What Can Replace the Emotional Support Skinny Jeans?

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your July Indulgence Gospel!And… it’s our 200th episode! To celebrate, we’re making today’s Indulgence Gospel free to everyone and offering a flash sale — 20% off to celebrate 200 episodes! Grab this deal here.This newsletter contains affiliate links, which means if you buy something we suggest, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only ever recommend things we love and use ourselves! One Good ThingNow that it’s summer, ice cream is a daily state of being here and I’ve been using my East Fork ice cream bowls constantly (they are also the perfect size for cherries and for many of your favorite snacks). If you are also an East Fork disciple, heads up that their annual Seconds Sale starts today! This is where they sell pots that are slightly imperfect but still 100 percent functional and food safe for 30-40% off. And yes, there are a lot of cute ice cream bowls. 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!Episode 200 TranscriptCorinne200! Can you believe it?VirginiaI can and I cannot. It’s one of those things where I feel like we’ve always been making the podcast, but also 200 feels like so many.CorinneI went back through, to look at some old episodes. And I was like, you know, I kind of remember all of them. I was like, surely there are some I have forgotten. But yeah, kind of not.VirginiaWhen I was looking back at the old episodes, it was like visiting old friends. I was like, I know you guys. We’re cool.CorinneIf you write into us with a question and we answer it, it really sticks with us!VirginiaWe continue to think about you. And would like updates, honestly. We don’t always get them, so putting that out there. We’d like to know.CorinneTo celebrate, we have a special two part episode for you. We’re picking favorite moments from the archives to revisit, to see if our feelings and opinions have changed.VirginiaAlright, I decided to look back at our many excellent guest conversations and pull out some favorites. First up, I thought I’d look back at our work ultra-processed foods since it is such an annoyingly evergreen topic. We did a great pair of episodes with Laura Thomas, PhD, who writes “Can I Have Another Snack?” which ran in July 2023. Here is a little excerpt from the first conversation.VirginiaIt feels like it’s important to say very clearly that processed is not synonymous with has no nutrition, and that actually processing foods is a good thing to do in order to eat, right?LauraYeah, well, all forms of cooking are a process, right?So unless you like want to go down some raw vegan path, you can’t really avoid processing your food to some extent.Now, advocates of NOVA, I think, would say that’s a bit of a red herring, because what we’re actually talking about is this additional level of processing, this ultra processing sort of phenomenon.But even within that category, I think there are merits to processing–even Ultra processing–our foods. One of the things that happens when we process food is we extend the shelf life of it, and that means that we are wasting less food overall, which I think we would all agree is probably a helpful thing.But industrial food processing, it reduces foodborne pathogens. It reduces microbes that would spoil food and make things like oils turn rancid faster. It also significantly cuts down on the time and labor that it requires to cook a meal. And I think that’s for me as a parent, and I know for you as well, like, that’s huge.VirginiaIt’s really everything, honestly. For me personally. Nothing should be everything for everybody, but limiting the amount of time I spend cooking dinner is the thing that enables me to eat dinner with my family at night.LauraBut it’s not just like super privileged white women that have a lot of you know nutrition knowledge, right, that benefit from ultra processed foods. I’m also thinking about kids with feeding disorders that would struggle to get all the nutrition that they need without processed foods. I’m thinking about elderly or disabled people who can maintain a level of independence because they can quickly cook some pasta and throw an ultra processed jar of pasta sauce on that and have a nourishing meal. I’m thinking about pregnant people who otherwise might not be able to stomach eating because of morning sickness and nausea, which we know lasts forever, not just morning, right?So there are so many groups of people that benefit from ultra processed foods, and they just seem to be missing entirely from the conversation around these foods.VirginiaSo often there’s this pressure of like, we have to just get poor people cooking more and get them cooking more. And it’s like, okay, but if you live in a shelter, you don’t have a kitchen. If you are crashing on a couch with family member, you know, in a house with lots of different people, and it’s not easy for you to get time in the kitchen. There’s so many different scenarios where cooking is not a practical solution, and having greater shelf stability is very important.LauraBut it also says a lot about where we place our values, right? And who is making decisions about where we cook our values? Because it’s not everyone’s value system to spend more time cooking from scratch and buying fresh ingredients and spending more time in the kitchen.VirginiaI picked this clip because I think Laura is summing up so many important pieces of this conversation that I just continue to see nowhere in the mainstream media discourse around ultra-processed foods. Like the fact that they are useful and convenient. And convenience is not a moral failing. I don’t know where we decided food should be inconvenient to be valuable and healthy? But it seems like that’s a thing that we believe.CorinneI know Maintenance Phase just did an ultra processed food episode. I listened to that.VirginiaOh, it’s excellent. CorinneAnd both they and you and Laura got into the way that “processed” is just such a moving target. It means so many different things.VirginiaIt means literally anything.CorinneAnd also nothing.VirginiaYes, when I say this is missing from the discourse, I don’t mean Maintenance Phase, who I think we’re very much in conversation with. As Mike and Aubrey kept discussing on their episode—I think Laura says some of this, too—depending whose classification system you go by, honey is ultra-processed or it’s not ultra-processed. Foods are moving categories all the time.And as Aubrey said: Really what it comes down to is they’re categorizing foods so that the ones that “people who make less money than you buy” are bad. And I was like, yep, there it is. This is really classism and racism and all the other isms to say let’s demonize these foods that people rely on. Which is not to say we shouldn’t improve the overall quality of food in the food system! But doing it through this policing of consumer habits just will never not make me furious.CorinneReally feels like this hasn’t gotten better since the episode aired two years ago? VirginiaIf anything, I think it has intensified. I think RFK and MAHA has really put this one in their crosshairs, and it’s just getting worse and worse. It’s really maddening, because we’re just not having any of the real conversations we need to have about how to improve food quality in this country or anywhere.CorinneWhat a bummer. All right, let’s listen to this next quote, which is about jeans.VirginiaOh, jeans.VirginiaSo the backstory is on recent Indulgence Gospels, we have talked about how Corinne converted me to the universal standard straight leg jeans, and I do really like them. But earlier today, I had to be in photos, and we had a plan. The three of us had a plan that I was going to wear those jeans, and at the last minute, I texted Dacy. I didn’t even text Corinne because I knew she’d yell at me. I texted Dacy, and I was like, I can’t do it. I’m in my skinny jeans for the photos. And, yeah, it was like, do I look too sloppy? Are these, like, saggy in a weird way that I have no control over?And I feel like for something like having your picture taken, like, wear the pants, you’re not going to feel like you’re only thinking about your pants. You know what I mean?CorinneOkay, so I wanted to revisit some of your feelings about jeans. You may recall that we used to open like every podcast episode by chatting about pants!VirginiaWe did. We haven’t done that!CorinneWe kind of fell off pants chat, and I don’t know why.VirginiaBring back pants chat! CorinneBut I do feel like since we started doing the podcast, your feelings about jeans have evolved? True or false?VirginiaThey have evolved. They definitely have. I mean, I still own a pair of emotional support skinny jeans. The same pair I mention in that episode. CorinneWhen is the last time you wore them?VirginiaI actually have not worn them very much at all. I did wear them two weeks ago under a shirt dress because it turned out to be colder than I thought. And I was like, “Oh, it’s not a bare leg dress day.” So I put on skinny jeans under it, but I haven’t worn them for any other reason in a really long time.And I will say: I’m wearing my Gap straight leg jeans the most, the baggier fit ones the most. So I do think I’ve evolved to embrace a more relaxed fit of jean, which does make it much easier to get jeans to fit your body.I still think the primary finding of Jean Science was correct, that jeans are designed terribly, that fashion in general is terrible at fitting people’s bodies, but particularly when it comes to fitting pants onto fat people. They’re really bad at it. And so I think all the jeans are bad.But I will say if you can embrace a wider leg or a more relaxed fit, you will have more options.CorinneYeah, I think that’s true.VirginiaI still cannot solve for the factor of, if you wear a more relaxed fit, they will still stretch out when you wear them, and they will be falling off you by the second day, if not later in the first day. And nobody has solved this.CorinneI think someone did solve it, and it’s belts.VirginiaThat is not a solution that is available to me, personally. I don’t like belts. I guess I should try belts? I don’t know about belts. Okay, that’s a whole other thing.CorinneThis is kind of neither here nor there, but I just read this post from Em Seely-Katz who writes Esque, and I think they were actually writing about something else, raw hem jeans. But they were saying that men’s jeans, the zipper goes all the way from the bottom of the crotch up to the top. Why don’t women’s jeans do that?VirginiaWait, men’s jeans have a different zipper?CorinneLike, the zipper on women’s jeans is shorter. It doesn’t go all the way down.VirginiaIs it because they don’t want men to pee on their pants?CorinneWell, I think it’s so you can open them up more to get your… whatever but, but I think women’s jeans should also have that option for access.VirginiaI just really have to pause on how uncomfortable Corinne was saying penis right there. She was like… whatever you’ve got down there.CorinneI think I was going to say dick and then I was like, is that inappropriate?VirginiaWhatever, we swear all the time. Anyway, the zipper is longer so that men can deal with their junk.CorinneI think women should have the option of being able to deal with their junk as well.VirginiaAgreed, agreed. Pro longer zipper.CorinneAlso, I feel like it would be easier to to get jeans on if they opened up more at the top.VirginiaNow that you’ve put this very important issue on my radar, I’m ready to adopt it as a primary cause.CorinneOkay, thank you.VirginiaWe will have a petition for everyone to sign shortly. You are a diehard jeans person. You always look great in jeans. You’re inspiring on the topic.CorinneThis year I have adopted drawstring jeans, which feels like it’s barely jeans.VirginiaBut also sounds like a life hack.CorinneYeah, it’s very comfortable.VirginiaI love drawstring. In the summer, I wear a lot of drawstring. I don’t wear a lot of drawstring in the winter.CorinneDrawstring would probably solve your stretching out after a couple wears problem, similar to a belt.VirginiaIt would be like a belt, but not a belt, so it wouldn’t trigger my belt concerns.I think my other struggle with jeans—that is maybe not really even about jeans—is that since I have broken up mostly with dark skinny jeans, there is sometimes a category of outfit I am trying to achieve where I’m trying to be dressed up, but not too dressed up. And I feel like the dark skinny jean really filled that need. Does that make sense?Like, you want to look like kind of polished because you’re going to your kid’s chorus concert or out to dinner with friends, but it’s not like all the way to a dress level? That might feel like too much. I feel like the dark skinny jean really threaded this needle.This stems from having been in my 20s in the early 2000s and being trained in the School of the Going Out Top. The going out top and dark jeans was a uniform. And I think I’m still like, “So what replaces the dark jeans and the going out top?” And then I realized, like… anything? That’s me trying to dress like it’s 2003 and it’s not.But that is one place I still struggle, because I don’t feel like the lighter, more relaxed denim can can do that same category?CorinneHmm, what about darker, wide leg jeans? Is that not a thing?VirginiaMaybe I just haven’t found a pair I really like that are darker. That’s a good thought.CorinneOr maybe with wide leg jeans, you need a slightly fancier top, I don’t know.VirginiaI think a lot of our dependency on the skinny jean was just because we’d really learned the outfit formulas for it. And I do feel like sometimes when I gravitate back towards it, it’s because I’m feeling at sea with how to put an outfit together without them.CorinneThis is not about jeans, but I’m really into these Old Navy shorts I have that have stripes down the side. They’re sweat shorts. And they’re so comfortable. But then sometimes when I’m going out, I am like, wait, what do I put on the top so that it doesn’t look like I’m just in sweats?VirginiaI just came here in pajamas. Yeah, don’t you feel like that’s a struggle with shorts and tank tops in general in the summer? And I feel like more of a struggle for fat folks?CorinneMaybe.VirginiaIt’s harder to look like you got dressed or something, right?CorinneLike, how do I look like I’m not just wearing a t-shirt and jeans?Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the answer to that being socks. Right now I’m wearing—am I about to try and show you my socks? Nope.I’m wearing chartreuse socks, kind of like a chartreuse dress sock. I’ll send you a pic after. But I feel like that with the tank top and shorts kind of makes it look more outfit-y.