When fat influencers get...even thinner.

Today we’re talking about plus size influencers getting weight loss surgery. We’ll get into:

⭐️ Is this the start of the Ozempic backlash?

⭐️ How much do public figures owe their audiences?

⭐️ How to hold space for body autonomy with weight loss journeys.

This is a complicated conversation! To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.

Extra Butters also get exclusive weekly chats, DM access, and a monthly bonus essay or thread. And Extra Butter ensures that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism. Join us here!

PS. If Extra Butter isn’t the right tier for you, remember that you still get access behind almost every other paywall with a regular paid subscription.

PS. You can always listen to our episodes right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts!

Corinne

Today, we’re doing a follow up episode on the episode that we did about plus size influencers losing weight.

Virginia

Yes, the plot has thickened, shall we say? In terms of some of these folks’ trajectories. I said that and realized it sounded like a weight comment, and I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not talking about whether their bodies have thickened.

Corinne

The plot has thinned.

Virginia

The plot has twisted. There are developments to discuss.

Corinne

I can’t believe that that episode was a year ago!

Virginia

yeah, it’s wild. I think you kind of called it where it was, like, there’s all this ozempic talk and like, when is it going to take a take a turn?

Corinne

There’s always a lash and a backlash.

Virginia

If we were in the lash, are we now in the backlash?

Corinne

We might be in a backlash.

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling on Tiktok for three hours before bed, as is my wont, and Tiktok fed me a video by Rosey Beeme—who we talked about in our last episode, she is not someone I follow—and it was a video of her talking to the camera.

Virginia

Before we talk about this new video, I’ll just say that if you didn’t listen to the last episode, you could certainly go back and listen to if you missed it. The TLDR is that Rosey became very well known as a plus size fashion influencer, and then was very public about her ozempic health journey. I don’t think it was actually ozempic she was on, but one of the GLP1s and about losing a lot of weight on it.

Of course, Rosey can do whatever she wants with her body. Body autonomy is fundamental, but she was narrating her journey with a lot of very ableist rhetoric. She had a line about how she had to lose the weight because she couldn’t wipe her own ass, which I think lots of folks who rely on mobility aids for basic personal care tasks felt was an indictment of them and the idea that your body is worthless somehow if you need these extra supports, which is, of course, not, where we would land on that.

So the last episode was us discussing how Rosey had gone on this journey and how she was narrating and justifying the journey through a lot of very ableist rhetoric. And now Corinne, what is happening with Rosey?

Corinne

So this video that popped up for me, the caption says, “Getting bariatric surgery! I’m feeling so joyful and I want to meet more bari friends!”

Virginia

Ah, your bari friends.

Corinne

She goes on to talk about how she has been on a GLP1 since 2022 and while she initially lost some weight and was really excited about it, it stagnated. She talks about starting an antidepressant1. And then she talks about how she’s made the decision to get bariatric surgery, and she’s feeling joyful. She also talks about how, in the past she has felt like weight loss surgery was admitting defeat, but having made the decision to do it, she’s experiencing joy.

She also talks a little bit about her own history, and she says,

For a while, I was deeply against weight loss. But I experienced physical setbacks as well as physical pain due to my body size. And I know that’s not everyone’s story out there. There are plenty of people larger than me that are completely happy in their body. And to those people, I celebrate you, I stan you. That just has not been my particular experience being in a larger body, but I’ve decided to move forward with weight loss surgery.

Virginia

So much here. Such a rich text.

I mean that chunk at the end is interesting because it tells me she actually did hear some of the feedback, and she has taken the note that it’s important to talk about this as her experience of her body, not anyone who can’t wipe their own ass due to body size needs to lose weight, which was definitely much more the focus in the earlier videos. So I’m encouraged to see that shift.

Corinne

The tone here feels very different, less sort of like gleeful mocking than some of the the stuff a year ago that was on Instagram. And also, my, my immediate reaction to watching it was just feeling so sad. You’re watching someone struggle with their reality that weight loss often isn’t maintainable, you know?

Virginia

She was so pro GLP1s, now she’s saying they worked until they didn’t, so now it’s time for the surgery. And it feels like she’s restarting a cycle that she’s been on many times before. There’s a different mechanism this time, but will there be anything different is an open question? I had the same feeling of sadness of listening to someone in that hopeful, optimistic place that’s so familiar to all of us, right? Like anyone who started any kind of diet, you remember that feeling of like you’re giddy in the beginning, like this is going to be it, it’s all going to be great. This is so different from everything I’ve done before, and it’s so interesting that we don’t always recognize how familiar that is when we’re in that beginning stage.

I’m also interested in how she says weight loss surgery always felt like admitting defeat. That language comes up a lot about weight loss surgery. It also comes up about GLP1s. What it’s really saying is that controlling body size should be a matter of willpower, and that I just can’t do it myself or do it the old fashioned way people will talk about.

Instead, what I appreciate about GLP1s and weight loss surgery is that they are acknowledging the reality that intentional weight loss through diet and exercise is not achievable for most people. It’s definitely not sustainable for almost anyone. And so, it’s not defeat, it’s just being like, this is how it is. This is what my body is. But then, instead of saying, well, this is what my body is, end of sentence. She’s saying, well, this is what my body is so now I’m going to do this other thing to change. That’s the heartbreak to me, that she has accepted that her body will not become thin through just diet and exercise alone—which is a really hard thing for a lot of us, so many people fight that truth for so long—but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t keep trying to change it.

Corinne

And I think that’s where we get into the lash / backlash thing that I was talking about. We’re seeing people who felt this joy and hope about being able to become thin on GLP1s not achieve that, and then what happens from there?

Virginia

It’s interesting that it’s happening quite quickly, that it is only a year later is sort of surprising to me! Because the narrative around GLP1s is not only are they magical at achieving their weight loss, but that as long as you stay on them for life, you’ll keep the weight off. It’s interesting to see that folks are finding no maybe they can’t buffer against a change in medication or other other things that cause bodies to change.

Corinne

So that’s Rosey. And not long after I saw that video, I saw an article about Remi Bader. Remi is a Tiktok influencer who gained a huge following around 2020 doing plus size fashion hauls.

I think people like her because she’s kind of relatable. She’s been very open about mental health struggles and having an eating disorder, also about going on Ozempic or GLP1s. She was famously quoted as saying that when she went off of Ozempic, she gained, doubled the weight back—I think that was early 2023.

But since then, her body size has changed dramatically. She posts frequently on Tiktok, people have been asking her about it in the comments, and she has been not addressing it, and she has been blocking people who mention it.

And then I think the same day or the same week, she went on Khloe Kardashians podcast. And then this article came out in SELF magazine called “Remi Bader Chose Herself,” where she talks about having gotten weight loss surgery.

Do you want to read this quote here from the Self magazine article?

Virginia

It was the fall of 2023, and Bader decided to act fast. She’d watched TikTok videos about weight loss surgery. The idea was scary, but she knew she needed a change and felt out of options. She asked herself: “If no one existed, what would I do? I would get the surgery.

This also makes is just making me think how hard it is to be an influencer where your body receives this kind of scrutiny! I really respect the move of blocking followers who are commenting on your body size changes. I don’t think she owed us a Khloe Kardashian podcast episode and a Self magazine interview to describe and discuss it all. Like, your body doesn’t need to be content.

Corinne

At the same time, this is someone who gained a following and gained fame through being plus size. Like, she was a fat person. She was trying on plus size clothes. And honestly, it was really relatable and funny, because she would try them on and be like, these are so weird and ill-fitting. And she has been really open about mental health, eating disorder up and downs, and now is thin. She’s really thin, and the dramatic change, I think she just hadn’t made a statement. I do think people’s audiences feel like they’re owed some kind of explanation.

Virginia

People do feel that way, and I feel complicated about that. As someone who is also a public figure, not on her level of fame. But, when I was working on that essay about is everything a diet, I was looking at Reddit threads about myself, which is something I do extremely sparingly. And there is a whole thread out there and people speculating about why I got divorced, and being mad that I’ve never spoken in a lot of detail about why I got divorced. And being like, well, it would be one thing if she just never talked about it, but since she mentioned it, why isn’t she giving us the full story? And like, fuck right off! Nobody owes you their full story. So I feel so complicated that these women feel like they have to invite us into the entire experience, which, of course, puts them in the cross hairs of people who feel owed the entire story.

And at the same time, they’re also making career choices. Their body story is a part of their fame. She kind of did have to do it because, as you’re saying, so much of her platform was built on being a certain body type and making a certain kind of content, which she literally now can’t make anymore, because now the clothes fit her.

Corinne

To me, this feels a little more similar to plastic surgery, or honestly, photo editing. Like, I wish there was a way to say, it’s not achievable for everyone, you know? Because I think without saying that, it sort of feels like, oh, if I just eat right and diet, then I will be able to achieve the weight loss Remi has.

Virginia

Oh, but don’t you think everyone’s just assuming any newly thin person is on Ozempic at this point? Do we think anyone’s still dieting?

Corinne

Well, she famously went off Ozempic.

Virginia

Oh, so now for there to be another thing. I see.

Corinne

I mean, this has been going on for years.

Virginia

Oh, Remi, girl. Okay.

Corinne

I know. And this is where, it also just starts to feel really sad, like we’re watching these people really struggle. That is the part of the article that really got to me. Remi goes really deep into detail. She talks about the surgery she had, she names the specific surgery, and she talks about how horrible it was! She says, quote, “I need to say that it was the most brutal thing.” And she talks about having two plus months of intense recovery where she was “not fucking okay.” I just felt so sad!

Virginia

I felt tremendously sad. I also felt her sharing those details. I felt like there was more value in the way she’s sharing this story than the way Rosey is in the”it’s going to be so great when I have the surgery” place, and so giddy, similar to the “it’s so great how well the drug is working” place. And then not showing us the parts where it falls apart. Like, I appreciate that when she did decide to share this, she’s like, let me share it all so you can know how rough this is.

Of course, SELF magazine, being SELF magazine, still puts that story next to photos of her highly styled, looking gorgeous and thin. It’s hard not to read it as a testimonial for weight loss surgery. At least there’s more reality in there, I guess.

Corinne

And the title: Remi Bader Chose Herself.

Virginia

I don’t know how to feel about that! I respect that that feels true for her, that losing this weight was choosing herself. And yet, there are also quotes in the article where she says something like, I’ve always loved being curvy. I’m probably the only person who had this surgery who’s saying to the doctor, can I still be curvy? So it’s not clear what she was choosing. I mean, she makes an argument that she needed it for all these health reasons and that weight loss would resolve all these health issues. There’s murky research on how true that is, of course. But I can understand feeling like that is going to be true. Maybe she felt very clear in her mind of I’m doing this for these health reasons. I actually don’t want to lose the aesthetic of being a curvy person. But then, is that really choosing yourself? Or is that like, this is a necessary evil in order to get my blood work under control?

Corinne

It’s so complicated.

Virginia

I struggle with, what do they owe us? I struggle with, why are they using their bodies to make content in this way? They’re also both quite young, and I just struggle with how much of their personal lives they’ve lived out publicly like this. That’s hard.

Corinne

I think it’s interesting to look at both Remi and Rosey and see the ways in which these GLP1 drugs gave so many people so much hope about weight loss. And again, we’re really only talking about using these for weight loss, not people who are using these to manage chronic conditions. But it was kind of a promise of easier weight loss and maybe you can achieve thinness. And now people are seeing it not work, and then turning to weight loss surgery.

Virginia

We were all Rosey, right? Like, we were all caught up in this moment of this drug is clearly the drug that’s going to work so well and be the easy solution, and that we’re not that far out from that. Like, I would say early 2023 is when Ozempic Mania started. Now it is spring of 2025, so we’re two years into this story. We’re kind of right where I expected us to be. Like every other diet, the weight loss stops working after 12 months, and you see the regain. This is the story of dieting. It’s like this 2-5 year cycle that people are always on. So, we’re right where we expected. And again, that’s not to discount that some people are having different experiences. There’s always going to be a range. But it’s interesting to see this turn. I’m intrigued that we’re now turning to the surgery, instead of turning back to diet and exercise or to some other new cleanse, or, I don’t know. I mean, we will. There will be something trendy like that.

But the hard pivot to surgery is a really dramatic step, because no one can pretend the surgery is the easy way out. Assholes will say that, but like, of course, it’s not. You’re going through major surgery. It is not an easy procedure at all. I mean, there’s a variety of procedures, but none of them are easy. They fundamentally change your anatomy forever, is the goal. People do have them reversed, but it’s supposed to be a permanent change in your anatomy that’s going to permanently change how you’re able to absorb food and nutrients for the rest of your life.

So it’s also taking on this management to make sure you aren’t nutrient deficient afterwards. For years post surgery, you’re going to be checking your micronutrient levels to make sure you’re not in some kind of deficit, because it’s harder to absorb food now.

There’s a big chapter on weight loss surgery in my first book, The Eating Instinct, that is a few years old now, but we can link to it anyway. There’s a lot of research that shows that people who have this surgery are at higher risk for substance use disorders afterwards. There’s a higher risk of relationships breaking down, divorce. And people think that’s because you got thin and hot. But I think it’s more complicated than that. And there’s an increased risk of suicide afterwards, too, which is pretty scary.

With all of that, I will hold space for, like, I have people in my own life who’ve had the surgery, who’ve had good experiences with it. There is a range of experiences. And, yeah, I don’t judge anybody who decides to do it, because very often this surgery is a barrier people have to overcome in order to access health care, in order to access ways of being in the world. And that is what it is.

The fact that we’re going from the drug that was supposed to be this easy thing to this pivot into something that is going to be really hard. Like, nobody is going to pretend that surgery is going to be like fun and easy breezy. That saddens me, because it shows how deep in the cycle so many people are, I guess.

Corinne

I looking for some research to like, support or disprove what I feel like I’m seeing with people who are finding that GLP1s don’t make them thin, and then turning to to weight loss surgery, and I found some studies showing that Weight Loss Surgery had dropped by one quarter between 2022 and 2023 which was the start of the GLP1 boom.

Then I found this article called State of the Union: weight loss surgery in 2024 from the Columbia surgery website, which is an interview with Dr. Marc Bessler, MD, Chief of the Division of Minimal Access/Bariatric Surgery and Director of the Center for Metabolic and Weight Loss Surgery. And do you want to read this quote?

Virginia

Dr Bessler says,

In our experience, about a third of the patients we're seeing have tried these medications, and they're either having side effects or they're not effective enough. So, for whatever reason, they're still coming on to have surgery. So, I don't think weight loss surgery is going away anytime soon.

Caveat, this is a man whose livelihood is based on performing weight loss surgeries, so he has a real vested interest to convince us that that’s still necessary to do. But he’s also speaking honestly about, like, bariatric surgeons don’t have to do a lot of marketing. Plenty of people are seeking them out.

Corinne

Absolutely, yeah. And I was remembering also that, I think when we were doing some initial research on the GLP1 drugs, one of the creators of the drugs had also said, like, a lot of people aren’t able to stay on these drugs longterm for whatever reason.2

Virginia

Yes, I do remember him talking about that.

Corinne

I just thought it was interesting that this doctor is sort of seeing that these GLP1 drugs had caused a temporary lull in people seeking weight loss surgery, but that he expected to see more people wanting to have it.

Virginia

I think it just underscores how we’re kind of nowhere in terms of progress. I don’t mean to end so depressingly, but yeah, of course. If you did Ozempic because you were hoping for weight loss, and it doesn’t deliver the weight loss, it makes total sense you’re going to keep leveling up to more aggressive things.

That’s what you really see in like Rosey’s and Remi’s stories, is that they have been on this conveyor belt their whole their whole life. Remi talks about starting dieting at age 10. That’s deeply relatable to so many folks! And there is this inability to release from the conveyor belt. It’s different for everyone what keeps us on there. I don’t know that it’s possible for any of us to fully divest from it.

But what makes it feel more possible for some of us to say I’m off that conveyer belt, like I might I might have bad body image days, I might struggle here and there. It’s a perpetual frustration to come up against anti-fatness in seating, in healthcare, and I’m going to choose to stay in this body and not keep pursuing thinness and for other folks that doesn’t feel like a tenable choice.

Corinne

For me, so much of the reason that I’ve stopped following people like Rosey and Remi is jus how sad and painful and uncomfortable it is to watch these people continue to pursue weight loss when it does sort of feel like, yeah, it’s not working. And maybe it will work when they get surgery.

Virginia

I mean, I can’t help but feel with these two cases that we’re talking about in this episode, but I think to some extent this is true for lots of folks: The way they are performing their bodies in public makes it that much harder to get off the conveyor belt.

Even though they both had a lot of success as fat people, and a lot of their platform was built on “I’m going to talk about being a fat person who wears clothes” so it’s complicated for them to get slimmer and suddenly not be able to make that particular type of content. They are still offering up their bodies for consumption and objectification. I think that sometimes even when I take my little outfit photos, you know? For like the once a month newsletter I do on clothes—and I’m curious if you ever feel this way with

Big Undies

. Like, just the act of constantly recording your body can trigger a lot of hyperfixation on certain things that can be hard to step back from.

Corinne

I think, especially for for Rosey & Remi where I’m sure both of them get comments that are, like, “your body has changed,” or whatever.

Virginia

Yeah, and negative comments when they were bigger, and negative comments now that they’re smaller! I mean, the onslaught of living with that kind of negativity is really hard.

Well, this is a downer of an episode. It’s a messy place, and I’m trying to simultaneously hold space and compassion for everyone just trying to survive this hellscape. And I do think people with large followings have a responsibility to think carefully about the language they use to discuss these things.

Corinne

Okay, do you have a butter?

Virginia

I do have a butter. My butter is, it is April and it is officially springtime, and just gardening. Gardening is the butter. No one is shocked. It’s all I want to talk about, it’s all I’m thinking about.

To be more specific, this year, I’m starting things from seed, which I don’t do every year. And it is more work, but I’m actually having a lot of fun with it this year. So I’m not saying you have to. If that sounds intimidating, I’m also here to say I don’t think it’s cheaper, because you do have to buy the lights and the trays and the soil and all of it. If I remember to start seeds in future years and save all of this, it will eventually become cheaper. But it’s not right now. But it is a really fun way to grow the exact, specific varieties of things you want to grow.

So I’m really down for that. I’m growing some specific colors of zinnias I’ve talked about, cosmos. I’m going to start some Torch Tithonia. Do you know that flower? It’s kind of like a cross between a Zinnia and a sunflower. It’s red. I’ve wanted to grow them forever, and they’re never in my local garden centers as annuals for whatever reason. So I was like, this is a reason to start from seed. And we’re doing many kinds of tomatoes and a lot of basil and some of the watermelons, I think.

Corinne

Oh, fun! Did you start stuff from seed last year?

Virginia

No, I haven’t done it for a few years. I did it maybe three years ago. And then last year, my life was far too messy. I was in no headspace for that. You know, you have to have the lights on a timer and check them and water them. But some stuff sprouted really fast. We sowed all the seeds on Sunday, and the cosmos sprouted the next day. And I was like, oh, I forgot how satisfying this is.

Corinne

Yeah, that’s really cool.

Virginia

I will forever be pro just buying your seedlings at the local garden center. It’s totally fine. I think you break even cost-wise. I really don’t think it’s a savings, but just being able to be that specific about what you want to grow and plan it all, if you really want to nerd out on it. Seed starting is actually really fun.

Corinne

That’s cool. I’m glad that we’re back in the time when we can have garden butter.

Virginia

I mean, just expect nothing but garden butters from now till November. That’s where we are.

Corinne

Great. I can’t wait.

Virginia

What about you?

Corinne

Well, I have a toxic relationship with coffee, where I love it and it doesn’t love me back. But I’ll periodically get re-addicted to it, and then be in this situation where I don’t want to be drinking coffee, but I have to, because otherwise I get a horrible headache.

So anyways, right now I’m trying to ease back off the coffee, and in the meantime, have been drinking black tea. And I found this black tea I really like, called Black Snail from the Little Red Cup tea company,

Virginia

That’s an adorable name!

Corinne

Yes, they are a Maine-based brand. One of the people runs it is a friend, and they import tea from China, and it’s all really good. This one is called Black Snail because the tea leaves are kind of curled up like a little snail. But it’s also just very delicious, and I like that the bags tell you what temperature and how long to brew it for. It just makes things very easy. And whenever I drink it, I’m noticing that this tea is notably delicious.

Virginia

Interesting. I’m excited for you. I don’t know that I’ve ever had that with Black Tea. I feel like I don’t notice a lot of difference in flavors. I’m not a refined tea palette. I’ll own that, but.

Corinne

I don’t have a lot of tea knowledge, but I do really enjoy a delicious tea.

---

1. Corinne here just popping in to say I wish we had talked about this more!

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7708309/

On writing for the female gaze, with Jasmine Guillory

Jasmine is a New York Times-bestselling author of nine novels, including The Wedding Date, The Proposal, and her brand new book Flirting Lessons.

This is an absolutely delightful conversation. Jasmine and I get into why she is publishing her first queer romance. We talk a lot about fat rep in romance novels, and we also talk about gardening. It’s so much fun!

You can order Flirting Lessons through the Burnt Toast Bookshop. Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk from Split Rock Books! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

Virginia

We are here to talk about Flirting Lessons. I completely inhaled it on vacation last month. It is such a treat. I was already a Noble Vineyards fan, so getting to follow these characters was really fun. But this book is also exciting because it is your first queer romance!

Jasmine

It is. I’m very excited about it! I hope people like it.

Virginia

Tell us how this came to be.

Jasmine

I have been wanting to write a queer romance for a while. But my publishing schedule was kind of set. I had other books planned, so I didn’t quite get to this one as soon as I wanted to. But Avery and Taylor were both characters in my last book, Drunk On Love, and as soon as I wrote them, I was like, oh yeah, these two. So it was really fun to get to write their book.

I also took a little break in between books because I was just very burnt out. During the pandemic, I wrote three books back-to-back-to-back, and then had the idea for this book and tried to start writing it, and was like, oh, no, I can’t. I have no ideas. I am empty.

Once I got excited about writing again, it was really fun to come back to Avery and Taylor. I was really excited about them, and to get to write a fun, happy story of them out in the world, exploring each other and learning new things. We had a lot of fun with it.

Virginia

You have a job that I think most people would think sounds like the most fun job in the world. But as a fellow writer—although I don’t get to write romance—writing burnout is real. So I’m glad you were able to take time and take care of that, because it becomes really not fun really fast.

Jasmine

It was really helpful that I have a very supportive publishing team. Many years ago, actually, I was talking to my editor, I asked her a question about one of her other writers and when her next book was coming out. And she was like, “Oh, it’s not coming for a while. She needs to take a break. She was really burnt out.” And then she said to me, “If this ever happens to you, don’t worry. Just let me know. You take your break whenever you need to.” And she told me this five or six years before it happened to me. But it was so nice that I didn’t have to really worry, “will my editor be mad at me?” I’m blowing my deadlines, whatever.

It was funny, because right before I realized I needed a break, I had a conversation with my agent, and I don’t even remember what I said exactly. And I said something about publishing or trying to write. And she was like, “Pkay, that’s it. You need a break. You’re not allowed to try anything, like write anything, for at least another month. And then we’ll talk.” And I was like, oh, okay. I think I needed someone to just tell me.

And it was great, because once I started getting excited about writing again, then it was fun again. When it wasn’t fun was when I was trying to push through it.

Virginia

I love that. I’m so glad you have people you’re working with who see that and get that. We need more of that.

It sounds like you’d been thinking about this book for a while. Was there any pushback or questions, or anything from your team when you were like, “It’s going to be Taylor and Avery? We’re doing a queer romance this time.”

Jasmine

No, not at all. They were really excited. They were like, okay, great. What’s their story? What are we going to do? So that was really good. It helped I think that I’ve had a number of the people on my publishing team have been the same people for a long time, so I wasn’t really worried about that. But it was nice that nobody blinked.

Virginia

I think it speaks to how romance in general has just—and you’ve been a huge part of this—as a genre, it has exploded in so many wonderful, inclusive directions in the last decade. There was always an audience for queer romance, but now the the industry knows there’s an audience for queer romance.

Jasmine

Exactly right. As with so many of the other kinds of diversity that have gotten good sales over the past 10 years: There was always an audience for those things. It took publishers a while to figure that out.

Virginia

They had to keep seeing the math.

Of course, I want to talk about Taylor Cameron. She stood out to me in Drunk On Love, as such a fun, fantastic character. And I just love how you write her. She is introduced to us as this insanely hot person. She’s an incredible flirt. Everybody in Napa Valley wants to sleep with her. And she’s fat.

You kind of casually work that in. There’s a moment where they’re at a spa and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, I can’t ever wear the women’s robes. I’ve got to go walk around naked till they realize they need to get me a better robe.” And it’s unapologetic. It’s just part of who she is. It’s not a plot point. It’s not something that needs defending. I’d just love to hear you talk about how you think about that, as you’re thinking of characters.

Jasmine

I think there were a few things. I mean, first of all, I love reading books where there are fat women who don’t care about being fat, right? Too often, it’s like, oh, I have to worry about this or I’m trying to lose weight, or whatever. And that’s not everybody. That’s not who I see out in the world. I see so many unapologetic fat women who have great relationships and everybody likes them and everybody cares about them and I wanted to represent people like that in fiction.

I think Taylor very much knows herself, knows her body, knows how she is attractive to other people. And I also think that the queer community tends to be—well, women in general tend to be much—I don’t want to say better, but that’s part of it—about accepting other kinds of body sizes and shapes and finding them exciting and attractive. And so that was another fun thing to explore.

Virginia

I think that’s so needed. There are a lot of examples, as you said, of the apologetic fat character. Who is often written by straight sized folks who just haven’t lived this experience. They can’t imagine it not being something that people would feel the need to define themselves by or apologize for and all of that. It’s just always a delight to get a book and be like, okay, it’s going to be a different version of that here. It’s a safer reading experience, I think, for a lot of folks.

Jasmine

In so many books there’s a moment where you’re like, oh, I didn’t expect that little hit to the ego. And I never want people to have that experience when reading my books. I mean, I don’t want me to have that experience when reading any books! And so I try to think about that and pay attention to that.

Virginia

It’s always disappointing.

Obviously, across romance, I think we’re making some pretty good progress on fat rep. I think again, you were a real trailblazer on this, and there are a lot of other wonderful authors doing it now. But it’s still by no means a given. Where do you think the industry is on this? Where are you still running into brick walls?

Jasmine

I think some of the brick walls just come from, at least for me, not my editor, my publisher, like my agent, they’re all great. Sometimes it’s retailers, right? If there’s a book with a fat woman on the cover, will they want to put it front and center? Or will, will they want to stock it at all? Sometimes it’s in the right cover design. Sometimes retailers will come back when there’s a cover and be like, we don’t love it. And if it’s a big enough retailer, you have to fix the cover or change the cover. And so sometimes it’s that they don’t want a woman who looks like that on the cover or they don’t want someone with too dark of skin on the cover, or anything like that.

And then some of it is readers, sometimes. It’s retailers thinking that readers will think this, and sometimes it’s readers actually thinking this. You’ll see it in reviews, which I tried to avoid reading. But yeah, sometimes they get slapped in your face. Like, “well, would someone with a body like that really think about that though? Like, I don’t know if someone would really find her attractive.” That happens all the time. That’s some of the pushback that you get.

Virginia

Yeah, the reader response is really interesting. I had Nisha Sharma on the podcast last year. And she was talking about how sometimes at book events, readers will say, like, I didn’t think this book was for me, because, either because they’re thin or because they’re white. And she’s like, well, you read books about serial killers, but you’re not a serial killer.

Jasmine

Right? You read books about dukes in 19th century England, but you’re not a duke.

Virginia

Like, you managed to make those leaps, why is this a hard? It’s fascinating that this comes up.

Jasmine

I think it’s fascinating, but also so anti-my experience, because I grew up reading all sorts of books that had nothing to do with me. I don’t think about having to relate to the main character.

Virginia

You’re not reading in front of the mirror when you read a book.

Jasmine

I guess, if you grow up reading books where the characters look like you, and have specific experiences that you do, you think about books in that way. It has never been anything that I had have ever thought about.

Virginia

Yeah, and it’s limiting. I mean, it just is. Of course, it’s powerful to see ourselves reflected in books. That’s why representation matters. But it shouldn’t be just this one default experience all the time.

Jasmine

Yeah, some people have very strong preferences for point of view in books, which I just don’t care about at all. But I’ve seen people say that they prefer first person because they like to envision themselves as the character, which is never anything that I would have thought of. But I think so many people are just used to reading books where they can do that.

Virginia

What do you hear from readers for whom your books are offering them representation for the first time?

Jasmine

That has been one of the most rewarding things. I’m going on book tour next month. And in many cases, book tours are exhausting because it’s like so much travel and going from place to place and airplanes and events and stuff. But the actual events just fill me up because I have so many readers who say, “I see myself represented here, I see my relationships, I see my family in ways that I haven’t seen in other books or that I didn’t expect to see.” Things like that from readers really just keep me going. It just does feel really wonderful to hear that and to and also to feel like something that I have written resonates with other people in that way. It really just makes such a big difference to me to hear that.

Virginia

You’re showing people different possibilities sometimes. Another thing Nisha mentioned was hearing from fat readers saying, “I didn’t know a fat person could have sex that way.” And like, it devastates me that someone would become a fully formed adult, not have had that get clear to them that that’s possible. But that’s why the power of fat bodies in positive, joyful sex scenes, is really important.

Jasmine

Absolutely, I totally agree. And being able to think, “there are people who find that kind of a body attractive, maybe they will find me attractive, too,” I think is really incredible, especially for maybe younger readers. I’m not talking about teenagers, well maybe teenagers, but people in their 20s maybe who have only ever seen a certain body type reflected in this is who is attractive. And I think one of the delightful things about romance novels and especially queer romance novels about women, is that I am writing to the female gaze here. It’s women appreciating women, which is very fun to write and it’s very fun to read.

Virginia

Was it different writing the sex scenes for this book, compared to past novels?

Jasmine

Yes and no. I think the most fun part of writing sex scenes, for me, is always writing about female pleasure. So it was just like a lot more of that.

Virginia

It’s now doubled, literally, twice as much female pleasure. I mean, that is what is so wonderful about your work is how much it centers female pleasure.

Jasmine

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Virginia

I checked in with podcast listeners to see if folks had questions for you, and one that actually came up more than once was okay, the book is called Flirting Lessons. Can Jasmine give us a flirting lesson?

Jasmine

There are a few things that Taylor tells Avery early on. But I think one of the things that I had her keep emphasizing is: You want this to be fun for you, too. Only flirt with people who you find attractive, who you want to flirt with. And if it’s not fun for you, then you can stop. This isn’t something that you have to do. One of the things about flirting is that it should be fun and exciting. And if you’re not getting that back, then you move on to the next person. There are lots of people who you can flirt with, and that’s okay. And I think that’s something that people think too much about. Like, is the other person enjoying this and not am I enjoying this?

Virginia

Yes! Because as women, that’s what we’re conditioned to think: Am I doing what he wants (or they want) as opposed to centering our own pleasure?

Jasmine

Yes. One of the things about flirting is you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You want people to know that you are flirting with them, and that feels scary because you’re setting yourself up for rejection. Like, what if this person is like, oh, I don’t want to flirt with her. Okay, then you move on. But I think that is kind of one of the barriers to get over is like, you you have to let yourself be open to that, and then if it’s not good, then you just move on.

Virginia

Yeah, because if it’s not good, it won’t be fun for you.

For folks who haven’t read the book yet, Taylor has many excellent flirting tips. Like, the whole book is her taking Avery on these flirting lessons where they go out in the world. Especially in this era of mostly online dating, I was just so nervous for Avery.

