Hi Burnt Toast subscribers! I’m back from vacation and I’ve missed you all! Today we’ve got an audio newsletter (recorded before my break). Tomorrow I’ll have a Friday Thread for you. (Do we need to talk about Sarah Paulson’s fat suit? Or any other burning questions on your mind? Comment below and let me know what you want to chat about!) And the big Tuesday essays will resume next week.

Now on to today’s episode…

Hello and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!

This is a newsletter where we explore questions (and sometimes answers) on fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who covers weight stigma and diet culture and the author of The Eating Instinct and the forthcoming Fat Kid Phobia.

Today is another solo episode. I’m going to answer a bunch of your questions that all relate to each other, because they’re all on the theme of “How do I talk to other people about this?”

I see this a lot. So often, we are in a place where we’re starting to work through our own stuff around food, our own stuff around bodies, or we’re really committed to doing things in a different way for our kids than how we were raised. But explaining this to a partner or explaining this to your parent or explaining this to your child can be so difficult. This is something I talked about with some podcast guests recently: In my conversation with Janet and Nyemade we were saying how this is an issue that we all feel sort of nervous to own, in a way that we don’t feel as nervous to stand up for ourselves around other controversial topics: Facism, homophobia, etc. Even with COVID, I think people who are firmly pro-vaccines are comfortable being firmly pro-vaccines. There are certain topics where we kind of know where we stand and feel good about standing up for ourselves. But this is one where we have internalized so much doubt and so much anxiety that advocating for ourselves or advocating for our kids can just feel super complicated.

So I just want to say up top: It’s okay if you don’t have the right thing to say in every moment, in every interaction. None of us do. This is hard work. If this is someone you have a good relationship with, someone who’s in your life in an ongoing way, like your partner, or your child, it’s okay to get it wrong in one conversation and come back and have a follow up conversation. It’s okay to say, “I wish I hadn’t approached it like that, and I want another try.” That’s such good modeling for our kids, it’s good for our relationships when we can do that. I think we can give ourselves all some grace as we try to navigate this, because we probably are going to mess it up a couple of times, many times, and we can try again.

The other thing I wanted to say: It’s not your job to convert everybody you meet to intuitive eating, or to make everybody in your life aware of the dangers of fatphobia. You know, it even is my job, and it’s also not my job. I don’t fight these fights in every conversation I have with a friend or every party I go to, every family gathering. I’m not navigating this all the time. There are lots of times when I just let something go, because it’s more important to me, in my relationship with that person, that we have a nice time and that it doesn’t become tense. And that is okay.

It is also true that those of us with a lot of privilege always have the option not to stand up and fight the fight. And people in marginalized bodies don’t.

So, if you’re a person with thin privilege, I do encourage you to push yourself out of your comfort zone when you can to take this on. For sure, it is worth calling out fatphobia when it happens around us, especially with our kids. This is very important. But there is some nuance here to how successful we’re going to be at doing it every time and if it even makes sense, if it even feels safe, to do it every time.

Enough big picture and talk, let’s dive into your questions.

Q: My teenage son is going for his first solo visit to Atkins Crazy Grandma. Do I tell her to back off before he goes?

A: First of all, I really love “Atkins Crazy Grandma,” I’m picturing that on a mug or something.

I’m going to link to my piece, The Grandparents Are Not OK. If you haven’t read it, definitely start here. It will give you a good overview as to why grandparents struggle with this issue so much and why so many Boomers are steeped in diet culture to the extent that they are. It is not entirely their fault. It is the water they have been swimming in for a very long time. They are navigating concerns around gender expectations, body expectations, aging expectations. And all of that is intersecting in a way that Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, none of us are dealing with it in quite the same way that boomers have had to deal with it. So try to hold some space in your heart for that.