@selfiefayStay for the pitbull cameo #ootd VirginiaYou should know my 11 year old is doing the same thing this summer.CorinneOh, that’s cool.VirginiaThere are a lot of brightly colored socks with regular shorts and t-shirts. Also, she has a lot of animal print socks. So you’re blessed by Gen Alpha or whatever she is.CorinneAmazing.VirginiaGood job.All right. Well, for the final clip, I went back to another favorite guest conversation. To be clear, I love all of our guest conversations. But this was one that was just like one of my favorite ever. It was with Martinus Evans, who is the author of Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. Martinus also runs the Slow AF Run Club, which is a running community for folks to run in the bodies they have. He is so hilarious and delightful. This episode ran in June 2023 so here’s the clip.MartinusSo what that looks like is like letting them know that obstacles and rising up in the face of adversity is a good thing. Because for a lot of people, they think it’s a bad thing. Like, oh, I face adversity. I’m slow.Or, here’s the thing I always get, is that I started running, and then I got a little tired, and I started walking, and I felt absolutely horrible that I had to walk. And then me come in and say, Well, what was wrong with that? Did you start running again? Yeah, I did. Well, fuck like, let’s celebrate that then? It’s that thing of letting people know that it’s okay to bumble and stumble and figure this thing out because you’re doing something with your body that you have not been A. celebrated to do, right? But B. You’re kind of stifled, like being a plus size person, like you may have even been stifled with movement, because you haven’t had the liberty to actually explore the things that your body might be able to do. You got to explore and figure all this stuff out.So, like, that’s where providing psychological safety is letting them know that it’s okay. It’s almost like, imagine a kid who’s like, riding a bike for the first time. They ride the bike, you let it go, they lose their balance, they fall, they scrape their knee. They’re going to cry. They’re going to be like, Oh, I don’t want to ride this bike anymore. It’s horrible. I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this. But as a good parent or as a good coach, you’re going to like, okay, let’s cry it out. You done crying? Okay, now let’s get your ass back on that bike. The same thing is true with physical activity. All right. You did it. You got a side stitch? Okay, cool. Let’s figure this out. Oh, you got shin splints. Okay, cool, yeah, let’s figure this out. Oh, oh, you got delay, onset, muscle soreness? Great. Let’s figure this out. But guess what? Yeah, that’s going to continue to move.That’s the approach that I take. Like we’re all going to fall off, and somewhere around us being grown start to be embedded in us, like doing something and then like failing or like not getting it right on the first time is a bad thing. I think it’s school.VirginiaI think school is a lot of it, yeah. I’m thinking, like, when a baby’s learning to walk, they fall a million times, and people aren’t like you should stop trying to walk. You know what I mean?MartinusImagine that like walking a baby trying to walk. And I said, screw you baby! Like you suck you’re not. Damn you for trying to walk.VirginiaYeah, you are a fat baby who can’t walk. And yet we have this narrative that then kicks in of somehow, if I have to stop to walk during my run, that’s like a moral failing. Like walking and running are morally equivalent activities, right? Like if you’re walking, some of it, if you’re running, some of that, as you said, like the pace of your running, if you are slow, that is still running. There’s no need to be attaching all these values to it.But it does seem like the culture of running at large is so built on that paradigm, and you are really challenging an entire paradigm here.MartinusYes, I am. Here’s why. If you’re not an elite athlete who’s like their life depends on winning prize money and like going to the Olympics, all of us are then paying for a participation medal to participate in a parade.CorinneI love this. He’s really delightful.VirginiaHe’s so good. And the reframing of running marathons as participating in a parade will just make me happy forever. It’s so correct.I mean, obviously we stand by everything Martinus said. There’s not really a lot more to say. So I thought we could also talk a little bit about how working on the podcast has changed each of our relationship with exercise. Because I think we’ve done a lot of good fitness content over the last 200 episodes, and I personally feel like I’m in a better place with exercise than I was when I started this project.CorinneHmm, that’s awesome. Well, I think I started lifting around the same time that I started doing the podcast.VirginiaThere was an early episode where you were, like, “I’m using a broomstick.”CorinneOh, that’s right! I was doing Couch to Barbell!VirginiaAnd look at you now, power lifter.CorinneI mean, one thing that is interesting about maybe starting any exercise, or maybe specifically powerlifting, is I think, in the first like year that you do it, you get better fast. Like, really consistently, almost every time you go to the gym, you’re lifting more weight. And that is so rewarding. And probably a little addictive.Now that I have been doing it for two and a half years, I’m not getting better every time. Sometimes I can’t lift weights that I have previously lifted for various reasons. Even if I’m maxing out, sometimes not hitting my previous maxes. I think it can be hard to figure out what am I doing? I took a little bit break last summer. I went to visit family, and I decided to just not go to the gym.VirginiaI remember, that seems good. I feel like it was good you took that break.CorinneYeah, it was good. And it sucked getting back. So yeah, I’m still figuring it out.VirginiaI guess that’s the tricky thing about any sport where there’s progress attached to it, which power lifting is still a sport organized around progress.CorinneI mean, there are different ways you can measure progress, too. Like how many reps, versus just straight up how much weight.VirginiaBut it’s still measuring progress. It’s still expecting there to be progress, which is both exciting, and I think progress can be very motivating. And what do you do then when you’re in a period with it where it’s not really about progress? How do you find value in that relationship? That’s a tricky question.CorinneOr when the progress is just much smaller.VirginiaAnd can you still feel good about that?. Or do you start feeling like what’s the point? I think for me, it’s so funny that I love this conversation with Martinus so much, because I am just never going to be a runner again. Running was such a bad relationship that I’m so glad to be done with.I think for me, so much of finding joy and exercise is about not having progress goals of any kind. Like just having different activities I like doing for their own sake, and kind of rotating. Like, I like weight lifting. It was exciting when I went up to larger weight, heavier weights. At some point I hope to go up to heavier weights again.But I’m not tracking it. I’m like, these still seem hard. I don’t know, it seems fine.Then the other stuff I do, like walking the dog and gardening, are really not things you would be like, wow, I weeded two more flower beds this week. It’s not progress.But I do feel good that I, in various flavors, work out much more consistently than I have at other points in my life. Because it’s more built into my lifestyle. And, I think talking to people like Martinus, Anna Maltby, obviously Lauren Leavell, Jessie Diaz-Herrera and all the folks who’ve come on and talked to us about different approaches to fitness have just really helped me claim it for myself in a way that I really was struggling to do. So that’s been cool.CorinneYeah, that is cool. That’s inspiring.ButterCorinneWell, this was fun to look back on some favorite episodes! Should we do butter?VirginiaI just came up with my Butter while I was eating lunch. And it is what I ate for lunch. And it is Sushi Salad. I invented this today. I had some leftover sushi, but it wasn’t quite enough to be lunch by itself. So I chopped up the spicy tuna roll, with the rice and everything, chopped it up into little chunks, and I put it over a bed of greens with some some chopped bell peppers, some red onion, and then I kind of made up a fake spicy mayonnaise Asian-ish salad dressing. I’m not saying this is culturally authentic in any way. I need to underscore that a lot. But it was such a good lunch. So Sushi Salad is my Butter.And in general, I’ve been a big fan of leftovers plus salad as a lunch formula. A lot of leftovers lend themselves well to being a chopped ingredient in a good salad, and then it’s like a new take. If you’re someone who gets sick of leftovers, it’s a whole new experience.CorinneI’m also going to do a food.VirginiaGreat. We love food Butter.CorinneI had some friends over for dinner earlier this week, and I made this Smitten Kitchen recipe, she calls it garlic lime steak and noodle salad.VirginiaOh, sold.CorinneIt’s a really good hot weather meal, because it’s rice vermicelli that you basically dunk in hot water for a few minutes and can serve cold or room temp. Then you chop up cucumbers and tomatoes and green beans, and then you make a marinade that also doubles as a dressing that has fish sauce, sugar, stuff like that, and and grill some steak and put that on top.VirginiaOh my gosh, I’m making this this week. I love this kind of recipe. Also, a great salad. Don’t sleep on main course salads.CorinneYes, I had the leftovers as a salad yesterday. So good.Well, coming up next week, we’re going to visit another bunch of favorite moments. Including: Feelings about aging, heterosexual marriage and what happens when your partner is on a diet.VirginiaThat episode WILL be paywalled, just like all our other Indulgence Gospels, so you should become a paid subscriber so you don’t miss it! Here’s that sale link again. 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—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! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my guest is Cole Kazdin.Cole is an Emmy Award-winning television journalist and author of What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety. Cole came on Burnt Toast about two years ago to talk about What's Eating Us when it first came out—and the way the eating disorder industrial complex leaves so many folks struggling to find durable recovery.Today, Cole is joining us again as an eating disorder expert, but also as a fellow woman in perimenopause… who is reeling right now from all the diet culture nonsense coming for us in this stage of life.Our goal today is to call out the anti-fatness, ageism and diet culture running rampant in peri/menopause-adjacent media. I know a lot of you have more specific questions about menopause (like how much protein DO we need?). Part 2 of the Burnt Toast Menopause Conversation will be coming in a few weeks with Mara Gordon, MD joining us to tackle those topics. So drop your questions in the comments for Dr. Mara! This episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.PS. You can always listen to this pod 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! And if you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!Episode 199VirginiaSo, Cole, you are back because you emailed me to say: Is all of menopause a diet? What are we doing? By which I mean menopause and perimenopause—we’re going to kind of lump them together everyone. They are distinct life stages. But in terms of the cultural discourse, they’re very much hooked together.You emailed and said:Look, I’m not a menopause expert, but I am an eating disorder expert and I’m seeing a lot of stuff that I don’t like. How do we take a skeptical but informed eye about the messaging we get as we age? How do we get through this without developing an eating disorder as we are in the full witch phase of our lives?So, let’s just start by getting a lay of the land. What are our first impressions as women newly arriving in perimenopause?ColeThere’s something that is so exciting about all the books that are out and the research that’s emerging, from actual OB/GYNs to the existence of the Menopause Society to Naomi Watts wrote a book about menopause. I think we’re the first real generation to have menopause information and conversations.When I asked my mom about her perimenopause and menopause she doesn’t really remember it. So I think I really want to preface this by saying how valuable this is. When I sat down to start looking at the available information and read these books, I was stunned by some of the symptoms that I’ve never heard of—tinnitus, joint pain, right? Things that aren’t just hot flashes, which I think are the standard menopause symptoms that we tend to hear about.VirginiaThere are a lot. It’s like, everything that could be happening to your body.ColeAnd then very quickly… there’s a sharp left turn to intermittent fasting. VirginiaYes. It’s like, wait, what? I want to know about my joint pain? What are we doing?ColeAnd it felt to me, like some sort of betrayal. Because you get on the train of “we’re going to learn about something that’s happening to our bodies that no one’s ever really talked about or paid attention to before.” And, then it’s oh wait, I have to track my protein. What just happened? I’m having so much trouble with that clash of gratitude and absolute hunger—pun intended, sorry, there’s no other word—for the information and research. And then being told, “But no hunger!”VirginiaI mean, this is always the story with women’s health, right? Women’s health is so ignored and forgotten by the mainstream—the media, the medical system—so we are left to put it together on our own.And of course, we have a proud tradition of centuries of midwives teaching women about our bodies. It’s the Our Bodies, Ourselves legacy. There’s all this wisdom that women figure out about how our bodies work, what we need to know to take care of ourselves. But because it’s being ignored by scientific research, it’s being ignored by the mainstream, and it is this sort of an underground thing—that also opens up a really clear market for diet culture.So it’s really easy to find an influencer—and they may even be a doctor or have some other credentials attached to their name—who you feel like, “Oh, she’s voicing something that I am feeling. I’m being ignored by my regular doctor and here’s this person on Tiktok who really seems to get it,” …and then also wants to sell me a supplement line. It’s so quick to go to this place of it’s just another Goop, basically.ColeAnd what if it didn’t go there? What does