I should say, Jasmine, I am divorced after an almost-25-year relationship. So my experience of dating in my 40s has been mostly really great—but I really felt for Avery in that panic of, I’m really going to go out there? I have to talk to people. What?

Jasmine

Yeah, because it is scary, right? I think that was one of the fun things about writing this book as we are coming out of a period where we were all shut in and not really talking, not encountering people out in the world, was to think about where would they go? What would they do? What are situations where you’re just meeting new people? And I think one of the things is having things already built in to talk about. Like the first flirting lesson that they go on—minor spoiler—is at a bookstore for a book event. And like, you have something to talk about. You’re there at a bookstore, you can talk about books. You can talk about the author that you’re there to see. You could talk about what other books have you read? And so that helps us, we already have a built in topic that I can talk to a stranger about and then maybe it’ll go from there. And thinking about things like that was really fun for me. How it’s a slightly safe setup for for them to start with that and then kind of keep going.

Virginia

A lot of the advice was about making friends as well. It’s not just, would I want to sleep with this person? It’s about being open to all kinds of relationships. And that was really beautiful. I really enjoyed that theme.

Jasmine

Yeah, absolutely. I hear a lot of people ask you the questions, like, how do you make friends as an adult? And I think the the answers are the same, right? You have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to be willing to say to someone who is basically a stranger, like, do you want to get coffee sometime? Or, we talked about that cool bar, do you want to meet there for a drink sometime? And I think that’s hard and scary for people, but that’s how I’ve made some of my closest friendships.

Jasmine

It is springtime or getting close to and I’m getting slightly obsessed with planning my garden. I, as Avery does in the book, like, learned to garden. And I have been lightly obsessed with planting for years. And then a few years ago, I bought a house. And then now have a very small amount of things to plant, and have started planting as much as possible in all of that. So I have six new rose bushes ready to be planted in space that I don’t have. And I have been planting lots of herbs and some sugar snap peas. There’s a great book that came out last year, I think it just came out in paperback called Soil. It’s by a Black woman and it’s about planting and gardening and the history of doing that. And it was very fun to read, and it’s very fun to like think about at a time like this.

Virginia

I am a hardcore gardener as well, and also regularly have more plants than I have space for. That’s a deeply relatable problem.

Jasmine

I’ve been inspired by you, actually, because was it last year that you only planted flowers? And I planted a bunch of roses, but not a lot of other flowers, and this year I want to plant more flowers.

Virginia

I strongly encourag that. We really underestimate the absolute necessity of growing beautiful flowers. Like, it’s an essential in my mind.

Interestingly, now there’s some pushback in my household that we should maybe get back to doing some more food, and I’m like, should we? Where’s that going to go? Because I really need all the space for the dahlias. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re trying to carve out different areas so it can be a little more of a mix. But it’s so satisfying and fun. That’s a great Butter.

Anything else you want to recommend?

Jasmine

I have read a few great books recently. I read the upcoming novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere. It’s about two women in the space program in the 80s. It is so good. I loved it. It was one of those I read in a day. I mean, I was on vacation, so I could do that. But I loved it so much.

I’m reading. Alexis Daria’s newest one right now, It’s called, Along Came Amor, it’s so good. It’s about the oldest cousin in the family—which, I am from a big family and a lot of the family stuff in it I really related to, and also I am the oldest sister and my mom is also the oldest sister. So, a lot of that kind of stuff, I related to and I loved the characters. So those are two of the most recent books that I’ve read that I really loved.

I’m in the midst of Kennedy Ryan’s upcoming book, which is just lovely. It’s called, Can’t Get Enough. I’m in the middle of that and it’s, I mean, her writing is just so beautiful all the time. It’s great to kind of linger in.

Virginia

Those are such good recs. I’m adding all of them to my to be read pile, which is, of course, a never ending list.

I’m going to do two book recs as well. One is Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London.

Jasmine

Oh, I love Kate. I haven’t read this one yet, but I need to get to it, because everybody’s told me it’s so good.

Virginia

It’s so delightful, especially if you are a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan or a Twilight fan, or were ever in the vampire genre. It’s a romance, but it’s a whole, delightful experience. It’s someone who’s a fan of vampire novels who ends up inside a vampire novel, etc. It’s great. It was really, really fun read.

And then the other one I just finished, actually, on audiobook. My podcast cohost

Corinne Fay

recommended this a few weeks ago, but I’m just going to second Corinne’s endorsement ofThe Safekeepby Yael van der Wouden. I’m probably mispronouncing that. I’m so sorry. It is an erotic story of love and obsession in 1960s Amsterdam.

Jasmine

Someone else told me about this book. I’ve heard about this book from a few other writers, and I need to really read it.

Virginia

Corinne didn’t want to say too much about it, and now I understand why. There’s a lot of twists, so I don’t want to say too much, but it does center a queer romance, which is really fascinating in that time and place. It also has a lot to do with post World War II Europe. I was totally absorbed in it. I had a long road trip this weekend and just kept being like, when am I back in my car so I can listen to that book some more?

Jasmine

Okay. I need to get to it.

Virginia

Well, Jasmine, this was so much fun. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with us. I am such a fan of your work. All of your novels are must reads. And I want folks to check out Flirting Lessons. So tell us where to find you, how we support your work, all those things.

Jasmine

I’m on Instagram at JasminePics. My website is Jasmineguillory.com and on the events page, you can find links to all of my upcoming book tour events and doing a bunch on the Eastern seaboard and then in the Midwest, and then the West coast. So hopefully I will be coming to a city near you, and you’ll be able to come out.

---

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

All the feelings about a work-in-progress relationship with social media and screens.

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your April Indulgence Gospel!

These episodes are usually only for paid subscribers but we’re releasing this one for free! If you like it, you can get even more Virginia by becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.

There has been so much conversation in online spaces over the past few months about divesting from social media. Folks are dropping X, Facebook, Instagram as a form of protest against billionaire tech bros like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And a lot of us are also feeling the need to doom scroll less as a form of self care. Plus, when Tiktok drops a new Chubby filter, it doesn’t really make us want to be there.

So today we’re chatting about how we’re both feeling about social media. What are we divesting from? How’s it going? And does any of this feel like a diet?

PS. You can always listen to our episodes right here in your email, where you’ll also receive full transcripts (edited and condensed for clarity). But please also follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and/or Pocket Casts!

This transcript does contain affiliate links; shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!

Corinne

Well, you’ve really been a leader in this field.

Virginia

A pioneer, would we say?

Corinne

You’ve been a pioneer in the field of quitting Instagram.

Virginia

Since December? I feel I cannot really claim pioneer status for something I’ve been doing for three months! But let’s start at the beginning.

What was your starting point in feeling like you wanted to start reevaluating your relationship with social media?

Corinne

Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I still feel mixed about it. We maybe should start by acknowledging that the “quitting Instagram” conversation just feels like it’s been going on forever.

Virginia

Forever!

Corinne

It feels like it has been years of people being like, “I’m so tired of Instagram blah, blah, blah.” And I’m someone who has always sort of felt like, “whatever, it’s fine.” I don’t necessarily feel like I go down an Instagram rabbit hole and then feel terrible about myself. Maybe in some specific circumstances.

So maybe for me, it started with our screen time episode.

Virginia

Where we looked at how much time we were spending on our phones. That was a hard day for both of us.

Corinne

I saw some stat recently that was like, if you spend two hours a day on Instagram, at the end of your life, you will have spent 10 years on Instagram. And that felt a little bleak.

Virginia

Okay, I don’t love that.

Corinne

Yeah, I didn’t love it. But there are also things I enjoy about Instagram. I do have a lot of friends and community there. SoI thought, well, why don’t I just delete it for the weekend?

Virginia

And that’s what you’ve started with.

Corinne

And that’s what I’ve started with.

What about you? What was your starting point?

Virginia

Mine was a little bit of a whim. I’ve been trying different things for a few years now to manage my relationship with Instagram specifically and with my phone more generally. And some of that was realizing that as a business strategy, it was not serving me to keep putting a lot of time into making reels and elaborate content for Instagram. Instagram is so siloed. It wasn’t translating to people coming over and finding Burnt Toast and the podcast. Maybe a handful of people do every week. But it’s not our main driver, and never has been.

So once I connected those dotes, I had to ask: Why am I spending an hour+ per day making content, for free, for this evil billionaire-led corporation? It didn’t feel right to me. So I’ve been scaling back and scaling back. But then it was really a total whim that in December, right as my kids’ winter break was starting, I was just like, you know what? I’m going to just fully delete it while my kids are off school. It’s the holidays, and I want to be able to focus on that.

And I will say, that was the first time I’d ever deleted it. I’ve often, in the past, on vacation, logged out or taken it off my home screen or taken a two week break, or a one week break, just by hiding it in my phone somewhere. But I always knew the tricks to find it again. So if I wanted to get back on I could. And this time, I was like, nope, it is not on my phone anymore. And that felt really huge.

And then. I really did not miss it at all. I really loved not having it in my space over the holidays in particular. And while I would agree with you that I’m also not someone who was spending a lot of time looking at beauty influencers and feeling bad about my skin or whatever, it turns out that I was getting locked into a comparison trap I didn’t even recognize. Especially around the holidays when a lot of people are posting their perfect family photos—I realized I enjoyed my own Christmas much more when I wasn’t comparing the messy reality of my family navigating the holidays with what people are curating for social media.

Corinne

Totally. That makes a lot of sense.

Virginia

I hadn’t even realized how much that bummed me out! But I was like, oh, I don’t want to see people’s Happy Family photos! Which makes me feel like a jerk, but it’s where I was.

Corinne

I think that’s very honest, and good to be aware of.

Virginia

So that was an interesting data point. And then after the holidays, I really was not dying to get it back on my phone, but I felt like I needed to bring it back for work. So here’s what I’m doing now: A couple of times a week, when we have a new podcast episode or new newsletter to promote, I’m logging on. I’m putting some stuff in stories. I’m spending a little bit of time responding to DMs. And then I delete it again until the next time I need to do that. So I’m really only downloading it like three or four times a week for an hour or two at a time.

Corinne

Wow, that’s awesome.

Virginia

Yeah, it’s a big change.

What have you noticed about not having it during the weekends?

Corinne

I think I’ve done it for three weekends, so hasn’t been super long. The first weekend, I was still looking for Instagram on my phone all the time. And then the second weekend, I think I actually forgot to delete it and just didn’t look at it.

Virginia

Interesting.

Corinne

One thing I’ve noticed is, I think we’re in a day and age where a lot of useful information is on Instagram. I was trying to look up whether something was open.

Virginia

Oh, like local businesses.

Corinne

And the only thing I actually trust would be Instagram. But you can still kind of use it in the web browser app.

Virginia

Yes, and it’s not at all addictive there because it’s so bad. You can quickly look something up if you need to. That’s how I’ve been using it for podcast episode research or story research is strictly web browser. Yeah, the local business thing. I definitely hear you on that.

Corinne

I’ve also noticed how quickly I can just use something else the same way. Like Substack notes have kind of turned into a similar thing. Or I also used to be really into playing Candy Crush, and so I’ve gotten a little bit back into Candy Crush as a zone out phone thing.

Virginia

Because you still need the dopamine hit and the “I’m going to just check out for a minute and do something mindless on my phone” break.

So when I went on vacation in February, I deleted Instagram, I deleted Substack, which felt terrifying because that’s my lifeline to my whole business, and I deleted my email off my phone, which felt even more terrifying. But was actually great. And I had the privilege of saying to Corinne, “If something explodes with Burnt Toast while I’m away, please text me.” And I would do the same for you. So it’s nice we have that option.

But now on the weekends, I’m trying to remember to delete all three of them to cut down a little bit on that mindlessly-looking-at-my-phone thing. I would so much rather be reading a book if I’m going do something where I just need a brain break. I would rather be reading a feminist romance novel than scrolling an app! It’s going to be more relaxing for me. I know this—but I have not yet broken the pickup phone check. I have not broken the muscle memory of that and I don’t know how we do that.

see the shape of my phone out of the corner of my eye sometimes it’s distracting, you know?

Virginia

I’m also such a power texter. And I do love texting for the connections it brings me. I don’t live with another adult and my kids are amazing, but I need adult conversation. Texting helps me feel like a part of my community. So that means I’m looking at my phone more for texting. And then once you’re texting, it’s like, oh, let me just check… And so I’m really on top of my New York Times word games. I’ll often find myself mindlessly doodling around my phone being like, wait, I’m not doing anything because there’s nothing here.

So I don’t know if that just fades eventually, or if I need, we need to do something more concrete to break that cycle.

Have you ever tried the brick?

Corinne

No, but I’ve been hearing about that. I’ve been hearing a lot about the brick, and also this app Opal, that similarly blocks certain stuff on your phone.

Virginia

I bought a brick maybe a year ago, and I did use it for a little bit. I was totally like, “This is going to be my Butter on the next podcast episode because it’s changing my life!” And then I put it down and never used it again.

Corinne

That’s so funny.

Virginia

But as we’re talking I’m like, should I try it again? Maybe it would turn my phone into a texting only vehicle.

Corinne

I’ve heard about people using it so as you go out the door on the way to work, you tap it and then it blocks stuff while you’re at work. But as a person who works from home, it doesn’t feel like that makes as much sense for me.

Virginia

You would just get up and go get the brick when you wanted to break into your phone, right? That’s what was happening to me.

Corinne

And I feel like it’s more like, I want to block stuff on my phone when I’m at home.

Virginia

I’m like, should I brick everything except text messages over the weekend? It’s something to play around with, maybe. Except, like, Google Maps or something, the essential things. Like, can you make your phone as unfun as possible?

Corinne

There are also now all those smartphone alternatives. I think there’s one called, Wisephone where they have the basics, but they just try to make it not fun. I think they’re black and white and don’t have social media apps, but still have phone calls, maps, texting stuff.

Virginia

Have you noticed any differences in terms of how you’re feeling about your body just because you’re less on Instagram and Tiktok?

Corinne

To be honest, I haven’t noticed. I feel like my body stuff is more influenced by real life and discomfort in the actual world.

I guess I do notice on Tiktok especially, that there is just a lot of filtering, I guess. Both skin and body stuff. Right now, there is a lot of talk about the new AI chubby filter, where you can use this certain filter and it makes you into a chubby person.

Virginia

I want to know what it would do to actual fat people. (Spoiler: Not much!!!)

Corinne

Yeah, I have seen fat people using it. It does not do a lot.

But the thing I’ll say about it is: It’s Disney chubby. It makes you into a cute cartoon fat person. Like chubby arms, but they’re smooth and you still have a waist. And then I also was realizing Tiktok has this app called CapCut that is a video editing app, and there are so many things you can do to your body. There are little things you can click like “square shoulders” or “shrink in waist,” just all these tiny little edits that you can totally mess with your your body.

Virginia

I mean, it’s not hard to see the potential for harm there is from that. Like, if you are uploading content of yourself and using these filters to digitally alter as much about yourself as possible, it is going to create a major disconnect with how you feel about your actual body.

I don’t use CapCut. But when I am editing photos, I use A Color Story, which is a photo editing app. I mostly doing it to brighten up a photo that didn’t have good lighting, or cropping it to fit into how I want it to look on Substack or something. But I do brighten, and I sometimes use a filter that makes the photo look higher quality. But of course, in doing that, it also is smoothing out my skin, or making me look a little more tan, that kind of thing. And there are times when I then look at an actual mirror and I’m like, oh, wait, I don’t have the Color Story “Welcome Home” filter on me. I am less glowy in real life. And it is weird. And that’s like, such a mild use of it.

Corinne

Totally. When you’re recording TikTok videos, I think maybe the default is to have some kind of beauty filter on that like smooths out your skin.

Virginia

Oh god! So wild! Do you ever use filters when you make Tiktok content?

Corinne

I think I have unknowingly in that way where it’s just the default.

Virginia

I’ve been coerced into it.

Corinne

Yeah, not that I’ve looked at my face and been like, dang, put something on there. But I’ve also played around with some of the like, makeup-y filters, and usually I hate the way they make me look.

I recently posted a TikTok where I was like, Does this not work on me because I’m fat or because I’m gay? I just don’t like how it makes me look. So, yeah, I think I’m maybe like, less susceptible. But I mean, it’s really strange. It’s just weird.

Virginia

It is really weird! We will link to Elise Hu, who was on the podcast a while back, talking about her book about Korean beauty culture. She has a greatTED talk she did recently about digital beauty standards and how they are messing with all of us, and particularly teenagers. It is a grim piece of this.

Corinne

The other thing I think about a lot with this is plastic surgery. Because the filters are one thing. But then I also think there’s just a lot of really popular people who are doing a lot of stuff to their face.

Virginia

It’s just like intentional weight loss. It’s a necessary survival strategy in a capitalist society for a lot of people, a lot of job descriptions hinge on it. So it’s there. And it also then has these ripple effects, of the more we look at those images, the more our brains normalize to those images, and the more we expect out of ourselves and others, and that way danger lies.

Corinne

Right? And it’s one thing to like be doing that and disclosing it, and then it’s another thing to not be.

Virginia

Totally.

Are you deleting Tiktok as well on the weekends? Or just Instagram?

Corinne

I have been deleting Tiktok as well. Tiktok is way more of a problem for me. I have this thing where I’m like, I’m just going to look at Tiktok for 15 minutes before I go to sleep. And then it’s literally two hours later, and I’m like, what?

Virginia

So then that leads me to the next thing on our outline, which is we are going to check our phone time.

I am curious to know if not having Tiktok is actually lowering your screen time.

Corinne

Well, not having Tiktok for two days. But yeah.

Virginia

So for anyone who missed our previous episode, Corinne and I were both averaging around eight hours of screen time a day according to our phones. Now I will put a caveat in that, which is, I talked to

TheGamerEducator

after that episode came out. And Ash told me that the iPhone screen time is not actually accurate, because it keeps recording after you put your phone down if you haven’t quit out of an app. So, like, there are lots of ways the phone is amplifying your screen time, which I think is very important for us to know.

However we can at least compare. It was somewhere around eight hours before. What is it now? So let’s look at last weekend.

How did you do, Corinne?

Corinne

Last Friday, I had six and a half hours. I had eight hours on Saturday, but I had 12 hours on Thursday and 11 hours on Wednesday.

Virginia

I had 13 hours on Thursday.

Corinne

Yeah, I’m really questioning how accurate this is.

Virginia

I’m really questioning how accurate it is, but I’m also like, wow, so it doesn’t fucking matter? Because even if it’s not accurate, it’s still roughly the same as what we had before, when we were on Instagram and Tiktok all the time?

Corinne

I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s making a huge difference. For me it looks like there’s maybe like, one hour difference. I don’t know.

Virginia

I mean, my most used app before was texting, and that’s still true. Like last Saturday, 8 hours and 39 minutes of total time, 3 hours and 22 minutes on texting. And what can I say? I had my kids last weekend, and I need adult conversation when I’m parenting. So there we are. But there is no Instagram time listed because I had deleted it.

Corinne

Yeah, yep. Definitely spending less time on Instagram. Is that a net positive?

Virginia

I don’t know, but it is distilling for me what the problems are. It tells you how many times you picked up your phone in one day, and I’m picking up my phone like 150 times a day. So maybe that’s the next piece of this I need to work on.

Corinne

Yeah, my daily average is 140.

Virginia

Yep, that sounds right. Wow, cool, great. So that’s depressing. We’re getting no better, but we are noticing benefits from being on these particular apps less.

Corinne

Yeah, right. We are? What are they?

Virginia

Did we just like ruin our entire sense of accomplishment? Oh, my gosh.

I mean, I think what’s interesting is we had both verbalized concrete ways this was making our lives better, and then we looked at the numbers and we felt like garbage.

And what does that remind us of, Corinne?

Corinne

Hmmm, dieting?

Virginia

So how do we think about wanting to use our phones less and not get caught up in a perfectionistic diet-y mindset?

Corinne

As you said, the tracking is not accurate. So I think we need to just not track. And not turn this into an information thing.

Virginia

It really should be more about how we feel. I also think there’s still some work that I personally need to do untangling morality and screen time. Like when I said earlier, oh, I’d be so much happier reading a book. I know that is true in the way that my brain feels after reading versus the way my brain feels after scrolling. I know I feel calmer and less stressed.

But what I don’t know is how much of that is because I think reading a book is a morally superior activity to being on my phone.

Corinne

I mean, I think it’s also really easy to make a diet culture parallel there. It’s like, sometimes I might actually physically feel better if I eat some salad with my pizza, rather than just eating a ton of—I don’t know, pizza is not a problem for me. But I think there’s an argument sometimes, where it’s like, I do feel better when I eat this way, and it’s not the whole story.

Virginia

How much of that is “I feel better because I’ve been told this is better” versus “I’m really noticing some physiological shifts.” And I think it can also be both, right? And I think with me, with books versus phone, it is both. But it is that is a piece of it. And I think I have to be careful to interrogate that part of it, in order to prevent this from becoming like…the phone diet.

Corinne

Totally. I also feel like you’ve pretty clearly identified what part of the phone using is helpful and valuable to you, like texting.

Virginia

Yeah, that’s true. So there’s no reason to feel bad if there’s a lot of hours spent texting, because that’s me being in touch with my community. What about you? Do you feel like there’s a clear way your phone is valuable to you?

Corinne

I feel very clear on what I don’t like, which is scrolling TikTok for three hours before I fall asleep. But that also seems to be one of the most impossible things for me to kick.

Virginia

What if you deleted it before bed?

Corinne

I mean, it’s just like, would I? There are all kinds of tips that are, like, put your phone in the other room, blah, blah, blah, and I’m just like, I’m going to put my phone in the other room after I look on TikTok for five minutes. So I don’t know if deleting it would be any different.

Virginia

I used to put my phone in the other room when I shared my room with someone else who had their phone on the nightstand, and now that I don’t, I want my phone in my room in case of emergencies. I want it in my room if my kids are not with me, in case, a kid gets sick in the middle of the night and, God forbid, I need to be notified. And I want it in my room when the kids are with me, in case the killer breaks into our house. So I can’t do that one anymore. And I think that’s fine.

But I do think editing down what’s available on the phone is helpful for the bedtime thing. But I also understand it’s like, are you going to do it? Maybe that’s where one of those apps, or the brick or something, could come in handy. But we haven’t gotten there yet.

I mean to that note of us being like we need our phones in our rooms for safety, which I think is valid for people who live alone, we should also talk about like the function of privilege in all of this, and how much divesting from screen time is, in and of itself, for privilege,

Corinne

And just the privilege to have a ton of screen time.

Virginia

Yeah, yeah, to have the time to do it. But also, I really, again, love Ash Brandin’s work on this. They talk about screen time and kids. So they’re not really talking about social media. They’re usually talking about video games and younger kids. And Ash wrote:

If we fear a child has too much screen time? Perhaps the question to ask is, what underlying need is not being met for this child? And if we do think that’s related to screen time, the question becomes, what need is this screen time meeting? Is it replacing a lack of parental leave, child care, a regulated parent, outdoor access movement? How do we address that need? Focusing on the screen will only make the caregiver feel shame, and that doesn’t help anyone, especially the child.

And I read that, and thought, yes. Because I know in addition to me needing my phone with me more as a single parent, my kids get more screen time now that they live in two single parent households, because there are not two people there all the time to have other things going on. And it does meet some needs.

And I think we can definitely extrapolate that to ourselves and ask what need is our screen time meeting?

Corinne

Yeah, that’s a great question.

Virginia

So what need does three hours of TikTok scrolling meet for you?

Corinne

I don’t think I have an answer, but I will definitely be thinking about it.

Virginia

I do think a lot of it is social connection. I mean, I think all of our screen time increased during the pandemic because social media became a replacement for community. I think there’s a lot going on there. And I think talking more honestly about that piece of it and understanding, what are you actually getting out of this, seems more useful than just, it’s bad, it’s bad. I’m bad for using it.

---

Corinne

Virginia. Do you have a Butter this week?

Virginia

I do. I’m going to suggest a fun, non screen time activity to do with kids. Not because I think screen time is bad, but just because it has been really fun in my house lately. It is giant coloring sheets, where you just put this giant poster roll of paper with a printed coloring thing on it, on a table with some markers, and you and your kids or your friends or whoever go to town on it, and it is really soothing and lovely.

Some recent coffee table coloring at Virginia’s house

Corinne

Wow, that sounds fun.

Virginia

Yeah, I got the first ones at Christmas, and I did buy them off Amazon, which we are no longer shopping at. And I had them out over the holidays when grandparents were visiting, and it was really nice for giving them an easy way to hang out with the grandkids, and just like, anyone could do it. There’s no skill. There is not really a lot of skill in coloring, and it’s just a nice it’s a nice way to be together. I don’t know, it’s great.

And then I posted about it on Instagram, and said I was looking for some non-Amazon options. And folks sent me two good ones. One is Friends Art Lab, which makes some really cute 10 foot long coloring rolls. So I’ve ordered some of those. And then I got some from Grove Collaborative. They’re smaller, but that was actually kind of nice. They fit better on our coffee table. And we’ve been doing those. I just keep it out on the coffee table with some markers. And I particularly find when we’ve had a cranky day, or there has been a lot of squabbling, that sitting down to color calms me down, and then inevitably a kid will join me. And maybe we’re not really talking, but we’re kind of like co-regulating ourselves.

Corinne

That sounds really nice!

Virginia

It’s also good to do while you’re watching TV. if I don’t have a puzzle going, it’s the same kind of like, keeps my hands busy, keeps me off my phone.

Corinne

I love that.

Virginia

What about you?

Corinne

My Butter this week is maybe a little bit niche.

Virginia

I love a niche butter.

Corinne

I was really struggling with the water pressure in my shower, my shower hose head thing was broken, and like all this water was just leaking out of it. Anyways, I replaced my shower head. It’s incredible. I highly recommend replacing your shower head, especially if you have hard water.

Virginia

Oh really?

Corinne

We have really hard water here and minerals build up and break everything and clog all the little shower holes. But I got a new shower hose and shower head, and it’s incredible. Like, what was I doing? Was I even washing shampoo out of my hair? Or was I just leaving it there? I always kind of dread stuff like that, but it was literally like, I could do the whole thing with my hand. I needed a wrench to get the old one off, just a tiny bit. But then you just hand tighten it. It doesn’t leak. it It’s so great. It’s such an easy little upgrade. So, highly recommend getting a new shower head.

Virginia

I love when any house thing that I think is going to be a nightmare turns out to actually be quite easy. A lot of them do. Not all of them! And then you’re like, oh, this dramatically improved my daily quality of life. Why didn’t I do it a year ago?

Corinne

Yeah, it has really, really improved my quality of life. So, something to think about!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for a bonus March Indulgence Gospel!

Today we’re chatting about:

⭐️ How to talk to your kids about (your) weight loss and/or GLP-1 use.

⭐️ How to handle medically-advised diets without getting…diet-y.

⭐️Our favorite leggings (we stand by all these recs!)

⭐️Dealing with haters… and more!

To hear the full story, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can add on a subscription to Big Undies, Corinne’s newsletter about clothes, for 20% off.

Today’s episode is a rerun; we’re bringing you episode 100, which ran in June 2023—such a simpler time! But we had a really valuable conversation about how to talk to kids about body changes, especially if you’re losing weight on Ozempic and we thought it might be a helpful one to revisit now. Plus there is our usual smattering of assorted random Indulgence Gospel topics. And dahlias! Enjoy.

PS. This transcript does contain affiliate links; shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast!

Virginia

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, anti-fat bias, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.

Corinne

And I’m Corinne Fay. I work on Burnt Toast and run @selltradeplus an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.

Virginia

It is time for your June Indulgence Gospel! We are going to answer your questions like we do every month. We are going to read a little hate mail—I have a fun one teed up for you. And we are going to celebrate! Because this is the 100th episode of the Burnt Toast podcast.

Corinne

Wooo!

Virginia

That’s wild. Corinne, how are you? I’m happy you are here with me on this auspicious occasion.

Corinne

I am so excited that it’s the 100th episode! It’s fully summer here. It’s hot. It’s Pride. I am trying to find shorts.

Virginia

Are you finding any? Or are you frustrated in the shorts journey?

Corinne

I’m both finding and frustrated. For some reason I’m feeling like all the shorts I wore last summer I don’t like anymore. It’s not that they don’t fit. I just don’t like them anymore.

Virginia

I had a similar reaction. I had the Target linen shorts from last summer.

Corinne

They just haven’t held up?

Virginia

No. It’s not the highest quality linen, I guess.

Corinne

I do find that sometimes with fast fashion stuff, the next season it’s dingy.

Virginia

Yeah. But happy Pride! Are you doing any fun Pride things?

Corinne

I am! I’m going to an ice cream social on Wednesday which I’m very excited about. And I think I might also get a tattoo.

Virginia

Wait. Tell us everything.

Corinne

At Dyke Night.

Virginia

Okay, the mom in me is like, you’re getting a tattoo in a bar? Have you checked it out? Are they reputable?

Corinne

I don’t know if you recall, but I got COVID at Dyke Night.

Virginia

I am recalling that, Corinne.

Corinne

So it is like, a disease vector.

Virginia

Have we just done like a little background search on this tattoo artist? High quality needles?

Corinne

They do seem cool. But yeah, I will wear a mask.

Virginia

I will wear a mask, but I will let you put needles in my body.

Corinne

Yes. So I think it’ll be an exciting week!

Virginia

Are you a big tattoo person? Do you have a lot of tattoos?

Corinne

I do. It’s funny that you don’t know that. I have a fair amount of tattoos. I don’t have a ton on my body but I have some on my limbs.

Virginia

Nice. I am the only millennial who doesn’t have a tattoo. Because I’m very scared of sharp needles.

Corinne

Well, It’s not too late.

Virginia

I know. I’ve just never had a thought of, that is what I would like. Do you know what the tattoo is going to be?

Corinne

It’s a flash event which means that they have pre-drawn stuff. And it’s a bunch of weird cute little creatures.

Virginia

This sounds delightful.

Corinne

I’m excited to get a little creature tattoo. How are you doing?

Virginia

I am good. It is it is Pride here as well. It’s also high garden season for me. May and June are like the months. So I’m just gardening as much as I can now that the book stuff is calming down. I planted too many dahlia tubers this weekend.

Corinne

Oh my gosh.

Virginia

It’s gonna be a whole thing. First of all, I just want to say Corinne is being all cool and getting tattoos and I’m now going to tell you a nerdy gardening story. We are who we are. It’s fine.

Corinne

Gardening is very cool.

Virginia

So I failed to successfully overwinter my dahlia tubers is how this story starts. Just so we know how much coolness is involved. I just dumped them in the garage and never packed them up properly. There’s a whole process you have to do. So I killed all my dahlia tubers, and in a panic, because I love dahlias, I ordered a bunch online and ordered way more than I needed. Then that order was delayed infinitely and I thought they weren’t coming. So I bought some locally from my amazing local flower store Parcel. I planted all of those and then my online order arrived. So now I have 66 dahlia tubers in my garden. Too many. I was sticking them anywhere.

Corinne

It sounds like it’s going to be awesome though.

Virginia

I don’t know. I’m late getting them in the ground. We’re having a drought already. We’ll see. And it was a ton of work to plant them all. But yes, I’m on a dahlia journey this year.

The most important thing—and everybody who listens to this podcast, please hold me accountable on this. This November when they freeze, please say: Virginia, dig them up and store them properly. Because you have now spent all the money on dahlia tubers and you cannot ever buy them again.

Corinne

It sounds so labor intensive though.

Virginia

It is very labor intensive. But they’re not inexpensive. And I have now bought them twice.