Remember that the goal of this trip is for your teenage son to have a strong relationship with this grandparent. I mean, I’m assuming this is the goal of the trip. And that’s why you’re sending him there, on his own, to have time with his grandmother. If that’s the goal, it is not that helpful for you to get in and interfere and set ground rules about what they can talk about, and try to moderate their relationship in that way. This is something I didn’t state as clearly as I could have in that grandparents piece. It is not our job to control the relationship that develops between our children and their grandparents. That is its own independent relationship, quite separate from us. And if you want your kids to know your parents, as people, they’re going to know them as people, which means they’re going to learn that they are flawed, and they’re going to have things they disagree on and part of their relationship is going to be figuring that out together.

Now, I do think you can set some boundaries. If you’re worried that your mom is not going to feed your son adequately because her dieting is so restrictive, I think that would be a place to intervene. And certainly, if you think she’s going to talk negatively about how your son eats or his body, that’s a different thing. Because then she is directly causing harm. And as parents, we want to obviously step in and mitigate that.

But if it’s more like, she’ll make lots of food, but she won’t let herself eat the bread, or she’ll make comments about how she’s eating with him—if it’s more self-directed, as this diet talked often is because people criticize themselves before they direct it to others. In that situation, I think you can talk with your son ahead of time about how this is something she struggles with. And say: “Yeah, it’s a drag that grandma doesn’t eat bread, but there’s no reason you need to stop eating bread.” Let him know where you stand on this, certainly, and give him some tools to navigate this. But don’t feel like you have to make your mom or your mother-in-law act differently around your son than she would otherwise. This is something they can figure out themselves. Your son’s a teenager, he’s old enough to start to really understand his grandmother as a complicated person. I wouldn’t feel like I needed to mitigate unless it was going to be directly harmful to my child.

If you are worried about her saying things directly to your child that might be harmful to him, there is a line that I absolutely love from Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks, from their forthcoming book, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: “My body is none of your business.” I love that. I actually taught that line to my own kids the other day, and it was hilarious to watch my three year old stomp around saying it unprompted and in response to absolutely nothing: Do you want Cheerios for breakfast? “My body is none of your business.”

So I think you can start to think about ways that your child can advocate for themselves in those situations. If you have a younger child, or if the relationship is, you know, really toxic, you are going to be at the front line of that advocacy work. Otherwise, give your son some tools, talk about it ahead of time, support him in navigating this issue with his grandmother, but don’t feel like you have to block the relationship with this person.

Q: My daughter is 12 and your work tends to address younger kids. Any resources for supporting parents of teens in intuitive eating and helping me break through my judgment of her body size?

A: My work does tend to address younger kids, partly because that’s the stage of parenting that I’m in. But also because I think that dealing with these issues when kids are young is really important. As I talk about all the time, we know that kids between three and five are starting to understand fatphobia and internalize it. So I do think the work starts there. But of course, your 12-year-old is not a lost cause! There’s a lot of really important work that has to happen in the tween and teen years on these issues. So I’m really glad you are trying to do it. And I’m really glad that you are recognizing that this is your work to do, that you want to break through your judgement about her body size, rather than seeing her body size as the problem and that she somehow needs to fix it. So, just want to give you a big high five for that, because that’s a really important first step.

Something I think is useful to sort of hold in your heart as you navigate this is: I’m guessing your feelings about your daughter’s body are tied to your feelings about your own body. This is really, really common. 12 is puberty and big body changes. And this is often an age that we experienced a lot of negative feelings about our bodies, or internalized lots of negative messages. So a lot of what might be coming up for you is your own stuff. And if she looks similar to how you looked at her age (or how you look now!) that may be kind of bringing it all together for you. So as much as possible: Recognize that this really isn’t anything to do with her, that this is you working through your own seventh grade bullshit, because Lord knows, we all have that. A therapist who works from a weight inclusive Health at Every Size perspective could be helpful. The HAES Community site has a searchable database of providers.