the world look like where it doesn’t go there? I am really hyper conscious of my own vulnerabilities—even though I feel very, very, very, very solid in my eating disorder recovery. I don’t go there anymore. I know there are vulnerabilities there, because I struggled on and off with eating disorders for decades. But, I really feel solid in my recovery. And then I wonder if I should start tracking my protein? I was shocked to even hear that in my own head, and then to hear my very sophisticated turn of “well, you’re not looking at calories, you’re not trying to get smaller, you’re done with that for real for real. But you should probably start looking at how much protein you’re getting!” Wait a minute, stop!VirginiaWhere’s that coming from?ColeI’m fortunate enough that because of my background and because I wrote a book on this, I can reach out to top eating disorder researchers in the country, and just ask a question. Isn’t this kind of funny that I did this? Isn’t that interesting? What do you think? And to be met with: Do not go near tracking apps! That is not safe for you. DO NOT track your protein. It’s not funny. I did that last night. I just reached out to one of the top eating disorder experts in the country, because this is something we don’t talk about. But I think with something like intermittent fasting, which we hear about in all aspects of wellness diet culture, we have to remember that intermittent fasting is extreme food restriction. Our bodies panic when we fast. But these can set us on roads towards very disordered relationships with food in our bodies. And the worst case is developing an eating disorder.VirginiaRight, or living with a subclinical eating disorder that makes you miserable, even if no one ever says, yes, you have a diagnosis.ColeAbsolutely. Thinking about protein every day is stressful and just being consumed with this idea of what we’re eating and how much we’re eating and what we need to be doing. And the fear of the consequences, right? If I don’t track my protein, I’m going to break a hip, right? I mean, I’m condensing the messaging. But if you follow the steps, that’s kind of where it goes.VirginiaWell, and I don’t think it’s even just “I’m going to break a hip.” I think it’s “I’m going to become old and vulnerable and undesirable.” The hip is symbolic of this cultural narrative about older women’s bodies, which is that you are going to become disposable and irrelevant. And the fear that’s stoking us, that’s making us hungry for the information—which is valid, it is a mysterious phase of life that we don’t know enough about. But there’s this fear of of irrelevancy and and not being attractive, and all of that. You can’t tease that out from “I’m worried about my bone density.” It’s all layered in there.ColeAnd my own OB/GYN told me at our last visit—she offers a separate let’s have a talk about perimenopause appointment, which I think is great. It’s essentially about hormone replacement therapy and when and if that might be part of your journey. But she told me that most people who don’t have some immediate symptom like hot flashes are coming to her in perimenopause because of weight gain or redistribution of weight, which is very normal during this phase of life. And they are asking if hormone replacement therapy could “fix” that issue.So it’s the post-baby body thing all over again. As if there’s a return to something, as opposed to a forward movement. But the fact that that’s an entry point for a lot of these menopause physicians that write books and have a presence on social media. It’s very, very connected to an audience that is looking for weight loss.VirginiaI think there is something about any mysterious health situation—whether it’s perimenopause, or I see a similar narrative happen around diabetes often—where the condition gets held out as this worst case scenario that’s so so bad that therefore any concerns you had about is it disordered to diet? Is it risky for me to count protein? All of that kind of goes out the window because we get laser focused and we have to solve this thing. You no longer get to have feelings about how pursuing weight loss can be damaging for you. This physical health thing trumps all the emotions.ColeIt’s a medical issue now.VirginiaRight! I’m at sea in this whole new complicated medical landscape of menopause. I don’t know what it is, so obviously, whatever I used to feel about needing to accept my body no longer applies. I don’t get to do that anymore. I have to just like, drill in and get serious about this.I’ve had older women say this to me. Like, “you can be body positive in your 30s or early 40s, but get over 50, sweetheart, and you’re not going to be able to do that anymore.” But why not? That should be available to us throughout our lives. So that frustrates me. Because simultaneously, we have no good information, we have no good science about what’s happening to us. And yet menopause weight loss is given this gravitas. You can’t argue with it, and you have to just be okay eating less for the rest of your life now.ColeMaybe this is where body liberation is in one of its most critical stages? To develop it here in this phase of life. Because I think what complicates it further, and I will give people the benefit of the doubt that it is not nefarious when the messaging is also married to we’re not trying to get smaller, we’re trying to get stronger. But here’s also how to get rid of belly fat. And that I find genuinely confusing, I think, oh good, you’re not talking about weight loss. Oh, wait, you are talking about weight loss. But is being stronger now a proxy for weight loss? You’re telling people not to diet.We see this in other arenas, and I even wonder, gee, now that these weight loss drugs are so ubiquitous, is menopause, the next frontier of of health and weight being conflated? And it’s such a letdown. I mean, I know that sounds so simple it’s just so disappointing. It’s so disappointing.VirginiaYou called it the Full Witch Phase. This should be a stage of our life that’s more free than ever before, right? We’re not 20-somethings trying to find a man to be a baby daddy, we’re through with that pressure.ColeNo this is the taking pottery lessons, stranger sex, no pregnancy phase! Maybe, I don’t know. For some people.VirginiaIt seems like it should be!ColeIt could be.VirginiaAnd yet, here is all this body stuff/weight stuff coming in.And women go through this at every stage of our life. I’m watching my my middle schooler in puberty, where weight gain is absolutely normal and what we want their bodies to be doing. Reproductive years, childbirth, weight gain—this is a part of having a body with a uterus is that you are going to go through phases where it is normal for your body to get bigger. And in every one of these stages, we’re told it’s terrible and you should avoid it at all costs. That said, I do feel like in some of the other arenas, like around pregnancy, there’s a lot of pressure on women to get their bodies back after they have babies. But you can find a counter-narrative that’s saying, no, I don’t have to erase the evidence that I had a child. My body can be different now, I’m going to embrace that. There are those of us out there saying that.But I don’t see that counter-narrative around menopause. I don’t see women saying, “Yep, you’re going to have a bigger stomach in menopause. It makes sense because of the estrogen drop off.” This is why bodies change in menopause. Let’s just embrace it. Instead, it feels like this, of all the weight gains, you must fight this one the most. And I don’t understand. I mean, again, I think there’s a link to ageism there. But what else do you think is going on there?ColeI mean, it’s ageism, it’s ableism, it’s beauty standards. It’s all the things. It’s how we’re valued as women. I want to dive deeper in this to see the fat menopause doctors. I would like to find some of those. I don’t know.VirginiaListeners, if you know some, drop them in the comments please. We want to talk to the fat menopuase doctors! ColeTo just see people that look different from some of these “classic doctors”e we see on Instagram and Tiktok, to just talk about what do we really have to think about during menopause? We know that the drop in estrogen affects from the brain, affects everything in our bodies, and how we don’t want to lose sight of that because we’re trying to get rid of belly fat either.VirginiaRight, right? I think of Jessica Slice, who I had the on the podcast recently, talking about differentiating between alleviating suffering and trying to “fix” your body. Or caring for your body instead of trying to force it into an ideal. We’re not saying that this isn’t a time of life where women need extra support, where our bodies need extra care. That makes sense to me. My face does this weird flushing thing now it never used to do. I just suddenly get blotchy for like, 20 minutes and feel really hot. But only in my face. It’s not even a hot flash. So there are all these wild things our bodies are doing that we deserve to have information about, and we deserve to have strategies to manage them. I mean, the face blotchy thing is not really impacting my quality of life. But there are a lot that do. The night sweats are terrible. I want strategies to alleviate that suffering. And it just seems like what a disservice we do when all of the advice is filtered through weight loss instead of actually focusing on the symptoms that are causing distress.ColeYes, yes. And is it boring to talk about weight fluctuation? Because I find it interesting that weight fluctuation is so deeply correlated with so many health problems. There has been research on this for years. That’s why I ask if it’s boring, because we know this, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough, but we know this. The research is so, so so deeply there. It’s correlated with chronic illnesses. And who among us hasn’t in their history had weight fluctuation? With our diets or whatever our behaviors are. And so what is weight fluctuation going to do in menopause? I doubt that’s being studied.I was looking at weight fluctuation and fertility when I was researching my book, and there aren’t those studies, because fertility studies are much shorter term, and weight fluctuation studies are longer term. So never do they meet.But could weight fluctuation impact negatively our menopause experience? It would make perfect sense if that if that were the case.VirginiaYes. This maybe isn’t a stage of life wher you want to be weight cycling and going up and down, and deliberately pursuing going down, because there might be cost to it. I mean, we do know that higher body weight is really protective against osteoporosis, for example. If you’re concerned about breaking a hip, pursuing weight loss, I would argue, is counter to that goal for a lot of us. Researchers call this the obesity paradox, which is an extremely anti-fat, terrible term. But we know that folks in bigger bodies have lower mortality rates, that they survive things like cancer treatments and heart surgery with better outcomes.So as we’re thinking of our aging years, where we’re all going to be dealing with some type of chronic condition or other, some type of cancer, heart stuff, like this is what’s going to happen right. Then pursuing thinness at any cost is not actually going to be the prescription for that. There’s a good reason to hold onto your body fat.ColeAnd I come back to the stress piece of this, which I don’t think can be overstated. Stress is so detrimental to our health, and this preoccupation with food, body exercise, tracking apps, all of that really does elevate our stress. And I think we’re so used to it. It’s invisible in so many ways because it’s bundled in with so many other stressors in our lives. Eliminating the stressor of what am I eating? Am I getting enough fiber? All of that is really, really can be a crucial piece of having a better experience in our bodies and of our health. It’s that Atkins echo over and over and over again, which I thought we had decided already we were done with. But it’s those two triggers, the protein, resistance training, lifting.I think it comes back to, you can control your behaviors. You can’t control your weight. And if weight is ever going to be some sort of goal, you’re really setting yourself up for stress, health problems, and again, at worst, an eating disorder.VirginiaAbsolutely. And we should caveat here: I personally love lifting weights. It’s my favorite kind of workout. If these things bring you joy, keep doing that. We’re not saying nobody should lift weights or nobody should eat protein. I just feel like I have to slip that in because people get frustrated.ColeNo, I think that’s important, and I am the same as you. I love lifting weights, and for me, it has actually been an antidote to a lot of the compulsive cardio I did when I had an eating disorder. There’s something about lifting weights that is so grounding. Every month or so, I go to this this guy—he does training in his garage—and we lift weights. And I told him before our first session, look, I’m recovering anorexic, I’m perimenopausal. I’m not here to have language like “tone up” and all of that. I do not want to do it. I want to lift something heavy and put it down. That’s what I’m here for. I was a little aggressive.VirginiaI mean, you have to put the boundary, though, you really do.ColeBut to his credit, he has respected that. And we lift heavy shit and put it down, and it is so so good for me. In repairing my relationship with exercise, which for me was one of the biggest challenges in recovery. So when someone says, lift weights, I’m here for that, because I really enjoy that. But I agree with you. I think it’s so important that we go with our ability and something we enjoy.VirginiaThe main reason I lift weights is because I do a lot of gardening, and I have to be able to lift a heavy bag of soil or a pot or dig big holes and do these things.We need to remember that these things, eating protein, lifting weight, it’s supposed to support you living the life you want to live. It’s not a gold star you need to get every day to be valuable as a person. I can tell weightlifting all winter is really helping me garden this year. That’s what I did it for. So you can recognize the value that these things have in your life—I’m less cranky if I eat protein at breakfast. I make it through my work morning better. And not be measuring our success by whether or not we’re doing those things and like, how we’re doing them and counting how much we’re doing them every day.ColeWell, that is key. I mean, first of all, I will say there are a few things more gratifying than hauling a 40 pound bag of cat litter up the stairs to my second floor apartment. I feel like I