Alright, let’s do some questions!

We are going to start with a couple of health questions.

Corinne

Yes, here we go.

I have recently been diagnosed with a mild case of fatty liver disease. When talking to my GI, who was more compassionate than I expected, he discussed dietary changes I should make to reverse some of the damage over time and maintain a healthy liver. As the mother of a new baby, I’m strongly incentivized to be as healthy as possible to be around for my kid. As a fat woman with a recently healed relationship with food and a firm anti-diet Intuitive Eating approach to life, I’m struggling to find the balance between “this is a diet” and “this is necessary for my health.” Can you make a recommendation for how sick folks can approach adjusted eating regimens in a way that is both effective and respectful of their journey and their own relationship with food and their bodies?

Virginia

Okay, so I want to say before we get started: We are not doctors. We’re not dietitians. You are here for our informed opinions. Standard disclaimer. Also, I am not an expert on fatty liver disease and I did not report that out. So we’re not going to talk specifically about what your protocol should be or is this the right thing to be doing.

What I really want to talk about is how this happens with all kinds of health conditions, where you get told you have to cut out a food group or make some diet adjustment in order to deal with a physical health ailment. How do you do that in a way that’s supportive and not triggering and not pushing you back into a diet-y place?

Corinne

Yes, that makes sense.

Virginia

So I would first do some research and see how necessary the dietary adjustments are. I think they’re often prescribed—and again, I don’t know about liver conditions, but they’re often prescribed as a knee jerk, one-size-fits-all kind of prescription, without a lot of nuance as to whether it’s really necessary for you. The research often isn’t as clear cut as we would like.

So, you might ask your doctor: “Is this dietary change something you would recommend for a thin person with this condition as well? If not, what treatment would you give a thin person?” Just to understand the landscape of are they doing this as a stealth way to prescribe weight loss for you? Or are they doing this because they see a clear-cut relationship between x foods and this condition?

Corinne

There is a Health at Every Size health sheet for this condition. That might be a good place to start with what does the research say about what helps.

Virginia

Ragen Chastain and everyone who works on those does such an incredible job pulling them together. They have a bunch of health conditions covered so that’s a really good starting point, anytime you’re getting a diet or weight loss prescription from a doctor to understand, what is the other take?

But okay, let’s say that you do have to make the diet adjustment, like it does seem clear that this is the right thing to do. What are your thoughts on how you do that in a non-triggering way?

Corinne

If you decide that you do want to make dietary changes, which I do think is a choice, you could always work with a nutritionist who is aligned with your values around that. If you are someone that struggles with restriction or food stuff, which it sounds like you are, dieting might not be healthy for you. You’re kind of balancing—

Virginia

—two health conditions.

Corinne

Yeah.

Virginia

I think it’s important to be clear with your doctor if this feels unsafe for you. Let’s name that and let’s make sure that your doctor is aware they’re suggesting something that may be unsafe for you. What supports are they going to put in place? Or what other protocols can they consider that would be safer for you?

I think that can be hard to do for folks who don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder. It can be hard to do even for folks with a diagnosed eating disorder because often doctors don’t care. And don’t ask about it, or they’re so focused on this little piece of your health, but they’re ignoring the bigger picture. But if you don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder, it can be this very vulnerable thing where you feel like you’re saying, “But it just makes me sad,” and that that doesn’t feel as important. There’s this urgency of your liver numbers or your A1C is in jeopardy and we don’t have time for your feelings.

So I just want to name that your feelings in this really matter. You’re not being high maintenance, you’re not being fussy. This is actually really hard to do.

Corinne

Yeah, definitely. The other thing that I have found helpful with stuff like this is if your doctor says “don’t eat X,” sometimes flipping it to be not, “I can never eat Oreos again,” but to be, “I want to eat more vegetables,” or whatever. So you’re thinking of adding rather than restricting.

Virginia

I think that’s a super helpful shift to make. I have a child who was on a medically required fat free diet for a period of time. And you lean into making what you can eat as delicious and amazing as possible. And you make sure that you’re trying to take an abundance mindset towards it. Not letting it be a stepping stone towards more restriction. Instead it’s like, “I’m restricting this one thing, but here’s what I can eat. What do I love here that I can eat? How do I get the most delicious and abundant versions of what I can eat in my life?”

Corinne

Yes. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Virginia

Alright, you want to read the next one?

Corinne

I’ve just started using Mounjaro as a way to combat type two diabetes. And I wonder what is a good way to discuss / explain this to my children? Because the reality is I’m using it to lose weight and reducing blood glucose levels is almost more of a side effect. Drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro and the like have overwhelmed the media. But how do we discuss a medical intervention like this with children? I don’t want it to be a secret, but I also don’t want to toxic conversation around size.

Virginia

Whew, I am getting many versions of this question. It’s interesting because the media has been so focused on the Hollywood angle of Ozempic, which is people taking it to be skinnier. But there have been all these people quietly saying to me, “Well, I am taking it mostly for my diabetes, but also to lose weight. What do I do?”

And I wanted to have this conversation because I feel like it is important to make space for that experience.

Corinne

It is really tough.

This is kind of a sidebar, but when was the last time the media was so obsessed with a medication? I just feel like it’s like inescapable right now!

Virginia

I mean, I can tell you at least one of the last times was when Orlistat went over the counter and became Alli. Because that’s when I was in women’s magazines covering weight loss drugs and we wrote quite a lot about how great it was that you could get a weight loss drug over the counter.

Corinne

I haven’t even heard of that.

Virginia

Well, it was like 2003.

Corinne

I was in high school.

Virginia

You’re a baby! You weren’t in high school, you’re not that much younger than me!

Corinne

Yeah, I graduated from high school in 2004.

Virginia

Well, you are an infant.

Corinne

You were covering weight loss drugs while I was merely graduating high school.

Virginia

It was a whole big thing and definitely all-consuming for a minute. Then we found out that it gives you a really oily poops and it turns out an increased urgency to shit your pants. So it was a flash in the pan. I am waiting for the Ozempic backlash.

So here’s the thing: It is a great diabetes drug. And I think if you were just taking it to manage your diabetes, there’s a super straightforward conversation you have with your kids where you say, “I am taking this to manage my diabetes. That’s really important for my health and wellbeing. It is being talked about as a weight loss drug, but that is not what I’m doing it for.” I wish more of the conversation was about its purpose as a diabetes medication because folks who need it for diabetes can’t even access it in some places because the weight loss stuff has gotten so loud.

But that’s not what this person is asking. Because she’s saying that the blood glucose is a side effect.

Corinne

My response to this was just like, why do you need to talk to your kids about the fact that you’re excited about weight loss? Like, is that something that they need to know?

Virginia

That’s interesting.

Corinne

But I’m also not a parent.

Virginia

Well, I guess the thing is, whether you speak to it or not—your kids probably know you’re excited about weight loss. Because if you’re losing weight on the drug, they’re going to be aware of that. And if you’re getting positive feedback for that weight loss, which you probably are, they’re going to be aware of that. Kids are just exquisitely sensitive to how we interact with our bodies, so they’re going to know if that’s a thing.

I do think it’s really important to have some ground rules for yourself that you don’t demonize your bigger body or anybody else’s bigger body. That you don’t talk negatively about your body in front of your kids. I would also ask, big picture: What are you doing to celebrate fat people, as a family? In the art on your walls? In the books you read, in the TV shows you watch? Are you celebrating and supporting fat people in general? Are you naming anti-fat bias and calling it out as harmful when you encounter it?

Corinne

It seems like a good opportunity to have a conversation about the systemic reasons that people might want to lose weight.

Virginia

Your individual choices to lose weight or not lose weight and how that’s tangled up in your health—all of that is the part I’m the least interested in. I want to know, what are you doing on anti fat-bias in general? What are you doing to make your home a safe space for all bodies? And I do think it’s valid to ask, if I am pursuing intentional weight loss, is my home a safe space for all bodies? Because if your kids are fat, maybe that’s going to feel unsafe to them.

But I do think we are allowed to have our personal struggles, and we can still be committed to the larger cause. I’m more interested in how you’re showing up in the world on these issues than I am in your own personal choices. And it’s super complicated if you have been told this feels very necessary for you to do in some way. I’m not here to talk you out of that. I’m just here to say yeah, okay, but what are you doing for fat people?

Corinne

And if it feels necessary for accessibility stuff, I think that’s really valid.

Virginia

I mean, so many fat folks are doing Ozempic or getting weight loss surgery, and it’s not an aesthetic decision for them. It’s because it’s necessary in order to access other healthcare they need.

Corinne

I also think if it’s possible, it might be nice to not be celebrating the weight loss. Not making it into a moral celebration that you lost weight because you’re a good person or you did something right.

Virginia

That’s a great point. Make sure you’re limiting it to “this felt necessary to improve my health.” Or, “this felt necessary for accessibility reasons.” Stick to the clear, practical reasons that this felt like the right choice for you.

She doesn’t say how old her kids are, but I’m thinking about my nine year old. If this was something going on in our house, if I got positive feedback for weight loss, I would name for her why that was problematic. Even if I said thank you to the person for the compliment in the moment, because sometimes that’s awkward, I would later say something like, “The way so-and-so talked about how my body is changing, that is really a sign of how much we value certain bodies and that’s really problematic. I just want you to know that how your body changes has no bearing on your value as a person.” And invite them to talk about what they think when they hear those kinds of comments.

Corinne

This probably isn’t the first time this stuff has come up. Maybe it’s the first time the medication has come up. But if you’re excited about weight loss, your kids probably know that.

Virginia

Maybe think about how have you talked about this in the past? And do you need talk about what you’re unlearning or how your thinking has changed.

Alright, the next one, this person writes:

I’m trying to work on my relationship with food and address some functional GI issues, but the two books I’ve read so far, The Mind Gut Connection and Trust Your Gut, are full of anti-fat bias. Do you know of any other resources?

Corinne

Gut stuff is so complicated. It just feels like it’s like one of those topics right now that is really huge in the wellness world. And yeah, there is a lot of anti-fat bias there.

Virginia

It’s pretty much always prescribed elimination diet, prescribed restriction is the treatment protocol. And this is an area I’ve looked into a little bit and there is very little evidence to support elimination diet protocols being helpful, particularly if it’s something you’re experimenting with on your own or with the help of one of these books, which I did just Google and yeah, they’re both filled with diet culture, anti-fat bias is very apparent.

So I think it is tricky because there’s a lot of people pushing stuff that’s not evidence based but they sort of glom it onto like one little study. There’s a lot of pseudoscience in the way this gets talked about.

I would definitely recommend, if you haven’t already, listen back to our episode with Christy Harrison on her new book The Wellness Trap. Definitely get The Wellness Trap or check it out from your library because she goes into a lot of detail about the myths and misconceptions and misinformation that circulates about GI conditions in wellness culture. She doesn’t drill so much into here’s what to do for a specific condition. But I think it will just be helpful for grounding you as you start to navigate what you want to do with all of these things.

“And as I learned in my research: Not only is it not evidence-based to cut out foods and do elimination diets for these conditions. But actually, there’s not really good evidence that these conditions even exist.”

Read full story

The other thing to know is, there’s a very high, almost like a complete Venn diagram overlap between GI issues and disordered eating or eating disorders. So, so often they prescribe some kind of elimination diet to treat your GI issue, when in fact restriction is an underlying cause of, or a major contributing factor to, your GI issue. More restriction is not going to solve it.

Corinne

You actually need the opposite.

Virginia

You need to eat and you’re not eating enough food. You might be thinking no, no, no I eat too much, way too much food because that’s often the way people feel when they’re stuck in a restrict or restrict/binge cycle. But it’s really worth looking into that.

Two other resources I would check out Marci Evans, who is a great anti-diet, fat positive dietitian based in Boston, who specializes in GI issues and disordered eating. And Emily Fonnesbeck, who I believe is in Utah and has a similar focus. I actually interviewed her for my first book about her experience going down that wellness culture rabbit hole of trying to solve her own GI issues through elimination diets, and how that ended up in orthorexia, and coming back out of it. They both have great Instagrams and websites with lots of good information.

Corinne

That’s awesome. Those are good resources.

Virginia

Alright. I think that wraps up our health segment.

I call this next segment just Existing in Diet Culture. It’s a lot sometimes.

Corinne

So real. Okay, let me read the next one.

Do you have any coping strategies when it feels hard to be okay with my body? It comes in waves.

Virginia

I think it’s good that this person is noticing that it comes in waves. Because if you can notice that when you’re in the wave, you can maybe also remember that it’s not going to last forever.

Corinne

Good point.

Virginia

And that you’re riding a wave right now. You’re not drowning.

Corinne

My thought was to sort of fight against that feeling by doing something that feels good in your body, like, I don’t know. It could that could be some kind of physical activity like walking or swimming or like laying on the couch, eating food.

Virginia

Furry blankets are helpful.

Corinne

Smelling smells. And I would also say, if it’s something that comes up for you a lot, make a list of what helps you feel better in the moment. And you can refer to it when you’re like having one of those waves.

Virginia

That’s a nice idea. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Look underneath the body feelings, to figure out what’s driving the body feelings. Because often this is where I go when my social anxiety is high. So what is really going on? If you’re feeling destabilized in a relationship, this may be where you go, to blame your body or blame yourself. So many different things.

Corinne

I always remember the episode where Mia O’Malley came on and she was like: Is your life comfortable for your body? Are you feeling this way because your pants don’t fit or your chair is too small?

Virginia

That is such a great point. What about your physical environment or your clothes or whatever needs to change to support your body as it is versus you feeling like I don’t fit or I need to change.

I think I’m like, pretty broken up with skinny jeans.

Corinne

Oh, wait, this is breaking news. This is crazy. We might need a new jeans science. Are you breaking up with jeans?

Virginia

I don’t know. I don’t know? It’s complicated. My relationship status with jeans is “it’s complicated.” But I’m wearing my straight leg jeans right now and I’ve been wearing them more. I like the style of straight leg jeans but they tend to be a little bit cropped and then in the winter it’s really hard in the Northeast because like what do you do with socks and boots? But it’s summer now so when I’m wearing jeans, it makes sense to wear my cropped jeans. And I’ve just been having this realization of, they are just so much more comfortable than my skinny jeans in just all the ways and what a gift that is to my body to be comfortable in my pants.

I mean, my other solution on this is I’ve been living in leggings when it was colder. I’m just like so comfy in leggings. But it was interesting to actually pull out a pair of jeans and not be tortured by them and be like, oh, right. Some of that was a choice of just being wedded to a style that did not feel good.

Corinne

I’m very curious where these straight or wide leg jeans came from.

Virginia

They are the Gap ones, they’re the same ones from Jeans Science. I have not bought new jeans. I have bought all the jeans.

Corinne

That’s very amazing.

Virginia

I actually did just go on gap.com to see if I could get a second pair because I do like them so much. And they’re sold out of my size right now. [EDIT: They were when we recorded, but have restocked, so this fluctuates!]

And, you know, Gap is not super inclusive. I’m wearing the 34 it only goes up to 35. Or maybe I’m in the 35. They are not a solution, or a pair of jeans I want to shout from the rooftops.

But to the larger point of this person’s question, something that’s been helping with my feelings in my body is being really comfortable in my clothes.

Corinne

Yeah, totally. That was a big revelation of Glennon Doyle, where she talks about how the clothes were policing her body.

Virginia

It’s nice not to be policed. So I think looking for small things like that and then just knowing that you’re gonna ride this wave. It’s going to get better. Then you’ll ride another wave. Maybe each week gets a little easier, you know?

Corinne

Yeah, it will come and go.

Virginia

Alright, this person writes:

I am struggling with how to respond to a very small friend who is struggling with the fact that she’s gained weight, unnoticeable to me, due to a more demanding job. I am a new mom of a nine month old whose body has gone up in size since giving birth and working really hard on dismantling my own anti-fat bias, with help from you and Aubrey Gordon, and accepting my new size without shame. How do I balance being a supportive friend while also setting boundaries that protect the self-acceptance I have been working so hard on?

Virginia

This comes up a lot. What do I do with my friends?

Corinne

I feel like you have to talk to your friends.

Virginia

You do. You have to let them know that this is harmful for you, which is vulnerable, but is also kind of the most respectful way to do it. They should know and it shouldn’t be your work to do but they may not understand the degree to which they’re harming you.

Corinne

You can start the conversation from a place of empathy. “Changes are hard, no matter what kind of changes they are. Especially when it’s your body. And, what you’re saying is really bothering me.”

Virginia

Yeah, “This is really bumming me out.” Also, you’ve probably done some of this reframing already because I’m sure you’re a supportive friend, but when people’s bodies change related to a clear life circumstance, like more demanding job, pandemic lockdown…

Corinne

Having a baby.

Virginia

All of the things. I just wish we, as a culture, could just let that stand. Like, that is fine. That is your body responding to a set of circumstances that you didn’t have a lot of control over and you don’t have control over how your body’s responding to it. And to put all your energy into “my body has changed and that is a failure and I need to fight to get it back” instead of “my body has changed because I have a very demanding job or I just had a baby or I’m surviving” or whatever million reasons. And just noticing that and like letting it be.

I mean, this goes all the way back to the messages we give kids in childhood. This is what I wrote about in Fat Talk, reframing the puberty narrative. From the get go we frame to kids that changes in your body are a problem to be solved, and a thing to be dreaded and pushed off as long as possible. Instead of saying, yeah, it’s totally normal. Your body is going to change constantly throughout your life, and you’re still going to be you, and your value is not going to change.

Corinne

I think that’s a really good point and something that people forget.

Virginia

It is not your job to explain that to your friend who is asking for a lot of emotional labor from you that you don’t need to give, but just something to hold on to for yourself.

Corinne

Good luck.

Next one:

The subject of leggings has snuck its way into many of your recent newsletters, but I’m looking for a bit more info. I’ve never been into sports and when I did work out I was more of a sweatpants and t-shirt kind of gal. About a year ago, I took up yoga and found a few leggings that worked well for me: Athleta and Girlfriend Collective.

However, this week I started roller derby and what works for bending and stretching does not work for running, jumping, and moving fast. I’m about a size 20 with a considerable belly and large thighs, but a fairly defined waist above my belly. Waistbands just love to roll under the belly when I move. What else is out there? I am of somewhat modest means but I do seem to really luck out when looking at used clothes. Do you have advice for a newly active person who needs to expand her workout wardrobe?

Virginia

First, I love that she noticed how often leggings creep into this newsletter.

Corinne

That was really funny. Because also, we just mentioned leggings.

Virginia

I mean, it’s a favorite topic, recurring theme, because all the jeans are bad. I am not a roller derby-ist, roller derby-er? I don’t know what your preferred nomenclature is. I don’t like to move fast or run or so I don’t know. I mean, the brands she mentioned are the brands I wear. Girlfriend Collective or Universal Standard. I do wonder about Universal Standard because the waistband is very high. It comes like up to my bra, basically. I really don’t have rolling down issues with that. I would maybe try that. But I do know what she’s talking about just from hiking. Like walking vigorously, leggings that are good for yoga do not always translate to walking. It’s so weird. Why are pants so bad?

Corinne

I was gonna recommend the Universal Standard next-to-naked leggings. I have a very long torso and they also come up to my bra. They’re pretty thin. I think they would be good for this.

Virginia

Yeah, they are very light weight. Whereas Girlfriend Collective are so thick. I feel like that’s part of what makes them possibly not work so well for her for running. Because the thickness, they start to drag on you a little. Like the time I wore a wetsuit in the water and realized I wanted to die.

Corinne

Universal standard also has these leggings, Roya leggings, that are more cotton-y.

Virginia

Oh, I don’t think I’ve tried those.

Corinne

They have an elastic band waist, so I feel like those could also work. But I don’t know if the cotton-y thing would be okay for roller derby-ing.

Virginia

Yeah, that’s a good question.

Corinne

My other leggings that I like are Superfit Hero but you might have the same problem with them.

Virginia

It’s the same thicker fabric right?

Corinne

They are the same, all one piece.

Virginia

Wetsuit-style leggings.

Corinne

But I do think the fit is really good on those.

Virginia

So that’s good. It’s also so body specific.

Corinne

I know. And I feel like this may be not my body shape.

Virginia

I mean, defined waist? She lost me.

Corinne

Same.

Virginia

We are not the best people to ask this. But we have had lots of other legging recs come in from Burnt Toasties, so drop them in the comments. And hopefully this person will check that out and get more advice, because I know there are a lot of other legging options out there besides our go-tos.

Corinne

But I would say yeah, try the Universal Standard’s Next To Naked. I would also maybe try size down because I feel like they may be run a little bit big.

Virginia

Okay, good. Alright. This person just wrote:

How do you deal with the haters? Do you have any practices for mentally blocking them out?

It’s a very sweet question. Well, I make videos where I eat snacks while I read them. That’s a big one.

Corinne

Do you find yourself bothered?

Virginia

When I was in the first few weeks of the book launch, when it got really loud, like it was like constant. I was feeling bombarded, feeling like I couldn’t open my inbox. Otherwise no. When it’s now down to the more usual volume of a few per week. I mostly just read, delete, move on. Don’t even think about it again.

But everyone’s allowed to respond to that in their own way. It’s okay, if it’s upsetting you. I’m not saying that’s the way you have to respond. The comments are horrible. You’re allowed to be upset by horrible comments.

But I think for me, it helps to have this community where I feel like there’s a lot of people on the same page and so one random dude finding my Instagram DMs, his opinion means less than nothing. And because they’re so repetitive in the themes they hit when they get mad at me that I’ve already worked through my like feelings so I’m not thrown by it.

I more get thrown if someone critiques something that I have also really like wondered about. Like if someone were to critique something about my writing I would be like, you’re right. You’ve caught the annoying phrases I’m always trying to get rid of or just like a more of a literary critique. That, I think, I could really walk around with and struggle, but the stuff where it’s like about what I report on, I’m like, no, I already have dealt with that enough.

Corinne

That makes sense.

Virginia

Do you ever get haters on @selltradeplus? Is that a safe community?

Corinne

Honestly, no. But I do live in fear of it happening. I feel like I don’t share a ton of personal stuff on there.

Virginia

I just worry because it’s clearly a community of lovely fat people, that people would come be assholes.

Corinne

Yeah, I definitely felt a little disturbed by the Fox News stuff that was happening to you. I was just like, oh my God. No.

Virginia

Yeah that was depressing,

Corinne

Hopefully that will never happen to me. Hopefully, it will never happen to anyone ever again.

Virginia

Unfortunately, it will absolutely happen again. But that was a very specific thing. I just don’t want to give them more power than they are already desperately trying to claw at from their mother’s basements.

Corinne

Okay, next one:

How did you stop / postpone / continue your old job and write your first book?

Virginia

I’m confused by this question because I didn’t stop a job. I don’t know if they saw something and misunderstood. So I’ve been a full-time freelance writer since 2005. So I was a magazine editor for a few years and then went full-time freelance in 2005. I got my first book deal in 2016. And that book was published in 2018. So I was continuing to freelance while I was writing that book.

I did scale back the types of assignments I took. At that point, I was doing a lot of longform narrative features and more investigative type features which are themselves kind of like mini book projects. They’re really all consuming for a few months. So, I knew I couldn’t do those and write the book. So I was doing a different mix of assignments, but I did keep writing freelance assignments and somehow wrote the book and was also pregnant that year. So it was a big year. I don’t recommend it.

Then for the second book—because it also occurred to me, maybe this person doesn’t know Fat Talk is my second book? For the second book, I was writing that while going all in on Burnt Toast being my full-time job. So what was bad about that was I was essentially launching a new business while writing a book. But what was better about that was I had more total control over the schedule than when I was freelancing for lots of different editors and the two worlds are very enmeshed. And a lot of the research I was doing for the book was giving me content for the newsletter and vice versa. So I was able to do both projects simultaneously. But I will say it sure is nice that now that I’m coming out of book launch season only doing the newsletter and I have just one job for a while. Yeah, don’t hate that.

Corinne

It seems like the answer is, it’s really hard.

Virginia

If this is a writer who’s asking for advice, I suppose I should say something useful. If this is something you’re thinking about doing: If you get a big enough advance then leaving a job in order to focus on the book may be an option. But most of the time, that’s not the case, especially with a first book. So it’s about getting clear on when you can find blocks of time. Like I did a lot of the first book writing from 6 to 7am in the morning before my daughter woke up and our like, day started. I would get like a ton of work done then and then during the day be doing my day job of freelancing. So, you know, it’s just like looking for those chunks, but it’s a lot. It’s super hard.

Corinne

Okay. Here’s a personal question:

How much do you spend on gardening? Just having plants in an apartment is not cheap.

Virginia

It’s not cheap! I’m not going to like give a number because I don’t think that would be good for us. For me, personally, I don’t believe in numbers. I don’t weigh myself. So I don’t put numbers on things like plants and the amount of joy they can bring us. Why would I? Why would I count the joy that the garden brings me? Why would I quantify it?

Corinne

No need to quantify it. But okay, this is making me have a question, which is like, do you have a gardening budget?

Virginia

Okay, so we need to distinguish between, like, there are some big projects we have done on our yard that I would say are akin to having done like a home renovation. And that was a separate budget.

Corinne

Like hardscaping type of things?

Virginia

Yeah, like we put in a patio and we added a bunch of trees, which are expensive because you’re putting big things. So that’s like, a separate conversation. I’m not going to get into that. All I’m going to say is, you’re investing in the value of your home. And also, gardens are a money pit. For sure.

But what I think this person may be talking about this, like when I post a video with my car full of plants, which, like, yeah, it was my birthday. And my book had hit the New York Times bestseller list, so I got a lot of plants. And good for me. That’s all I’m going to say.

As previously referenced in this episode, I recently bought double the number of dahlia tubers I needed. This is not an area of my life, where I believe in restriction. It is a big source of my joy. And, you know, in our family budget, I have a certain amount of discretionary spending money, both my husband and I get a chunk of do-whatever-you-want-with money every month, and pretty much all mine goes on plants.

Corinne

Oh my God, that is so funny.

Virginia

In the gardens months, yeah. And all I can say is it brings me so much joy. I think there are no real budget strategies because the other thing is, like, it’s not just the plants but also like, I need a new garden hose because this one cracked. Like, there’s so much equipment. There’s a great meme I’ve seen going around that’s like listing all of like the costs of the raised beds and the dirt and the this and that. And then it’s like, now to enjoy my 25 cent tomato. There’s no math where growing your own food or growing your own plants is going to be cheaper than not doing that.

And this is why I don’t worry about growing vegetables, because I know it wouldn’t be saving us any money and it doesn’t bring me as much joy. So I’ll just buy my vegetables from the grocery store. It’s fine.

But um, so number one, only buy as many dahlia tubers as you need. That’s one budget strategy I have for you. Also, starting more things from seeds can be cheaper. I tend to forget to do that, but it’s a goal of mine. These are all the things I would do if I could get my act together.

I don’t know, I mean, you’re a gardener, too. What are your thoughts?

Corinne

Yeah, I’m a very low key gardener. And I was going to say, I’m someone who does have a bunch of houseplants and I have spent almost no money on them.

Virginia

HOW.

Corinne

I think I bought some pots so they would kind of match. Yeah, but I don’t really care about houseplants so I’m not going to spend money on them. But at my old job, people used to bring in cuttings so I would take cuttings. I also know a lot of cities will have seed exchanges or seed libraries where you can go and get seeds for free. And also there’s also a lot of plant swap groups now. I’m pretty sure there’s an Albuquerque plant swap on either Reddit or Facebook where people will like trade cuttings.

Virginia

Well, I definitely need to get in on that.

Corinne

So there are definitely ways to get plants for low cost. I will say there’s certain plants that I feel like people are constantly giving away because it’s so annoying how fast they grow. Like, please do not give me that plant because I can’t deal with how fast it grows.

Virginia

Wait which plants?

Corinne

I feel like it’s like pothos and spider plants. Mother of thousands or whatever.

Virginia

Oh God, mother of thousands. We’ve talked about that.

Corinne

Yes, I threw mine away because I was like, stop.

Virginia

I threw mine away, too, and it’s still popping up in the other pot. I can’t get rid of it. Truly a nightmare.

This is reminding me I do have a truly absurd number of hostas in my garden and a gardener friend of mine has an old Victorian and someone planted hostas a million years ago. So there were so many hostas and she didn’t want them so I went and dug up all her hostas and then divided them. So what was like 100 hostas became like 300 hostas, I’m not even kidding. Because hostas, you can just divide and divide.

This year my asters are going nuts, so I was able to call her and be like, come pick up as many asters as you want because you gave me hostas. And so that’s lovely. And dividing over time will give you more of everything. So if you can’t buy a lot of plants in the first year, you can build up towards that. Then like they get bigger and then you can divide them, but it just requires so much patience.

Corinne

Yeah, it’s true. If you have specific plants you want in your apartment, you might not be able to get them for free or cheap. But yeah, check Facebook marketplace.

Virginia

Listen to Corinne, she’s got great tips.

Corinne

Make friends with other people who like plants and give them away all the time.

Virginia

It’s true, if you come to my house, you might be leaving with one. And I do encourage people to take cuttings of my house plants, like my polka dot begonias. I’ve given a lot of cuttings.

Corinne

Yeah, or like a probably illegal strategy of walking through the succulent section of a plant store and picking up the fallen leaves.

Virginia

Oh, the fallen leaves. I thought you were going to say breaking off a little piece.

Corinne

No, no, I would never suggest that. That sounds illegal. However, if they have fallen and you pick them up, you’re basically just helping them clean.

Virginia

That’s really good. With talking about this, though, is I’m feeling a lot better about the money I have spent because I’m thinking about how all of the plants I have are actually many more plants. So my cost per plant is going down as we discuss because I’ll just keep dividing things and making more plants. So yeah, so I’m really actually quite a budget garden chopper and I’m glad we had this talk. Okay. Next question!

Corinne

Also plant-related.

Plants for shade gardening? And can we talk about Solomon’s Seal?

I do not know what Solomon’s Seal is.

Virginia

Oh, Solomon’s Seal. This is someone from Instagram because I posted pictures of my Solomon’s Seal. It’s a really lovely native, although I think I don’t have the native ones. I have a variegated one. Kind of like a fern, it arcs. It’s like an arc-ing plant with leaves and it has little flowers to hang off it in the spring. And it’s lovely in shade gardens because it looks like waves like it like it’s really pretty. I will post some pictures from my garden of my Solomon’s Seal.

The big question about shade gardens is do you have dry shade or moist shade? Because most of the good shade plants are moist shade plants because they want to grow along streams in the woodlands or like in a rain forest. And you know, and I live on a very rocky mountain with a lot of big oak trees that take up all of the root space in my garden. So I have a lot of very dry shade, which is I would say the hardest gardening condition and the reason I have to buy so many plants because it takes a long time for my beds to fill in. But some stuff that’s working for me is the Solomon Seal for sure.

Brunnera is another one that has like really pretty silvery green sort of swirly leaves and little blue flowers in the spring.

Pulmonaria which has super cute polka dot leaves and little pink flowers in the spring. And that gets big and you can divide that a lot.

And what else do I really love in my shade garden? My favorite shrub in my shade garden is the oak leaf hydrangea which is really beautiful.

Do you have shade gardens in New Mexico? Is there shade in New Mexico?

Corinne

No. I’m going to say no. There is neither shade nor wet. It’s like finding plants that can survive full insane sun. And I mean, I think most people who have gardens here have irrigation which I am contemplating having put in, so we’ll see.

Do you have good shade gardening resource recommendations? Is there somewhere you look for info about that stuff?

Virginia

So my favorite garden blogger is Margaret Roach who blogs as A Way to Garden and she also has a podcast. She regularly has on Ken Druse who is a garden writer who has written I think at least one if not several books about shade gardening. I’ve gotten a lot of great tips from both of them.

