who's clearly having a hard time. 

So I think you kind of need to balance how much it's bothering with you, with, how much it's bothering them. Do you want to just set a hard boundary? Like, "I'd rather not talk about this." Or do you want to be like, "That's really hard, my body bothers me sometimes too."

Virginia

How much do you think the relative body sizes of the friends matters here?

Corinne

I think if it's someone smaller than you, it might be triggering to you in a different way. And you might want to just set a boundary, versus if it's someone who's bigger than you complaining about their body.

Virginia

Yeah, I think it does matter. I think if it's someone smaller than you, it's okay to say, Hey, I'm sorry you're having a hard time, but I am not the person for this conversation. Wish you well with that, but I'm not the person for this.

If it's someone bigger than you—I don't want to invalidate your own struggles with your body, but can you understand it more from the perspective of they experience bias and stigma that you don't deal with, and find empathy for it is harder for them to navigate seating or doctors or clothing access, etc. I think that has to play into it.

Corinne

There's also layers of privilege with this stuff though, that you might not know about. Like a thinner person could also be more disabled, or a transgender person or a person of color. 

Virginia

Good point.

Corinne

Also, there are no details in this question. Like, what are they complaining about? 

Virginia

I assume weight, if they sent it to us!

Corinne

Yes, but maybe they're complaining about, my butt is too big for this chair, or people stare at me when I do XYZ thing, versus, just like I have flabby muffin top, right?

Virginia

That's interesting. I think if someone is just denigrating their body, that is harder to absorb as a friend than someone who's like, "I'm talking about what's difficult in my lived experience of my body."

Corinne

Totally,

Virginia

But on the other hand, of course, people do really struggle emotionally with feeling negative about how their body looks. So I'm not saying they don't deserve a place to vent about that. 

But if they're venting requires the use of anti-fat language, that's a problem. If your best friend is New York Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells, I think you should set a boundary and say, "Pete, I don't want to hear about how you lost the weight of a basset hound."

If the only way they can talk about their struggle is to invoke anti-fat rhetoric and language, I think you should set a boundary. 

Corinne

I think that's a good way of talking about it. Like, what are they complaining about? Is it anti-fatness, or is it something else.

Virginia

The next question is a very fun one.

Please tell us about your pets, including their names and origin stories.

Corinne

I'll go first because I only have one pet.  I have a dog named Bunny. I've had her for almost 10 years, and she's around 11. I got her from a shelter in Albuquerque when I moved here, or not long after I moved here. I had been knowing I wanted a dog, and I was living in a bunch of situations where I was not allowed to have a dog. So as soon as I entered a situation where I was, I got a dog. She's a pit bull. She was a scrawny little shelter dog. And now she's kind of entering her old ladyhood.

Virginia

11. Wow.

Corinne

 I love her. She's also kind of bad. She's, not great with other dogs, not great with, like, smaller creatures in general. But yeah, she's my dog, so!

Virginia

She's allowed to have preferences and feelings about the world. I admire Bunny from afar. When Corinne drives to Maine, and I'm always like,"Come and stay on your way to Maine in New York!" She's like, our dogs can't be friends. So we haven't figured that out yet.

Corinne

Also, also chickens. 

Virginia

Well, the chickens are in a coop. I mean, it's easy to keep Bunny away from the chickens. I promise, okay. Speaking of, yes, I have chickens.

Corinne

How many pets do you have? Would you say?

Virginia

I currently oversee? Manage? I manage a flock of 13 animals. 

Corinne

Wow. Does that include the chickens?

Virginia

 That includes eight chickens. 

I would like to underscore that I am a cat person who would be happy owning one cat. One to two cats is, to me, the correct number of pets. 

I do like dogs. I am much more of a dog person now that I have a dog. But they are so much more work than cats. It's not even funny. It's not the same conversation at all. So if I had a different life, I would be a one to two cat person. 

However, I have a child who is an animal whisperer. Like truly, that is her love language, that is her passion, that is her whole world. And you're supposed to really try to encourage your children's interests. And so somehow, now I have 1000 pets. 