need some sort of like, are people watching me? Am I getting a medal for this? Even if no one is.VirginiaI totally agree.ColeIt is exciting, me, alone with myself, walking up the stairs with that, and it’s not that hard. I get excited. I lift weights so I can carry this bag of cat litter. I mean, it’s more complex than that, but that is a very significant percentage of why I lift weights.VirginiaBecause that impacts your daily functioning and happiness.ColeAnd I think with eating, I find I’m in a better mood when I’m carbing it out. You know what I mean? I’m sure protein is great. And I have some. I do all the things, whatever. And everyone’s body is different. Everyone responds differently. But some people will say, oh, when I have salmon, I just feel fantastic or something. I don’t know. VirginiaHave they tried pasta? Do they not know about pasta?ColeFor me, I feel better when I eat—it almost doesn’t matter what it is. And if I don’t eat, then I have low energy and brain fog and don’t feel good. VirginiaAnd again, it’s because of the fear mongering around the stage of life. It’s because of this you’re now in this murky waters where everything could go wrong with your body at any moment type of thing. I mean, this is what diet culture teaches us. Control what you can control. Okay, well, probably I can’t control what’s happening to my hip bones, but we think we should be able to control how we how we exercise and losing weight. The fact is, your day to day context is going to change. Having arbitrary standards you have to hold yourself to because of vague future health threat stuff is unhelpful when you may have a week where you don’t have time to make all the salmon and you have to just be okay with eating takeout. There’s no grace for just being a person with a lot else going on. And every woman in perimenopause and menopause is a person with a lot going on.All right, we are going chat a little bit about one of the folks that we see on the socials talking about menopause relentlessly —Dr. Mary Claire Haver.ColeShe wrote the book The New Menopause, which is a really great, significant book in many ways in terms of providing information that has never been provided before. VirginiaOh yes, this is @drmaryclaire.ColeWhen I bought her book, I saw that she has also written The Galveston Diet, and I said to myself, hmm. And then bought the book anyway. And you know now it all makes sense. Because The Galveston Diet is is very geared towards the perimenopausal, menopausal lose belly fat, but also have more energy help your menopause symptoms, right? How can you knock that? Come on.And so it's very sort of interwoven with all the diet stuff. So it's not surprising that she would bring so much of that up in her menopause book and a lot on her Instagram. She wears a weighted vest all the time. I thought, “Should I get a weighted vest?” And I again, I wasn't sure if I was doing it for menopause diet culture reasons, or I just love to lift heavy things reasons. I thought, “That could be cool. Maybe that'll be fun. I'll just wear a weighted vest around the house, like this woman, who's the menopause authority.”I guess what’s coming across in this interview is how vulnerable I am to any advertising!VirginiaNo, it's relatable. We all are vulnerable! I mean, I'm looking at her Instagram right now and I'm simultaneously exhausted at the prospect of wearing a weighted vest around my house and, like…well…ColeWouldn't that be convenient? But let me save you a minute here, because when you go to whatever your favorite website is to buy weighted vests, and you look at the reviews, it's split between people saying, “This is the best weighted vest [insert weighted vest brand here],” and other people saying, “Gee, the petroleum smell hasn't gone away after two months.”VirginiaOkay. I can't be walking around my house smelling petroleum. No, thank you.ColeBecause they're filled with sand that comes from who knows where, and the petroleum smell doesn't go away. And according to some reviews I read—because I did go down the rabbit hole with this—it actually increases if you sweat. So I thought, You know what, I can do this in other ways.VirginiaI'm sure there are folks for whom the weighted vest is a revelation. And, it's a very diet culture thing to need to be alway optimizing an activity. You can't just go for a walk. You need to be walking with a weighted vest or with weighted ankles. Why do we need to add this added layer of doing the most to everything?And I'm looking at a reel now where she talks about the supplements she's taking. Dr. Mary Claire is taking a lot of supplements.ColeSo many supplements! VirginiaVitamin D, K, omega threes, fiber, creatine, collagen, probiotic… That's a lot to be taking every day. That's a really expensive way to manage your health. Supplements are not covered by insurance. There's a lot of privilege involved in who can pursue gold standard healthy menopause lifestyle habits.ColeAnd it's always great to ask the question, who's getting rich off of the thing that I'm supposed to be doing for my health? Because it's never you.VirginiaYes. She keeps referencing the same brand — Pause.Cole It's hers. It's her brand.VirginiaOh there you go. So, yeah, taking advice from someone with a supplement line, I think, is really complicated. This is why it's so difficult to find a dermatologist as well. Any medical professional who's selling their own product line has gone into a gray area between medical ethics and capitalism that is very difficult to steer through.ColeAnd even in the most, let's say, the most noblest, pure intentions, it still creates that doubt, I think, with patients.VirginiaI'm interested to see some “body positive” rhetoric coming in. There's a reel I'm looking at from May, where she's talking about, “When you were 12, you wanted to be smaller…” The message is, as you get older, you're constantly realizing that the body you once had was the perfect body.And so she's arguing that we shouldn't this pursuit of thinness can leave us more fragile, more frail and less resilient as we age. Instead of chasing someone else's standard, celebrate the strength, power and uniqueness of you. “Because your body's worth isn't measured in dress sizes. It's measured in the life it lets you live.” Which is kind of what we've been saying. And this is from a woman who sells a diet plan, so I don't know how to square that.ColeThat's what I'm struggling with, with this whole menopause thing! Because when someone starts selling me supplements, or talking about weight loss, talking about tracking your protein, I no longer trust them. And yet, it's not so black or white, because there's a lot good information too. She's helping a lot of people, myself included, with the information about menopause symptoms and the history of research or lack thereof, on this. It's really valuable, and it is hard to square that with the other part.VirginiaIt says to me that these people are choosing profit. I mean, maybe this isn't the piece she believes the most. Maybe she cares more about getting the information about menopause out there, and cares more about correcting those imbalances—but she's also comfortable profiting off this piece. And that's something that you just have to hold together. And I mean, listeners have been asking me to do a menopause episode for like, months and months. And the reason I keep not doing it, and the reason, when you emailed, I was like, Oh, good, there's finally a way to do this, is I can't find an expert who is a menopause and perimenopause expert who is not pushing weight loss in a way that I am uncomfortable with. There certainly isn't a social media influencer person doing it. I mean, my own midwife is great and extremely weight neutral. I hope people are finding, individually, providers who are really helpful. But the discourse really is centering around “you’re in this terrifying stage of life you have to fight looking older at every turn,” and that includes pursuing thinness now more than ever.ColeAnd: Don’t worry, we’ll fix this belly fat thing.It’s so difficult to find providers who can talk about menopause, period. I have friends who went through menopause early and they were given every test in the world except a conversation about menopause, and found out after thousands of dollars and spinal taps and and really big procedures, that it was early menopause. So it’s so difficult to find a provider who is educated in menopause and can talk with you about it in a constructive way. So that’s the first step.Then to be so audacious as to hope for a provider who will then be weight inclusive. Maybe we’re not there yet.VirginiaWe’re really reaching for the stars.I hate to end on a depressing note, but I do think that’s where we are. I think it is hopefully helpful that we’re just voicing that and voicing this tension, that we’re seeing this disconnect, that we’re seeing in this conversation, that there needs to be better better information. That we need menopause voices who are not selling us things and pushing weight loss.But yeah, this is, this is where we are. So I appreciate you talking with me.ColeMe too, and the answer to menopause is not weight loss.VirginiaIt really does not seem like it should ever have to be. It really is never the answer.ColeIsn’t the whole point caftans??VirginiaCan we please get to the caftan stage? I’ve been training my whole life to be in my caftan era. It’s all I want.ButterVirginia Well, speaking of caftans and things that make us delighted, Cole, do you have any Butter for us this week?ColeI do. My Butter is very specific. It’s my friend Catherine’s swimming pool. A good friend of mine from New York is now here in Los Angeles, where I live, helping to take care of her mother. And they have a lovely house with a heated swimming pool in the midst of a garden. I’ve never had the opportunity to be a garden person because of where I have lived. I would love the chance one day.VirginiaIn your Full Witch era!ColeIn my Full Witch era. Lavender and roses around the swimming pool. It’s kind of like a three or four hour vacation. I went there the other day. I brought my son. He was absolutely delighted to be out of our two bedroom apartment. So my Butter is my goal. My summer goals is more of my friend Catherine’s pool. And whatever that is for anyone else, I wish that for them, too.VirginiaYes, I love this Butter. I am going to double your Butter, because we have a small pool that I love. It’s not a full-size swimming pool. It’s called a plunge pool, but it’s big enough for a couple of us, to get in. And it’s in my garden, which is a magical combination. And the thing about being having pool privilege—which I own. I have a pool, so I have pool privilege—the thing about pool privilege is your kids will then disgust you, because they will stop caring that the pool is there.It’s just like everyone gets a backyard swing set. It becomes window dressing. They don’t see it. They’re like, “I don’t need to go in the pool. I don’t want to go in the pool.” And you’re just like, do you not know how privileged you are? Do you not know how lucky you are that we have a pool? But I realized last night the trick to it. We were having dinner on the back patio, and I wanted them to go swimming after dinner, because I’m trying to wear out my kids. And they didn’t want to go in. And then I was like, “Well, what if you went in with your clothes on?” And they were like, oh my god, this is the best ever. I just let them jump right in. And then I went and put a swimsuit on, because that is not my journey.Then we hung out in the pool, and once I get them in there, we have the best conversations. Pools, being in any water, is such a nice way to bond with your kids, because you can’t really be on your phone. Something about the water, it just puts everyone in a good mood.But yeah, for anyone else with pool privilege and annoying children, just let them go in with their clothes on. It’s fine. You’re going to be dealing with wet clothes anyway afterwards.ColeThat is such a constructive menopause tip.VirginiaTrue. The reason I wanted to go in the pool is because I was freaking hot. And I could have gone in without them, but I was trying to be a fun mom, you know? Trying to have a magical moment, damn it.Well, Cole, this was wonderful. Tell folks where we can follow you, how we can support your work, where we send our vents about our menopause symptoms.ColeI’m on Instagram and have been kind of quiet on Instagram lately, but I’ll get loud if we talk about menopause.VirginiaAll right, all right. I’m here for it. Thank you so much for doing this. This was really delightful.ColeThank you so much. So good to talk.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! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.comYou’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it’s time for your June Indulgence Gospel!It’s time for a mailbag episode, so we’ll be diving into your questions about:⭐️ Virginia’s online dating adventures 👀⭐️ What we’re cooking right now 🧑🏻‍🍳👩‍🍳⭐️ How we’re doing with the Target boycott!⭐️ Plus Corinne’s best Maine recs 🦞And so much more!To hear the full story, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscriptions are ON SALE THIS WEEK ONLY for 40 percent off!If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can add on a subscription to Big Undies, Corinne’s newsletter about clothes, for 20% off.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!Episode 198 TranscriptVirginiaIt is time for your June indulgence gospel, which I am recording while losing my voice. In addition to my voice, this is also our second take on this episode. We’re having technical difficulties, so it’s just really a banger day. So Corinne, thank you for bearing with this.CorinneOh God, it’s my fault.VirginiaYeah, but we’re going to do this. We’re going to answer these listener questions. I’m going to make Corinne read them all so I can save my voice for responding, and we’re going to muddle through. It’s going to be great.CorinneIt’s going to be great.All right. Are you ready for the first question?VirginiaHit me.CorinneMy daughter wanted me to bake the red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for her birthday instead of buying them, and I used a box mix for the cupcakes. And I feel that this, in and of itself, was a rejection of mommy perfectionism, which is a rejection of diet culture. Yes?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—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!