I’m also linking to this piece and this one, both of which I wrote for the New York Times about parents navigating body image issues with their kids. I think the parents quoted in those articles do have younger kids, but the advice is applicable to all ages. And the experts quoted in those pieces might be folks that you want to look up on Instagram or online other places and follow their work. A couple of folks I really love, who do a great job about talking about teens and eating: Katja Rowell MD is on Instagram. She is a responsive feeding expert, and a parent of a teenager. And she talks quite a lot about intuitive eating and teens in a really great way. Also, as I just mentioned, Amee Severson and Sumner Brooks, their book will be geared towards parents of teens as well as younger kids. I’m going to throw a few other links in the transcript: @teenhealthdoc on Instagram is a great resource for all things teen health but definitely comes from a body positive perspective. I also like The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens by Elyse Resch and You Are Enough by Jen Petro-Roy; they are meant to be read by your kid but you will get a lot out of them too!

But I think, as much as possible, focus on the fact that this is bringing up stuff for you. And what you really need is support for you. It’s less about their age, and more about how you’re navigating this.

Q: My teenage daughter has postural issues. I am afraid to point them out to her because I don’t want to say anything about her body. But she is unaware her posture is problematic and therefore can’t work on it herself. Or should she? Is that just more dieting culture nonsense?

A: This is interesting. I think, if there is something about your child’s body that does not conform to societal beauty standards, and you are worried that it will sort of create a “problem” for them, the last thing your child needs is to hear that information from you. What your child needs from you is radical acceptance of their body. They need to know that you do not see their body as the enemy, you do not see their body as the problem. And that is related to whatever size their body is, certainly their posture, if they have acne, if they have anything about their body that is atypical —scars, disabilities—they need to know that you as their parent view their body as a miracle and something really special and unique and wonderful and worthy of taking care of. They need to know that you trust their body so they can trust what their body is communicating to them.

On this question of posture, I think it’s very normal for teenagers to have awkward posture because their bodies are growing really fast in lots of different directions. It’s normal for a kid to not be fully aware of how she’s holding herself through space. That’s part of being a teenager and figuring out your adult body. And I really would not think that it’s your job as her parent to speak up about it and point it out in some way because you’re only going to make her super self-conscious about it. I think your instincts are right on.

If you want to support her from a more body-positive, empowered place, I think you could look into something like taking yoga classes together, ideally with a weight-inclusive, body-positive teacher. You know, strength training can be really positive and powerful. Maybe you follow someone like Meg Boggs on Instagram who talks about strength training in a weight-neutral, weight-inclusive, body-positive way. Tally Rye is another body-positive fitness trainer and I also love fitragamuffin. So maybe you start exploring the world of joyful movement with her. But I don’t want you exploring this, because you’re thinking, “if we do yoga, it will fix her posture.” That’s not the goal, just like it’s not the goal to be like, “if we start running together, she’ll lose weight.” That’s not the goal. We’re not motivated by this perceived flaw about her body. We’re motivated by wanting to help this kid find ways to move her body that she loves, to find ways to feel strong in her body, to feel joyful in her body.

So you’re giving her tools to take care of her body in different ways. If that addresses her posture, great, if it doesn’t adjust her posture, great, that’s not really the issue. It’s really about helping her feel what it’s like to be in her body and really be embodied in her body in a positive way.

Q: Any thoughts about eating in front of the TV? It seems unsupportive of intuitive eating—but it’s one of my kid’s favorite things. And I don’t want to nag him around this other than an occasional ask, “Are you listening to your body when you’re eating in front of the TV?”

A: First of all, it kind of is nagging to say to your kid, “Are you listening to your body when you’re eating in front of the TV?” I know you’re really trying hard not to nag. But kids are smart. And I think they know that obviously, the implied answer is “No, I’m not. And you want me to stop doing this.”