When the kids were born, we had, at the time, three old man cats that were dying off in their early childhood. And then once we were down to one cat, we got the dog. So we have a Bernedoodle named Penelope. And at that point, in 2020, we also had the dog, a cat named Walter, and a fish tank. 

And when we divorced, I said, I will keep the dog and Walter the cat who hates the dog will go to their dad's house and the fish tank went to their dad's house too. Oh, I'm sorry we also had a leopard gecko at that point. So I kept the gecko. And I've talked before on the podcast the story of Blue the gecko. I won't go into it now, but Blue the gecko did disappear for a while. So we adopted a second gecko, and now we have two geckos, Blue and Kat. And the dog, Penelope. 

Corinne

What is the lifespan of a gecko?

Virginia

 it's like 25 years. It didn't know that when I got a gecko.

Corinne

Are you kidding me?

Virginia

No. Blue and Kat and I are in it for the long haul. They can live a really long time. But I will say they are very low maintenance pets. When they're not lost in your house, they just sleep in their tanks all day, and you feed them wax worms every couple of days. It's no work. Compared to a dog, it's fine. They're less work than a cat. 

So for a while, we were a household of just dog and geckos, and then the kids convinced me to adopt two kittens, so we added Licorice and Cheese, our two cats.

And Cheese is my favorite of all of the pets. And I tell all the other pets this all the time, because I'm always hoping to inspire them to be more like Cheese. Cheese is the most laid back cat. He's like, You do you. I'm fine. I'll come and curl up next to you, but I'm not in your business. I don't create drama. I don't create interspecies drama. Like Penelope and Licorice are always working stuff out. Cheese is my favorite child. Everyone knows this. 

And then after we were really at indoor pet capacity, I would say, with the two geckos, the two cats and the dog, Jack, came into our lives, and he really encouraged my 12 year old's passion for chickens, and now we have the eight chickens. 

Corinne

Wow. 

Virginia

And the chickens do have names. Let me see if I can do it. Pom Pom, Turkey, Shiva the destroyer, Lord Peanut of Doom, Peggy, Alex, Lily and somebody else. Oh, Thomas J Finnegans.

Corinne

Will you be getting any other animals. 

Virginia

No. 

Corinne

Ask your children.

Virginia

I say no, okay, but I cannot with confidence.

I mean, for sure, if we have a casualty, there will be a strong argument for replacement. I have held firm on no second dog, because as much as I love Penelope, they are so much work. Dogs are like adding another child to your home. And I don't want that.

And I don't think anyone wants another cat, because, I mean, we make Jack do the cat litter now that he's here but none of us were real enthusiastic about litter box cleaning. So that’s the one downside of cats. And for anyone whose kids are pet curious: I don't think reptiles are actually great pets, because they are not very interactive or interesting. This is an unpopular position, but I think if you're inclined to go reptile and you live in a neighborhood where you can do it, chickens are a better option. They are also tiny dinosaurs and you get eggs, and they're more fun and interactive, 

Corinne

That makes sense.

Virginia

And it's about the same work wise. They're not a ton of work. Also, just be a cat person, though.

I mean, it's fine, nobody needs this many pets. But they do bring us a lot of joy.

Corinne

All right. Well, on to the next topic.

Question, do I need to buy a sex pillow? Instagram keeps making me think I do not sure if they are size inclusive.

Virginia

I think you do. You don't need to buy one off Instagram. But we learned from Brianna Campos, when she came on to do our fat sex episode, that they are definitely size inclusive and, a really good option for fat sex. 

Corinne

I feel like, if you're wondering about it, why not? At the very least, you have something to try out.

Virginia

See if you're into it. I wonder if Instagram keeps sending this person the same one they send me, which is like a very high end linen sex pillow. 

Corinne

Oh, wow. 

Virginia

Called Tabu.

Corinne

I'm not getting advertised this.

Virginia

Well, you will now. I've been curious about it. I've been, seeing the ads.