And I should also say Anne Helen Petersen (now writing Garden Study!) and I text regularly. She has both sun and shade, more sun than me, plus she is in zone 8.

Corinne

That’s funny, I feel like I’m like zone 8.

Virginia

There are clearly a very different zone 8s. It’s New Mexico and Washington State. Not the same zone, but yeah, I’m over here in zone 5, where it’s cold forever. So it’s rough. But yeah, AHP and I text a lot about shade plants and she was just posting a bunch of stuff in her Instagram stories which will not be up by the time this runs. But our running joke is that we are going to, in our retirement, start a gardening blog. So stay tuned.

Corinne

I love that idea.

Virginia

We both do not actually have time for it, but yeah. May have a name. May have working title.

Corinne

My God, amazing.

Virginia

Alright, I thought we could add on a fun little read some hate mail because you guys liked when we did that in May. So I’m going to pull up this delightful one. This is just a quick little comment that came up on Twitter.

Corinne

Here we go. I’m opening it. Oh, I don’t know want to read this. Okay, here we go.

Obnoxious glasses? Check.

Greasy thin hair? Check.

Porcine body? Check.

This woman is a Democrat.

Wait. Okay, I just have to say, what photo did this person see because you do not have greasy thin hair. I’ve seen you on Zoom a lot and you have luscious thick beautiful hair.

Virginia

Thank you. I really needed that. The comments don’t live in my head but with this one, I was like, I’m sorry what? That is just wrong.

Corinne

Who are you talking about? And also your glasses are not obnoxious?

Virginia

No. My glasses are obviously amazing. This person is wrong

Corinne

They are extremely cool.

Virginia

But I loved that the first time I got seriously offended I was like, “I don’t have thin greasy hair.” Which like, I’m not hair-shaming people. All hair is good hair.

Corinne

But no one who has seen your hair would describe it that way.

Virginia

Anyone who has to deal with my eyebrows can confirm that thin hair is not a struggle in my life.

Corinne

Ooh, jealous, honestly.

Virginia

Lack of hair has not been a problem.

Corinne

Wow. Well, I guess I know what a Democrat looks like now.

Virginia

I mean, and what he doesn’t even know is the Democrats are often not liberal enough for me. Actually pretty annoyed with them a lot of the time. But okay.

Corinne

Tell him that.

Virginia

That was just a little fun hate mail for us. Now let’s do some butter.

Corinne

Okay, so as discussed it is summer. It is very hot. I’m sweating so much, because also I’m spending so much time in the gym right now. So one thing that I’m really enjoying and is making my life much more livable is electrolytes. So I want to recommend two different electrolyte delivery vehicles. The first one is Gatorade.

Virginia

Nice.

Corinne

But specifically the cucumber lime flavor. That’s the only flavor of Gatorade. The only flavor anyone should be drinking. And the other thing that I’m really enjoying is these Nuun electrolyte tablets. They’re a little easier to carry around than Gatorade. And they have more interesting flavors like cherry limeade. And some of them have caffeine which also is really fun.

Virginia

And you really do like the taste?

Corinne

I do like the taste. I mean, it’s not like delicious but it’s drinkable. And I do like the results of drinking electrolytes. I just find that I feel better.

Virginia

It’s so important, especially in the heat. How is the weightlifting? How’s it going?

Corinne

It’s going good. Feeling a little stressed about the meet, which will be done by the next time we record.

Virginia

So we’re gonna get a full report. I can’t wait. That’s very exciting. Well, I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself on this journey.

Corinne

What’s your butter?

Virginia

My butter, which I have to give credit to Kim Baldwin who is on Instagram as @theblondemule and also theblondemule.com and she blogs a lot at Joy the Baker. Anyway, she posted a lovely shot of a bunch of books, including Fat Talk, which is how I saw this. They were all on a cart, a little cart. And it turns out, this is her TBR cart—you may know TBR stands for to be read. So all the books that she’s waiting to read, she has organized on a cart. And I was like, this is genius because I get sent so many books because of my work and blurbing people’s books or interviewing people for the podcast. And I also purchase a lot of books—when I said I spent all my money on plants, that was false. I also buy a lot of books.

So the nightstand is not going to cut it for my TBR pile. The nightstand would be up to the ceiling. So I now have this little cart. It’s from Target, it was $40. And I’ve got all my TBRs organized by podcast guests and fiction. It’s making me so happy.

Corinne

That’s so cool. That’s a great idea.

Virginia

Because you don’t want to shelve them on your bookshelves because then you’ll forget if they’re in the archives. You want them where you’re going to remember that this is what I’m reading. And just having them laying around was not a good system.

Corinne

I love that idea. I like that a cart is movable.

Virginia

I have it in my office, but you could totally put it in a bedroom. I also got one for my kids art supplies which tend to cover our house. So now we have art supplies contained and the TBR contained.

Corinne

Wow, that’s awesome. That’s a great butter.

Virginia

I think Kim really is onto something and we should all be getting into the TBR cart game.

Corinne

I love that.

Virginia

All right, I think we did an episode. Thank you so much for listening to Burnt Toast.

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your March Extra Butter.

Today we’re talking about Dr. Becky Kennedy, the beloved parenting influencer. We’ll get into:

⭐️ The Dr. Becky mantra that Virginia uses…often.

⭐️Why you don’t need to cook dinner for your kids at 3pm.

⭐️ The infamous “school nurse call” post.

⭐️ Is Dr. Becky — and parenting content more broadly— a diet or diet-adjacent?

This episode contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast! You’ll find all of the links aggregated here.

Virginia

We’re talking about Dr. Becky Kennedy! I am excited. I think this is going to be a very interesting one, because Corinne, I don’t know if you are aware, people love Dr. Becky. Like, really, really love her. If you look at testimonials online, people will credit her with saving their marriages, saving their parenting life.

Corinne

So she has fans.

Virginia

Yes. And I think there’s a lot to love about her work and her messaging. But, as we’re going to get into, there are also some strange themes in her work. It’s a little bit diet culture. It’s a little bit Nice White Lady.

And I think there are ways in which all of that ends up making her advice less useful to the average parent than her Internet following wants us to believe. So I’m bracing for impact on this episode. Ee may get some emails.

To kick it off, Corinne—what do you know about Dr Becky, as someone who doesn’t have kids and doesn’t have to understand how to manage tantrums?

Corinne

Well, just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me one of her Instagram reels, which was about learning to fail, living with failure, and how that can be useful. I liked it. I thought it was great. And then I went to look at her profile, and I was like, OH, this is that Dr. Becky??

I guess I thought she did more parenting and kid feeding stuff and her Instagram wasn’t really about that.

Virginia

So she is a clinical psychologist, and she specializes in parenting advice, not just feeding. She definitely talks about feeding, but it’s much more big picture. I will read you her official bio:

“I’m a clinical psychologist, mom of three, and founder of Good Inside. When I was first starting out, I practiced a popular behavior, first reward and punishment model of parent coaching. But after a while, something struck me. Those methods feel awful for kids and parents, so I got to work taking everything I know about attachment, mindfulness, emotion, emotional regulation and internal family systems theory, and translated those ideas into a new method for working with parents.”

So it’s like every aspect of parenting, potty training, sleep issues, whether or not to use punishments.

Corinne

I do not know what a “behavior first reward and punishment system” is. I don’t know what that means.

Virginia

So this is where I’m very much in agreement with Dr. Becky. She’s critical of authoritarian style parenting, where it’s very like, “ou have to follow the rules and do what we say, or there are punishments,” and the punishments maybe don’t always make sense.

Corinne

Like, eat your vegetables or you won’t get screen time?

Virginia

Right? Eat your vegetables or no dessert. No TV because you didn’t make your bed. All stuff that maybe seems sort of random to the kids.

She’s also critical of using rewards if kids do a good job, like using a lot of gold stars and prizes and things to get them to behave the way you want. Which is a very compliance-based approach to parenting.

I’m describing her work — I’m not blaming anyone who was raised in that model, or who finds themselves parenting in that model. There are definitely times where you’re like, “The only thing that’s going to get me through this is figuring out a bribe, and that’s just where we are.” And you know what, it’s real.

We can link to some work from folks like Melinda Wenner Moyer who reports on this in a lot more detail. (Check out: This piece, this piece and this one, plus Melinda’s episode of this podcast about why both pressure and rewards can backfire.)

Across parenting research, there has been a shift away from “let’s use prizes and punishments to get kids to behave,” towards “let’s understand what makes kids ‘misbehave.’” What’s going on underneath the outbursts or the lack of cooperation, or whatever you’re encountering? And so that’s what Dr Becky really talks about. She’s pulling together attachment theory, mindfulness, and Internal Family Systems theory.

Corinne

So is this what would be called gentle parenting, or is this different?

Virginia

Yes, this is definitely gentle parenting. Gentle parenting is a term that gets thrown around but it has no official definition. There are many different flavors of gentle parenting. But Dr Becky is, I think a lot of people would agree, the most famous face of the gentle parenting movement.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about gentle parenting, which are important to say, too. People often think gentle parenting means you never use a consequence for your kid, or you never give them boundaries. And that’s not what she’s saying. She actually gives quite a lot of boundaries. We’ll talk about that. But it is much more of a child-centered approach, where you try to understand them as people with complicated emotions and needs, versus “Why don’t you just do what I say!” I’m painting with a very broad brush, of course.

I will also say, unlike Mel Robbins our trial-lawyer-turned-self-help-guru, Dr. Becky is a real psychologist. She has all the degrees and clinical training. She has worked with families and has clinical skills and training. So that definitely makes me appreciate her perspective more.

I would say, though, as someone who’s reported parenting stories for a long time—a lot of her messaging is a repackaging of other people’s research and work. These are not necessarily her own innovative ideas. I think she’s very good at pulling together a lot of what other people are talking about, and figuring out how to distill it in a way that works well in Instagram reels.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s like a plagiarism situation like we had with Mel Robbins. But I just think it’s worth noting that she is benefiting from decades of other people’s work in order to come up with her new method for working with parents.

Corinne

Hmm. Interesting.

Virginia

Okay, I’ve got a couple of Dr. Becky reels that represent the aspects of her work I first connected with. I mean, she’s someone who’s definitely helped me out of some tough spots. My kid’s dad also really likes her content.

So you can pick one that sounds interesting to you, and we can look at it.

Corinne

I’m just going to click on the first one:

Virginia

What’s your take?

Corinne

It’s interesting. It seems like the first thing is she’s acknowledging the feelings happening, but then also saying, like, “I’m acknowledging your feelings and—

Virginia

“We still have to get in the car.”

Corinne

“We still need to do what we need to do.”

Virginia

This is a common misconception about gentle parenting—that it’s only acknowledging the feelings. Because then. with a lot of kids, you just get caught in this loop. I think a lot of us, when we try it, get caught in that place. It’s really hard to move past the part where you acknowledge your child’s feelings, because no child in the middle of a tantrum or transition anxiety or anything is ever like, “Thank you for acknowledging my feelings. I will now put my shoes on.” They stay there venting and emoting, and you’re like, But I’ve acknowledged your feelings! Now I need to get you in the car.

Corinne

Does acknowledging a kid’s feelings help before you have to grab their arm and drag them out the door?

Virginia

I think it’s better to do it that way than to just drag them out the door?

As someone who’s been trying to do this for most of my parenting, I do think my kids have a strong sense that their feelings matter and should be heard. So I think there is value in it. But what it’s not, is it’s not a quick fix. It doesn’t instantly regulate the kid who’s gotten dysregulated and upset.

It helps you steer the ship through the chaos, but the chaos continues around you. So I think that’s where sometimes people get tripped up about it.

Corinne

It kind of reminds me of Division of Responsibility in some ways, because it’s sort of like outlining who’s in charge of what, and then stating it and then doing it.

Virginia

Dr. Becky is a big fan of division of responsibility. Parents are in charge of what’s offered. Kids are in charge of whether they eat it. Kids are in charge of their hunger.

Corinne

Here parents are in charge of making sure that you get places on time.

Virginia

You’re in charge of how you feel about it. Yeah, that’s really true and that is basically it, right? Like, I still have to get you to go to bed, but you can be in charge of how angry you are about the fact that it’s bedtime.

Okay, the second reel that I put is something else I really like that she does, which kind of helps me understand the broader picture.

Corinne

Okay, this one is called getting good at repair.

Okay, I like that. I like that. Seems good for all relationships.

Virginia

Yes, exactly. We all need to learn repair in all of our relationships. It is definitely not a skill that comes naturally to me, I will own. And so, I have worked on it. And what I especially like about it is Dr Becky acknowledging that you can try “I validated your feelings. I know this is hard. I have to hold the boundary,” and a lot of the time, you’re still going to end up screaming at your kid because you’re human. You just can’t stay calm and navigate them through every storm with the perfect script that she’s given you.

I read an interview with her where she said, her three kids only get the perfect Dr Becky parent, like, I don’t know, 30% of the time or something. And the rest of the time she’s just like us, just losing her mind and then repairing. And I was like, okay, this makes me like you. You’re not expecting us all to be robotically parroting these scripts to our kids all the time, because it doesn’t feel authentic.

Corinne

No. And that does seem important to teach kids about, too. How to face the facts when you have done harm or made a mistake.

Virginia

Yes, you’re modeling to them that if you screw up and yell at them, you’re going to come back and say you’re sorry. And open the conversation and make space for their being upset about that. And hopefully that then they would also start to learn to do that when they are the ones.

And I think it lets you parent as a real person who gets upset. Our emotions are not our kids responsibility—a seven year old should not be worrying about whether her mom’s a happy person, right? That’s not an appropriate dynamic. But our kids can know that we are human beings who get frustrated and cranky as well, and that this is a two way relationship. And their parents are not just robots who live to serve them. As I like to remind my middle schooler when she’s asking me to get her a glass of water when she’s sitting right next to the sink and I’m across the room.

Corinne

Okay, this next video is called How to Respond to Whining.

I mean, does seem insightful.

Virginia

I gotta say, I used this one yesterday actually! Because I watched this reel yesterday as I was preparing for this episode. And then, as it happens, one of my children presented me with the perfect opportunity to practice this. And the mantra piece in particular was so helpful. When I first watched the reel, I was like, “ugh, it’s Mel Robbins and high fiving yourself in the mirror.” But saying, “I’m safe, this is not an emergency,” actually did make me take a second and stay calmer before I launched into negotiations with this child.

And it definitely felt super cheesy. But I need to remember that I don’t have to join that party, and be at a 10 with her. I can stay in charge of my feelings. So it was very helpful.

Corinne

I think that’s good advice. Generally, this is just good interpersonal advice. Like, take a moment before you react. Someone else’s negative feelings are not your house being on fire.

Virginia

Okay, now let’s talk about some other notes that come up a lot in Dr. Becky’s work, which I feel more complicated about. In some cases, I think is this just because she settled on a brand that requires her to make Instagram content seven days a week? Some are going to be a swing and a miss, right? You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, and it doesn’t all stick. Or is there an underlying theme? But the more I think about it, I think there is a little bit of an underlying theme. I don’t think it negates what’s good about her work. But I do think it’s something people should be clear on. The first one is actually something I wrote about last year. Why don’t we revisit the concept of the 4pm dinner?

Corinne

Yes, I remember this. She’s presenting a parenting hack, and the hack is that you serve your kids dinner right after school instead of giving them a snack. And then you eat dinner later?

Virginia

Yes. So your kids come home from school or camp absolutely ravenous. That’s when you feed them a full meal with like the vegetables and the protein and the things you want them to eat at dinner. And then you have your normal dinner, and they get an evening snack, like a bedtime snack, while you’re having your regular dinner at six or seven, and then they go to bed.

And this is one of these Internet parenting hacks that you hear it, and there is some logic to it, right? Because it’s totally true. My kids come from starving at the end of the school day, and they eat a million snacks, and then often they aren’t hungry for dinner, and it is frustrating. And—anyone who works cannot be cooking dinner at 2pm!

Corinne

I mean, I feel this myself. Sometimes I’m ready for dinner at 4:30 but I also have to cook myself dinner.

Virginia

And when was I supposed to start doing that?

Corinne

I would be stopping working at like 2pm.

Virginia

I mean, you and I both have very flexible work from home lives, and it does not make sense for us to be like, “Okay, no, we can’t podcast record at that time because we have to start our dinner prep at 1pm so that we can be eating.” It’s like, no, it still makes sense for me to start making dinner at five o’clock, And that’s frankly, some days, ambitious.

Corinne

Yes. And it does feel like there’s a little bit of morality that a meal is better than a snack.

Virginia

Absolutely.

This is a little snippet I wrote in the piece:

Super early dinner is advertised as a way to get kids eating more “real food” and fewer snacks. It’s a perfect distillation of so many of the diet culture messages we grew up internalizing: The romanticization (by Michael Pollan and later his disciple Gwyneth Paltrow) of eating “real food, mostly plants, not too much;” the “don’t eat after 7pm” rule; the fear mongering around ultra processed foods, and our perpetual parenting anxiety that our children are eating too many snacks.

Parents have been taught to fear kids snack foods on so many levels.

And another way to reframe this is to say, my kids come home from school ravenous. I am finishing work, or they are in an after school program, or whatever you have for your afternoon child care block. It makes sense for them to have portable, readymade packaged snacks that they can eat to fill up then, and they may not eat an amazing dinner later. Or, you know, maybe they will. But it’s just not the time where I can serve them a home cooked meal. And that’s okay. So isn’t it great that we have prepared packaged foods that make that time easier to feed our kids?

I think the other piece of it is the privilege involved. Either you have a stay-at-home parent who can do this cooking, or you have a nanny. I strongly suspect, given that Dr Becky Kennedy runs her empire from the Upper East Side of New York, that there is a nanny. Which I have no problems with! Childcare is very important work, and I hope that person is being very well compensated for their labor. But there’s no naming of that in her reel. She doesn’t say, “I’m so fortunate that our nanny can make dinner for the kids at four o’clock.”

Okay, so now let’s click on when the school nurse calls.

Corinne

This feels similar. She’s not acknowledging that a lot of parents are working during the day.

Virginia

They’re not like, “I’m having coffee with a friend. How disappointing I have to cancel that.” They’re like, yeah, if, I leave my job…

Corinne

Which is also totally reasonable but, like, have you ever considered how stressful it is to have to tell your boss that you have to leave?

Virginia

What if you are a doctor seeing patients, or a teacher with a classroom of kids, or a retail worker who is dependent on that shift?

There are so many jobs that are not easy to just walk out of because your kid is sick. Your boss isn’t going to be like, sure, no worries. Have a good day. Good luck with everything. And there’s just no mention of that.

Corinne

Yeah, that is very interesting. She’s literally like, “When your kids are at daycare, that’s your time to for yourself.”

Virginia

You’re filling up your cup by…earning the money that pays for the daycare and also the groceries or the rent or the mortgage.

Corinne

It’s just weird because that can’t be her situation really! She’s clearly working a lot.

Virginia

Yeah, I don’t understand. I mean, she’s working, but she obviously loves her job. Maybe this does fill her up.

I will say, too, when I did her podcast during the Fat Talk book tour, we were chatting a little bit before we started recording, and she mentioned that she had just come from her Thursday morning breakfast and workout that she does with her best friends to make sure she sees her friends during the week. They all meet up after the kids go to school, workout in the gym in her building, and then make a breakfast together every Thursday morning. And I was like, huh, my life doesn’t involve a standing two hour socialization opportunity on a weekday morning. So I don’t know. I mean, it sounded lovely, but that is not a typical way that most working parents are spending Thursday morning.

Corinne

That is interesting,

Virginia

Between the dinner thing and the school nurse one, I just started to feel like there is a level of privilege that is not being acknowledged in this parenting content. And again to draw a parallel with intuitive eating, it reminds me of how intuitive eating often gets very rightful criticism for not taking into account like class issues and racism and things like that. Or how Division of Responsibility has a lot of ableism that means it doesn’t meet every neurodivergent kid where they are. There’s not this this awareness of the fact that not everyone can waste food. Not everyone has the flexibility and the privilege to eat intuitively all the time. And I think there’s a similar dynamic here where, yes, this does sound lovely. This does sounds like a lovely way to parent, to make dinner at four o’clock. But how does this translate to real people’s lives? It doesn’t.

I think the last one I want to look at is her thoughts on how to share the mental load.

Corinne

At least from what I’ve heard or observed about this, usually the conflict comes from even trying to get someone to acknowledge that you’re doing more of the mental load?

Virginia

That it exists at all. Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s the first step.

Corinne

So this sort of seems like it’s assuming absolutely no conflict around it.

Virginia

And that it’s just a total accident that one partner has been doing more, but as soon as you point it out, they’re gonna be like, “Great, let’s sit down and make a plan and even that right out, no problem.”

I also think it’s really interesting that there’s no mention of gender in that post.

Corinne

Good point.

Virginia

On the one hand, maybe she’s trying to be inclusive of same sex partners who struggle with this dynamic, and that’s great. But knowing who the majority of her audience is, and the majority of people who struggle with mental load imbalances in their relationships, it’s straight women married to straight men. And there is no acknowledgement of that context, or of the larger systems of oppression that have created that dynamic.

So it’s like she thinks she can just help people work this out on an emotional level with their partner, without taking into account the fact that the entire world is built to make it happen this way.

Corinne

She’s never acknowledging the greater systems at play that would make being able to cook dinner at 3pm impossible or having your kid’s daycare be ‘me time’ or partners not equally splitting labor. It’s always just framed as an individual issue.

Virginia

Exactly. And on the one hand, I guess I can understand that her training is clinical psychology. She works on an individual level with people. That’s what she does, right? She coaches parents and people in relationships on how to problem solve these things. But to do that without the larger systems at least being named—that feels like it’s limiting how much good her advice can do. Because the real world application of it is always going to happen in a context where those systems exist.

I will also say, on the feeding kids stuff, while she is a big fan of Division of Responsibility, it’s kind of the same thing. She presents division of responsibility very simplistically: You’re in charge of what’s offered, kids are in charge of whether they eat it. And she’ll throw out the example of, “you’re serving meatballs, pasta, and tomatoes for dinner. The kid only eats pasta. That’s fine.” That’s how you leave it.

But in my house, there’s often one kid who wouldn’t eat any of those things, and would also need a second thing on the table to account for the fact that they won’t eat any parts of that meal. There are neurodivergent kids who have a different set of needs. There’s budget and the fact that the kids are only going to eat pasta and you made these meatballs, which leads to food waste issues.

And I think it is also heavily implied that you’re doing this division of responsibility thing because you want kids who are not picky, and by “not picky,” we mean “eats a lot of vegetables,” ultimately.

So that’s the overall theme that I see cropping up. Again, this is not a takedown episode. I don’t think Dr. Becky is a full-on grifter or anything like that. But I do notice this recurring theme of entitlement and lack of context. And maybe that’s just a factor of being an online advice giver, where there can’t really be any context, and maybe we should all be considering why we get advice from people talking into their phones on the Internet. But it’s something I’ve really been noticing and wanted to talk about.

Corinne

OK, so where do we land? Is Dr. Becky a diet?

Virginia

I…think she is not? Well? I was going to say no, but the more I thought about it as we’ve worked on this episode, I think the diet part is that she’s holding up a promise of what your parenting life can be like, that is likely always going to be just out of reach. That you will always be able to validate their feelings. That your child can emotionally regulate themselves. That you can stay calm and in control. That you can have this deep connection with your kids that will make you feel like you’re excelling at parenthood…

I don’t think that’s realistic for us to expect to achieve in any 100 percent of the time sense. I was just telling you about having a really lovely dinner with my kids last night, and then one of them going off the rails right after. It just feels, for a lot of us, that even when it’s good, the hard parts are just, like, 20 minutes away? And I think a lot of this parenting content can make us feel worse about that because it feels like we’re doing something wrong if we’re not achieving the vision that she’s selling.

Corinne

I feel similarly. Is she a diet? Not in the sense that a diet is a way of modifying your eating habits to lose weight.

Virginia

We’re talking about metaphorical diets, in these conversations. We’re not saying she’s trying to make kids lose weight. We’re using “diet” as a metaphor here, as we frequently do on Burnt Toast, to explore where is this person replicating some of the harm we see coming out of diet culture.

Corinne

Yeah. It is a sort of dream world that she’s selling.

Virginia

And there is still a lot of prescriptive advice. There’s a lot of “follow these scripts” and “take these steps” to notice a change. And that feels diet culture-adjacent to me.

Alright! That was our look inside Dr. Becky. I’m very curious to hear what folks think about her. I’m sure a lot of people in the Burnt Toast community have been following her advice for a long time, so I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t work, what your takeaways are. Tell us everything.

Corinne

Yeah, and I’m really happy that now I know who Dr Becky is.

Virginia

You’re such a good sport when we do this parenting content. I appreciate you.

Corinne

Do you have a Butter?

Virginia

I do have a Butter. I am going to talk about a Butter that I feel a little shy to talk about on the podcast. But we are a body positive space, and that is core to what we do, and so I am going to talk about vulva balm.

Corinne

Wow, incredible. I feel like this has been coming up in the comments a lot. I guess because I was talking about moisturizing.

Virginia

Oh yeah, over on Big Undies you’ve been talking a lot about skincare and moisturizing.

Corinne

It has come up multiple times.

Virginia

Well, so what I will say is, if you are in perimenopause, or you are just a person with a vulva, this can happen in many stages of life, but particularly in perimenopause, you may be feeling more dry and chafed at times. And itchy, perhaps. And if that is sounding familiar, those terms, this product, which was recommended by my gynecologist, is great. It’s a brand called Medicine Mama, and the product I use is called VMagic Vulva Balm, and it’s just basically a mix of organic oils and whatnot. It’s for discomfort, dryness, safe for daily use, good for sensitive skin. I just went through my first jar, and I will be doing their Subscribe and Save option now, because I really like having this on hand. It is quite useful.

Corinne

It looks amazing.

Virginia

Obviously, talk to your gynecologist or your midwife or whoever as well if you’re having these symptoms, there can be more things going on. We love an antibiotic, etc. But just for relieving immediate discomfort, Vulva Balm is great.

Corinne

Yeah, all parts of your body need moisturizing.

Virginia

They really do. We are hoping to do more episodes on perimenopause. We’re reaching out to some potential guests. So if you guys have questions about perimenopause, body things, we want to get into it. It’s pertinent to our interests. At least my interests! Corinne is an infant.

Corinne

It’s coming for me.

Virginia

It’s coming for you, babe.

All right, what’s your Butter?

Corinne

My Butter is also skincare related. I want to recommend a sunscreen as we are getting into the warmer months. I have this one I really like called Dune. I forget how I first discovered this. It is a little bit expensive. I want to say this little bottle is like $25, but it says invisible gel. I will say it doesn’t come out clear. It’s like kind of a greenish color, but it really goes in very easily, and it’s not super greasy. I love it. It feels almost more watery. So I really like it, and I recommend it.

Virginia

That is really good. I feel like I’m always looking for a good face sunscreen. Do you use it for your face?

Corinne

Yeah, this brand has different ones, but this one is the mug guard, so it’s specifically for your face. And some of the other ones I’ve tried are scented, and I’m really picky about scented stuff, but this one is not.

Virginia

Excellent. Well, we’re looking out for your faces and your labia, and you’re welcome. That’s what we come here to do.

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your March Indulgence Gospel!

Indulgence Gospel episodes are usually only for paid subscribers but we’re releasing this one for free! If you like it, you can get even more Virginia by becoming a paid Burnt Toast subscriber.

Today we’re chatting about:

⭐️ Navigating fitness spaces designed for smaller bodies!

⭐️ Feelings about hair color!

⭐️ Do Virginia and Corinne like sports now? 👀

⭐️ And what to do when it seems like everyone is on a weight loss drug.

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

Virginia

Okay, I just want to say: We got a lot of clothing-related questions this month, which we’re sending over to the Big Undies space. Not that we’ll never talk about clothes on Burnt Toast! But if you’re someone who’s coming to us for that content, you really need to be reading Big Undies because Corinne is doing the Lord’s work over there.

Corinne

Yep,. I am doing the Lord’s work.

Virginia

You are the most size-inclusive fashion Substack. I’m going to just claim that title for you. I think it’s correct?

Corinne

I mean, a size-inclusive fashion Substack.

Virginia

Well, admittedly, the competition for Most Size-Inclusive is not stiff, since most fashion Substacks are not at all size inclusive. But there are a handful of great ones! You are just my favorite.

Corinne

You can always DM or email me your questions!

Virginia

Corinne has answered many of my fashion questions. So send more of them to Corinne!

Okay, so what’s new? How are you doing?

Corinne

I’m doing good. Is there something I should talk about other than the weather?

Virginia

Well, it’s March, which is my least favorite month of the year weather-wise in New York. So if you have good weather tidings, you can bring them to us. Because I don’t.

Corinne

We have had a few unseasonably warm days, I’m talking low 70s, and the bulbs are starting to come up.

Virginia

I’m jealous of everybody else’s spring. I live in a very cold part of the world and it will not be spring for many, many more weeks. But that’s nice for you.

Corinne

Yes. Shall we get to the questions? I’ll read the first one.

I turned 49 in January. My hair is brown, ash blonde and going silver along the hairline. I have a hair stylist who loves to do color and is very good at it. I’ve been thinking about doing color or streaks as a way to mark this fifth decade. But what color? In my dreams, it’s sparkling gold, but I’m not actually Galadriel. I don’t want anything neon. If you’ve colored your hair, how did you choose which color? Especially if it wasn’t for overall beauty labor reasons, but more as pleasure.

Virginia

I love this. I love the idea of dyeing your hair to mark turning 50, specifically dyeing it what sounds like a not found-in-nature color.

How many hair colors have you had Corinne?

Corinne

Mainly one. I dyed my hair pink in high school. I think I dyed my hair darker brown in college once, just box dye. I’ve never seen a professional hair colorist. But I have been thinking a lot about this because, you know, I recently got my colors done.

Virginia

Oh, that’s right! We are going to have a whole episode about getting your colors done, people! The early teaser for that is that I’m still waiting for my results. But yes, so you got your colors done. And did it make you rethink your hair color?

Corinne

Well, yes, and no. I think a lot of people use that framework for choosing hair color when dyeing their hair. So that is one way to think about it. And I did sort of have the question, like: Well, if gray isn’t one of my colors, and my hair is starting to go gray, what does that mean? Should I think about coloring it?

Virginia

But wouldn’t your hair naturally go the right gray for you?

Corinne

I mean, I think there are different interpretations.

Virginia

Is there a right gray? Maybe you have no grays in your approved colors.

Corinne

I’m a true spring so I think I would want like a lighter gray? I don’t know.

Virginia

More of like a blonde gray ? There’s so much to discuss on this whole colors thing, because I am something of a skeptic. I started as a devotee, now I’m a skeptic. So stay tuned for the colors episode. But I could see it being both helpful and stressful when it comes to thinking about hair color.

I have never had fun colored hair. I have a child with blue hair, so I do know quite a lot about the maintenance involved in living with fun color hair, and it’s a part time job of mine to maintain that. But I’ve never had it for myself. I had a brief blonde period in college—if I can find photographic evidence, I will consider revealing that to the world. You can see the color of my eyebrows. They are dark, dark brown, so it was very like 90’s Tori Spelling. It was not a natural state for me.

So that was a mistake. And then I stayed my natural color, which is dark brown, all through my 20’s and 30’s. But sometime after I had my second child, my hair stylist—who is one of the most important long-term relationships of my life, she’s been cutting my hair since I was maybe 29—slowly nudged me over into color, and now I do get my hair colored, and it’s a mix of a base color and highlights. I don’t really understand what happens, I just let her do what she wants because I trust her implicitly with my head. And I like not having to make decisions about it, and that it always looks good.