I think maybe back off direct questions. It is true that eating every meal in front of a television or in front of any screen—whether that’s eating every meal while you’re playing video games, or while you’re on your computer, while you’re Virginia and you’re writing your book so you’re eating lunch at your desk while reading chapter drafts—these are all ways that we are disconnecting from the experience of eating and distracting ourselves. We’re not eating in a very “mindful” way. We’re getting fuel or we’re snacking because it feels good while we’re doing this other thing. So no, this is not, “mindful eating.”

But is this intuitive eating? It can be. Because it can be realistic to say, I’m so busy today that I’m going to eat lunch at my desk, because I know it’s really important that I eat, I know I’ll feel like garbage if I skip lunch and work straight through lunch. But I don’t have time to stop and savor this experience for 45 minutes. So I’m going to eat this while I’m working, so that I have some fuel in my body and I can keep going. But no, it’s not like the most enjoyable lunch I’ve ever had in my life. That is not anti-intuitive eating, that’s assessing what you need and meeting your needs in a variety of ways.

Similarly, I think, for a lot of us, eating delicious snacks in front of a TV show we love is a very comforting and joyful activity. And I don’t think that that’s anti-intuitive eating to say it’s the end of a long day, and I want to zone out and watch Monty Don on BritBox and eat chocolate because that is what I like to do in the evenings. Or for your child—I’m guessing your son doesn’t watch Monty Don, maybe he does, I hope he does—but whatever he’s watching, and snacking, you know, this can be really relaxing. My now eight-year-old loves to watch nature documentaries or Simpsons reruns and eat various snacks. And this is something she often does on the weekends for an hour or two while her little sister is napping (or not napping, but we’re pretending she’s napping).

I don’t see that as a problem. I see that as nice, relaxing, it’s fun to unwind and watch a favorite show and eat some good snacks. If she did that for every meal, I would be concerned. But it’s a couple times a week. During lockdown (and over the last few weeks of summer break) it was more than a couple times a week. But it’s still just one part of the day. It’s not every eating opportunity in the day. That’s how I think about TV.

Obviously, you’re going to hear more rigid viewpoints on that. There’s certainly folks in the intuitive eating world, in the Division Of Responsibility world, who would say “no meal should ever happen in front of a screen, that’s a terrible habit you should break.” But to me, that kind of rigidity, that’s like a diet culture mindset coming in saying we have to have this hard and fast rule.

Do I think it’s great for every meal? I do not. Do I make a big effort to make sure that we as a family eat dinner at a table looking at each other? Yes. Every now and then do we say, “Hey, guys, do you want to eat dinner in front of the TV?” so that my husband and I can actually talk to each other during dinner, and they can enjoy a show? Yep. We definitely do that. So I think it’s not something that you need to set hard and fast rules around. Is this happening to a degree where it’s replacing other kinds of eating experiences? Or is this just like one of your kid’s favorite things that they like to do on weekends? And sort of find some “balance” in there, as opposed to having rules, like you can only do it on Fridays, or you can only do it three times a week. Because that may be setting it up so it won’t feel like enough and they’ll want to do it more, and you’ll end up with this fixation. So I would look at the overall balance.

If this is how they eat dinner every night, you might say I want us to start eating family meals again. But if this is something they do a few times a week, it’s a relaxing thing, it’s bringing them joy, it’s not replacing time that could be spent in other ways, then I would let it go.

Q: My husband is limited in what he eats. It’s pretty much all fast food or heavily processed food (chicken fingers, pizza, Panda Express menu items, etc.) and treats (candy, soda, etc). He doesn’t like to go to other people’s houses because he’s afraid he’ll have to eat something he doesn’t like. He has traumatic memories from childhood about being pressured to eat things he didn’t like. I can only imagine how terrible that must feel.

But now my kids (ages 5 and 7) are starting to limit what they eat to processed foods, too. I will never force my kids to eat anything, but it’s important to me to serve vegetables and whole grains and encourage them to try new things, alongside the processed stuff they already like. But whenever I try to serve a meal that’s not part of their limited palate, they have serious meltdowns. 