Corinne

I would definitely look into whether it's size inclusive. Maybe see if there are reviews from anyone? Or how strong the foam is?

Virginia

Are we worried about it getting flattened? Are we worried about width? Like, you don't want to feel like something's narrow? You don't want it to feel like a yoga block underneath you? So maybe check some measurements.

But I think there's got to be some good, fat-friendly sex pillows out there, because the sex wedge is really helpful for working it out with bodies with bellies. It gives you new angles to get to. We say go for it and report back and let us know. 

Corinne

Go for it. 

Virginia

Okay, I will read the last question:

Hi. I am wondering if you find that personal responsibility vis a vis sustainability to be a diet ever? For example, pledging to do something to help the planet in absolute terms. Like, I will never, ever drink bottled water. I will never buy a new article of clothing, etc.

It seems blasphemous to say personal responsibility, efforts towards sustainability is a diet, but I'd be curious to hear your and Corinne's thoughts on it. I do think it's great and necessary to take steps to reduce, reuse, recycle, have a smaller footprint, use resources responsibly and sustainably, but sometimes the rigidity of people's rules around this and the moralizing feel familiar to diet culture.

Corinne

I do think it can be a diet. it's one of those things where you kind of have to find the sweet spot between it feeling like a restrictive diet, and not being so jaded that you do nothing. So it's not being like, I will never, ever drink bottled water, but also not throwing every plastic bottle you encounter in to the landfill.

Virginia

I think anytime we're absolute about something, we start to enter into a perfectionist territory, which goes diet-y, fast—if by diet we mean using a set of external rules to judge yourself, setting high standards that are impossible to achieve, and deciding there's an arbitrary standard of goodness by which to measure yourself. Those are all the main components of how Burnt Toast defines a diet. And I can see them showing up here. But it doesn't mean like you're saying that the actual impetus to want to live more sustainably is problematic. 

I think it's that we are so used to feeling like if we're doing something, there's one right way to do it. That's how we apply a diet lens to this topic. And it's sort of ironic, right? Because the whole goal is to live more sustainably. And there is nothing less sustainable than a diet.

Corinne

I've definitely, felt this way about the sustainability fashion conversation sometimes where people are, like, "There's absolutely no excuse for shopping from fast fashion brands." 

Virginia

Budget, accessibility...come on, guys.

Corinne

Have you ever been a size 26 and needed a pair of pants immediately.

Virginia

 I can think of so many reasons why folks need to shop fast fashion at least sometimes. And I just think anytime we remove the possibility for gray areas we remove the ability for something to be sustainable, I also think a lot of the steps that people take towards sustainability and get really obsessive about doing "one right way" are not necessarily the things we most need to happen to save the planet.

What we really need is, big legislative change, industry regulation—all these big things. And it's not to say that personal choices don't matter, but you becoming overly rigid about bottled water is not going to make or break anything. So how is it useful? How is it getting you towards the goal? And at what cost?

If we're always kind of moving the goal post on what's enough here, that's not useful. Which is not to say, don't do some of these things. But the absolutism, I see it all the time, and I think a lot people start those projects and are not able to sustain them. 

And I say this to someone who regularly feels like she's not doing nearly enough for the planet. So I'm not saying I've got to figured it out. There's certainly more I could be doing. 

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Butter

Corinne

Well, I think we made a podcast.

Virginia

I think we did that! What's your Butter today?  

Corinne

Okay, my Butter is something which I also just recommended on Big Undies, but it is called Ponaris, kind of guessing on how you say it. And it is a nasal emollient. So it is like a little glass bottle with a dropper that is filled with oil and minty herbs or something.

Virginia

 Beef tallow.

Corinne

And you drop it up your nose and it immediately drips down the back of your throat and clears everything out. 

Virginia

Ohhhh....so not beef tallow.

Corinne

It feels amazing. Someone recommended it on the Big Undies Fall Must Haves. And last week, I just, reached a tipping point where I was like, my legs are scaly. My sinuses are scaly.

Virginia

I am becoming a lizard. It's too dry.