But it is a point of reckoning, because I don’t actually care about the beauty labor piece. Like, I don’t actually care about covering my grays, but she is covering my grays most of the time anyway.

Corinne

So how do you know you don’t care about it?

Virginia

Because when they grow back in, I’m like, “Oh, hey, that’s fun. Gray hairs!" When I’m in between, you know? I’m not, like, I want to cover the grays. That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I like going to see her and hanging out with my friend, and I enjoy what it looks like when she’s done. Like, it is pleasure. And it’s pleasure that upholds a beauty standard, so I feel complicated about it.

But the way I choose the color is I just go to the salon and I trust the person who knows very well what to do. And it sounds like this reader, this listener, has someone in their life who does that. So I think I would start there! Go to your hair stylist and be like, “Okay, let’s do something fun.” And I feel like she’s going to blow your mind.

Corinne

I agree. And I also think I wouldn’t let not being Galadriel stop you from getting or wanting sparkling gold hair.

Virginia

I think it could be pretty sparkling! Hair color technology has come a really long way. If you’re doing salon color, they can do quite a lot, especially if you have some silver you’ve already got some bleached parts. I think it could be pretty awesome.

Corinne

Just based on your description, brown ash blonde, going silver, sounds like a good match for sparkling gold.

Virginia

If you do it, please send us pictures! We would love to see this.

Okay, next question:

Even though I’ve been in the anti-diet space for years, once in a while, I think maybe I should just try Zepbound and see what happens. Has anyone else been pulled into these thoughts?

Corinne

“See what happens.” What are we talking about here?

Virginia

We’re talking about weight loss. We’re talking about seeing how much weight loss will happen.

Corinne

One good thing to remember about these drugs is that they do cause weight loss in most people, but they don’t cause weight loss in everyone. And, if you ever want to stop taking them, you will likely regain the weight.

So I think the question is: Do you want to go on this drug, see how much weight you can lose, then go off it and regain the weight? Is that a net positive?

Virginia

That’s a really useful framing. Because what you’re essentially saying is: Do you want to go back on a diet? It’s not that different from what I presume most of us have done with intentional weight loss in the past. It’s just a different delivery vehicle. You want to try the drug approach versus the diet approach now. Or a lot of people end up doing both, whatever.

I think all of us have had these thoughts, right? It’s hard. The drugs are everywhere. People are talking about them constantly. We’re human. Of course there are moments where I’m like, “Am I going to be the last fat mom in the Hudson Valley?”

Corinne

Oh God!

I do just want to also make the point now though, that a lot of people also go on these drugs, lose a lot of weight, and are still fat.

Virginia

Thank you for saying that. Excellent note. Or don’t even lose that much weight. Not everybody responds the same way. That’s the thing.

So you can have the thought. There’s nothing wrong with having the thought. But it’s important to put the thought into the context of what’s actually happening with these drugs. Which is the same thing that always happens with dieting. Yes, some people are losing weight on it for some unspecified amount of time. And not everybody is losing dramatic amounts. It’s just dieting. So yes, we’re constantly tempted to reconsider an anti-diet stance because we live in a culture that’s constantly telling us to.

Corinne

Totally. I do think within the anti-diet space, we’ve become so anti-these drugs that I can sort of understand being like, “What if I just tried it,” you know? And I think if you want to try it, that’s fine. But I do think it’s good to just have a reality check of what that’s actually going to look like.

Virginia

Be realistic about where you’re going with it.

Corinne

You could even just start by looking into how much it might cost.

Virginia

Oh, yeah. That might clarify some choices.

Corinne

Yeah. It might be like, well, if I can get it for free, sure, I’ll try it. But if I have to pay $2,000 a month, no thank you.

Virginia

If it’s a second mortgage payment.

Yeah, and how do I feel about chronic nausea? I was thinking about this because I just had food poisoning at the end of my vacation, and we won’t talk about it because Corinne is very triggered by discussions of food poisoning and specifically airplane-adjacent vomiting.

But when it happened I was like, people are signing up to feel this way? It feels so awful feeling nauseous! It’s an awful feeling. If you’re on the drugs and you don’t feel nauseous—I get it, not everybody does. But that’s the most common side effect. And to voluntarily be like, “Let me do something where I’m going to walk around feeling nauseous.” I’m like, I have been pregnant twice. I have had stomach bugs. I could be retired from that feeling, thank you.

Corinne

I think nausea is one of the worst feelings in the world. And, I can understand the calculus between, would I trade feeling nauseous to experience less fatphobia? Like, that’s real. There’s a lot to think about.

Virginia

I think we’re saying it makes sense you’re pulled into these thoughts. We’re offering some larger context in which to put the thoughts. We support you doing whatever you want to do, but that’s the calculus we’re landing on. We get the thoughts, and then we put it in the larger context and we move on in our fat lives. But your mileage may vary, and that’s fair. You’re still welcome here.

Corinne

Good luck!

Alright, here’s the next question.

I would love to hear a discussion on the ways movement spaces are geared towards smaller bodies, even in subtle ways—because it pisses me off, and I can’t be alone in this! For instance, I enjoy a morning spin class with a friend of mine, and when the gym got new bikes, the new models moved the lever to adjust intensity to the front/middle. Now, as a fat person, my stomach bumps the dang thing and resets it throughout my workout. Clearly, bigger bodied people were not considered when creating this piece of exercise equipment. Not shocking, but super frustrating! Keep your anti-fatness out of my delightful morning spin.

Virginia

I’m so annoyed about this.

Corinne

Yeah, that’s horrible.

Virginia

Ot’s so dumb. I hope you’ve complained to the gym, because they should know they bought equipment that does not serve their clients. That’s irritating.

Corinne

You should definitely complain to the gym and possibly also the company that manufactures the bikes.

Virginia

It’s just rude. I mean, my solution to this is that I don’t work out in mainstream fitness spaces. I work out in my home where it is sized to me. Because I find this constantly maddening.

And I think it is subtle stuff. It’s the equipment, it’s the physical built space, and it’s also the felt experience of being the fat person in a space that is oriented around thinness. I just don’t like putting myself into it.

So that’s not very helpful. I’ve spent a bunch of money on weights for my house, and I have space to use them. But that’s not everybody.

Corinne

This question was interesting to me, because I actually feel like I don’t encounter this a lot at my gym.

Virginia

Say more.

Corinne

I feel like a lot of the equipment at my gym is designed to hold really heavy weights, because people are lifting really heavy weights. And a lot of the equipment is extremely adjustable. There are two bikes at my gym—they’re what are called assault bikes. Is that the real name? You pump your arms and pedal your feet. But the seat moves up and down, and it moves forward and back. So you can really kind of adjust it. When one arm is pulled all the way back, sometimes I do hit my belly, but it’s fine.

Virginia

I am googling an assault bike. We’ll put a visual for people like me who have not heard of this. I just have to say, there’s just no end to fitness equipment that looks like torture devices. And why do they keep inventing these things?

Corinne

It’s literally just a bike with with arm pedals. One thing I really like about it is the front is, I guess it’s like a flywheel or something? So it blows air on you. It’s cooling.

Virginia

Oh, that’s nice. Why does that have such an aggressive name, though?

Corinne

I do not know. That’s why I was like, is that the real name? I’m not sure.

Virginia

Why can’t it be called the breezy bike?

Corinne

Okay, I don’t know.

But my other thought about this was, I was recalling that I encountered this a lot in yoga studios where you would get a strap and sometimes it wouldn’t be long enough. If there was a place I was going all the time, I would know which strap I had to get.

Virginia

And yoga mats are not cut for everybody, they can be too skinny.

Corinne

Yeah, not wide enough or not long enough.

Virginia

And depending on the number of people they’re trying to cram into the class if you go into a popular yoga studio, you can feel really cramped. The space my body will need to move comfortably here is not available. I hate that.

It makes sense that a sport like powerlifting would be better on this since lots of different body sizes powerlift and you’re lifting heavier weights. And I think there’s more inclusivity in terms of the size of athlete it attracts. Whereas something like spin or yoga, which are thin lady sports, are going to be really annoying on this front. Which is not to say you have to be a powerlifter, but I think if you love a sport that really emphasizes thinness or has a thin ideal, you’re going to have to advocate more.

Corinne

I am also curious: Are you sure the bike doesn’t adjust at all? But maybe it doesn’t adjust in a helpful way.

Virginia

I’m kind of guessing maybe this person has already explored that.

Corinne

I will say I experienced this a lot in other spaces. Anywhere else that has seats. Bathrooms sometimes. Why is the toilet paper blocking where I need to sit.

Virginia

Bathroom stalls are so narrow. That’s really real. Oh, I will link Dr. Rachel Millner, who is a wonderful eating disorder therapist and fat activist. She has been posting a lot of content on Instagram—she’s on a mission to become a fat Peloton instructor. She’s posted a lot of great content talking about adjustments you can make riding your Peloton bike, and how to do that as a fat person more comfortably. So we can link to that. Rachel is amazing.

I just think this speaks to the lack of inclusivity. Like, Peloton still has only ever had one fat instructor, Ash Pryor, who is a rowing instructor, not a spin instructor. So that’s not great. I mean, she’s great, but the inclusivity is not great there. Peloton fans, you don’t have to email me. I know how much you love your Pelotons. But even brands that nod towards being anti-diet, or even attempt to represent anti-diet are not always fat inclusive. Like, it’s skinny ladies talking about being anti-diet.

I mean, this comes up for me even in the workouts I do at home. I mean, I do videos by two women I absolutely adore and have relationships with, so I can offer this feedback. But sometimes I’ll be like, yeah, that twist didn’t work for my belly, you know? There’s just a lot where someone in a smaller body, might suggest a child’s pose where your knees press into your stomach, and as a fat person, you’re like, yeah, that is not my ministry. I’m not going to enjoy that one. And I think the onus is really on the industry, and I think there are people really trying to do better at this, but if they haven’t had that experience they just don’t know if they’re not really making an effort to talk to fat clients about what they need.

Corinne

I’m sorry this is happening to you. I hope you can get a good solution.

Virginia

This next question is very funny to me. This person wrote:

Do you like to watch sports? How did you become a fan? Are you becoming a fan? What’s that like? And what do you wish you were a fan of? Will you never be a fan?

Corinne

Wow, a lot of questions packed right in there.

Virginia

Okay, do we like to watch sports? We’ll go one by one. We can both answer it. Do you like to watch sports?

Corinne

Yes.

Virginia

Okay. I would say no, until quite recently.

Corinne

Okay, I will say yes, but I know nothing about them. But I have always enjoyed the Super Bowl, because I really enjoy the Super Bowl snacks. And I think it’s cool to watch people doing athletics.

Virginia

I feel about watching sports the same way I feel about exercise, which is that I’m never naturally going to want to do it. But sometimes I end up being glad I did and enjoying it more than I expected?

Corinne

That’s fair. I mean, I’m watching it, and I’m like, well, don’t really know what’s going on, but cool to watch.

Virginia

So I have someone in my life who’s a big football fan now. Which means I did watch quite a lot of football this past season. And I don’t understand what they do, and I am concerned about the traumatic brain injury stuff, and I have many feminist critiques of the NFL. And I will also say, it’s fun when they suddenly do run really fast across the field, and you’re like, well that seems impressive. And I enjoy the player backstories. I can be here for the gossip. I know a lot of player backstories now. I don’t understand what’s happening in the game, but I like that part.

Corinne

Did you become a fan? Are you becoming a fan?

Virginia

I don’t want to commit to a position on being a fan. That feels like a big step for me. I mean, I have historically been probably the most anti-sports person you could meet. This is all quite new and disconcerting for me. My dad is a lifelong fan, loves all the sports. My extended family are hardcore football and basketball fans. I grew up just being completely allergic to the whole thing.

Corinne

Well, this year I’m trying to get into watching the WNBA.

Virginia

This is the other thing we need to talk about. I do feel like women’s sports finally getting a modicum of more attention is helping me quite a lot. I mean, obviously this NFL thing is not a women’s sport. But I feel like Simone Biles helped me understand that maybe I could care about sports a little bit. Certainly, the Williams sisters have done a lot on that front. And then now women’s basketball.

Corinne

Yeah, I will say basketball is fun to watch because it’s really fast and not very long.

Virginia

Which is the opposite of football. That is the slowest game. I did not understand. One minute can be three hours. It’s wild. It makes you question the entire concept of time.

My mom is really into women’s basketball, so I feel very basketball adjacent. Even if I’m not watching it, I’m often being informed about it.

Corinne

Yeah, it is really fun to watch. Also fun to learn the gossip backstories. I have been watching, along with the Out of Your League Substack chat, which was has also been fun.

Virginia

I mean, Frankie de la Cretaz makes sports very fun. I read Frankie—and of course, we can link to Frankie’s interview on Burnt Toast—even though I am not following any sport closely enough. They always make me laugh and also blow my mind.

Corinne

Totally. So I think we’re both getting more into watching sports.

Virginia

And some of us feel complicated about it? Some of us might have to write a think piece about it at some point?

Corinne

Please write a think piece. And I’m curious what other Burnt Toasties are watching or not watching!

Virginia

I will say, after I wrote about the Super Bowl, I realized we do have some die hard football fans, because those were people who got cranky with me about that Super Bowl piece.

In some cases, rightfully so, but also just don’t mess with sports fans. It’s exhausting. They feel so strongly and so deeply. And it’s like, You do realize this is all made up? Some people are on a field with a ball and nothing changes in the world? Sorry sports fans. I support you. I see you. But your fervor is sometimes absurd to me. I mean, it’s like Taylor Swift fans.

Corinne

I was just going to say that. Yes, Swifties.

Virginia

The sports fans and Swifties and all of the fandoms. People feel this strongly. It’s understandable. Want to read the last question?

Corinne

Yes. The next question is:

This question is both late and like THE question right now, to the point that it can feel trite. But also, I’m desperate to hear people’s ongoing thoughts and ideas around how to stay sane in this onslaught of terribleness. Not hoping for any big solutions—though, absolutely welcome if you have any, maybe just one or two things you guys are finding helpful right now.

Virginia

I mean, just to put into context, we are recording this on February 26. You’re going to hear it in early March. So the terribleness this week is the Republicans just absolutely gutting Medicaid yesterday in their budget vote. The federal government layoffs continuing apace, and oh also, now suddenly we’re blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia. Like, yeah, cool, cool. So the terribleness is intense, and obviously by the time this episode airs, there will be 50 million new terrible things, and what I just said will be completely out of date.

So I’m just situating us in this moment of terribleness before we give our answers here.

Corinne

Yep. What are we doing?

Virginia

I would say the number one thing I am doing that is helping me is calling my reps. You taught me about this last year when we were advocating for ceasefire in Gaza— just use the five calls app.

I think people know about the five calls app, but if you’re like me, you might have downloaded it and not used it yet or for a while. Because I definitely did that for a while after you first told me about it, where I was like, yeah, I’m going to use it, but it’s scary. It’s scary. I don’t want to make the calls! It’s scary! I’ll just have it on my phone for a while.

And then I did finally do the first Gaza call. I was like, okay. And now I’ve re-upped using five calls, and I don’t manage to call every day, but I definitely try to call like, three or so times a week is kind of my baseline. I have it on my to-do list every day. It always only takes three minutes. There was one scary time where I had to talk to a person, but mostly I’m leaving voicemails. You can call after hours if you would prefer to just leave voicemails. And it does make me feel like, okay, I am doing the one thing that we as constituents can do right now. I am using my voice to inform my representatives of my disgust and tell them what I want them to be doing.

And it’s helping me focus in a little bit. I knew that budget vote was the big thing happening this week, because the app will be like, vote on this day is happening now. So you can kind of be like, “This is the fire I’m actually going to pay attention to,” because there are so many things on fire all the time now, and it’s overwhelming. But like, okay, I’m tackling this one.

Like, when RFK was going to be confirmed, I was like, I am calling about RFK this week. I can do this one thing. So that is really a game changer for me. It makes me feel informed, and also then like I can step away the rest of the day a little bit and preserve my own sanity, because I did the one thing.

Corinne

It just feels a little bit less like shouting into a void. I feel like there’s so much posting on social media, and not that that has no value, but it’s like, what value does it have? I don’t know. I would just rather make one phone call than post like five Instagram stories about whatever.

Virginia

I mean, we’re so polarized. It’s very unlikely that anything I post on my Instagram Stories is being seen by people, A with the power to do anything, or B who don’t already agree with me. So the performative nature of that was getting really old to me. I mean, it’s sometimes informative. There are sometimes things I hear about on social media before I read about it in the news. And that’s valuable. But it feels otherwise, just like a waste of energy. And so making the calls is like, okay, I used my voice in the most productive way I can.

Corinne

Yeah. The other thing I want to recommend on that front is the Substack Chop Wood, Carry Water. Do you follow that one? It’s a daily political action email. So every day they give you a thing to do, and I think a lot of it is kind of focused on Democrats and its more national electoral politics focused, but if that’s your thing, I do think it’s helpful.

Virginia

Okay, I love that.

This is related to what we just talked about with doing a little less on social media. But ever since I did my Instagram break over the holidays—we’re now in March, almost March, as we’re recording this, and I have continued. I still go on Instagram, but only when I’m going to post, and then I delete the app. I’m not using it for doomscrolling anymore. And I think that is really, really helping.

Like, it hasn’t been perfect. I had random insomnia one night, and I was like, well, fuck it. I’m going to download it and stare at Instagram till my eyes burn. But for the most part, I’m much less on it. And there has been absolutely no downside.

Corinne

Wow, I gotta do that.

Virginia

It just really feels great. Don’t miss it at all. I don’t know that I’m going to quit it completely because, for business purposes, whatever, whatever. And I haven’t added Bluesky, I haven’t added any new replacement social media. I’m just on Substack, which doesn’t feel like social media to me in quite the same way. I think it’s just giving me a little bit of space. So I think finding space is important.

Corinne

One thing that’s completely unrelated, but, one of my friends sent me a care package the other day, and it was so nice. And now one thing I want to do to distract myself from the terribleness is send people care packages so I’m going to endorse that as a large-scale solution for everyone.

Virginia

Even if you can’t send a care package, maybe you can send a card? I do think, like, time with our people. Everyone’s been saying this, but I do really feel that.

Another thing that we’re doing locally in my house is Friend Friday. My seven-year-old named it. Where on Friday nights when I have the kids, we invite some friends over for takeout and all the kids play or watch a movie. It’s not revolutionary. I was actually doing it for a long time before we named it, but I’ve now told a group of friends that it’s a standing invite.

I’ll send the text to remind but standing invite if you want to come over this Friday and then if you don’t make it, you can come to another Friday. Because I have them two Fridays a month, and that’s making me feel like I’m continuing to invest in my local people in a way that feels good.

Corinne

Yeah, I have a standing dinner date with some friends once a week, and it’s so nice.

Virginia

Oh, that’s beautiful. Do you go out?

Corinne

No, we rotate whose house it’s at. So someone cooks, but then it’s like, if you’re doing it with three other people, you basically only have to cook once a month for four people.

Virginia

Right.

Corinne

It’s really nice.

Virginia

I want more things like that in my life. More like we have these touch points of when we’ll see people and just having those breaks. And I mean, you know, as someone who does long solo parenting stretches, I really need the adult time to pace myself with that. And it really helps, and it makes my kids happy, and I feel like it’s making my kids have a sense of us as part of a larger community. And you know, that feels really useful right now.

We had more helpful advice for that one than I thought. I thought we were just going to be depressed and have nothing and just be sad. But, yeah, we’re doing what we can. We’re chipping away at it. I guess.

Corinne

We’re trying, for sure.

Virginia

We’re trying. I’m trying.

Corinne

Well, speaking of staying sane, what’s your Butter this week?

Virginia

My Butter this week is going to be meatballs. I’ve been on a meatball kick because I regularly cook for one vegetarian pasta lover, but I love pasta sauces with meat in it. And then I have another child who doesn’t like any kind of tomato sauce. And I realized that making a batch of meatballs and keeping them separate from the sauce to spare the vegetarian means that the child who doesn’t like tomato sauce will eat the meatballs because they are not tainted by the sauce. So you see, you see what my life is?

But I then get to eat pasta with meatballs one night, which I love, and then I have a bunch of leftover meatballs for the week.

A recent spaghetti and meatballs night, with separate components. (And Julia Turshen’s Italian Salad!)

And today for lunch right before we got on to record, I’d made some lamb meatballs. They were really good, and I’d throw them in with a cup of Minute Rice, and then I had some leftover salad that didn’t have any dressing on it, that I just added, and then, dumped a bunch of creamy dressing all over the top of the whole thing. And it was such a good lunch.

Corinne

That sounds delicious!

Virginia

Having those meatballs made in my fridge made lunch come together in a very useful way. So yeah, Sunday meatballs! That’s my Butter.

Corinne

Wow, more meatballs. My Butter is probably one of those things everyone already knows about, but I’ve been watching Severance.

Virginia

Oh, I need to start the new season.

Corinne

Yeah, I needed to go back and re-watch the first season, because I started watching season two, and I was like, I remember nothing. But it’s great. I’m really enjoying it. Also just want to shout out that there’s a tiny bit of fat rep. The character Dylan on Severance is a fat man, and he does some really important things. Hopefully he continues to be a good character in season two. But yeah, I’m really enjoying the show, and just wanted to shout out that there’s a fat person without, at least so far, a weight loss storyline.

Virginia

We love it. We love to see it. I’m excited to get into that. I also need to re watch season one, and then I want to do White Lotus too. So I’m like, oh, that’s two stressful shows. I gotta pick which stressful show I’m going to watch, because I can only handle so much. But they’re both on my list.

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is Amy Palanjian.

Amy is my work wife and best friend of over 20 years. She’s also the creator of Yummy Toddler Food and author of the nationally bestselling cookbook Dinnertime SOS: 100 Sanity-Saving Meals Parents and Kids of All Ages Will Actually Want to Eat.

Amy joined me last month at Split Rock Books to celebrate the launch of FAT TALK in paperback. They also host the Burnt Toast Bookshop for us, and are forever the place to get my books signed and personalized however you like!

So we talked about the book, of course, but we also got into how family dinners have changed for us post-divorce, why cooking with kids is terrible, and then Amy outed my (not so) secret love of protein powder. 😂

(Bear with some imperfect audio, since we weren’t recording with our usual set-up — but Tommy worked his magic as usual so it’s still highly listen-to-able!)

If you find today’s episode valuable, a paid subscription is the best way to support this work!

Guest interviews are always free on Burnt Toast, but paid subscriptions enable us to pay guests for their time, labor and expertise. (This is extremely rare in the world of podcasting, but key to centering marginalized voices!)

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

Amy

Okay, so we are here to celebrate your paperback release, and we had a burning question from the front row. Can you tell us if and how this book is different than the hardcover?

Virginia

Yes! Okay, so I don’t know how familiar folks are with publishing, but a lot of hardcovers don’t ever get a paperback. It’s just the way the industry is working these days, fewer and fewer books make it to paperback. So it was very exciting to make it to paperback! And part of how you make it to paperback is you and your editor brainstorm all the ways you can make the paperback really good so they’ll want to print it.

Most of the book is the same, but there is a foreword written by Kate Manne who is an amazing fat activist and feminist philosophy professor at Cornell. She’s the author of the incredible book, Unshrinking. She wrote a beautiful foreword. And then there’s an afterword by me where I talk about what it was like to launch this book at the height of Ozempic Mania, and how that played a role in the conversations around the book, how it led so many men on the Internet to have feelings about me.

Amy

I was going to ask if you can talk a little bit more about how the world feels different or how your maybe your intended audience feels a little bit different from when you first released the book to now? If it does.

Virginia

Obviously there’s the huge conversation happening now around the semaglutide drugs and this idea that now weight loss is within all of our reach. Now, I think what we’re seeing increasingly from the data is that it doesn’t put weight loss within everyone’s reach. There’s also a very valid conversation to be had about whether we need weight loss to be within everyone’s reach. Everyone is allowed to make their own choices for their bodies. But what would it actually do for the world if we could make everyone thin?

Audience Member

That’s funny. Sorry, that’s ridiculous.

Virginia

Yes! So in short, it’s ridiculous. But I think what it does mean is that the conversation around weight loss is louder in a lot of ways. I mean, in some ways, I think traditional diet conversation it is less because that’s not what people are doing now to lose weight. But the fact that anytime, as a person in a larger body, I go to the doctor, this is likely to come up. You’re just navigating it in a whole other way now. And what the Ozempic conversation has really done is given anti-fatness and diet culture this “well, why not?” sort of answer. Like, “Well, we’ve got this now, so why wouldn’t you?”

And again, this is not to demonize anyone’s personal choices! We’re all allowed to do what we want with our bodies. But there are lots of us that feel like that shouldn’t be the only answer, or shouldn’t be where the conversation stops and starts.

What I’m also noticing is that we have a lot of people who are like, “Well, I am doing this because my doctor said it was important for my health. Can I still be for fat liberation? Can I still be against diet culture?” And the answer is absolutely yes. So I think we need to create space for the fact that people are going to make their own choices for their bodies, because that’s core to body autonomy and body liberation. But we can also still name anti-fatness and calling it out and trying to dismantle it. So it’s more nuanced now. Because we have to hold those two things together.

Amy

So, say you go to the doctor because your knee hurts and the subject of weight loss comes up, or weight loss drugs come up. What are some questions that you might ask for more context?

Virginia

Well, I think the first question that’s always useful to ask is: How would you treat this condition for a thin person? Because someone in a thin body that shows up with knee pain is not prescribed weight loss. We know for any health condition, there are multiple ways of going about it because weight loss isn’t the answer for everybody. So asking them to think about, “what would you do for a thin person? Can we start with that for me?” is a useful starting point.

Then I think having a direct conversation is important. And this is scary and vulnerable and really hard to do. But most of us who are fat, we’ve done weight loss. That’s not something we have no experience with. So saying, like, “I’ve done this, it hasn’t worked for me. This is what happens when I’m dieting.” This is the toll it takes on my mental health and my emotional health. This is why it’s not realistic for my lifestyle, because of my job schedule or my parenting schedule. And helping the doctor understand that while yes, that might solve a problem that they’re trying to solve for you, the ripple effect of that “solution” in your life also matters.

So does that actually solve your problem, or does that give you many other problems? That’s going to be a different answer for everybody. But that’s the nuance that I want doctors to have. It’s not that I never want doctors to talk about weight, it’s that I want them to be understanding that the conversation doesn’t start and end with weight loss, and that you’re allowed to be a person with a whole context to your life.

Amy

Okay, so, speaking of versions of your book, I have a 12 year old who was obsessed with your hardcover book, and she has heard that you are noodling around the idea of a YA version. She has volunteered herself to be as helpful as possible, and would really like to know if this is happening.

Virginia

Okay, we are in early conversations—this is early, early, early!—to do a middle grade version of the book. I would be delighted to have your 12-year-old write it! She and I need to talk. We’re figuring out what of the book needs to go into a middle grade version.

One interesting thing that came up, actually, in a conversation with the editors was they are concerned—and the same thing happened with the hard cover. With the hard cover, people said, “Should we call it FAT TALK? Because maybe that means only parents of fat kids will buy the book!” Like, as if parents of thin kids never think about fatness or have no relationship to this concept. And I was like, no, I don’t think that will be the case. And it wasn’t.

But with FAT TALK for kids, they’re saying, is this a title that makes sense to put on a middle grade book? Will only fat kids read it? Will that create stigma? Like, what do we do about that?

So this is a conversation I need to have with your kid and other kids, because I think it’s a fair point. I think there are lots of great books for kids that talk about body image. I don’t think there are books that explain to kids that we’re talking about a systemic form of oppression, that explain it as a system, that explain what diet culture is, what this industry is, and what they’re trying to sell you. That’s information kids in every body size need, because we’re all navigating it. But how do we bring that to the kids? So that’s what we’re working on right now.

Amy

You can ask her and I’m sure she will talk at you.

So this is not meant to sound as—I don’t know how this could sound. But okay, so you really love protein powder? It seemed like a good segue. I would like to hear about your relationship with protein powder. Because it is, you know, like… protein is… yeah. So tell us about that.

Virginia

Amy has decided to out me. This is all going on Reddit right now.

Okay, yes, I enjoy protein powder in my smoothies. I learned about protein powder on my last diet, which was in 2015 which was a time in my life where I thought I was being really critical of diet culture, but I definitely..wasn’t. So I was writing a piece for Self Magazine about whether detoxes are worth it, and following a detox diet for two months as “research.” So I was obviously still very much in that world. I mean, I was still writing for women’s magazines. But I did this terrible detox where they didn’t let me eat anything except protein powder and chicken broth or whatever. And I did quit the detox, I think after only a couple weeks. Do you remember this?

Amy

Was this the chicken thighs one?

Virginia

That was a different one. Oh man. Our 20s were a bad time.

I can’t remember how long I did it for it, but I did, in the course of the detox, get really into this protein powder. Even though it has now been almost 10 years since I’ve tried to lose weight in any intentional way, I still love this protein powder in my smoothies every morning. It’s just tasty. And I think part of it is, we’re allowed to reclaim these pieces of diet culture that actually we do really like. You don’t have to reject it wholesale just because it got marketed to us.

But I did have to spend some time divesting from my relationship with the protein powder.

Amy

What are some other foods that you reclaimed, besides Diet Coke? Because I feel as though maybe we all know about that one. But are there others?

Virginia

I’m recently getting back into kale and I think you’re going to be mad. Amy does not like kale, which is a controversial position for a food blogger to take! Because there are a lot of expectations that you would like kale, I think. It’s expected to be part of your brand. But I think I do like kale?

Amy

In what way?

Virginia

Julia Turshen had this really great recipe. I actually made it on Christmas Day but I have made it since, where you take Lacinato kale and you slice it up pretty thin and you really massage it with a lot of lemon and oil and stuff, and then there’s a chickpea thing you make up the air fryer and you put on top. And I think it’s delicious!

Amy

Okay. I have this recipe for kale bites. I did legitimately make them a lot when my oldest was a toddler and she ate them. I mean, it’s kale in a bucket of cheese. It’s one of the oldest recipes on my website and almost all of the content has been updated at least once, and I keep seeing that in the list, and I’m like, I cannot make them. I’m sorry.

What is your go-to line when you are at a meal with, say, family, and someone says something either disparaging about themselves and what they’re eating or about food in general.

How do you react? If you do.

Virginia

I mean, I just want to say it’s hard to have one line for this. I get asked this a lot and people want one go-to line but it’s so context specific. And, it’s really okay if you just don’t engage. I’m actually doing less engaging these days, because I feel like it just often goes badly, and you’re not going to change hearts and minds by being combative in these moments. They are where they are. It’s better to preserve your bandwidth for things you really need to do. So often I don’t say anything.

But where I will say something is if someone comments on how my child is eating, or my child’s body. That is one where I will insert myself. Because that’s not okay. And then I’ll probably say something like, “Oh, we trust them. We’re not worried about this.” Like, this isn’t something we’re worrying about right now. We trust them to eat how they need to eat.

I frame it this way because I’m less concerned with “how do I convince this person that I’m correct,” and more concerned with “what do I want my kid to hear in that moment?” And what I want my kid to hear is, “My mom trusts me and trusts my body, and is not concerned about how I’m eating.”

Amy

I will also say that, as my kids have gotten older, when comments from other people happen about what someone is eating themselves, talking about it afterward has become very interesting. Even just asking, “Did you hear what whoever said at the table? What did you think of that?” Just so that they start to develop the ability to notice those types of comments and then get to have their own opinion about them. It’s very interesting to see what they say.