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my conversation is with Lauren Leavell. Lauren is a weight neutral fitness professional and content creator. She focuses on creating inclusive environments for movement and exercise to help clients feel strong and confident, and previously joined us on the podcast back in 2023. Lauren is an oasis in a sea of toxic online fitness and wellness culture. And it has been super toxic lately! So I asked Lauren to come on and chat with us about the recent dramas happening on Tiktok and Instagram.Yes, we get into the girl who said nobody over 200 pounds should take Pilates.We also talk about how to stay grounded when this noise is happening online, and how to seek out inclusive movement spaces—whatever that looks like for you. Today’s episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.PS. You can always listen to this pod 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! And if you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show!Episode 197VirginiaLauren, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast! It was one of my favorite conversations. It was two years ago that you were here before, I think.LaurenI know! Honestly, we could have a conversation once a month about toxic fitness stuff. VirginiaThere’s always something. For anyone who missed your first appearance and has missed the 72,000 times I say “I love Lauren’s workouts,” can you introduce yourself?LaurenI am Lauren Leavell. I am a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. I’ve been doing that for almost a decade at this point, which is so wild. I’m not tired of it yet, which is amazing for me. I have a virtual program online, and Virginia is a member of tat community.VirginiaA groupie.LaurenHonestly, yes. Love that. I teach live classes and on demand classes. All of them are body neutral, and most of them are lower impact, because we’re here for a good time and a long time. And I also have private training clients who I program Stronger Together workouts for.When I’m not doing that, I’m apparently complaining on the Internet. Well, I try not to complain too much on the Internet. And stalking cats in my neighborhood.VirginiaYou are my favorite Internet cat lady.LaurenHuge, huge accolades here.VirginiaFavorite Internet cat lady. That should be in your bio. And you are talking to us from France right now! Do you want to talk about that?LaurenI’m really leaning into my Sagittarius lifestyle. I just picked up my life in Philadelphia and decided to move to France. People keep asking me, why? And my answer is, why not? My partner and I are child-free except for our two beautiful cat daughters. But they’re pretty easy to move. So we packed up our lives and moved to France. We are still really new here, really getting into it. And I’m genuinely just so excited for all the new stimuli. VirginiaOf course for folks listening to this episode, it is now mid-June, so we’re going to talk about something that happened a month ago, and it is forgotten in the attention span of the Internet. But I still think it’s very important to record for posterity that this happened. So Lauren, can you walk us through what I’m going to call Pilatesgate.LaurenPilatesgate occurred when a woman decided to come on TikTok, and really just rant. You can tell that she was a little bit amped up. She was talking about how she did not believe that people in larger bodies—specifically, if you are over 200 pounds—you should not be in a Pilates level two class. She was really insistent, and talked about how you should be doing cardio or just going to the gym. And then she followed up with: “You also shouldn’t be a fitness instructor if you have a gut.” Like, what’s going on? The overall tone of it was she was extremely agitated. VirginiaShe felt this deeply.LaurenShe was very bothered. Mind you, the person saying this, obviously, is not in a fat body. She’s not in a larger body. I think the tone of her video and how agitated she was is what really sparked the conversation around size inclusivity and fitness and blatant fatphobia and anti-fat bias. But it all started with someone having a very agitated car rant that I’m sure she didn’t think would go the way that it went.VirginiaI think she thought people were going to be like, Hell yeah! Thanks for saying the truth. I think she thought there was going to be this moment of recognition that she had spoken something. But I would love to even just know the backstory. I assume she just walked into a Pilates class and saw a fat person and lost her mind? I can’t quite understand what series of events triggered the car rant, because I can’t imagine having really any experience in my daily life that I would be like, “That was so terrible I need to take to the internet and say my piece about it,” and to have the experience be…I observed another human being.LaurenRight? I think that from from her follow up video it seems like she’s been doing Pilates for a while, and maybe was agitated that someone was either getting more attention or she just maybe felt some type of way in general.VirginiaI wonder if the fat person was better at Pilates than her, and that made her feel bad.LaurenIt could be anything. Just like you said, like the presence of being there, maybe even having a conversation with a teacher—something triggered her. It could have even be been seeing something online of like a fat person doing Pilates as an instructor. I know plenty of fat Pilates instructors.And the apology videos were really like, “I need to work on myself.” And also, you know…you could have worked on yourself before releasing that rant into the internet space.VirginiaI give her one tiny point for how it is a very full apology video. So often an apology video is like, “I’m sorry people were upset,” you know? Like, “I’m sorry that this bothered you.” And she is like, I truly apologize. I have to work on myself. This is bad. She does own it to a certain degree.LaurenI think it’s also because she experienced consequences. Her membership was revoked and she either lost her job, or at least is on punishment from her job.VirginiaWhich is correct! She should experience consequences. Plus there was a tidal wave of of videos coming out in response to her first one being like, what is wrong with you? This is a terrible thing. The backlash was quick and universal. I didn’t see a lot of support content for her. I saw just a tidal wave of people being like, what the fuck?LaurenI think the people who would have maybe supported that kept their mouths shut because they saw what was happening. There are people who support that message and feel exactly the same. It was almost like she was like, channeling that type of rage. And I think, again, the agitation is what sets this video apart from every other video that’s released 500 times a day on my FYP somewhere about people expressing anti-fat bias in fitness spaces, right?VirginiaShe said the thing that is often implied, and she said it very loudly. She also said it so righteously. It was a righteous anger in the first video. That, I think, was what was startling about it, I was glad to see the backlash—although, yes, as you’re saying, there is so much more out there. And really she looks like she is 12 years old. I think she’s like 23 or something. So this is a literal child who has had a tantrum. That happens every day, that some young 20 somethings says a fatphobic thing, right?LaurenI mean, actually, I was, at one point, a young 20 something saying fatphobic things to myself and out in the ether.VirginiaFrom my esteemed wisdom as a 44 year old, I try to be like, Thank God Tiktok didn’t exist when I was 23! Thank God there’s no record of the things I said and thought as a 23 year old. So, okay, babygirl, you did this and we hope you really do do the work. But as you’re saying, she said something that is frequently echoed and reinforced by fitness influencers all over Al Gore’s internet.You sent me a Tiktok by a fitness influencer Melania Antuchas, who posts as FitByMa. We see her leaning into the camera at a very uncomfortable-looking angle, saying, “If you don’t like the way I train or instruct, don’t come to my class because I’m going to push you to be your best self and you just need to take it,” basically. Can we unpack the toxicity of this kind of messaging? Because I do think this kind of messaging is what begets the angsty 23-year-old being appalled that there’s a fat person in her Pilates class.LaurenYes, totally. I think that that person may actually be like an Internet predecessor to the rant, if I’m going to be honest. This person’s content, against my own will, has been showing up frequently.VirginiaThank you for your service, by the way, that you have to consume all this fitness content, and see all of this.LaurenI’ve been seeing a lot of this person’s videos, and a lot of Pilates instructors have actually had a lot to say about it, because what she’s pitching as Pilates is not traditional Pilates, either mat or reformer. It’s inspired by, but we really shouldn’t be calling it that. And some people were like, “It seems like more of a barre class.” And I’m like, get my name out of your mouth. What are you talking about?VirginiaYou’re like, don’t you make me take her! I don’t want her!LaurenYes, please don’t come over here with this. So I think it’s a combination of the fact that maybe her workouts feel a little mislabeled to a lot of people who are professionals in the field, and then her teaching style is extremely intense. And that’s really what I would love to get into. Because I think if you’ve been a casual fitness person, you have experienced these type of intense motivational instructors and and maybe when we rewind to when we were the age of the ranter, that would have worked. That does work on a lot of people. What this person is saying is if you don’t like it, don’t come to my class. There are always going to be people who love a punishing, intense type of motivation because they never experienced anything else. They don’t know how to find motivation or how to exercise without the presence of punishment.VirginiaThis is certainly endemic of a lot of CrossFit culture, a lot of boot camp culture. There are a lot of fitness spaces that are really built around this. Like, “no pain, no gain.” You’ve got to leave it all on the mat. You’ve got to always show up and give 200% no matter what. And I guess that is, as you’re saying, motivating to some people.LaurenTell me about your childhood, if that’s what you like. You know? And it’s also a result of the United States culture in general, it is extremely punishing. And if we really stop and interrogate why we enjoy this, and why we only feel motivated by this intensity and someone getting up in our face, then we might have to slowly chip away at all the other places where softness has been denied and love and openness and acceptance have been denied. But it’s to make you stronger. It’s to make you better.VirginiaIt’s like capitalism as a workout. LaurenIt’s definitely a reflection of that type of culture, because some people maybe won’t be motivated by anything softer, because they’ve never experienced softness.VirginiaAnd they’ve never been given permission to exist in a more multifaceted way, like you’re either successful or you’re not. You can either take it or you can’t.LaurenAnd pain leads to success, right? Like, even though we all know—well, many of us know that—a lot of successful people have done no no suffering to get there. Other people have done the suffering for them.VirginiaExactly. It’s just where you’re born, which family you’re born into, that lead to the success. The idea that there are no excuses, which was a recurring theme of her videos. Like, you’re going to push yourself to be your best self or I’m going to push you to be your best self. That whole thing was so interesting to me because it was like, so you’re not allowed to just have a headache one day? You’re not allowed to be a neurodivergent person who has different needs and bandwidth? You’re not allowed to be human, really, in this in this context.LaurenNo, not at all. And it really shows. I mean, I get it. And I have seen it over and over. But the ableism that exists in fitness spaces is almost like you’re almost unable to, untangle them in so many spaces. And that’s part of my job. It’s been really, really, really interesting to be someone who’s attempting to untangle those because how can I be motivational to people who have never experienced motivation outside of the intensity and the ableism and the pushing past. That’s why I’m always talking about how unserious it is. Because this woman is telling me I have no excuses, and I have to go 100%. Like, girl, this is literally a 45 minute class. What are you talking about? This is 45 minutes of my life. Like, yes, with consistency you’ll get results from fitness. And those don’t have to be aesthetic! You will get your results from fitness if you are consistently doing a 45 minute workout. But consistently doing it doesn’t mean doing it 100% every time.VirginiaRight? And let’s not forget, we’re just rolling around on a floor. LaurenWe’re rolling around on the floor! Hopefully in a good class, we’re mimicking movements that we would like do in our lives that would cause our bodies to meet those muscles. So if I’m moving furniture, it’s usually not intensely at a speed run, I just need to be able to pick up my side of the couch! VirginiaAnd move it three feet and put it back down again.LaurenI think the the intensity of fitness is often overblown. And of course, this is hard to say as a fitness instructor who’s not thin, because they’ll be like, well, that’s why you’re fat.I think it’s really deeply psychologically baked into fitness for a lot of people, that it has to be horrible. And that’s my first experience with working out. Like, I thought it had to be horrible. Because I grew up in a family of women who only worked out when they needed to change their bodies. So it was like, oh my gosh. Remember when I was like, seriously working out for six months? It was always a sprint,VirginiaYou can’t sustain the Mean Girl workout. Like, that’s not a way to live. Or if you can, it’s a warning sign that you can live with that much punishment for that long. LaurenYeah, definitely. Growing up, I thought that that’s what all workouts were going to be. I did a lot of Stairmaster in my early 20s.VirginiaThe most Mean Girl of all cardio equipment.LaurenYes, I mean, that should have been a warning sign. But, I do think about this now, you know, I’m walking up a ton of stairs every day. I’m like, okay, well, do I need to go on a stairmaster, or am I able to just live my life and have to carry my groceries upstairs?VirginiaRight? I mean, being able to climb stairs is useful. And it’s always really hard.LaurenA number one goal of people when I talk to folks, they’re like, “I just want to be not winded when I go up and down stairs.” I’m like, I have horrible news for you.VirginiaIt’s never going to happen.LaurenIt’s a situational thing. You’re