Corinne

It was like a desert inside of me. And so I ordered a new lotion and some Ponaris. Anyways, apparently it was developed by NASA for astronauts to use in space as. part of their first aid kit. 

Virginia

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. 

Corinne

So that’s science, if you've ever heard of it.

Virginia

It's good enough for the astronauts noses, guess it's good enough for my nose!

Corinne

It's a little bit weird. But I do feel like it's really making a difference.

Virginia

Well I totally want to try it. I also totally want to say that this is your second MAHA-adjacent recommendation.

Corinne

Is this one MAHA? I was thinking this was more like the solar shield.

Virginia

Well it's in the woo, woo supplement territory. 

Corinne

Okay, well, yeah.

Virginia

We're getting into ear candling vibes. People are going to be like, I love ear candling.

Corinne

Is that MAHA?

Virginia

I don't know. 

Corinne

I don't know that it is. Ear candling is, crunchy hippie, right?

Virginia

But it's the crunchy hippie that then circles back around to MAHA. I'm just saying, we're concerned and we're tracking.

Corinne

Thank you for your concern. 

Virginia

Well, to make you feel better, my Butter is also going to be a weird nasal supplement.

Corinne

Oh, amazing. Wow. We did not plan this.

Virginia

It's also perfect because this is the pets episode! Mine is a weird supplement that I'm giving my cats so I won't be allergic to them.

Corinne

Whoa, does that work?

Virginia

I can't believe I'm saying this, but... yes, it seems to be really working. Question Mark?

Corinne

What is it? 

Virginia

Okay, it's a brand called Pacagen. It's a chicken flavored powder, and you sprinkle a little on the top of your cat's food. And they claim, I guess this too, is science. Question mark? They claim that it changes the protein in your cat saliva, and that's what we're allergic to. And cats lick their fur everywhere. So that's why you react to cat fur.

I, despite being an avowed cat person, am allergic to cats. I live in a lot of denial about it, because I love them and wish to have cats, and don't wish to acknowledge the cat allergy that I live with, but I was reaching a point last fall where I was like, I mean, I am definitely, really allergic to my cats. Every time I pet them, my eyes were streaming and, you know, I wake up with a stuffy nose all the time. Is it sleep apnea? Is it cat allergies? Who knows? 

Anyway, someone on Instagram influenced me to try this because she claimed it totally worked for her. And I was like, whatever, we'll try it. And both Jack and I, within like, two weeks, were like, oh my god, we're really a lot less allergic, and I can pet the cat now and not have an immediate reaction.

Corinne

Wow, that's amazing. 

Virginia

Now, couple of caveats.

It's quite expensive. I'm locked in now, but it's like 60 bucks a month, or something. Like, it's not nothing, especially because I have two cats, so I need to buy, like, multiple things, and itcomes in these little, teeny bottles.

Also, my family, who are all much more cat allergic than me, when they visited for Christmas, were like, You're crazy. We're still allergic to your cats. 

So I don't know what level of allergy severity it works for. I would have described my allergy as mild to moderate. But also I don't know, maybe they were having colds or something. Nasal stuff is very mysterious. It's very hard to nail down what's causing it. So we don't know. 

But it's working well enough that I'm going to keep buying it for the lifespan of these cats, I guess, and as long as I feel like it's still working. It's something to try, because otherwise I was like, am I at the allergy shot stage? And that felt like a whole big project. 

I hope this is helpful information for anyone else whose nose is dry and stuffy. You can put oil in it, and you can feed your cat something weird.

Corinne

Amazing.

Virginia

All right. Thank you all for listening. We would love to know what is new with you and what you're putting in your nose. Take that in whatever direction you want! Tell us in the comments.

Make sure to rate and review us in your podcast player and tell friends where they can listen for breaking news about nasal substances. 

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies.

Our producer is Kim Baldwin who also writes The Blonde Mule.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! 

EPISODE CREDITS

Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. 

Producer:  Kim Baldwin. 

Logo design: Deanna Lowe.

Theme Song: Farideh.

Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku

Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron

Follow 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!