Virginia

Definitely.

Amy

Speaking of kids, what is your go-to family meal?

Virginia

My children have many great qualities, but they’re not adventurous eaters. They’re wonderful, spectacular human beings. But. My house is me and my two daughters. I would say our go-to family meal these days is some kind of pasta with some kind of red sauce, plus a snack plate that includes Cheez-Its and sliced cheese and fruit. Because one child won’t eat pasta, and so she’s going to have the cheese and crackers for dinner. And I’ve just kind of made my peace with that’s how family dinner looks like in our house right now.

What I’m really more focused on is, how do we foster connection at the family table? How do we make sure that they feel safe and welcome showing up there? And I have not always gotten it right! This has been a really rocky part of my parenting a lot of the time. But at least if the food is familiar and comforting to them, then I know we have that in place.

And when in doubt, those smoothies with the protein powder make me feel less freaked out about their overall intake. So we all do those for breakfast.

Amy

So, Virginia and I are both divorced. I’ve always felt pretty detached from what my kids eat. I mean, I put out what’s for dinner, and then they eat what they eat. And I have three very different eaters. But once I took another adult out of the equation, somehow there is just less pressure overall on family meals. There’s no other fully grown person having any opinion whatsoever. It’s just little kids. So our meals have gotten a lot more fun. Not the food! But we will often go around the table and each person gets to pick two songs and then we play them.

So my bandwidth has changed a lot as I’ve put some distance in between that value on family dinner in the same way. I think it’s also because the kids are older. There’s no high chair situation. They can actually put food in their own mouths without it falling on the floor.

Virginia

They don’t need to be touching you while they’re eating.

Amy

I mean, that is brand new. And I have an-almost six-year-old. But there is a lot more room for it just to be about safety and connection and the food is there. So that’s been nice.

What are some meals that you make just for yourself?

Virginia

I order sushi a lot. That’s what I make for myself. The Uber Eats app. I also eat a lot of pasta. My child comes by that very honestly.

What else do I eat? Amy, you stumped me.

Amy

I actually don’t know. You eat The Cheese.

Virginia

Oh, right. Thank you. There’s this really good marinated sheep goat cheese by Meredith Dairy that I thanked in the acknowledgements of this book. I love it so much, and I will build a lot of meals around that cheese. It’s good on pasta, it’s good on toast, it’s good on a salad. It’s a real building block for me.

Amy

There’s this idea that if you have your kids in the kitchen with you, they will turn into a certain type of eater. Did you cook with your kids when they were little?

Virginia

Well, I tried, but it’s terrible! It’s terrible to cook with small children. They’re so bad at it, and it’s so messy, and you just get very impatient. I think that that is exactly the kind of toxic and misleading image of motherhood we are sold, about what it means to be this perfect mom raising healthy eaters. Then you get there and there’s freaking flour everywhere, and raw eggs, and you’re just like, “Get out of the kitchen! Go watch TV.”

I remember a turning moment in my feminism motherhood journey was when I was reporting a story for a parenting magazine about screen time and how terrible screen time is for children. And I interviewed this male researcher from Harvard who was studying screen time with children, and he was talking about how terrible it was, and how our children should not have screen time. And I said, “Well, okay, but I do let my three year old watch TV when I’m cooking dinner, because how else am I going to do it?” And he said, “Why don’t you invite her in? Kids love a bag of flour to play with.” And I was like, Sir, it’s Wednesday night. It’s 5pm. I need dinner on the table. And you’re suggesting I give a three-year-old a bag of flour?

Amy

Also it says right on it, raw, do not eat!

Virginia

I’m talking about flour on my ceiling!

Amy

I’m imagining it going in their mouth and then on the ceiling.

Virginia

Who’s cleaning that up?

Audience Member

Not him!

Virginia

Obviously.

I googled him. He was on his second wife, it all made sense. She was a lot younger. They did have a child, but I am sure he is not at all involved in making dinner.

I think this is one of those times where, if you love baking and if baking with your children gives you joy, that’s wonderful. Do it! We love that for you! But if that’s not your bliss, there are so many other ways to connect with your kids.

And I think that’s something I’ve had to come to terms with. Because I don’t have kids who are super-food oriented, dinner isn’t where we talk about our day often. Dinner is often like, we’re getting through it, people are grumpy, there is sibling conflict, nobody wants to sit still, etc — and then they’re going to snuggle up at bedtime and tell me everything about themselves.

There’s this pressure that parents, that moms especially, have that we have to have these perfect family dinners, and if we don’t, our kids are going to grow up to be drug addicts because we didn’t ask them about their day enough at the dinner table and all of that. And that’s just not every family. And that’s not definitely mine now, post-divorce. It’s just not what my family looks like anymore.

And I actually like it better this way.

Amy

Okay, so you have some stronger boundaries now with your social media use. How is it being online as someone who is fairly visible, just as far as it’s a lot of feedback at times? I think you and I are both going through this process of, like, we’ve been online for a little while. And have realized that it’s kind of nice to shut off the feedback.

Virginia

I get so much feedback.

Amy

So how is that going?

Virginia

So I took a three week Instagram break over the holidays, and it was totally on a whim. Like, we were just texting—Amy’s really working on her boundaries, too. And she was like, “I’m not going to Instagram this weekend!” And I was like, fuck it. I’m just going to delete the app for winter break. Why not? Like, it’s fine. I’ll just download it again when I need it. And it was so much better for my brain. I hadn’t even realized how much I needed that break.

And then I re-downloaded it. I was like, well, I’m getting back to work, and I have to promote the newsletter. I’ve got to get back on there. And the first DM I saw was from a man who had sent me this hateful message in December describing my body and the reasons I was wrong and how he was mad at vegans, but also me. Then the second DM that he’d sent two weeks later was, “What’s your number?”

And I was like, Okay, I think I’m done again. I didn’t respond to your troll message, so therefore I want to go out with you?

So there is a lot of feedback. And you develop a thick skin and you can laugh about it. And, like, I’ve made reels making fun of the funny comments. But stepping away from it completely, I was like, oh, that is this part of my brain that I don’t need to be giving to that anymore. So, I mean, it’s hard, because it is our job. We make words on the Internet, so somehow we have to do that with the Internet. But I think especially right now with what’s happening with Meta and Zuckerberg doing what he’s doing, I’m feeling less need to participate. So, yeah, I’m experimenting with more boundaries.

Amy

Does it seem like it impacts your newsletter audience at all?

Virginia

Are we now having a business meeting?

Amy

I’m curious about the engagement on Burnt Toast itself.

Virginia

No, I mean, the great thing about Burnt Toast is it’s my beautiful safe space. We have amazing conversations, and everyone is smart and lovely, and even when people are critical, it’s couched in this like, well, like, you know, I just want to give some feedback. And everyone is so kind about it, and often right. That’s great. So I think finding those places, and just being more judicious with how we want to use the Internet, I think makes a lot of sense.

Amy

What makes a meal satisfying for you?

Virginia

Cheese?

I mean, any cheese. Parmesan. I’m just like, if there’s not cheese, what did we come here to do? That’s all.

Amy

I’m not going to name who this was, but we were having a conversation about a cookbook that sold a bajillion copies recently, and we were talking about whether this person speaks about food in a way that is has diet culture in it. And I was like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that, but apparently in the book, there is some. And I was wondering if you could recommend some food resources for recipes or just like food ideas in general, where we’re not going to run into that.

Virginia

Um, Dinnertime SOS by Amy Palanjian. 100% diet culture free. Also Yummy Toddler Food. I mean, you’re at the top of the list, obviously.

Just to brag about my best friend, Amy is working in this niche of kid food blogging, which is incredibly diet-y, incredibly rigid. There are so many expectations of perfection. And you have been systematically pushing against that, and in the nicest Amy way. The nicest way, but always like, no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to very gently push back. I really admire it because you’re swimming in some shark infested waters.

Other food people, I mean, we have shout out Julia Turshen, who is also a recovered diet-y person who has really brought a different perspective into her work and her food is all amazing. I think you guys are kind of my two go-tos because you’re always safe.

Amy

I took one of Julia’s classes—she does a live cooking class every Sunday, and I took it last week. And it was like, I could have made the recipes without her, but there was something about being there and she was, I mean, she’s like, legitimately talking to the people in the class. And I was like, oh, I sort of forgot how nice it is. We made a roasted chicken with a really simple gravy, which is not remotely something I have ever made. And it was so simple. And I was like, I could just make this for myself. It was chicken on a pile of onions with broth, and then the gravy had a whole thing of sour cream in it.

Virginia

There is the dairy.

Amy

It was amazing. I would say, that is a really great gift to give. If you’re like, I don’t know if someone likes food and you’re not sure, it’s a great gift. Because you can choose from her back catalog or live classes. I cook all the time and it was just so nice to have someone be like, just do this and it will turn out really well.

Virginia

Should we go to audience questions?

Audience

So last year my daughter got a note passed to her in class—and she knows exactly who wrote it—that said you’re fat and ugly.

Virginia

Oh my god.

Audience

And I was like, oh, we’re still doing this shit? This is still what’s happening in middle school? Because middle school sucks, and I guess always gonna suck. I really had you in my ear, right? Of like, how to talk about that language, which is clearly intended to be hateful. And then there’s a knee jerk reaction, I think, to be like, oh, it’s not true. That’s not what it’s about. I was good at that part, but I’m sure I still bungled it. I wanted tohear what you as moms of middle school girls, how you handle when that happens. Because it just feels so shitty.

Virginia

I mean, it’s so shitty. I’m so sorry that happened. It makes me really rage-y when I do hear about it. I hear it all the time from readers. And I think the instinct we all have, is to correct it and be like, “you’re not fat, you’re beautiful.” But we don’t want to do that, because that puts fatness in opposition to beauty. And instead, you want to talk about why that shouldn’t be an insult that gets weaponized. But I think the first thing you have to do is just really sit with how much it sucks for them that that happened, because that’s where they are. They just got attacked. And this sucks. You can have the more philosophical conversation about it, but you just have to sit with like it is really terrible that people use bodies against us. This is really terrible.

What would you add?

Amy

I would add, outside of that immediate situation, in my life, there have been kids in my car who have said fat in a negative way. And I just am like, “We don’t use fat that way. It just means you’re big or you’re small, you’re tall, or you’re thin and you’re fat.” And sort of normalizing using the word as a descriptor that is not negative, it just is, can sort of help so that when those the attacks happen, then at least in the back of their mind, they’re like, “Fat is not a bad thing.” And this person is a jerk. It’s not perfect, but I think that that helps a little bit.

Audience

What would you tell someone like me, who doesn’t have kids yet, but is thinking about it. Because when you’re in your 30’s every other day someone tells you they’re pregnant. Like, maybe I should eventually consider that! You think about it a new way. And as someone who is still working through their own body image diet culture issues, and how to parent kids and bring a human into the world, especially with the Ozempic of it all. What do you wish you knew before?

Virginia

I mean, I think the bottom line is, everyone is going to show up to parenthood screwed up on this. There’s no “let me get this fixed before I have a kid.” Your reproductive options would run out before you could finish that work. This is the work of all of our lives.

So I think it’s just having a lot of grace for the fact that what’s wild about parenting around this issue is that it will bring up all of your own stuff. It will bring up stuff that your mom said to you when you were nine, or that your middle school bullies said, or you’ll be comparing your body to someone else’s body after they had a baby. It just will bring up all of that.

So I think instead of trying to get out in front of it and be like, “I can handle it,” it’s like, well, what support am I going to need to have in place who in my life can I talk to when I hit these moments? Who can I text? Who’s a safe person to share this with, whether it’s therapy or friends who are on the same page. Who’s going to be your support system? Because it’s not an if it’s a when you will be navigating it.

Then I also think—I hear this from a lot of parents, and this was true for me—that it can be a really healing piece of it. Because you do have a chance to do things differently with your kid. Like Amy and I talk all the time about seeing our kids have a vocabulary for talking about fatphobia, for knowing fat is not a bad word, that that’s automatic to them now. Like, we didn’t have that. We know that. And it’s not that they’re not going to struggle—they are. But we have been able to build this different foundation.

So when those things come up, my seven year old will come home and be, like, the teacher said this crazy thing. And it’s not landing. It’s not hurting her, because she’s like, like, what? Why? She’s recognizing it. And so that’s really satisfying to see.

Also, you totally don’t have to have kids.

[Every mother in the room passionately agrees.]

Amy

One other thing I would say is that one of the things I didn’t know that I learned as I went was there is this whole way to talk about food that has nothing to do with health necessarily, vitamins, minerals, proteins. You can talk about the way it tastes, you can talk the way that it feels, you can talk about the color. There’s all of this descriptive language around the experience of eating.

When I first started doing my brand, I didn’t quite know how to do that. And it took me some time to be like, if I just actually focus on making this taste really good, the byproduct is that we’re going to be more likely—not guaranteed—to eat it. And that is a different way of eating and relating to food. And I think especially with kids, you’re not going to have a lot of success if you try to persuade a three year old to eat something because it is good for them. But if it tastes good, or if it’s funny, or if there’s some other thing, it’s just a much more enjoyable experience.

It’s just feels very different. Then one other thing I was going to say, once kids have vocabulary, like my middle schooler sent me an email and was like, “I need you to get me out of this health assignment.” It was a calorie counting assignment where they had to make a meal plan. And she’s like, I don’t want to do this.

The fact that she knew and she asked for help. And then, I wrote this long email, of course, to everyone. And there was like, a one word answer that was like, fine. I mean, like, literally nobody cared. I just was like, can she do the assignment without the numbers? Can she just make a meal plan? Of course, I was like, what if we think about whether it’s enough? And they were like, No. But it’s like, there can be all of these different things that come up that are actually enjoyable. Just because there’s a lot that could potentially be stressful. There’s also a lot on the other side.

Audience

I’m excited about the YA situation, and I would like to discuss that, because I also think there is an appetite, maybe, for you to discuss your situation of what you were in middle school and how that has changed into your adult life and the trajectory.

Virginia

What I was in middle school?

Audience

Smaller.

Virginia

Oh yeah, thin.

Audience

Only because I listened to all these stories, and I’ve always been in this body, and so I did get the “you’re ugly and fat.” I’m like, girl, no. So I think there’s an arc to be discussed, right? Like, what does it look like when you are thin, and what can you do as a thin person to advocate? And then now your body has changed, because that’s what bodies do.

So is there that discussion in the YA version? Is there a potential for that?

Virginia

I think the reason it’s so important to me that—and I may even change the title, if you really think that thin kids wouldn’t buy a book called Fat Talk, which I’m still not—

Audience

They might not read it in public, right?

Virginia

I’m still figuring out how to handle that piece. But it’s so important to me that thin kids read this book, because not every thin kid is going to be a thin adult. I mean, even if they were going to be a thin adult, they don’t need to be an asshole about it. We need to raise thin kids to be good advocates and allies.

And it’s always tricky because the trauma that fat kids experience within their bodies from the world is worse objectively, it’s terrible. But what happens with thin kids, what happened to me, is that you’re told your thinness is this superpower and it’s this thing you should hold onto at all costs. And you see the way fat people are being treated. You see, you know, that your dad doesn’t let himself eat donuts. You see all of that, and you’re like, oh, it doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have to follow those rules. I can eat the cookies because I’m thin, but if I stop being thin, can I still eat the cookies?

And what we need thin kids to understand is: Your bodies are going to change. You’re in puberty. That’s what is supposed to be happening. This is a good thing. And you don’t have to diet to fight it. You don’t have to be set up to try to get back to this previous version of you. It’s all still you. So I think it’s really important to get that message in there—and maybe that’s the message we all need, right? Like, all of our bodies are changing, and that’s what bodies do.

So yes, I’m thinking a lot about how to get that in the book, but we’ll see. Stay tuned. And I’m open to title ideas!

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

Today Virginia is chatting with Brianna Campos. 

Bri is a licensed professional counselor and body image coach who works with folks recovering from eating disorders, and finding body acceptance through grief. You may know Bri from Instagram, or from her newsletter, Body Image with Bri.

Bri and I talk about why this concept of body grief is so important—and yet so often overlooked in this work. And she shares how doing her own body grief work has led her to have a happier relationship with her body and to start dating again—confidently and with a lot of joy as a superfat person. 

If you find today’s episode valuable, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

Guest interviews are always free on Burnt Toast, but paid subscriptions enable us to pay guests for their time, labor and expertise. (This is extremely rare in the world of podcasting, but key to centering marginalized voices!)

To tell us YOUR thoughts, and to get all of the links and resources mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript, visit our show page.

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. 

And don’t forget to check out our Burnt Toast Podcast Bonus Content! 

Disclaimer: You’re listening to this episode because you value my input as a journalist who reports on these issues and therefore has a lot of informed opinions. Neither my guest today nor I are healthcare providers, and this conversation is not meant to substitute for medical or therapeutic advice.

FAT TALK is out in paperback! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Follow Virginia on Instagram, Follow Corinne  @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing and subscribe to Big Undies.

Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism. 

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is Brianna Campos.

Bri is a licensed professional counselor and body image coach who works with folks recovering from eating disorders, and finding body acceptance through grief. You may know Bri from Instagram, or from her newsletter, Body Image with Bri.

Bri and I talk about why this concept of body grief is so important—and yet so often overlooked in this work. And she shares how doing her own body grief work has led her to have a happier relationship with her body and to start dating again—confidently and with a lot of joy as a superfat person.

Bri is such a delight, and I learned so much from talking with her. You are going to love this episode!

If you find today’s episode valuable, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

Guest interviews are always free on Burnt Toast, but paid subscriptions enable us to pay guests for their time, labor and expertise. (This is extremely rare in the world of podcasting, but key to centering marginalized voices!)

This episode contains affiliate links. Shopping our links is a great way to support Burnt Toast! You’ll find all of the links aggregated here.

Bri

My name is Bri. I am on Instagram as Body Image with Bri. I am a trained mental health counselor in the state of New Jersey, and I transitioned to body image coaching and education somewhere around 2018 or 2019. The way I work with folks in helping to make peace with your here and now body is through this concept of body grief.

Virginia

I think the whole idea of “body grief” is something that gets left out of a lot of the conversations around bodies, and fat liberation. So tell us how you use this phrase and why you think it’s so important to make space for this grief work?

Bri

I was working in eating disorder recovery. And it’s funny, because I was with clients, and thinking, “Huh, do I have an eating disorder? No, I can’t have an eating disorder, I’m fat!” And not using fat in a reclaimed way.

I started to notice, wow, what’s being prescribed as a person in a fat body is being diagnosed in a thin body as an eating disorder. That’s a quote from Deb Burgard, an eating disorder therapist and one of the founders of Health At Every Size. The dissonance for me was huge. Like, wow, so the only difference is because I exist in this body.

So when I’m telling these girls—I worked in a facility that was only girls— “we just have to accept your body,” and they had a hard time with it, and they lived in socially acceptable bodies, it dawned on me how much harder it’s going to be for me to accept my own body. I felt like that was the piece of the conversation that was getting left out. Acceptance doesn’t actually mean that you have to like it or love it. If you look at the stages of grief according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, acceptance is sort of the outcome. It’s not a destination.

But first we have this place of denial and bargaining—I see a lot of people who get stuck in this bargaining phase. Between the bargaining of “maybe I can still fix this” and “this is my body.” It’s “I don’t love that this is my body” and “this is where I’m at.” Most of us don’t want to enter that.

The working definition I have for body grief is: The distress associated with the perceived loss around body change.

The reason I make it such an expansive definition is because that works for people going through puberty. That works for people going through perimenopause and menopause, people who are aging. It works in alignment with gender dysphoria. It’s a change in one’s body that’s causing you distress because of what you will lose, or perceive yourself to lose.

Virginia

I’m interested that you say perceived loss, because there are tangible losses sometimes, with body changes. But also, sometimes, not. Or they aren’t the losses we expected.

Bri

Correct. That’s what makes this so tricky. We have systemic anti-fat bias that exists in the world. So as somebody in what I would identify as a superfat body, there are times where I won’t fit in a booth at a restaurant. I may have to ask for additional seating at a venue. I can’t clothes shop in most stores. That loss is real, but it’s very easy for me to identify that as a systemic issue.

To me, the grief was more in the emotional pieces that I thought I was going to lose out on. One of the stories that I very much believed when I was starting to do this work is that if I don’t exist in a smaller body, no man will ever find me attractive. I date men, unfortunately. They are a liability. And I know some really great men, right??

Virginia

#notallmen, but also…

Bri

But also. Come on.

I had been exposed to a lot of anti-fatness, especially in the dating world. I’ll rephrase that, I don’t think I was exposed to it as much as I was observing other people experience it. And I was like, Oh no, no, no. I don’t want to experience that at all.

Virginia

I’m not going to put myself out for that.

Bri

I also thought I would lose the respect of of potential clients I had. I worked for a company once that said, “If a family is uncomfortable with your body size, we’re going to remove you from the case.” They tried to make it seem like it was for me. And I was like, oh, that’s fucked up. But I was so new in my own body image exploration, that I was just like, I know this is wrong but I don’t know why. And now I’m like, now I know why. Now I get it.

Virginia

I’m just taking a minute with that one. So, if a family is uncomfortable with your body size, we’ll remove you from the case. Rather than the entire thing we’re here to work on is is overcoming that discomfort and internalized fatphobia.

Bri

It was like, “Well, we wouldn’t want to subject you to that.” And I took the job anyway, so, I mean, there’s that.

And I think there’s something to be said about the societal and social pressure of existing in a smaller body. Something else I grieved so bigly was the the fear of never being “healthy” enough for my doctors. I just wanted to do a good job!

Virginia

That one’s a mix of emotions and systemic, right? Because it’s the fucked up system that results in doctors treating you that way. But it’s also so vulnerable and emotional to go into the doctor’s office.

Bri

People will look at my body as a billboard for my health. Somebody will look at me and believe that they know my health status without ever looking at any other criteria. So what I felt was not only the loss of privilege, which is that systemic piece, but was no longer even being able to hide with privilege. If I was aggressively working out and dieting, at least I could come with evidence of here’s all that I’m doing, and my body isn’t changing, right?

What I realized was: It was never going to be enough. There was no amount of weight that I could lose that would actually allow me to experience quality medical care. I remember I had been working out so aggressively, while also working in eating disorder recovery. I was passing out while I was working out because I have orthostatic hypertension and I shouldn’t be bending over. Didn’t know this. And every single doctor was like, “I really just want to talk about how concerned I am for your BMI.” And I lost it. I was like, “What would you like me to do? I’m working out five, six days a week.” And he was like, “Well, I just want you to keep trying.” I’m like, I’m here because I’m working out and passing out.

Virginia

It’s that Good Fatty thing. You can follow all the rules but they’re not ever going to give out the gold stars.

Bri

I think that was my diet culture breaking point. I realized it was never going to be enough for the world. Every time I’d hit a goal post, the goal post would change. And I realized this is an exercise in futility. I am just going to keep doing this over and over and over again. As somebody who loves to succeed—I love a gold star, I love to hit check boxes—I was like, I’m just going to always fail at this.

So I really had to sit with myself and say, “If I fail at shrinking my body, and I say, I surrender and I just allow my body to do what it’s going to do, what is the worst thing that could possibly happen, truly?”

I recognized I would lose a lot of privilege. I would lose accessibility. I would lose the praise and adoration from society. I could potentially miss out on partners and jobs and respect. And at the end of the day, I know that that didn’t align with my own values.

I don’t measure somebody’s enoughness, or humanity, based on how many days a week they exercise ,and how many vegetables they eat, or how good they are at shrinking their bodies. The true connections that I have with people don’t revolve around that.

But it was a lot easier for me to accept that, because nothing I did worked. I find that people who are able to hold onto thin privilege can stay stuck in that bargaining phase a lot longer.

Virginia

Yes, I think that’s right. Because it’s just within reach.

Bri

I was always fat.

Virginia

The seduction of thin privilege is so intense. It’s hard for people to recognize they’re never going to get there either. The goal post is always moving for everybody.

Bri

Sonya Renee Taylor talks about it and talks about in her book, The Body Is Not an Apology. 10/10 recommend to anybody who is on a healing journey. I’ve had clients tell me this feels advanced for me, which I get, and also breaks my heart, because what she’s talking about is radical self acceptance. And that is too hard for people. If that’s the case, I recommend starting with Jes Baker’s book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls.

Virginia

Also wonderful.

Bri

A great starting point of like, oh shit. This is where all this started. This is how I can check in with myself. But Sonya Renee Taylor talks about beauty standard sas this ladder, and she says, You can climb this ladder, but it has to be knowing that you’re never going to get to the top. How do we know that there’s no top? Look at Oprah. Look at the Kardashians. Look at these people who have infinite amount of resources to attain the impossible and how long have they been able to hold it for? If not even the most privileged people in the world can reach that, what hope do the rest of us have?

Virginia

It’s a rigged system.

Bri

She says, you have two choices. You can climb the ladder knowing that you’re never going to get to the top, or you can choose not to climb the ladder.

Virginia

You already mentioned that one of the things you had to grieve was what would this mean for future partners. And yet, you’ve been talking on Instagram recently about being out there on the dating apps!

So clearly that fear was not entirely realized and I want to talk about this.

Bri

It’s honestly, like—it’s so fun for me. If you had told 2018 Bri, “Not only are you going to get through this, but you’re going to get to the other side, and you’re going to start talking about your own dating life,” I would have been like, “That’s not gonna happen. That’s not my story.”

So I’m so excited to talk about it. It’s still raw and new and exciting and emotional. So we’re going to just kind of navigate it together. I consider myself somewhat of a late bloomer. I didn’t really date extensively when I was younger. I would say 85 percent of that was body image shit, and then the rest of it was religious shit.

Virginia

That’s a fun combination for you.

Bri

Oh, it’s super cool. It’s great. Doing my own deconstructing of faith and beliefs and and self. And what I can say through the last several years of doing this body image work is: Body image wounds often are a mask for a deeper wound. And bear with me on this, because I think there are some times where it is like, yes, my body is just uncomfortable, but the connection isn’t the problem. It’s the interpretation of what that connection means.

Let’s say you change over your seasonal clothes and your pants don’t fit. There might be physical discomfort in your clothes not fitting, but usually what’s activating is that there’s an emotional story of “oh my God, my pants don’t fit. This is bad. This is not a good thing.” And then we start to panic. So the analogy I’ll use is it’s a little bit like a fire alarm going off, and your brain telling you we have to stop drop and roll. I’m a child of the 90s. The amount of training we did for stop, drop, and roll—I thought the probability of catching on fire was so high. Nobody talked to me about emotional regulation.

Virginia

We were prepared to roll flames out of our bodies at a moment’s notice. But name our feelings, no thank you.

Bri

So when we feel connected to our bodies sometimes, or most times I would argue, we associate it negatively. I did everything I could to not connect to my body. So then, anytime I had connection, I interpreted as it is something bad.

So like, clothes not fitting, not fitting in public spaces, feeling bloated, having a stomach ache—everything was just like, oh, this is a negative connection. There was no awareness of like, hey, you know what feels really good? Drinking a warm cup of coffee! That feels good in your body. You know what feels good? A nice hug. A cozy sweater. We can feel good in our body. The problem is we minimize that experience and we exacerbate the distressful experience.

So I remember starting to really seriously date in my 20s, and I hated it so much. It was not for me. I was like, “This feels effortful in a way that I just would rather be home and not trying.” And I kind of just let dating and relationships and all that go to the wayside.

During the pandemic, I am a provider. It was a very stressful time for providers, especially. And I would get off my calls at the end of the day, and I’d be like, “Wow, I have pain in my chest that I can’t manage.” So I changed medications. I went from low anxiety meds to a a different medication—I’ll just name what I was on. I went on Zoloft and it worked great. Did exactly what I needed to do. But fast forward now to 2024, and I’m newly diagnosed with ADHD. I’m working with a new provider who says “I think we should try you on a different med that goes really well with ADHD.” And I switched from Zoloft to Wellbutrin. And when I tell you, it was like a light switch. It was like my entire system. Do you remember when you would turn on your computer back in the day, it would go? That’s what it sort of felt like.

Virginia

And I’ll just interject quickly that if you’re on Zoloft and it’s working for you, we’re not saying don’t be on Zoloft.

Bri

No, please talk to your providers. I will also just advocate, too, if you are somebody who thinks you’re neurodivergent or is neurodivergent and your provider doesn’t understand neurodivergence, find a provider who does. Because mine did. I was like, I don’t have ADHD. And she was like, well, it could look like this, but could also look like this. And I was like, oh yeah, I do do that.

Virginia

It does look like that, actually.

Bri

Yeah, and like, night and day. And absolutely this is not a recommendation of getting off your meds.

Virginia

Bri is just saying, find the meds that work for you. And if you are noticing this suppressed feeling or numb feeling, this could be a conversation to have with your doctor to see if tweaks can help reboot your computer, so to speak.

Bri

Amen.

Virginia

So you had the rebooting, the computer turning on. And then you were like, all right, I’m going to get out there. How did it go?

Bri

So this is now the first time in recent history where I’m getting out into the dating world. And my body image is healed, my self esteem is healed, and I was still a fucking anxious basket case. And I’m like, What the fuck? Why did I do all of this work?

Virginia

This should be easy!

Bri

It is such a beautiful mirror to healing your body image. Because I thought healing my body image meant that I was going to feel sexy all of the time. That I was going to feel 100 percent comfortable all the time. And I’m like, no, that’s not it. Healing my body image just means that there are days I’m like, “I feel uncomfortable,” but I no longer have a secondary story about it. Or when I do, when I’m having a lot of old body image thoughts, now I can recognize that is a clue for me. Of like, hey, these are old patterns. What’s happening? Why is our nervous system going backwards? What is happening? We are regressing.

And oftentimes it comes from two things. 1. Not connecting to my body. Like having purposely or just absentmindedly disconnecting from my body for a long period of time. Or 2. Being being around super fatphobic people.

Virginia

Yeah, that can do it!

Bri

So with this dating thing, I’m like, I love myself. I love my body. Why am I still anxious?

Virginia

Maybe because there are other people involved now?

Bri

There it is. And I was like, damn it, this is so hard.

Virginia

They might not be cool. You’re cool, but who knows how they’ll be.

Bri

There’s social anxiety, and there’s like, oh my God, I have to small talk. And I’m a therapist, I could small talk you under the table, right? But I don’t want to do that.

And I’ve said this to a couple of, you know, people that I’ve met up with. It’s one thing for me to have healed my own body image, but it is a very vulnerable thing to have my body be potentially rejected by someone else. So that’s a very real concern.

Virginia

That’s terrifying.

Bri

I think two of the biggest concerns I had with going into dating and putting myself out there, was that I was going to either be rejected or that I or that I was going to be fetishized.

Virginia

I think these are the universal big fears for fat folks dating. Either no one will want me, or everyone will want me, but only in a weird, creepy way.

Bri

Yeah. Not my experience.

Virginia

Great.

Bri

Not my experience.

Virginia

And I’ll just add for the record: Not mine either, listeners. So that’s two votes for not that experience as fat ladies.

Bri

It’s not that it doesn’t happen, but I would say it happens so infrequently that it doesn’t detract from the experience. It doesn’t make me not want to date.

And I can tell pretty quickly if somebody has a fat fetish. So I’ve just gotten really comfortable saying, “Hey, I’m just going to name this off the bat. If that’s your kink, there’s no shame. But that’s not my kink. So I don’t think it’s going to be a match if that’s for you. I know there are other people out there who will be a great fit for you.”

Virginia

We should also say: We’re talking about being fetishized without consent, which is different from a shared fetish, where you’re both into it. Great, have a good time. That’s lovely.