dressed in regular clothes, carrying up three bags of groceries after carrying them in from your car, or not being warmed up, or carrying, a baby in a baby carrier, those baby carriers that are 400 pounds. Yeah, you’re going to be winded.VirginiaI’ve lived in a fifth floor walk up in a sixth floor walk up, and I never got better at the stairs in the years I lived in those apartments. And I was a skinny 20 something when I was doing that. It never got easier, not one day.LaurenLiterally being out of breath is a sign that we’re working those cardiovascular muscles. Just let them be out of breath real quick.VirginiaThat’s a really helpful reframing. We jumped so aggressively into chatting about all of this that we should probably spend another beat for anyone who’s confused, explaining that people who weigh over 200 pounds are allowed to do Pilates! Can you just explain why what she was saying was total bullshit? LaurenTotally. I think that people, at any weight, can do whatever workout they want or don’t want to do. And I think particularly if you’re a woman or socialized as a woman there are always these imaginary limitations on what your weight should be. And I think that that’s really where the 200 pound conversation came in, right? Because for a not-fat woman, anything over that weight is really unfathomable to them. I definitely remember conversations around that within my own household of like, oh, we can’t possibly weigh over this number. And I’m sitting there, like…VirginiaCan you not? Because I’m doing it. Here I am.LaurenSo I think that that’s really where that number came from. She pulled out a number that she thought was just like, beyond anything. And I think it’s also important to remember that so often, when people are asked to assess what people weigh, they have absolutely zero idea.It’s really hard for people to tell other people’s weight based on how they look. So I think that that was why that number was picked.VirginiaIt sounds so scary.LaurenIn her head, 200 pounds is really, really big and really scary. And going back to weighing whatever anybody weighs, I think Pilates is a great workout for people who are in, all different types of bodies and diverse bodies. Pilates is super low impact in a lot of ways, and really good for folks who have chronic illnesses, particularly like reformer, because it could be recumbent and you’re not putting a lot of stress on your joints in the same way. So the idea that this workout that’s really almost like super in line with disability and rehabilitation, to say that there’s like a weight limit—again, fatphobia, joining in with ableism—is like, so so off base. So deeply off base.VirginiaFat people can do any workout, but Pilates in particular happens to be a workout that can be extremely body inclusive when it’s taught well.LaurenExactly. I think that that maybe also added to some of the outrage and and honestly, some of me thinking it was very funny. I’m not someone who regularly weighs myself, but I’ve always been someone who was extremely heavy, as a person. Even as a child, there were stories about me versus my cousin who was three years older than me and a boy, and how he weighed less than me for most of our childhood. I have always been so solid. And I think growing up, many of us heard like, oh, that person has the body of a swimmer. That person should play volleyball or basketball or whatever. I’m like, what is this body type meant for? Like, shotput? And then I’m teaching Barre, you know? I think it’s just so made up. And yes, maybe it’s good for people who swim to have long limbs, great. But when we close ourselves off to types of movement based on body types and weight limits, then people have a harder time finding things that they enjoy, because maybe they don’t enjoy something that they “look like they should.”VirginiaJust because you don’t have long limbs doesn’t mean swimming can’t bring you a lot of joy.LaurenRight? Just because I don’t have long lean muscles doesn’t mean I can’t teach Barre. The language around Barre and Pilates is always “long and lean.” And I just feel that’s so funny as someone who’s not long and lean. I love not being long and lean and and enjoying my classes. Some of the outrage did come from that number being named, because it’s a misunderstanding of what real people in the real world weigh when you are not around those types of people. But I also think that there are a lot of limitations put on bodies, particularly larger bodies, and what you can and can’t do. I have another video that’s actually making a resurgence right now, probably because of this conversation that fat people should only do cardio, because if you lift weights, then you might gain more muscle mass, which would increase your scale weight. So you should only do cardio, because that’s how you’re going to lose weight, which is inaccurate and very boring.VirginiaAnd it’s just really drilling into and this was the core of what she was saying. It’s the core of that Melania video, that exercise is only a tool for weight management. That you would only exercise to avoid or minimize fatness, and right?LaurenAnd because Pilates “isn’t actually good for burning fat,” you definitely shouldn’t be doing it if you’re fat.VirginiaYeah, you should be at the gym running. And it’s completely ignoring the many other reasons we would exercise, the benefits you can actually achieve. Because, as you’re saying, weight loss through exercise is a very murky thing for most people. And it’s just ignoring all the other reasons you would do it that are more fun.LaurenYeah, like “I like it.” You’re allowed to like things! But again, if you’re socialized to only know shame and punishment, then the idea that people do things out of pleasure is hard to wrap your mind around.VirginiaSpeaking of shame and punishment, I wrote recently about Andy Elliott, who is actually a sales trainer, but he’s also a bodybuilder. He’s always cold plunging. He’s always recording from a cold thing of water.LaurenAgain, pleasure, right? We can’t have warm water. We made this technology, use it.VirginiaNo, no. He’s like in Dubai, sitting in a barrel of cold water, posting his rants. And he posted this video showing off his twelve and nine year old daughters and how he had challenged them to get a six pack in less than two months. And they got shredded in two months. Then in this room full of his male sales trainees, he had them take off their sweatshirts and show off their six packs to a room full of men. It’s revolting, on so many levels. But one thing I’ve been thinking about as I had to look at the Andy Elliot crap and then looking at this other crap, these extreme examples of toxic diet culture in some ways, I think, are unhelpful. Because they make us more dismissive of stuff that’s not that. It’s like, well, it’s not that bad. Do you know what I mean?LaurenIt’s moving the the spectrum of what’s normal and what’s not normal.VirginiaSo it’s like, “Well, I didn’t say 200 pound people can’t come to Pilates, so I’m not being fatphobic.” Or “I’m not showing you a nine year old with a six pack, so I’m not being fatphobic.” But it shouldn’t have to be that bad!LaurenIt also somewhat negates the fact that most of us are not exposed to the extreme. We’re exposed to the more insidious anyway.VirginiaRight? Because the insidious is what your coworker is saying in the break room at lunch about how she’s only eating a salad.LaurenIt’s the stuff that we get daily exposure to, as opposed to these extremes where most people can point out, like, oh that’s wild.VirginiaMaybe don’t force your children to get six packs? It’s pretty clear cut. On the other hand, I kind of feel like the needle is moving on what is extreme because of the rise of MAGA and MAHA wellness culture. We’re unfortunately normalizing a lot of this really intense and harmful rhetoric.LaurenI’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think number one, yes. Also the anti-intellectualism. That also helps push these things, because if someone’s shouting confidently enough, they could sell anything. You said that person is in a sales job. Like, that’s part of that thing. It’s psychological. It’s not even based in facts. But I think that it’s on the rise, for sure, because it’s not being checked. And I also think that in that more insidious way, it’s on the rise because people are seeking to fly under the radar, and they’re seeking safety in their bodies being read as safe.In this super conservative and rise of fascism, falling in line is a way that some people will seek safety, right? But it obviously, when we get into ranking bodies as good and bad and purity testing bodies. Like, if that even exists, that means someone has to be at the bottom. It’s very clear that when we’re saying take control. Hyper individual. Yeah, I did it, and you could do it, too, applying your situation to other people’s. Like, that’s not how science works. Number one, that’s not how genetics work. And I think that people of all like races, ages, and abilities, you know, will seek safety in flying under the radar in a regime that’s getting scarier and more intense. So I think that bodies and fitness is definitely a way that people will get there.VirginiaYeah, it’s a logical survival strategy in a really dark time, for sure.LaurenSo I think that that’s part of the reason why even people who wouldn’t identify as like MAHA are on their health and wellness, and they don’t realize how quickly it gets there, but it does pretty instantly. But as someone who is has multiple marginalized identities myself, I often see people who are in similar situations, and I look at them with a lot of compassion because, yeah. Like, if you’re disabled, if you’re Black, if you’re poor, being fat on top of that, you just checked another box for people. And I feel like that is where this intensity comes from all sides. And that’s why we’re seeing even more diverse voices echoing this type of message, because people are seeking safety, and they might not even know that that’s what they’re seeking. But I can see it because I get it.VirginiaYes. That breaks my heart, but it is logical when you have those multiple marginalizations. Fatness is the one that you’ve been conditioned to think you can and should change.LaurenIt’s supposed to be fully within your control. And then that’s when we dip into disability being within your control. And the idea that you could just take vitamins or do red light or coffee enemas or something, and you’re going to cure your your chronic conditions. Like if you haven’t tried it, then you know you’re not trying hard enough. So I think it’s a really slippery slope, and it gets there very quickly.VirginiaYou’ve mentioned ableism a few times, obviously, because it’s really core to this conversation. I’d love to hear a little more about how you think about ability in your classes. Anyone who’s taken your class knows how completely different they feel from the Melania version. You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into how to be inclusive of ability.LaurenI appreciate that. I work really hard, and I try to advertise myself as someone whose classes are many levels or most levels, because I think even saying that something is all levels is not being fully like aware of the scope of people’s ability. So I try to be very clear in my communication. I don’t know how I got here, personally. Again, the pendulum definitely swung with me. I was someone who I would consider was Orthorexic and all on my organic everything, blah, blah, blah. Particularly when it like was coming down to my PCOS and how much of that was in my control.VirginiaPCOS triggers a lot of rabbit holes.LaurenRight? And, like the fatphobia in my own family mixed with that. But I think at some point it just clicked, like we all have the ability to become disabled if we’re not already, you know? We could. And disability is a spectrum. We usually like start checking off more and more boxes towards that. But because ableism is so rampant, most people would never identify something going on as a disability. Wearing glasses, wearing hearing aids, needing captions, needing accommodations. They wouldn’t identify those as a disability because it’s horrible to be disabled in this world, so we try to avoid saying that.I think realizing I had so many folks coming to me who were burnt out by all the stuff we just spent all this time talking about—and I was burnt out in that world. And that’s how I got spit out the other side. I was like, I’m going to do things differently. And more and more and more people started really identifying with that. And I got to know people individually within my memberships, and they shared about what they had going on, and oh my gosh, your classes have been so great because I have POTS, or I have EDS, or I have chronic pain, or I also have PCOS, I have PMDD—all these things.And because I am who I am, and I’m someone who is neurodivergent and I’m a nerd and I want to know what’s good for people who have POTS? What’s good for people who have blood pressure issues? What would be like a good modification or variation to throw out there to people who might not even know that that’s going on with them, because again, our medical system. Like, oh yeah, I get dizzy sometimes. Like, okay, girl, can we elaborate? But I think that just realizing, no matter who it was, every single person in my membership can contribute to my ability to teach better, because if one person says it, 10 people are probably experiencing it. That’s why I love the feedback. I love that! That hurt? I have no idea. I have one body. I literally have only this body, right? You have to tell me if something hurts, right? I don’t know, that doesn’t hurt me. Or that does hurt me, and I don’t do it, but that works for you. So you have to tell me. So I think that that’s really where it resulted from people being comfortable feeling honest and sharing, and my desire to continue making things feel good and challenging. Because I think that people think you have to sacrifice movement being challenging. Like it can’t it can still be challenging and not horrendous and punishing.VirginiaYes, this is what’s hard to articulate when I tell people how much I love your classes. This is the needle you’re threading. We think of it as so black and white. Either you’re someone who wants to go so hard, like the Melania video, or you’re someone who’s like, exercise needs to feel like a warm bath, or I’m not going to do it. And there is a middle space. There’s a huge middle space.LaurenYes. And that’s the neutrality of it all, which is yeah, I’m allowed to do this hard thing and and really invest when we’re talking about the consistency and no excuses. But if we’re talking about a 45 minute workout that you’re doing