My husband is now their ally in this. It feels like the three of them are pitted against me. He tells them they’re not allowed to have Pizza Hut every night, not because they need a balanced diet, but because “Mommy won’t let us.” He’s constantly adding more and more sweets to the kids’ breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. (I think this is his way of showing love.) Now, they’ve stopped eating the sandwiches and fruits I put in their lunches. They’re starting to steal candy and cans of soda that my husband has hidden around the house. 

I realize my husband is dealing with his own childhood issues, but I fear that all this fighting over food is going to create issues for all of us. It’s definitely creating tension between me and my husband. (We’ve talked about this many, many times.) Now, I dread dinnertime. I don’t enjoy eating any of the things we have for dinner. It’s stressful for all four of us, and I’m sure I’m making things worse. What can I do to make eating less stressful for my family?

A: So this is really tough. This happens when one or both parents have different sorts of unresolved eating issues. And this is similar to what we were talking about in that first question, when our kids hit certain stages, which are very normal for kids to hit. It’s very normal for five and seven year olds to be pretty cautious about trying new foods, and prefer comfort foods and predictable foods. But then when that intersects with a parents own issues around those same foods, you’re going to kind of have this powder keg moment with all of these different tensions coming together.

I think your family sounds like you would really benefit from some professional help. My suspicion, you know, keeping in mind that I’m just a journalist who researches this, I’m not a trained professional—this is not a medical diagnosis of any kind—but my suspicion is your husband would meet criteria for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, otherwise known as ARFID, which is basically an eating disorder that centers around fear of food rather than body image issues, although it can get kind of all intertwined. (Here’s a piece I wrote about ARFID a few years ago; there is also a chapter devoted to it in my first book.) But often, at its core, ARFID originates because kids have had really punitive experiences of being forced to eat certain foods, and where their caution around new foods was punished or demonized. Sometimes it happens when kids have choking experiences or they gag, they have really strong sensory responses to different textures with foods. And the problem builds and builds until it’s this intense phobia around different foods.

ARFID is treatable, but it is a very poorly understood eating disorder. And it is difficult to treat because it’s often treated the same way you treat anorexia, which is to refeed and insist that people eat huge amounts of food, and for someone with really deep fears of specific foods that can pile on the trauma. So it’s really important to get good help for it. Some folks I know who work on ARFID and who do it in a really compassionate and thoughtful way are Katja Rowell MD (again), Grace Wong RD, and Lauren Mulheim, PhD. So this will hopefully give you some starting points. I’m hoping your husband will be open to talking to someone about this because it’s not easy, and he needs support, and I love how much empathy you are holding for his struggle.

But it is also true that his struggle is creating a lot of problems for you. I’m also going to link to Anna Lutz, RD, and Elizabeth Davenport. They are dietitians who specialize in family feeding dynamics and write the blog Sunnyside Up Nutrition, which is a great blog about feeding families. But they’re both also experts in these disordered eating dynamics that can have these ripple effects throughout families. So I’d really encourage you to reach out to some therapists and dietitians who can support you, because it does sound fairly entrenched. Especially because you’re referencing that he’s hiding a lot of food around the house, the kids are now finding the food that he’s hiding, and they’re sneaking his sneaking food. I mean, there’s like layers of food sneaking here. So yeah, there’s a lot going on.

In terms of how to start to navigate this as a family, I would encourage your husband not to have to hide food and to let the let the kitchen be full of foods everybody loves. So your fruits and vegetables and whole grains, right alongside his, you know, Panda Express, candy, soda, etc. Let it all be out in the open, nobody needs to feel ashamed about the food that they love in your family. Something else you might talk to a therapist about is, you know, you haven’t talked a lot about your own stuff here. I appreciate that you’re saying you don’t want to force your kids to eat anything they don’t like, but it does sound like you are focused on the vegetable/whole grain side of things, which is understandable. But you might want to consider whether you have some rigidity about that. It could be helpful to get some support to work through that, so just throwing that out there as a possibility. I think in general, though: all foods fit. There’s permission around all foods, there’s no need to be banning these foods. And maybe as you’re approaching family meals, you can have it all on the table. And if your kids are gravitating towards the “processed” stuff more than the other stuff, let that be okay. That’s very normal for their ages, it’s very age appropriate.