Bri

Because it’s like, how do you know if I’m consenting to it? If somebody just messages me, and is like, “Oh my god, I love your, your big, beautiful body. I love big, beautiful women,”—you are now fetishizing me without my first consenting that this is something I’m into. To me that’s an ick. Bless and release.

I did have somebody who was very polite and said, “This is my kink. Like, I do love big women.” And I was like, I’ll entertain it. It ended very quickly.

Virginia

And is this all happening over DMS on the app? Are you trying to clarify these things before you meet up in person?

Bri

100 percent. And like, really connecting with somebody beforehand. I have yet to find or meet up with somebody that I met off the streets, but that would require me to leave my house.

Virginia

Yeah, so gross.

Bri

I don’t love doing this.

Virginia

It’s cold. What are we superheroes?

No, I really think the apps—I mean, obviously they’re a mixed bag. There are a lot of terrible things about them—but I think the ability to establish clarity about key topics over DMs before you have to put clothes on and leave your house is a huge gift of technology.

Bri

What I tell my friends is: I have learned so much about myself in this process. This is my dating era. I am dating now more than I have ever in my life. And I actually took a dating course with my friend Lily Womble. It’s called main character dating, and she really taught me how to figure out what I want and to ask for what I want unapologetically even if I don’t believe it exists. Yeah, even if I don’t think it’s out there, like, let’s just name it and claim it. If we connect with somebody, and then it changes, we get to bless and release that person.

And I will tell you this entire process, I’m like, Okay, I’ve learned something new. Like, I’m going to need to do a phone call before I meet up with you. Because, if we can’t hold a conversation, this isn’t going to work.

There are so many things that I’m learning about myself through this that, outside of the men, has been healing for me.

Virginia

Super valuable.

Bri

And even just: Being able to name what I want and ask for it unapologetically as a fat woman. Also healing.

Virginia

So healing. I love this.

Anything else you really advise people do to help work through those fears as you’re getting into the process?

Bri

As you’re getting into the process, I will tell you, we have to start with you first. Because again, I had zero, body image shit going into this, and I was still an anxious mess. I am so confident in myself, and I still was anxious. And what I realized was it was multi-layered. Some of it was old patterns, just going down that groove, old messages and stories coming up. There’s also some anticipatory anxiety of doing this thing that you have nothing to compare it to. Am I resourceful enough to handle the worst case scenario? What’s the worst case scenario that could come out of this situation?

But we are a resourceful bunch. I don’t believe that we need to be resilient. I just think we need to be resourceful enough. Something I talk about in my community is good enough healing. We’re not looking for a grade. You can’t be honor roll. What will allow you to add more joy and pleasure and satisfaction into your life? You can’t get those things without also risking rejection, pain and discomfort. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Virginia

I think for me, there was definitely this issue of —yeah, I’ve done all my own work, but I was suspicious about whether men would have gotten the memo of my amazingness. Does that make sense? You and I are both women on the internet, so we hear from men, which is not usually great when it’s Instagram DMs and troll comments.

I just felt very aware, like, I’m over 40, I’m a divorced mom. These things are not considered hot by general society or whatever. It has turned out to be the complete opposite. None of that has mattered at all. But there was a leap of faith that had to happen where I was like, “I am willing to risk that being their response.” And I had to realize, if that was their response, that would never be a person for me. It’s fine. It’s actually not personal at all. It’s just like, yeah, oh, that’s fine. You go off and find your size two 25 year old, or whatever it is. That’s fine.

Bri

We like to say the that the trash likes to take itself out.

Virginia

Exactly.

Bri

And I will say, too, I have been the heaviest person on every single one of my dates. Maybe not the tallest. But there has been no specific body type or size or person—everybody has been different, and it’s been so healing for me. A man with washboard abs wants to go out with me, like, what? Somebody’s got to tell 16 year old Bri!

Virginia

This is big news.

Bri

I don’t think she’d believe you. And: Just because you have washboard abs doesn’t mean that you are a home run. Right? So it requires us to do a lot of work on our own internalized anti-fatness, too. There’s something about attraction, of being attracted to somebody…but I don’t believe, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, that you can say, “I’m not attracted to fat people.”

Virginia

No, I agree. I mean, I struggle with that whole conversation. None of our personal preferences developed in a void. You’re not just like, “I happen to like tall men.” No. We like tall men because society’s been telling us to like tall men forever. All of these preferences have this other context. So, I think saying “I’m not attracted to fat people” is a fundamentally problematic statement. I mean, I think it’s true for people because of their social conditioning, but I don’t think it’s an okay thing to put on your dating profile or whatever.

Bri

Something I’ll put on my profiles is “I’m body positive. I need somebody who is also body positive.” Like, if you like body positive, swipe right. If you’re fatphobic or you have a fat fetish, swipe left. Just don’t even. Don’t even bother.

Virginia

And that really does help. I didn’t have a lot of people messaging me that didn’t get that memo. You’ve got to set that boundary.

Bri

I also think when I was younger, I just felt like I was desperate. Like I just had to take anybody who messaged me, even if I didn’t find them attractive or I didn’t feel like we connected. It was like, “Well, they like me, so I have no choice.” Whereas now I’m like, nah, I don’t have to do that.

Virginia

We don’t settle for crumbs. No, thank you.

Bri

And I’m not shy of options.

Virginia

Again, gift of the app! Slash problematic of the apps.

Bri

It’s a good way to reset and get yourself back out there. Something that my dating coach talks about is joy building. So it’s going out and doing things that you have fun doing without the pressure of dating. Because the more out you are, the more likelihood you’ll be able to connect with people. I joined a choir. I went to this book swap that was nearby. I connected with two of the women and we’re gonna go out for coffee. One of them has a son. Like, you just never know!

Virginia

There you go!

Bri

So it’s just, it’s creating a bigger dating pool. But what I will say is that that you need to ask yourself: Do I see myself as somebody who is attractive to be desired? Because if you don’t think you’re desirable, it’s not that you won’t find someone else. Like, we do this all time, right? Of like, “you have to heal yourself before you find that.” Now there are plenty of people who are unhealed and in relationships. The problem is, is that you will still find somebody and not believe it.

Virginia

I mean, it’s like the last season of Bridgerton, where Colin has to show Penelope how beautiful she is. Like that doesn’t fucking work. That’s not the work. And also it’s so patronizing. This idea that your value is contingent on the man witnessing you and adoring you. Like, no thank you.

Bri

It just doesn’t work that way. If somebody compliments you and you’re like, “I don’t agree with you,” you’re going to reject that compliment the same if somebody’s like, “I desire you. I want to be with you. I want to go on a date with you, I want to make out with your face.” Like, no, you don’t. That’s a self esteem and internalized anti-fatness issue.

Virginia

So now, you’re out there, you’re going on dates, you’re having a blast. We love all of this. Are there any rituals you’ve figured out for yourself that help? Because I’m sure there are still butterflies, right? That oh God moment right before you go out the door? Like, how can there not be?

Bri

Every time.

Yeah, so again, I’m sounding like a drug pusher here. But I keep some spare meds in my car in case my nervous system is really activated. And I remember being afraid of that, like, oh my gosh, if I do this, then I’m going to numb myself out, and then I’m not going to be present. The very first date that I went on this year, I didn’t take anything. Afterwards, I was like, Klonopin wouldn’t have ruined anything. Maybe I could have made this a little easier for myself.

Just would have taken the edge off just a bit. And you know, if you’re familiar with Internal Family Systems, IFS work, like, sure, it’s probably a part that could some get work done. But I don’t have to work on that right now.

Virginia

We’re just trying to go to coffee with a guy!

Bri

I just want to get a drink. That’s all.

When I work with somebody, I use the distress scale. So on a scale of 1 to 10, how distressful is it? I was probably at like a 7.5. And I was like, I’m going, I’m doing the thing. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to survive. The Klonopin would have just taken me down to a five.

Virginia

We don’t need to white knuckle this.

Bri

So with body image work, what I would do is like, “Well, let’s not start with the thing that’s a 7.5. Let’s start with a thing that’s like a four, because then when your brain can handle it.” And it’s now going to give you evidence that you can continue. So 10 out of 10 don’t recommend white knuckling.

But I have a huge support system. They call it my podcast. Every time I go on a date, they’re like, “We can’t wait for the voice note of what’s going to happen next. How’d it go? Give us the recap!” And having people who are there to support me is key. Also sharing my location, you always have to be safe.

Virginia

Always. And the guys name.

Bri

Name, picture… actually it’s probably one of my calling cards, I’ll be like, “Do you have a photo I can send to my friends in case you murder me?” And then just see how they respond.

Virginia

It’s a great little litmus test.

I also just have to say, I similarly love the group chat aspect of dating. And I feel so bad that I don’t think many men have that? Just because of again, social conditioning, I think women can have so much more fun dating because no matter how bad the date is, you’re going to text your friends afterwards or send the voice note, and the gifs alone are going to make it feel worth it.

Bri

I remember when I would hear people say, “dating is so much fun!” I was like, what are you doing on a date that’s fun? And I’m starting to have fun now because I’m picking people that I actually feel connected with. I’ve always dated for finding my partner. Right now, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m just like, “Do I think I could have fun hanging out with you, spending some time with you, getting some free drinks?” I pay some of the time. Especially when I’m like there’s not going to be a second one.

Virginia

I’m going to buy my own drinks.

Bri

And it has been fun. It has not been painless. It has not been all 10s. Every experience hasn’t been a 10 out of 10, but I have learned something about myself every time I go out. And that’s the coolest part about this.

Virginia

I love that. Anything else on this topic we haven’t hit on that you want to make sure to really emphasize for folks?

Bri

If the idea of going out on a date right now feels impossible, just start by getting on the app and seeing what happens with your nervous system.

And let men or women or whoever you’re dating connect with you and and just watch and observe the process.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to go anywhere. That’s the other part of this, too. You have a lot of false starts. You’re vibing with somebody, and then the next day they’ve blocked you and you’re like, oh.

Virginia

They just disappear.

Bri

I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but I have had to start asking now. Like, are you in a committed relationship and cheating on a partner?

Virginia

I realized I had to ask that pretty early on.

Bri

I would be like three days into talking to someone, and they’d be like, “So I just think you should know I’m married.” And I’m like, okay, are you ethically non monogamous?

Virginia

Totally fine, great.

Bri

“No, they don’t know.” Then we’re done. So I’ve put that’s on my profile, too. If you’re cheating, get lost.

Virginia

Absolutely wild. And then I’ve had guys be like “😞.” No! No sad face for you.

Bri

I don’t know if you’ve had this experience of going on a date with a person, and then it not working out. And I will say this has probably been the hardest part for me —actually doing the bless and release. Because I’m such a people pleaser and I hate hurting people’s feelings.

Virginia

Yeah, that’s hard.

Bri

But if you bless and release them, and then they’re cry babies about it…I’m like, no. Confirmed.

Virginia

It was a good call.

I never quite figured out how to do it in person? I end up sending a text to bless and release the day or two after. But I actually think that’s fine. Especially as a woman dating straight men—there’s a safety piece. It is what it is. And if we’ve only had one or two dates, I don’t feel like we’ve earned a face to face over it. It doesn’t warrant a long conversation.

Bri

I don’t owe anyone. I give out what I would want. I’m never just going to block and delete somebody if we didn’t have a good date. I’m going to give you the respect of having that conversation. But it’s not fun. It’s not easy. But it has been worth it, and you learn so much about yourself in this process.

Virginia

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

Bri

Dating has very much become my ADHD obsession. I’m just like,”I’m just doing it all the time now.” Part of my ritual is one of the things my dating coach says in her book, which is called Thank You, More Please. So I made a “thank you, more please” playlist.

Virginia

Oh, that’s so good!

Bri

It’s got hype music for when I am getting ready for a date, or when I’m coming home from a date and I’m feeling myself, and I’m listen to it after I send my friends the podcast episode update. It’s just so empowering and and healing in its own way.

And going back to the body connection, music can be such a somatically healing thing. So if you’re ever feeling dysregulated in your body, and you put music on, you will see, and experience, your body calm down. And so when I’m getting ready for a date, I’m like, alright, I’ve got to pump up that adrenaline. Let’s go. It’s been one of my faves. So if anyone listens to this, please send me some songs to add!

Virginia

I love that so much.

My Butter is a beauty product, which I have talked about a little bit on the newsletter already, but I’m just going to give it another shout out because it’s just coming in clutch for me as we’re navigating winter and all the illnesses. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, because my kids wake up all the time. So I look exhausted, and then I want to not look exhausted. So Tarte makes this eyeliner called Fake Awake, which just goes on your water line of your lower eyelid. It’s like a sort of creamy white peach color, and it just makes your eyes look less exhausted. Which turns out to be like something I really benefit from.

I got the recommendation from Kim France, who writes Girls of a Certain Age, which is a great fashion Substack. And she was like, “This is like every stoner’s favorite eyeliner.” I am not a stoner. Pot is not meant for me. But as someone who is a little bit allergic to her cats and doesn’t get enough sleep, I feel like I often have stoner eyes? And it’s really great.

Fake awake is #5! Shop all Virginia’s makeup here.

Bri

I love that. I’m going to check that out.

Virginia

And, yeah, we could deconstruct forever: Do you need makeup? Of course not. It’s all patriarchy, etc, etc. But also sometimes I just want to look like I slept better than I did.

Bri

Lindley Ashline has a great line for that. She says something like, “We don’t need to feel bad or apologetic when we want to get wear makeup or get Botox or something like that. We can just allow ourselves to recognize ‘I’m going to conform today to the standard.’” Like, it’s a survival skill.

Virginia

I’m curious how you think about that with dating, actually, because I have thought about it a lot. When I was not yet dating, I was really embracing what Emma Copley Eisenberg calls frump fashion. Lots of giant, oversized dresses. No male gaze anywhere, I’m wearing whatever, just comfortable things all the time.

And then when I started dating, it was like, oh, I’m not going to wear that on a date. There is a difference. There is an awareness of the gaze. And I think for me, it’s kind of fun to have both options. It’s kind of fun to play around with it and decide what level of this I want to subscribe to. But also, sometimes I’m like, where’s that line? Like, I just think we all have to find that line. I don’t know.

Bri

I think for me, I am not going to change anything about me for somebody else. So if somebody were to call me today and be like, “Can I FaceTime you?” I’m not going to be like, hold on, let me go put makeup on real quick. This is how I look today. You take what you get, you don’t get upset.

But if I’m going to meet somebody for the first time, I want to get cute. I want to look my best self. And it’s a little bit of a ritual for me, too. I’m going to put my makeup on and I’m going to listen to my music and I’m going to look my hottest, and then I’m going to feel good. And, also know that I’ve gone on a bunch of dates, and these guys have seen me with makeup and without makeup, and their responses have been the same. It’s still “Oh, you’re so beautiful.” And I’m like, “Thanks. I look like a couch troll right now, but I appreciate it.”

Virginia

A hot couch troll. Put that in your bio!

Okay, well, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming. Tell folks where we can find you and how we can support your work.

Bri

Thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor, and I was just so excited to talk about it. And just excited to be able to share with with somebody else, who’s in it, and tracking with me. Because I feel like a lot of times people who talk about relationships are people who are in relationships, I’m like, you can’t relate to me. You’ve been married for 75 years.

Virginia

Oh, it’s a different world.

Bri

It is. It is a different world. But what you want is possible. It starts with healing you first. And it doesn’t mean that it has to be perfect. It just has to be good enough, and that you believe that you are worthy of love and intimacy and going on fun, flirty dates in the body that you have right now. And if you don’t, then we start with that.

So with that, I’m an ADHD queen, so I’m a hot mess. So I would say the best place to learn how to work with me is on my Instagram. It’s usually the most up to date way of how you can find me. I do have a podcast called the Body Grievers Club. We are casual podcasters, so haven’t posted anything current at the time of this recording, but hoping to become more consistent with that. But we do have some episodes on sex, love and dating while fat:

• 59. Let's talk about [fat] sex

• 55. My partner said they're not attracted to me since I've gained weight.

And I have a Substack which, again, also hoping to get a little more consistent with that.

Virginia

Thank you so much for being here! This was absolutely delightful.

Bri

Thank you so much for having me.

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

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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

Hi Burnt Toasties!

We’re resending Thursday’s podcast episode because we had a little mix up: Our deep dive into Mel Robbins’ Cult of High Fives was supposed to be February’s Extra Butter episode—but it ran with an invitation to subscribe at the regular paid level to access it. Which a bunch of you did, and then were understandably confused when you still couldn’t listen!!

This was totally our goof. So to make it right, we’re re-releasing the episode today for ALL paid subscribers!

If you have yet to go paid—that means you can now access one of our premium episodes for as little as $7 today.

If you’re already a paid subscriber — thank you! Enjoy!

We’re hoping, of course, that you’ll love this chat about our buddy Mel so much that you’ll still consider upgrading from regular paid to Extra Butter. EB is our premium tier, which means you get access to what is usually our juiciest podcast episode of the month, like dating while fat, why all the fat influencers are getting skinny, and…did Virginia really get divorced over butter?

Extra Butters also get exclusive weekly chats, DM access, and a monthly bonus essay or thread. And these subscriptions ensure that the Burnt Toast community can always stay an ad- and sponsor-free space—which is crucial for body liberation journalism.

But no matter which subscription tier is right for you—thank you so much for supporting Burnt Toast!

-Virginia & Corinne

Corinne

Today, we are talking about motivational speaker and author Mel Robbins and we have maybe some surprising opinions on this topic.

Virginia

We have different takes about Mel Robbins. Some evolving takes as well. In the course of researching this episode, I think we went on a little Mel Robbins journey.

Corinne

I’m going to introduce this topic by saying that I first heard about Mel Robbins a few weeks ago. My coach at the gym was like, “Have you heard of Mel Robbins?” And I was like, “Hmm, sounds familiar? What is that?” And she was like, “I just listened to her on this podcast, and I saw she was on Glennon Doyle, and I was just wondering if you knew who she was.” And I didn’t know who she was, but I was like I’ll listen to her Glennon Doyle episode.

I listened to it, and I liked it. I found it interesting and helpful.

And then, just a few days later, you messaged me, and you were like, “should we talk about this person on the podcast?”

Virginia

Yes, because I had no idea who she was. We should be clear, this is someone with 22 million followers on Instagram. Us not knowing her was an oversight. She’s an enormous celebrity, but I had somehow missed her completely. Amy texted me one of her reels and was like, this feels like a Burnt Toast episode waiting to happen and I sent it to you.

Corinne

And I was kind of like… No.

Virginia

You were like, she’s not a diet. I like her. It’s fine.

Corinne

I enjoyed her episode on We Can Do Hard Things. She’s a run of the mill self help-y person.

Just to give a little background, she has been a self help person for a long time. One of her first biggest things was she did one of the early TEDx talks that went insanely viral.

Virginia

In about 2011 or 2012.

Corinne

She had this book called The Five Second Rule. The concept is basically if you’re thinking about doing something, count down to five and then do it. Which, like, how is that helpful? But okay, a lot of people found it extremely helpful.

Virginia

Is it that it’s supposed to make quicker to do a thing you don’t want to do, or make you pause before doing a thing you should not do?

Corinne

I think it’s preventing you from overthinking / talking out yourself out of something.

Virginia

I guess that’s not my struggle. But I can see for people for whom that is a struggle, having somebody push you off the diving board—I mean, as someone who would never jump off a diving board, I would need to be pushed. I get it.

Corinne

She also has a podcast.

Virginia

The Wall Street Journal calls her “a billion view podcaster,” and Time Magazine says she gives millions of listeners around the globe a reason to believe in themselves.

Corinne

She’s very, very, very popular.

Virginia

Very popular. I also want to note that she is someone who is writing books about how to change your habits, how to overcome emotional hurdles. She is not a psychologist. She is not a social worker. She is not a therapist of any kind. She is a former attorney who first became famous because she started doing legal analysis on CNN. She covered the George Zimmerman trial for them and then that led to her first book in 2011 which was called, Stop Saying You’re Fine. So this high powered lawyer backstory to self help Guru is a is an interesting path.

Corinne

So I did get her book to research for this episode—

Virginia

You got the newest book?

Corinne

I have her newest book, The Let Them Theory, but I want to talk about that later.

But at the beginning of that book, she goes over her story, and to be honest, sitting here right now, can’t remember the details. But she has a struggle. Either she or husband got laid off, they’re having a hard time, and then she’s depressed, and that’s where the five second rule comes from. You’re saying she’s this high powered lawyer who goes into self help, but her story is like “I was struggling. I came up with this theory.”

Virginia

Okay, I also just want to note that—not to take away from her truth about herself—but Wikipedia also taught me that she and her husband own homes in three locations.

Corinne

I mean, she’s very wealthy right now.

Virginia

I’m just holding her personal struggle, overcoming how hard things were, and she is a former-attorney-turned-self-help-guru who owns three homes. So we can just hold those things together.

Corinne

Her struggle was 15 years ago.

Virginia

Different time! Maybe one home, one-and-a-half homes tops at that point.

Corinne

Do you want to talk kind of about her Instagram reels and the diet culture of it all?

Virginia

Yes. My assignment for this episode was Mel Robbins’ social media, which I spent some time on, and I’m still recovering from a little bit.

Her whole aesthetic on Instagram—you know how every influencer has their branding? Hers is very talk-to-the-camera, intense little pep talk videos. Or it’s excerpts from the podcast. She always starts the intense pep talks with like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” That’s her little like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” So this is our buddy, Mel, we’re going to talk about.

And, you know, they’re a real mix. Some of them are the five second rule. Sometimes it’s about letting go of your expectations for other people.

There was one reel I really liked where she’s just saying, like, if you’re going through a really hard time, like you have a terrible ex, or you are surviving some kind of trauma and you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, that is actually what you should be doing. That’s not you failing, that’s you having a logical reaction to a hard thing. And I was like, yes, okay, I’m on board that seems right. It is important that it’s okay for us to be sad when things are sad and angry, when things are unfair. Especially given the current state of the world. That vibe I’m here for.

But in this reel, she talks about how important it is to drink a glass of water in the morning before you drink your coffee.

And again, this is a former attorney turned life guru, so I’m not clear why is Mel Robbins the expert for me on water before coffee?

Corinne

I mean, I don’t know, but it does seem like a good idea.

Virginia

I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m just saying, why is she presenting it?

Corinne

She’s famous now, she gets to give advice on anything she wants.

Virginia

She starts talking about hormones and it gets very science-y, but there are no citations. There’s not even a nutritionist sitting next to her. Maybe this is from a podcast interview she did with a nutritionist? I don’t know. But there is no sourcing. She has this very emphatic way of speaking, and she’s like, this is the thing you need to do. And I just watched this, and I was like, oh, so she’s a Huberman bro! This is Huberman husband stuff, right?

Corinne

I mean, it’s self help! She’s telling you what to do.

Virginia

Mel Robbins would love to tell us all what to do.

Corinne

In the intro to her book, where she’s talking about how she got into writing these books, she refers to having done PhD levels of research.

Virginia

But on what? Because the science about hydration and coffee intake is very different from the research on how we move through big feelings during trauma. These are not related concepts, Corinne. So she’s doing PhD level research on everything?

Corinne

She has a PhD in giving advice.

Virginia

Do you want to talk us through the morning routine post?

Corinne

So, “this is the morning routine that’ll supercharge your energy all day.”

Virginia

“Backed by science,” that’s what she says.

Corinne

Starts with getting up when the alarm goes off. Once again, it’s not bad advice. Like, yes. But also is Mel Robbins telling you to do it going to make you do it? I don’t know.

Virginia

Sometimes you’re just not going to do that, and you might still have an okay day. It doesn’t mean the whole day fell apart because you didn’t get up the second your alarm went off.

Corinne

The next thing, making your bed, tidying your space—another very common self help tip!

Virginia

It’s “the simplest way to practice discipline,” Corinne. “A promise kept no matter what.”

Corinne

I’m going to be honest, I feel okay with the first two. Number three, “high five yourself in the mirror.” Like, no. I’m never going to do that. I hate that. I really hate it.

Virginia

I can’t stop laughing. She’s so serious in the photo. She has a selfie of her high fiving herself, and she’s so serious in the photo. Like she is earnestly high fiving herself.

Corinne

Let me tell you, “giving yourself a high five in the mirror rewires your brain to focus on self love and positive reinforcement.”

Virginia

The science behind that is all in her book, The High Five Habit. So there you go. The PhD level science that she’s done to confirm. I just imagine saying to someone actually struggling with depression or anxiety, like, “why don’t you just high five yourself in the mirror?” And, like, I think they would be justified in throat punching you. Like, “I’m sorry your mom just died. Have you tried high fiving yourself in the mirror?” Like, fuck you.

Corinne

This is the thing, right? This is what we talk about. It’s like, exercising does make us feel better, but you can’t tell someone struggling, “Just exercise.” Like, this advice is good. Like, get out of bed, have a glass of water. Exercise. And, no one needs that advice. Everyone knows that.

Virginia

High fiving yourself in the mirror I’m going to say is not good advice. Like, I’m going to say for most of us, that’s not going to be transformative in any way. It’s just going to be dumb.

Okay, then we get to the hydration stuff again. “Delay your caffeine one to two hours.” And then here we are. Andrew Huberman again, “Take in the morning light. Get outside ASAP.”

I currently have to wake up at five o’clock to get my middle schooler on the bus and it is dark for the next two hours. So I would be going outside in the dark. I do take in the morning light when I then drag an exhausted 11 year old out to the bus stop every morning. That counts. Okay, I get a gold star.

Corinne

So she definitely has a self help-y thing going on.

Virginia

Then the next reel I want you to look at is the one that references intermittent fasting.

In this one, she says, if you’re going through a divorce, if you’re feeling kind of lost in life, if you have no clue what you want to do, here’s a tip from your friend Mel Robbins, just do something really, really hard. As well as doing the really hard thing you’re going through. So she did five days of intensive intermittent fasting “for her gut health”—I’m using air quotes—and that is how she got through some hard time.

Corinne

Yeah. I mean, her other suggestion is training for a marathon. I sort of see a kernel of something here, but I can’t imagine actually giving someone this advice.

Virginia

Having gone through a divorce in recent memory, we can use me as an example. I felt like during those months, I was doing pretty good to keep the ball moving on my divorce. Like, keep parenting my children as best I could. Keep my business afloat. I did not need to be intermittent fasting on top of any of that. I didn’t. I was doing a lot. It was hard. I was doing all these hard things. I felt like I had enough. I don’t think training for a marathon would have done fucking anything for me. I just truly don’t. And I just needed to get through. The hard thing was enough.

I never want to demonize coping strategies, and so if someone’s like, training for my marathon did help me through my divorce. Like, amazing. But it feels like choosing a coping strategy that will give you a big block of time that’s filled with something else to distract you. And I just think, if it wasn’t diet- or exercise-related. Like, if it was like, “I’m binge drinking every Saturday night as my coping strategy,” that also fills a lot of time, also distracts you, takes your mind off your problems. But then suddenly we have a totally different narrative around it, you know? So it’s like the combining of we’re going to give you this big, all consuming thing, and we’re going to make it something that we attach a lot of moral virtue and like social performance to. And that somehow is going to be why it’s going to be helpful.

Corinne

Yes, the things she’s suggesting are committing to dry January fitness goals, building better money habits.

Virginia

Yeah, all good. But are they all projects you need? They’re all in and of themselves hard, complicated projects. Do you need to do them while in some other crisis?

Corinne

No, I don’t think you do.

Virginia

So this is why I’m saying yes, Mel Robbins is a diet. There’s just this make it as hard as possible, push yourself to do more. Everything Sounds like a simple, easy tip, but she wants you to do 900 of them. That’s what I’m pushing back against. And then, I mean, there were a couple other reels. We don’t need to take them one by one, but, she’s done podcast episodes on how to boost your metabolism for weight loss. She’s done podcast episodes about working out for menopause, where they’re just like, you want to be strong, not skinny. But everyone talking in that conversation is extremely skinny.

Corinne

Okay, I want to talk a little bit about her book. Probably the reason we both have just come across her is because she has a new book out. The book is called The Let Them Theory. And this is what she was talking about on We Can Do Hard Things. So this is what I listened to a podcast episode about and was like, I like it.

The Let Them Theory is basically letting other people do what they want to do. So it’s like, instead of making yourself miserable trying to control what other people are doing, let them. The story that she gives at the beginning to set this all up is her kid was going to prom, and they went to go take Prom pictures with a big group of kids before the event, and it started pouring rain. And then it turns out her son didn’t have a restaurant reservation for where to eat with his 20 friends before prom, and he decided he wanted to go to an outdoor taco restaurant. And she was just like, everyone is going to get soaking wet. It’s going to be horrible. Blah, blah, blah. And then her daughter was just like, Mom, let them. If they want to get soaking wet eating tacos, let them.

And I do think that’s helpful. I also think there’s a way in which, that is anti-diet, you know? Like, let people eat what they want to eat. Let kids eat brownies before dinner, whatever.

Virginia

Not to get too personal with my buddy Mel, but you were really going to control your child’s prom experience that much? They’re 17 years old and you’re weighing in on where they need to go for dinner. It’s their problem!

Corinne

It’s an anxiety thing, right? It’s like, oh my God, 20 kids are going to walk into a restaurant without a reservation. I think we all have those type of spirals where other people are doing things in a way that bothers us. And instead of getting worked up about it, I’m just going to let it go.

Virginia

I mean, I fully subscribe to this. I wrote an essay maybe two years ago about working on my own control issues and then realizing control isn’t love. And yes, this resonates very deeply with me. It is something that I am a perpetual work in progress on. And I feel like I’m having a really hard time squaring this “release people, stop trying to change people, don’t control other people” with have a 12 step morning routine. She’s like, I can’t control other people, but here’s what I can control.

Corinne

How does the let them theory square with giving anyone else advice really?

Virginia

Also that.

Corinne

So that is something that I’ve been thinking about, just as we’ve been talking.

Another thing I wanted to mention was the book definitely mentions weight loss, like she uses it as an example of if someone’s wanting to lose weight or something, but they’re not eating in that way, like, let them. Let other people’s problems be other people’s problems. But like, just noting it as this is not a person who’s necessarily versed in body liberation.

Virginia

She has clearly done no work interrogating the idea that you maybe don’t need to lose weight. She’s willing to just take that as a foregone conclusion, which is common to this kind of self help person.

Corinne

One thing that I found myself grating up against was she has a few kids. She has two daughters, and I guess they have really different bodies, and she talks about her older daughter’s feelings about her younger daughter’s body. And I have no idea how old the daughter is. I think the daughter is an adult or close to being adult. But I was just like, I really don’t like this.

Virginia

Yeah, did you have to go there? Even if they consented, why are you telling your kid’s story and talking about your kid’s body in that way?

Corinne

And, as you said, there are episodes about, weight loss, how to boost your metabolism, eat these five things or whatever.

Virginia

She brings on “experts” for all of those episodes. But this is a former attorney. I’m just like, what is your vetting process for these guests? How are you deciding? What criteria are you using? All of that is very unclear.

Corinne

Then the last thing that I want to mention is that this morning, as I was getting ready to record this episode, getting ready for my day, doing my morning routine—

Virginia

High fiving yourself.

Corinne

As I was not high fiving myself in the mirror.

Virginia

You do a high 10, you do both hands.

Corinne

I was like, I’m going to relisten to the Glennon Doyle episode, just so I can remember some of the things that Mel Robbins was saying on that podcast episode, which I enjoyed. So I opened my podcast player, I went to my We Can Do Hard Things feed, and the episode was gone! [1]

And I was like, this must be some phone glitch. I checked every podcast app. I texted a friend, also gone in their feed. I texted you, you also couldn’t find it. So then I start Googling, and there’s a Reddit thread about this podcast episode disappearing, and someone links to a Substack post where a person is accusing Mel Robbins of plagiarism.

Virginia

Oh my God!

Corinne

This other person named Cassie Phillips had written a poem that basically has the words and the concept “let them” and “let me,” which is like the basis of the book. And I guess that poem went really viral in 2022 and then Mel Robbins came up with the let them theory in 2023 so very close timelines.

I did read the Substack post. I feel like it’s one of those kind of like, one person says one thing, the other person says something else, situations. I don’t know if you could ever prove that Mel Robbins heard it from the poem. And in fact, Mel Robbins says that she heard it from her daughter, so I don’t know what the truth is.

Then the other thing I just wanted to mention, and this is something I had been thinking about, is that idea of “let them” and not trying to control other people. Like, that’s also just not Mel Robbins’s idea. A lot of different cultures use that. I know a lot of people in Al Anon who have embraced that as a way of just being like, you can’t control other people’s drinking, that kind of thing. So just want to acknowledge that it’s not an original idea. It’s possibly plagiarized. We don’t know.

Virginia

We cannot know about the plagiarism. But those are valid questions to be raising, given the timeline. But even if that was not a contributing factor, she definitely took this very well established concept—again, like, I wrote an essay two years ago about my own work in therapy on this idea. It’s out there. And it’s not that she can’t write about it. I wrote about it! But to then turn it into the Mel Robbins’ secret method of fixing your life, which is very much how the book is marketed and how her Instagram is marketed. It’s very much like, only Mel Robbins can tell you this hard truth. That is a real neat trick. And I think speaks much more to her ability to build a brand and build an audience than it does to her actually being a wise and research-based expert on personal growth. That’s not necessarily what she is, but she is a pretty genius marketer and packager of an idea.

Virginia

I’m just really struggling to square it with the rest of her messaging. It doesn’t actually feel very consistent. Like, let them I understand. It’s more about other people. But you count to five and throw yourself out of bed the second the alarm goes off. Like, what? It just doesn’t feel internally consistent to me at all.

Corinne

To me it’s just like if you’re just going to let them then why are you giving people advice? Why are you trying to control how people get out of bed?

Virginia

Yeah, and whether they drink coffee or water first? It’s not just that she’s giving advice. She gives really specific, granular advice about how to structure your day. She wanted to control whether her son took his friends to a taco place or not on prom night. Like, she’s real interested in people doing very tiny things, especially according to her specifications. So it’s kind of feels like maybe she got really into this idea because she knows it’s her own biggest struggle, which is totally fair. But there’s a lack of introspection to then peel back a few more layers and be like, well, where am I not letting them? I’m not letting people do a lot of things.

Another thing that feels slightly like a disconnect to me with the “let them” and this let people go thing is, when you look at how Mel Robbins is presenting herself, it’s a very specific aesthetic. She is definitely someone who—I mean, she talks about working out a lot, intermittent fasting, all of that. Her body is presenting as a highly controlled body. She’s very thin, she’s very blonde. That is not a natural blonde. That’s her body, her choice, of course. But again, it’s this interesting tension between this message that is very expansive and trying to give you room to take up space in your life, and then what she’s presenting to us in in her embodied self feels very different. And again, this is not a criticism, because it’s also like one of those things where, like, what other option does she have? She got famous as a CNN commentator. She’s now a big deal on Instagram. Thinness, blondeness, whiteness, all of that is required for those jobs. So it’s just interesting seeing that like someone else with this message, who is not a tiny blonde woman would probably not be able to blow it up to the level that she is.

Corinne

Yeah. And I also think she is older. I think she’s in her 50s.

Virginia

She has got to play the game.

Corinne

This is how people are going to pay attention to her.

Virginia

Well, that’s Mel Robbins. We learned a lot. We now know who she is, and also quite a lot about her. I’m interested to hear from listeners who have been following her. You may have more thoughts on the whole plagiarism piece, or the missing Glennon episode piece, or just have more nuanced takes on her work. So I’m excited to hear what people think.

Corinne

Do we want to definitively say, Is Mel Robbins a diet?

Virginia

I’m comfortable definitively saying it is. You have been on more of a journey. I don’t know if you’re ready to say it.

Corinne

I don’t know if I would say that Mel Robbins is a diet. I do think she’s a whole thing.

Virginia

She’s a whole thing.

Corinne

I think she’s like perfectionism culture maybe?

Virginia

She is high fiving herself in the mirror so hard.

Corinne

Is high fiving yourself in the mirror a diet?

Virginia

It’s not not a diet is where I’m going to land on that.

Corinne

Wow. I don’t know if I agree with that, but there’s a lot to think about.

Virginia

Okay, let’s do butter, because my butter is going to possibly undermine my credibility for this entire episode.

Corinne

Is your butter drinking a cup of water before you drink coffee?

Virginia

I am not doing that, but my butter is my new hydration tracking app that I’m using!

Corinne

Are you freaking kidding me?

Virginia

I knew I was going to... I knew this was going to..

Corinne

A hydration tracking app.

Virginia

It’s called Water llama. It’s adorable. Every day there’s a different animal. Today I’m tracking on this little bunny. And then it shows how much of how the water fills up on the little illustration. So I’ve drunk 2/3 of a bunny according to my goal. I am not doing this as a diet. This is not a weight loss goal. It has nothing to do with that.

I have so many migraines. My migraines have been getting worse in the last couple months. I was looking back at how often they are happening. They’ve really increased. I live in a frozen tundra. My house is so dry. I’m waking up every morning with headaches and sore throats. I have a humidifier. But I realized I really think I need to work on hydration. I’m also going to get a work up with my neurologist, but the appointment is three months out. So I was like, this is something I can work on in the meantime and see if it makes a difference.

And I have tried to just be mindful about water consumption in the past, but I will forget all about it. I hyper focus on work all day long and drink nothing, and then it’s eight o’clock and I’m very thirsty. So I was like, alright, I’m going to do this water tracking app. And I’m a week into it, and I’ve drunk so much water in the last week.

Corinne

Does it give you reminders?

Virginia

You can set it to remind you every one or two hours, if you want. So it nudges you. I haven’t even really needed the reminders, because so far I’m just excited to fill in my little numbers.

I will say I put in a custom goal that I made up. I’m not going to say what my goal is, because I think it’s somewhat absurd honestly. I’m really just trying to drink as much as possible until I don’t wake up with a headache, and then use that number as the target and see if it helps.

I deliberately put in a custom goal, because otherwise they calculate it based on your weight. So if you don’t want to mess around with that, you can just put in your own goal.

There is a weight loss challenge thing you could do, but there is an option to hide that, and I did that right away, so I don’t have to look at any weight loss content.

So you know it’s with a caveat. Like, tracking is not for everybody. Tracking is usually not for me. If this doesn’t feel good for you, please don’t do it. But if you are thirsty and need to drink more water, I’m liking it.

Corinne

Cool.

Virginia

Do you feel like I’m such a hypocrite right now?

Corinne

Um, I don’t know if I would say hypocrite? The tracking thing is interesting. Like when tracking is triggering versus when it’s not.

Virginia

I think because I have a very specific metric, which is no headaches. Like, I’m doing this for a very niche reason. It feels okay and that’s what I can come up with.

But I’m also paying attention to it, and if it starts becoming stressful, I’m putting some parameters around it where I’m like, okay, then we delete the app. But water llama, it’s pretty cute.

Corinne

Well, I hope water llama helps your migraines.

Virginia

TBD. What about you?

Corinne

I want to recommend a book that I just read. It’s called The Safekeep. I don’t want to say too much about it, because I went into it knowing almost nothing and was shocked at various points.

Virginia

By Yael van der Wouden.

Corinne

Yes, I think she’s Dutch. What will I say about it?

Virginia

I can read the summary line, which is “an exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961.”

Corinne

That seems like a good summary.

Virginia

I mean, I want to read it. That sounds really good.

Corinne

It takes a few different turns and I think has a surprising ending that seems like it wouldn’t work, and it kind of did work for me. And I would say, like, I also just did not expect it to be as spicy as it was!

So, I recommend The Safekeep and I would say, don’t read too much about it before you read it!

Virginia

Just dive in. That’s a great butter

Well, should we high five on Zoom to wrap up this episode? Because our buddy Mel would want us to?

Corinne

I need some science behind why high five.

Virignia

You can read her whole book called The High Five Habit and just start high fiving everybody all the time.

Corinne

No.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who writes Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off!

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!

---

1. You can still find the transcript of the episode here: https://momastery.com/blog/we-can-do-hard-things-ep-373/

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel.

Today we’re talking about Mel Robbins! We’re going to get into:

⭐️ Is Mel Robbins diet culture or anti-diet? Is she just Andrew Huberman for the We Can Do Hard Things crowd?

⭐️ Corinne & Virginia’s difference of opinion

⭐️ The big Mel Robbins controversy

⭐️ Will we start high fiving ourselves in the mirror?

Corinne

Today, we are talking about motivational speaker and author Mel Robbins and we have maybe some surprising opinions on this topic.

Virginia

We have different takes about Mel Robbins. Some evolving takes as well. In the course of researching this episode, I think we went on a little Mel Robbins journey.

Corinne

I’m going to introduce this topic by saying that I first heard about Mel Robbins a few weeks ago. My coach at the gym was like, “Have you heard of Mel Robbins?” And I was like, “Hmm, sounds familiar? What is that?” And she was like, “I just listened to her on this podcast, and I saw she was on Glennon Doyle, and I was just wondering if you knew who she was.” And I didn’t know who she was, but I was like I’ll listen to her Glennon Doyle episode.

I listened to it, and I liked it. I found it interesting and helpful.

And then, just a few days later, you messaged me, and you were like, “should we talk about this person on the podcast?”

Virginia

Yes, because I had no idea who she was. We should be clear, this is someone with 22 million followers on Instagram. Us not knowing her was an oversight. She’s an enormous celebrity, but I had somehow missed her completely. Amy texted me one of her reels and was like, this feels like a Burnt Toast episode waiting to happen and I sent it to you.

Corinne

And I was kind of like… No.

Virginia

You were like, she’s not a diet. I like her. It’s fine.

Corinne

I enjoyed her episode on We Can Do Hard Things. She’s a run of the mill self help-y person.

Just to give a little background, she has been a self help person for a long time. One of her first biggest things was she did one of the early TEDx talks that went insanely viral.

Virginia

In about 2011 or 2012.

Corinne

She had this book called The Five Second Rule. The concept is basically if you’re thinking about doing something, count down to five and then do it. Which, like, how is that helpful? But okay, a lot of people found it extremely helpful.

Virginia

Is it that it’s supposed to make quicker to do a thing you don’t want to do, or make you pause before doing a thing you should not do?

Corinne

I think it’s preventing you from overthinking / talking out yourself out of something.

Virginia

I guess that’s not my struggle. But I can see for people for whom that is a struggle, having somebody push you off the diving board—I mean, as someone who would never jump off a diving board, I would need to be pushed. I get it.

Corinne

She also has a podcast.

Virginia

The Wall Street Journal calls her “a billion view podcaster,” and Time Magazine says she gives millions of listeners around the globe a reason to believe in themselves.

Corinne

She’s very, very, very popular.

Virginia

Very popular. I also want to note that she is someone who is writing books about how to change your habits, how to overcome emotional hurdles. She is not a psychologist. She is not a social worker. She is not a therapist of any kind. She is a former attorney who first became famous because she started doing legal analysis on CNN. She covered the George Zimmerman trial for them and then that led to her first book in 2011 which was called, Stop Saying You’re Fine. So this high powered lawyer backstory to self help Guru is a is an interesting path.

Corinne

So I did get her book to research for this episode—

Virginia

You got the newest book?

Corinne

I have her newest book, The Let Them Theory, but I want to talk about that later.

But at the beginning of that book, she goes over her story, and to be honest, sitting here right now, can’t remember the details. But she has a struggle. Either she or husband got laid off, they’re having a hard time, and then she’s depressed, and that’s where the five second rule comes from. You’re saying she’s this high powered lawyer who goes into self help, but her story is like “I was struggling. I came up with this theory.”

Virginia

Okay, I also just want to note that—not to take away from her truth about herself—but Wikipedia also taught me that she and her husband own homes in three locations.

Corinne

I mean, she’s very wealthy right now.

Virginia

I’m just holding her personal struggle, overcoming how hard things were, and she is a former-attorney-turned-self-help-guru who owns three homes. So we can just hold those things together.

Corinne

Her struggle was 15 years ago.

Virginia

Different time! Maybe one home, one-and-a-half homes tops at that point.

Corinne

Do you want to talk kind of about her Instagram reels and the diet culture of it all?

Virginia

Yes. My assignment for this episode was Mel Robbins’ social media, which I spent some time on, and I’m still recovering from a little bit.

Her whole aesthetic on Instagram—you know how every influencer has their branding? Hers is very talk-to-the-camera, intense little pep talk videos. Or it’s excerpts from the podcast. She always starts the intense pep talks with like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” That’s her little like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” So this is our buddy, Mel, we’re going to talk about.

And, you know, they’re a real mix. Some of them are the five second rule. Sometimes it’s about letting go of your expectations for other people.

There was one reel I really liked where she’s just saying, like, if you’re going through a really hard time, like you have a terrible ex, or you are surviving some kind of trauma and you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, that is actually what you should be doing. That’s not you failing, that’s you having a logical reaction to a hard thing. And I was like, yes, okay, I’m on board that seems right. It is important that it’s okay for us to be sad when things are sad and angry, when things are unfair. Especially given the current state of the world. That vibe I’m here for.

But in this reel, she talks about how important it is to drink a glass of water in the morning before you drink your coffee.

And again, this is a former attorney turned life guru, so I’m not clear why is Mel Robbins the expert for me on water before coffee?

Corinne

I mean, I don’t know, but it does seem like a good idea.

Virginia

I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m just saying, why is she presenting it?

Corinne

She’s famous now, she gets to give advice on anything she wants.

Virginia

She starts talking about hormones and it gets very science-y, but there are no citations. There’s not even a nutritionist sitting next to her. Maybe this is from a podcast interview she did with a nutritionist? I don’t know. But there is no sourcing. She has this very emphatic way of speaking, and she’s like, this is the thing you need to do. And I just watched this, and I was like, oh, so she’s a Huberman bro! This is Huberman husband stuff, right?

Corinne

I mean, it’s self help! She’s telling you what to do.

Virginia

Mel Robbins would love to tell us all what to do.

Corinne

In the intro to her book, where she’s talking about how she got into writing these books, she refers to having done PhD levels of research.

Virginia

But on what? Because the science about hydration and coffee intake is very different from the research on how we move through big feelings during trauma. These are not related concepts, Corinne. So she’s doing PhD level research on everything?

Corinne

She has a PhD in giving advice.

Virginia

Do you want to talk us through the morning routine post?

Corinne

So, “this is the morning routine that’ll supercharge your energy all day.”

Virginia

“Backed by science,” that’s what she says.

Corinne

Starts with getting up when the alarm goes off. Once again, it’s not bad advice. Like, yes. But also is Mel Robbins telling you to do it going to make you do it? I don’t know.

Virginia

Sometimes you’re just not going to do that, and you might still have an okay day. It doesn’t mean the whole day fell apart because you didn’t get up the second your alarm went off.

Corinne

The next thing, making your bed, tidying your space—another very common self help tip!

Virginia

It’s “the simplest way to practice discipline,” Corinne. “A promise kept no matter what.”

Corinne

I’m going to be honest, I feel okay with the first two. Number three, “high five yourself in the mirror.” Like, no. I’m never going to do that. I hate that. I really hate it.

Virginia

I can’t stop laughing. She’s so serious in the photo. She has a selfie of her high fiving herself, and she’s so serious in the photo. Like she is earnestly high fiving herself.

Corinne

Let me tell you, “giving yourself a high five in the mirror rewires your brain to focus on self love and positive reinforcement.”

Virginia

The science behind that is all in her book, The High Five Habit. So there you go. The PhD level science that she’s done to confirm. I just imagine saying to someone actually struggling with depression or anxiety, like, “why don’t you just high five yourself in the mirror?” And, like, I think they would be justified in throat punching you. Like, “I’m sorry your mom just died. Have you tried high fiving yourself in the mirror?” Like, fuck you.

Corinne

This is the thing, right? This is what we talk about. It’s like, exercising does make us feel better, but you can’t tell someone struggling, “Just exercise.” Like, this advice is good. Like, get out of bed, have a glass of water. Exercise. And, no one needs that advice. Everyone knows that.

Virginia

High fiving yourself in the mirror I’m going to say is not good advice. Like, I’m going to say for most of us, that’s not going to be transformative in any way. It’s just going to be dumb.

Okay, then we get to the hydration stuff again. “Delay your caffeine one to two hours.” And then here we are. Andrew Huberman again, “Take in the morning light. Get outside ASAP.”

I currently have to wake up at five o’clock to get my middle schooler on the bus and it is dark for the next two hours. So I would be going outside in the dark. I do take in the morning light when I then drag an exhausted 11 year old out to the bus stop every morning. That counts. Okay, I get a gold star.

Corinne

So she definitely has a self help-y thing going on.

Virginia

Then the next reel I want you to look at is the one that references intermittent fasting.

In this one, she says, if you’re going through a divorce, if you’re feeling kind of lost in life, if you have no clue what you want to do, here’s a tip from your friend Mel Robbins, just do something really, really hard. As well as doing the really hard thing you’re going through. So she did five days of intensive intermittent fasting “for her gut health”—I’m using air quotes—and that is how she got through some hard time.

Corinne

Yeah. I mean, her other suggestion is training for a marathon. I sort of see a kernel of something here, but I can’t imagine actually giving someone this advice.

Virginia

Having gone through a divorce in recent memory, we can use me as an example. I felt like during those months, I was doing pretty good to keep the ball moving on my divorce. Like, keep parenting my children as best I could. Keep my business afloat. I did not need to be intermittent fasting on top of any of that. I didn’t. I was doing a lot. It was hard. I was doing all these hard things. I felt like I had enough. I don’t think training for a marathon would have done fucking anything for me. I just truly don’t. And I just needed to get through. The hard thing was enough.

I never want to demonize coping strategies, and so if someone’s like, training for my marathon did help me through my divorce. Like, amazing. But it feels like choosing a coping strategy that will give you a big block of time that’s filled with something else to distract you. And I just think, if it wasn’t diet- or exercise-related. Like, if it was like, “I’m binge drinking every Saturday night as my coping strategy,” that also fills a lot of time, also distracts you, takes your mind off your problems. But then suddenly we have a totally different narrative around it, you know? So it’s like the combining of we’re going to give you this big, all consuming thing, and we’re going to make it something that we attach a lot of moral virtue and like social performance to. And that somehow is going to be why it’s going to be helpful.

Corinne

Yes, the things she’s suggesting are committing to dry January fitness goals, building better money habits.

Virginia

Yeah, all good. But are they all projects you need? They’re all in and of themselves hard, complicated projects. Do you need to do them while in some other crisis?

Corinne

No, I don’t think you do.

Virginia

So this is why I’m saying yes, Mel Robbins is a diet. There’s just this make it as hard as possible, push yourself to do more. Everything Sounds like a simple, easy tip, but she wants you to do 900 of them. That’s what I’m pushing back against. And then, I mean, there were a couple other reels. We don’t need to take them one by one, but, she’s done podcast episodes on how to boost your metabolism for weight loss. She’s done podcast episodes about working out for menopause, where they’re just like, you want to be strong, not skinny. But everyone talking in that conversation is extremely skinny.

Corinne

Okay, I want to talk a little bit about her book. Probably the reason we both have just come across her is because she has a new book out. The book is called The Let Them Theory. And this is what she was talking about on We Can Do Hard Things. So this is what I listened to a podcast episode about and was like, I like it.

The Let Them Theory is basically letting other people do what they want to do. So it’s like, instead of making yourself miserable trying to control what other people are doing, let them. The story that she gives at the beginning to set this all up is her kid was going to prom, and they went to go take Prom pictures with a big group of kids before the event, and it started pouring rain. And then it turns out her son didn’t have a restaurant reservation for where to eat with his 20 friends before prom, and he decided he wanted to go to an outdoor taco restaurant. And she was just like, everyone is going to get soaking wet. It’s going to be horrible. Blah, blah, blah. And then her daughter was just like, Mom, let them. If they want to get soaking wet eating tacos, let them.

And I do think that’s helpful. I also think there’s a way in which, that is anti-diet, you know? Like, let people eat what they want to eat. Let kids eat brownies before dinner, whatever.

Virginia

Not to get too personal with my buddy Mel, but you were really going to control your child’s prom experience that much? They’re 17 years old and you’re weighing in on where they need to go for dinner. It’s their problem!

Corinne

It’s an anxiety thing, right? It’s like, oh my God, 20 kids are going to walk into a restaurant without a reservation. I think we all have those type of spirals where other people are doing things in a way that bothers us. And instead of getting worked up about it, I’m just going to let it go.

Virginia

I mean, I fully subscribe to this. I wrote an essay maybe two years ago about working on my own control issues and then realizing control isn’t love. And yes, this resonates very deeply with me. It is something that I am a perpetual work in progress on. And I feel like I’m having a really hard time squaring this “release people, stop trying to change people, don’t control other people” with have a 12 step morning routine. She’s like, I can’t control other people, but here’s what I can control.

Corinne

How does the let them theory square with giving anyone else advice really?

Virginia

Also that.

Corinne

So that is something that I’ve been thinking about, just as we’ve been talking.

Another thing I wanted to mention was the book definitely mentions weight loss, like she uses it as an example of if someone’s wanting to lose weight or something, but they’re not eating in that way, like, let them. Let other people’s problems be other people’s problems. But like, just noting it as this is not a person who’s necessarily versed in body liberation.

Virginia

She has clearly done no work interrogating the idea that you maybe don’t need to lose weight. She’s willing to just take that as a foregone conclusion, which is common to this kind of self help person.

Corinne

One thing that I found myself grating up against was she has a few kids. She has two daughters, and I guess they have really different bodies, and she talks about her older daughter’s feelings about her younger daughter’s body. And I have no idea how old the daughter is. I think the daughter is an adult or close to being adult. But I was just like, I really don’t like this.

Virginia

Yeah, did you have to go there? Even if they consented, why are you telling your kid’s story and talking about your kid’s body in that way?

Corinne

And, as you said, there are episodes about, weight loss, how to boost your metabolism, eat these five things or whatever.

Virginia

She brings on “experts” for all of those episodes. But this is a former attorney. I’m just like, what is your vetting process for these guests? How are you deciding? What criteria are you using? All of that is very unclear.

Corinne

Then the last thing that I want to mention is that this morning, as I was getting ready to record this episode, getting ready for my day, doing my morning routine—

Virginia

High fiving yourself.

Corinne

As I was not high fiving myself in the mirror.

Virginia

You do a high 10, you do both hands.

Corinne

I was like, I’m going to relisten to the Glennon Doyle episode, just so I can remember some of the things that Mel Robbins was saying on that podcast episode, which I enjoyed. So I opened my podcast player, I went to my We Can Do Hard Things feed, and the episode was gone! [1]

And I was like, this must be some phone glitch. I checked every podcast app. I texted a friend, also gone in their feed. I texted you, you also couldn’t find it. So then I start Googling, and there’s a Reddit thread about this podcast episode disappearing, and someone links to a Substack post where a person is accusing Mel Robbins of plagiarism.

Virginia

Oh my God!

Corinne

This other person named Cassie Phillips had written a poem that basically has the words and the concept “let them” and “let me,” which is like the basis of the book. And I guess that poem went really viral in 2022 and then Mel Robbins came up with the let them theory in 2023 so very close timelines.

I did read the Substack post. I feel like it’s one of those kind of like, one person says one thing, the other person says something else, situations. I don’t know if you could ever prove that Mel Robbins heard it from the poem. And in fact, Mel Robbins says that she heard it from her daughter, so I don’t know what the truth is.

Then the other thing I just wanted to mention, and this is something I had been thinking about, is that idea of “let them” and not trying to control other people. Like, that’s also just not Mel Robbins’s idea. A lot of different cultures use that. I know a lot of people in Al Anon who have embraced that as a way of just being like, you can’t control other people’s drinking, that kind of thing. So just want to acknowledge that it’s not an original idea. It’s possibly plagiarized. We don’t know.

Virginia

We cannot know about the plagiarism. But those are valid questions to be raising, given the timeline. But even if that was not a contributing factor, she definitely took this very well established concept—again, like, I wrote an essay two years ago about my own work in therapy on this idea. It’s out there. And it’s not that she can’t write about it. I wrote about it! But to then turn it into the Mel Robbins’ secret method of fixing your life, which is very much how the book is marketed and how her Instagram is marketed. It’s very much like, only Mel Robbins can tell you this hard truth. That is a real neat trick. And I think speaks much more to her ability to build a brand and build an audience than it does to her actually being a wise and research-based expert on personal growth. That’s not necessarily what she is, but she is a pretty genius marketer and packager of an idea.

Virginia

I’m just really struggling to square it with the rest of her messaging. It doesn’t actually feel very consistent. Like, let them I understand. It’s more about other people. But you count to five and throw yourself out of bed the second the alarm goes off. Like, what? It just doesn’t feel internally consistent to me at all.

Corinne

To me it’s just like if you’re just going to let them then why are you giving people advice? Why are you trying to control how people get out of bed?

Virginia

Yeah, and whether they drink coffee or water first? It’s not just that she’s giving advice. She gives really specific, granular advice about how to structure your day. She wanted to control whether her son took his friends to a taco place or not on prom night. Like, she’s real interested in people doing very tiny things, especially according to her specifications. So it’s kind of feels like maybe she got really into this idea because she knows it’s her own biggest struggle, which is totally fair. But there’s a lack of introspection to then peel back a few more layers and be like, well, where am I not letting them? I’m not letting people do a lot of things.

Another thing that feels slightly like a disconnect to me with the “let them” and this let people go thing is, when you look at how Mel Robbins is presenting herself, it’s a very specific aesthetic. She is definitely someone who—I mean, she talks about working out a lot, intermittent fasting, all of that. Her body is presenting as a highly controlled body. She’s very thin, she’s very blonde. That is not a natural blonde. That’s her body, her choice, of course. But again, it’s this interesting tension between this message that is very expansive and trying to give you room to take up space in your life, and then what she’s presenting to us in in her embodied self feels very different. And again, this is not a criticism, because it’s also like one of those things where, like, what other option does she have? She got famous as a CNN commentator. She’s now a big deal on Instagram. Thinness, blondeness, whiteness, all of that is required for those jobs. So it’s just interesting seeing that like someone else with this message, who is not a tiny blonde woman would probably not be able to blow it up to the level that she is.

Corinne

Yeah. And I also think she is older. I think she’s in her 50s.

Virginia

She has got to play the game.

Corinne

This is how people are going to pay attention to her.

Virginia

Well, that’s Mel Robbins. We learned a lot. We now know who she is, and also quite a lot about her. I’m interested to hear from listeners who have been following her. You may have more thoughts on the whole plagiarism piece, or the missing Glennon episode piece, or just have more nuanced takes on her work. So I’m excited to hear what people think.

Corinne

Do we want to definitively say, Is Mel Robbins a diet?

Virginia

I’m comfortable definitively saying it is. You have been on more of a journey. I don’t know if you’re ready to say it.

Corinne

I don’t know if I would say that Mel Robbins is a diet. I do think she’s a whole thing.

Virginia

She’s a whole thing.

Corinne

I think she’s like perfectionism culture maybe?

Virginia

She is high fiving herself in the mirror so hard.

Corinne

Is high fiving yourself in the mirror a diet?

Virginia

It’s not not a diet is where I’m going to land on that.

Corinne

Wow. I don’t know if I agree with that, but there’s a lot to think about.

Virginia

Okay, let’s do butter, because my butter is going to possibly undermine my credibility for this entire episode.

Corinne

Is your butter drinking a cup of water before you drink coffee?

Virginia

I am not doing that, but my butter is my new hydration tracking app that I’m using!

Corinne

Are you freaking kidding me?

Virginia

I knew I was going to... I knew this was going to..

Corinne

A hydration tracking app.

Virginia

It’s called Water llama. It’s adorable. Every day there’s a different animal. Today I’m tracking on this little bunny. And then it shows how much of how the water fills up on the little illustration. So I’ve drunk 2/3 of a bunny according to my goal. I am not doing this as a diet. This is not a weight loss goal. It has nothing to do with that.

I have so many migraines. My migraines have been getting worse in the last couple months. I was looking back at how often they are happening. They’ve really increased. I live in a frozen tundra. My house is so dry. I’m waking up every morning with headaches and sore throats. I have a humidifier. But I realized I really think I need to work on hydration. I’m also going to get a work up with my neurologist, but the appointment is three months out. So I was like, this is something I can work on in the meantime and see if it makes a difference.

And I have tried to just be mindful about water consumption in the past, but I will forget all about it. I hyper focus on work all day long and drink nothing, and then it’s eight o’clock and I’m very thirsty. So I was like, alright, I’m going to do this water tracking app. And I’m a week into it, and I’ve drunk so much water in the last week.

Corinne

Does it give you reminders?

Virginia

You can set it to remind you every one or two hours, if you want. So it nudges you. I haven’t even really needed the reminders, because so far I’m just excited to fill in my little numbers.

I will say I put in a custom goal that I made up. I’m not going to say what my goal is, because I think it’s somewhat absurd honestly. I’m really just trying to drink as much as possible until I don’t wake up with a headache, and then use that number as the target and see if it helps.

I deliberately put in a custom goal, because otherwise they calculate it based on your weight. So if you don’t want to mess around with that, you can just put in your own goal.

There is a weight loss challenge thing you could do, but there is an option to hide that, and I did that right away, so I don’t have to look at any weight loss content.

So you know it’s with a caveat. Like, tracking is not for everybody. Tracking is usually not for me. If this doesn’t feel good for you, please don’t do it. But if you are thirsty and need to drink more water, I’m liking it.

Corinne

Cool.

Virginia

Do you feel like I’m such a hypocrite right now?

Corinne

Um, I don’t know if I would say hypocrite? The tracking thing is interesting. Like when tracking is triggering versus when it’s not.

Virginia

I think because I have a very specific metric, which is no headaches. Like, I’m doing this for a very niche reason. It feels okay and that’s what I can come up with.

But I’m also paying attention to it, and if it starts becoming stressful, I’m putting some parameters around it where I’m like, okay, then we delete the app. But water llama, it’s pretty cute.

Corinne

Well, I hope water llama helps your migraines.

Virginia

TBD. What about you?

Corinne

I want to recommend a book that I just read. It’s called The Safekeep. I don’t want to say too much about it, because I went into it knowing almost nothing and was shocked at various points.

Virginia

By Yael van der Wouden.

Corinne

Yes, I think she’s Dutch. What will I say about it?

Virginia

I can read the summary line, which is “an exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961.”

Corinne

That seems like a good summary.

Virginia

I mean, I want to read it. That sounds really good.

Corinne

It takes a few different turns and I think has a surprising ending that seems like it wouldn’t work, and it kind of did work for me. And I would say, like, I also just did not expect it to be as spicy as it was!

So, I recommend The Safekeep and I would say, don’t read too much about it before you read it!

Virginia

Just dive in. That’s a great butter

Well, should we high five on Zoom to wrap up this episode? Because our buddy Mel would want us to?

Corinne

I need some science behind why high five.

Virignia

You can read her whole book called The High Five Habit and just start high fiving everybody all the time.

Corinne

No.

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who writes Big Undies—subscribe for 20% off!

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!

---

1. You can still find the transcript of the episode here: https://momastery.com/blog/we-can-do-hard-things-ep-373/