And they are fixating on these foods more because the dynamic between you and your husband has given them so much power, because he’s saying things like “Mommy won’t let us.” And so there’s this idea that these foods have to be forbidden and that you are the one forbidding them. I mean, this is not a fair situation for anybody. But it’s really unfair for your kids to feel like they have to sort of pick sides on food. And it’s not surprising that they’re picking the side of the foods that tastes really good to them. It’s very understandable. But you can start to give these foods less power if you can say, “I know you love Pizza Hut, that’s so great, and we’re having pizza tonight, and we’re having salad and we’re having, fruit on the table, and you can have as much as you want of what’s on the table in whatever order you want.” If they don’t eat something, it’s fine. One food is not more special or better than the other. It’s just this is what’s for dinner, they can pick from what’s offered. So I would definitely lean into making sure that there’s always some of these preferred foods on the table along with the other foods that you're hoping to expose them to.

At the same time you have a right to eat food that you like for dinner. I mean, I like a lot of processed foods. But if I had to eat mac and cheese every night, I’d be pretty grouchy about it. It’s not my favorite So if this means that you guys are sometimes serving two dinners, you know, I think that’s okay. I was talking to a friend recently and he was like, “Yeah, our kids eat with us maybe two nights a week and the rest of the week we are making two dinners and sitting down together, but they have their chicken nuggets, and my wife and I are eating what we want to eat.” And I thought, Oh, that’s genius. His kids are 5 and 7 too. And for those of us who have kids in this age range, we know that it’s just not realistic to come up with a meal seven nights a week that every member of your family is going to like. This is probably not realistic for any group of people. But it’s particularly difficult when you’re in this under eight, hyper cautious stage, when they tend to have a pretty short list of foods they want to eat, and they want to eat the same things over and over again. It’s totally normal. And it’s exhausting to try to cater to that, and also still have other foods.

So, maybe you have nights where you order from a restaurant where everyone gets to pick something they like, and it’s a restaurant that does serve something you like and something that everyone else likes. Maybe you have nights where you make a big salad that looks good to you, and you know, you’re serving chicken nuggets alongside it, that’s great. Don’t be hemmed in by rules about what the meal should look like, or do these foods even really go together? You know, we went through a phase where we were putting Eggo waffles on the table at dinner a lot because they were a preferred food. And Eggo waffles don’t really fit in with any menu I might be trying to plan, but it sure takes a lot of pressure off if my kid who really likes them knows that they’re there, and she can have those. And she can also maybe try other stuff if she’s in the mood. So I think bringing some more flexibility all the way around to the situation is going to help.

And I think it’s very fair to ask your husband not to throw you under the bus about food. I think it’s very fair to say we’re going to keep serving the foods that I like to eat—especially if you’re the one doing the work of making the foods—but at the same time know that any rules you are putting around processed foods is only going to make them more appealing, or that your kids are more prone to fixating on.

I hope you’re going to reach out to some professionals who can help you navigate what sounds like a really difficult situation. I’m also hoping folks might chime in in the comments on this one. Because I think there’s a lot of different ways to handle this. I certainly welcome anyone who’s either dealt with this firsthand and has some lived experience or any of my followers who are professionals in the responsive feeding world, feel free to chime in. Because this is a complicated one. Hopefully that gives you some starting points.

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Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Jessica McKenzie who writes the fantastic Substack, Pinch of Dirt. Our logo is designed by Deanna Lowe, and I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram and Twitter where I am @v_solesmith. Thanks for listening! Talk to you soon.