maybe two times a week, and investing in 30 seconds of challenge or discomfort, and investigating how that feels in your body and doing it. And then after six weeks, suddenly, wow, that thing that was uncomfortable six weeks ago is no longer uncomfortable. This new thing was uncomfortable. And that’s why I love movement so much. Because I feel like you can not solve, but get to the bottom of, investigate, interrogate and get to know parts of your body. And and I really do feel like the work that we do in 45 minute classes empowers people enough to go out and tell people at their jobs to eff off, you know? Like, it gives people the ability to get to know themselves well enough to know what they’re willing to tolerate.VirginiaI feel like when I do your videos, there’s always a point where honestly, I might be watering my plants or just lying on the floor, and then there’s always a point where I’m actually so in it and pushing really hard. Do you know what I mean? And it’s like, it can be both things. I get to choose which is the part that I’m going to be like, yeah, I’m holding this 20 second plank the whole time. I’m going to go for my heavier weights. We’re going to do that.LaurenBecause it doesn’t need to add up or count for anything, but it always does, even if you’re like, I’m just doing this to do something. That just just doing something will still add up and it’ll still come up later. And I think it doesn’t need to be that serious. It’s never that serious.VirginiaAny other fitness trends that are making you especially grumpy right now, or anything good you want to highlight?LaurenI mean, honestly, the backlash to that rant was good, right? There were so many good responses, I actually followed a couple people. I do think people being able to recognize that as blatant anti-fatness was good. It was a good gut check for a lot of people. And I think that that, yeah, it was good for me. That that made me feel, oh, there are seeds of hope.VirginiaNo, we haven’t fallen as low as I fear sometimes.LaurenNo, and it’s really hard. I’ve heard Jessamyn Stanley say, like, “Sometimes I don’t remember that people act this way.”VirginiaOh God, yeah. You’re really still out there being like this?LaurenYes, yes, yes, yes. So I think there was a lot of silly, goofy and and very good responses to that. I love that push and pull that we can hopefully sometimes see and still have this dialog about. I feel like it’s really important. And with so many people intentionally losing weight right now, I think it’s really important to see people who are not necessarily in traditional fit bodies doing fitness.VirginiaGod, it’s so important. ButterLaurenI was going to be funny and say that my Butter is actually butter, now that I’m living in France.VirginiaYou’re living in butter country.LaurenI have been trying different butters all the time. Hopefully people who are listening, maybe their weather is getting better. So this is a, this is like a freebie recommendation, but just a little photosynthesis. Now is a really good time to give yourself space, to open up your body again after a winter. Just a little bit of fresh air and a little bit of sunshine and a little bit of phone getting thrown across the room. Which is what I have been trying to do every single day. It really makes a huge difference. So, phone down, photosynthesis up. That is what’s getting me through right now. And I hope that other people can enjoy that. Doesn’t mean you even have to go outside! Crack a window, allow yourself to be a human being. And it’s free. You don’t need a discount code for it. You don’t need someone to sell it to you on Tiktok shop. You were allowed to be a person existing for completely free.VirginiaYes, so true. That’s really good. My Butter, in honor of you, my favorite Internet cat lady is going to be my cats. I’m going to give them a shout out. Licorice and Cheese. We adopted these kittens last year after my kids begged and begged. I mean, I’ve always been a cat person, but our old man cats had passed away. We had no cats for a while. And they make me so happy. They just are such love bugs. Because the weather is better, I think Cheese has taken your notes about photosynthesis, and so he’s regularly trying to jailbreak, to get outside. He’s trying to get outside all the time. So we are having a little cat drama in my house where the kids go outside, forget to close the door. Cheese is on it. He’s trying to get out there, and we get him back inside. But we have a screen porch, so they do get to go out and live their best life on the screen porch, which makes them really happy.LaurenOh my gosh, I love when they photosynthesize. My new place has lots of big windows and lots and lots of sunshine, and my girls have just been absorbing the sun. And they’re both trying to go out on balconies, which we’re doing the same thing you’re doing, because one pigeon goes by, and my cat’s diving.VirginiaAnd I live in the woods where there are a lot of predators. We did have an old man cat who in the final years of his life, we did let outside, because we were like, you’ve had a good run. And we’re thinking quality of life at that point. But these two babies, I want them for many, many years. We can’t risk the coyotes. And I think one of them really gets that. Licorice is like the boss of the house, but he’s terrified of the outside. I think he recognizes he’s a big fish in a little pond, and he needs to stay that way. But Cheese is like, oh, that’s my world. I want to get back there?LaurenYes, maybe a harness? Maybe that can be what the kids do this this summer is harness train Cheese.VirginiaWe’ve never tried the harness with them.LaurenHe’s still young. My girls are full grown, and when I put a harness on them, they fall over. They’re like, it’s the last day they’re ever going to live. They’re like my bones don’t work anymore. What did you do to me? We’ve been trying to harness train them so that they can go back outside, because we did have a yard before, but I think if he’s young and eager to go outside, he might put that harness on. And that’s also a good summer project.VirginiaOh, I feel like my 11 year old’s going to get really into this. Okay, I’m going to give it a go. I’m going to report back. Well, Lauren, thank you so much. Tell folks where they can find you. How can we support your work?LaurenYou can find me at Lauren Leavell Fitness and I have a membership—the level up fitness membership, where you can join live classes. You can take on demand classes. Again, it’s a silly, goofy mood over here. There are classes of different lengths. You don’t need a ton of space or equipment. I currently don’t have, really any equipment. I have. I have two pound weights.VirginiaI’ve been enjoying the recent videos where you’re like, well, I’m doing this move that I’d normally have a 20 pound weight with a 2 pound weight.LaurenPretend these are 20 pounds! So we really are accepting of all scenarios that you have going on fitness-wise here. And like I said, the replays are there if you’re not someone who gets catches live classes, totally get it. Or you just don’t want to come to a live class. And then, if you are looking for more, I do have some workout videos on YouTube, which are kind of a sample of my teaching. They’re a little less weird than I normally teach. I’m a little bit more polished on YouTube. And then, of course, Lauren Leavell Fitness on Instagram, and Lauren Leavell Fit on TiktokFay, 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! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

Before we start the show today…Have you donated to the Me Little Me Virtual Food Pantry? This amazing organization works to get low-income folks (many of whom are in eating disorder recovery) fed — and with the food of their choosing. Meaning yes, ultra processed foods that bring comfort and convenience, and yes to beloved cultural foods…and yes to trusting folks in need to know what they need.We’re trying to raise $12,000 and add 50 recurring donors to their rosters by June 1 AND WE ARE SO CLOSE TO OUR GOAL. But we need your help to crush it! Thank you!You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my conversation is with the iconic Sarai Walker. Sarai is the author of The Cherry Robbers and Dietland, which came out in May 2015—and is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month.Dietland is one of those books that means so much to me, it’s hard to put into words. I consider it a foundational text of the body liberation movement of the past decade. It was adapted as a television series starring Joy Nash for AMC in 2018. It’s just one of those books—that inducted so many of us into conversations about fatness, feminism, radical social action. Sarai has also lectured on feminism and body image internationally. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and elsewhere, and she worked as a writer and editor on an updated version of Our Bodies, Ourselves.I asked Sarai to join me today to reflect on what 10 years of Dietland has meant to her. We also talk a lot about the very mixed experience of being a public fat person, as well as being a woman, and a writer, in midlife. You will love this conversation.And! If you order Dietland and Fat Talk together from Split Rock Books, you can take 20% off the combo with the code FATLAND. If you’ve already bought fat talk from Split Rock, you can still take 10% off Dietland or any book we talk about on the podcast, using the code FATTALK. Today’s episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.Episode 195 TranscriptVirginiaThis is really a big thrill for me. Dietland came out in 2015, we’re here to celebrate its 10th anniversary. I read it pretty soon after it came out, and I remember reading about Plum and Calliope House and the Jennifer vigilantes who were killing all the evil men, and just thinking, how is she in my brain? How is she writing my whole heart in this story? So to start us off with what is probably an impossible question: How does that feel, to have contributed something that is so important to the canon? And by canon, I mean the fat feminist literary canon.SaraiIt’s funny, as an author, I don’t know if I feel it the way you’re describing it. Man, I hope that that’s the case! I guess it’s for other people to decide what a book’s legacy is, whether it’s important or not. What I can say—you know, the book turns 10 this month, and it has really meant a lot to me over the years that people have just connected with it in such a positive way.People related to Plum’s story, they really felt that I put into words something that only they had felt, which was one of the things that I really had to work hard on in the book, because I had all these feelings about my own experience with my own body. And I was like, how do I put that into words? So that was the struggle of writing the book and being able to do that. I was so happy when people really felt that the book could speak for them in certain ways, that it gave them a voice.I still hear from people! I heard from somebody just yesterday who said the book changed their life. We live in an age where so many things just seem disposable, and people forget about things and move on really quickly. Dietland, whatever its legacy may be, it has had a long life.VirginiaWe should say, for folks who don’t know publishing: For a book to still be in print 10 years later is incredible. The vast majority of books have a year, two years, and then they’re done. It is a huge accomplishment, and a huge contribution.SaraiIt means a lot to me. It’s getting a new French publication and a new translation over there. So, you know, my girl keeps on going. And it’s funny, because I think one of the things that people enjoyed about the book was the anger and the rage in it, and the revenge fantasy narrative about Jennifer.At the same time, some people were like, oh, well, things aren’t that bad. You’re exaggerating. Fast forward from 2015 to 2025, and things are worse than I could have ever imagined back then.VirginiaYou downplayed it a little bit.SaraiExactly. So I feel in this weird way, kind of vindicated? That’s not a great feeling. But it’s just so weird that the 10th anniversary is coming at a time when there’s this huge backlash against feminism, against fat. Even something as watered down as body positivity is under attack, you know? It just tells you how bad things are. So in that sense, it’s sort of bittersweet to have the anniversary at this time, because things are really just heartbreaking and scary right now.VirginiaBut also: We need the book more than ever. We need the Dietland story more than ever, because things are so scary right now. It gives us a way of articulating that. It gives us a place to put those feelings.SaraiI hope that new readers find the book now in this new climate that we’re in and people who read it before might revisit it. I’ve actually thought of writing some new Jennifer stories. I feel like they would have to be so, so violent and so filled with rage, I don’t know if they would be healthy for me, but I’ve thought about unleashing Jennifer on MAGA.VirginiaI personally am very here for this and yery, very supportive of this idea. I think there would be an audience. I would really love to see Jennifer take on MAGA and MAHA and RFK Jr. in particular.SaraiIf I end up in prison, though, I don’t know.VirginiaI’m hearing that concern, as we’re saying it out loud. Fictionalized versions of these things, perhaps.SaraiNames changed.VirginiaI mean, you’re busy, you’re doing lots of things, but it would be a public service.Many more folks discovered Dietland after it became a TV show, which aired in 2018. It was created by Marti Noxon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. And it starred the incredible Joy Nash. And we only got 10 magic episodes. It’s a really great season, but we only got the one season. I would love to hear how you felt about the show? I’ve always wondered what that feels like, to have a novel go into on the screen. It’s got to be such a strange experience.SaraiIt is strange and surreal. Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that it happened. I think so many writers do get their book optioned, but to actually have it not just optioned, but then go into production and become a television series is pretty rare. So I feel lucky that I had that.The show premiered three years after the book was published, which is so fast, but that was kind of the golden age of TV, I think.It was a great experience. Marti really welcomed me in. I went out to the writer’s room, and I worked as a consultant. I got to visit the set in New York. And basically the the 10 episodes that we got were the whole book. So, I’m really sad that it didn’t go on, that we didn’t get at least a season two, preferably five seasons would have been great. But AMC just kind of bailed out on it. There was a lot of drama there going on behind the scenes that had nothing to do with the show that contributed to that.When the show was canceled, one of the cast members posted something on social media saying, “I’m so tired of shows about women that try and do interesting and groundbreaking things just being canceled and not given a chance to grow.” It’s very hard to build an audience in one ten episode season. So I just felt like the show wasn’t given that chance. And so that makes it a little bit bittersweet. But I treasure the ten episodes that we did get. It’s an incredible privilege that we got that.Amd the show was pretty faithful to the book, actually, I thought. When I got there to the writer’s room, they were already at work and they were using it as their Bible and I was this kind of like goddess of this world. It was really weird.VirginiaThat’s amazing.SaraiAll these people working on something that came from my head. It was surreal.VirginiaAnd Joy as Plum—she’s amazing and really embodies the character.SaraiShe is so great. I just love Joy. When I was living out in LA we used to go out to lunch, and she’s so fun and just so sweet. And, yeah, I really loved working with her, and having her play Plum.VirginiaSo you mentioned feeling like a goddess in the writers room. But putting this out there did launch you as a Public Facing Fat Person, which I put in capital letters. It’s an experience that that I’ve had, a little bit as well. And it is a real mixed bag. It’s just really a weird experience to be professionally fat, especially because, in your case, your subsequent work has had nothing to do with fatness. And yet, I’m sure this is still something that comes up.SaraiYeah, I mean, you know what it’s like to be publicly fat. Everyone reacts to it differently. I’m a novelist, so I’m very introverted. The book was published in 2015 and then the paperback in 2016 and the British edition, which was a whole wild ride with the media over there.VirginiaOh god, I am sorry. I know and I’m sorry.SaraiYeah. It made our media look okay!VirginiaNo, it’s terrible. The British media is so awful in general, and it’s so specifically fatphobic. Anytime I’ve done anything with the British media, it’s been a deeply scarring experience.SaraiIt was awful. I had a big newspaper over there wanted me to write this big article for them, and they’re like, “You have to put your weight in the article.”VirginiaI mean, what?SaraiAnd then another website, this feminist website, was like “We want pictures of you to use as stock photos for other articles on body positivity.”VirginiaI’m sorry, can you not find other fat people??SaraiI’m the only one that exists. I don’t know if you know that, but I’m the only one.And so, I had years of this. I was on NPR, talking about being fat. I was on MSNBC. I was on other radio shows. I mean, that’s the game, right? And at that time, “obesity epidemic” rhetoric was a really big thing. So my book had this hook, which isn’t common for novels, but I got all these interviews and so I had to go along with it, and go out there.On the one hand, it’s really radical to be like, “Yeah, I’m fat,” and to speak about it in a neutral or positive way. It’s radical. It’s a taboo. And there aren’t a lot of taboos left. But it also just was hard to constantly have my body mentioned all the time. I remember Julianna Margulies, who was on the TV show, did an interview on a podcast talking about me and said something like, “Oh, Sarai’s a big girl.” Which is fine. I mean, that’s the thing, that’s what I wrote about. And that’s what it was like, actors, radio hosts, journalists, all referring to me as big or fat. And I’m not blaming them at all, but it was just the effect it had on me over time, was like, I started to kind of feel like a fat lady in like a circus or something. But I was reduced to the it was always about my bodyVirginiaAnd you’re like, “I’m actually a writer. I have this whole incredible ability to invent a world. Not many people can do that. Could we maybe talk about that?” Just a thought.SaraiIt was really hard for me. I thought I would love being in the spotlight, and it was harder than I thought it would be.VirginiaI appreciate you saying that. I think it is really hard. I’ve had a smaller experience with it, and that was enough. I don’t want more than I’ve had. I have a friend who says, “You don’t really know how you feel about a book until three years after the book came out. You need that time to survive.” The whole experience of launching a book—especially if a book does well—is like you’re basically disassociating a lot of the time to get through all the interviews and the press and the backlash and the trolls and whatever it creates. And then your nervous system needs time to slowly absorb what you just experienced. For me, one piece of it is like, okay, that was enough. I don’t need more scrutiny on my body or my life. We don’t owe the world that. And there’s a weird expectation that because you made a thing or wrote a thing that people are connecting with, you somehow owe them more of yourself.SaraiAnd it’s like you’re saying, if you kind of step back, it’s like, am I disappointing people? And I don’t want to do that.VirginiaBut I’m still a person with a life and my own needs.SaraiI’ve always been fat. When I was a kid and growing up as a young adult, I was deeply ashamed of being fat. And I had the kind of the experience of Plum in Dietland, where I eventually experienced liberation about my body. But that trauma doesn’t go away. So having everybody talk about me being fat all the time, it kind of triggers off things that you thought you had dealt with, or were at peace with. Then all of a sudden, it’s like picking in a scab all the time.Even in the writers room for Dietland, I was the only fat woman in there. So that was my role. I’m the fat person. I have to tell you what it’s like to be fat. And it was just always focusing on that. And that’s what happens when you put out a book about that subject. I’m not really complaining about it. It was just harder than I thought it would be and it took a toll on me.VirginiaIt’s a weird experience, and it’s weird that it’s a necessary part of getting this conversation into the mainstream.When Fat Talk came out, Aubrey Gordon texted me and was like, “I’m checking in to see how you’re doing, because the book’s doing well” Because, obviously, she’s had lots of experience as a public fat person. And she was like, “Thanks for taking your turn in the trenches.” And that is kind of how it feels. In order to keep this conversation going around fat liberation and body liberation, we do need to keep putting this work out there. Somebody has to go to the front of the line and take all the hits for a while. And you did it at a time when not many people were getting a big stage to do that. And without a network of other people who had done it, maybe. So thank you.SaraiOh, well, you’re welcome. And thank you for everything you do. Because I remember after your New York Times interview, I DMed you. I was like, “Are you okay?” Because I know what it’s like to write something and the New York Times people go nuts when it’s about fat. I’m like, are you all right? Because we have to look out for each other, you know?VirginiaI really appreciated it when you did that. It wasn’t the most fun experience in my life. When we were talking about doing this episode, you were also saying how, as a writer you have gone on to write things that don’t have anything to do with fatness. It’s not like being a journalist on a beat. So I’m sure that’s also challenging, that you’re like, this can’t always be the most interesting thing about me. That’s not fair.SaraiYeah. I mean, my second novel, The Cherry Robbers—VirginiaWhich I loved!SaraiOh, thank you. That was historical. The novel took place mostly in the 1950s. I wanted something totally different. I didn’t want to be in the contemporary culture. When the book came out, it got a glowing review in The New York Times, and great reviews, but people just weren’t interested in talking to me anymore.I mean, part of that’s is the publishing world thing, where your debut is like a debutante ball, and everybody wants to talk to you. And then once it’s your second or third book, it’s like, oh, yeah, we moved on from you. Sorry, I sound really jaded right now! But without that kind of a newsy hook, people just weren’t interested really in talking to me anymore about the book. I think you could be tempted to say, “Okay, well, I’m going to write another book about fatness so I can get back in the media attention.” But no. As you say, other people have stepped up in their writing about it, and they’re doing the work on it now. I had my time, I had my voice. I’m not saying I’ll never write about being fat again. I’m sure I’ll write an essay or who knows what, but I am just doing other things now. I’ve tried to carve out my space as a writer who is fat and who writes about all different kinds of things.VirginiaNo one needs a thin writer to keep writing about thinness. No one needs a male writer to keep writing about the experience of being a man. It’s only when you have some kind of marginalization that people then expect that to be everything you write and think about. As opposed to saying, this is a person who writes and thinks about lots of different things. And happens to be this identity, and cares a lot about that identity and has thoughts about it. But every piece of work doesn’t need to be defined by that.SaraiYeah. I mean, I live as a fat person. That’s my reality. I’m not running away from it. It is who I am. It’s inextricably linked to who I am. But I as a as a writer, as a person, I get bored easily. I want new challenges. I want to write new types of stories.In my next novel, the narrator is fat. But I only mention it once in the novel, so it’s sort of like playing around with, yeah, this character is fat, but that’s not really that relevant to the story that I’m telling. It’s there, and it kind of comes up in other ways, but it’s not the whole story. So kind of an evolution, I guess, too, of how I’m writing about fat, at least in fiction.VirginiaThat’s where we need to get with representation—where every story about a fat character should not be just about their experience of fatness. That’s so reductive. We need more characters that happen to be fat, that are doing other things. SaraiYeah, I think that that’s the ultimate goal. I don’t think we’re there yet in any kind of medium. But, yeah, that would be the dream.VirginiaWe’re working towards it.You were also saying that you feel like just a very different kind of writer now than when you wrote Dietland, which is a book with so much anger and fire in it. It’s a gauntlet thrown. You described yourself as feeling “less fiery and more muted now,” but I also wonder if this is just being older and wiser and maybe a little more jaded— but also clearer about which mountains you’re willing to die on now.SaraiI wrote Dietland in my 30s. But it was published when I was 42 because it took forever to find an agent. Then when we sold it, it took forever to come out. Publishing is quite slow. But that was the novel of my 30s. And I look back now at this anniversary, and I was so fired up. I was so passionate. I was bold and fierce and brave.Some of the things I wrote, I don’t know if I would write now, if I’d be brave enough. So I look at that person who wrote Dietland, and I’m not exactly that person anymore. And it’s something that’s been bothering me for a while.And recently, I listened to an interview with Zadie Smith on the NPR Wildcard podcast. She and I are about the same age, 50-ish, going through all the hormonal changes of this time of life. And she was talking about her earlier books and how she thinks about herself when she was younger versus how she is now. She was talking about how now, at midlife, she feels kind of quieter inside. Her big personality has sort of retracted a little bit. And when I heard her say that, I just was blown away, because that’s what I’ve been experiencing too. And I haven’t really heard a lot of other people talking about it, and I hadn’t really put it into words or myself. I think because it was upsetting to feel a bit more low key, a bit more apathetic.I’m not really an apathetic person. I’ve never thought of myself that way. But I kind of feel that way now, so it’s a weird time in my life. And I’ve had women who are older say it gets better. Like, just wait, ride this out, and you’re going to come out on the other side of this older and wiser and happier. But right now, I’m just kind of in this weird space where I just feel different. I’m a different person in some ways. I have the same values, but I’m a different kind of a writer, different kind of a person. I’m settling. That’s where I am right now. I’m kind of in the thick of it. VirginiaI think we don’t often hear this nuance from people after they do something that has the kind of impact and success that Dietland has. We often think, well that person just continues to soar and it’s all the next peak and the next peak. And that’s not every experience. Probably that’s not most people’s experiences after having a big success. It’s okay that there are valleys and different paths and different twists and turns to it.My other thought is: How could you not be feeling that way right now, given what the world is? Given what it means to be a woman right now? And everything that we’re up against. I think there’s a some universal—maybe it’s apathy, maybe it’s… I don’t know what it is, exactly. But this feels deeply relatable to me on a lot of levels.SaraiI think going through midlife and perimenopause, at a time when the whole world seems to be a disaster makes it a lot worse. Everybody is coming off the pandemic and Roe v Wade being overturned, and now Trump in office again. Our baseline is just really bad, you know? It’s just kind of everything piled on at once.But it is true, I talked to some other women I know my age, who who’ve written novels in the past and have success and then can’t get published anymore once they get into their 50s. You expect you’re going to go on forever like you do at the beginning. And you have to deal with the publishing industry. It’s a corporate industry. And there are lots of things at play that have nothing to do with whether books are good or not, or whether readers want certain books, or whatever.You start out having these expectations about how your career will go, and then you don’t realize that it’s, it’s always a struggle. Unless you’re some massive superstar writer who could have their grocery list published. But for the rest of us, it’s a struggle that just kind of peaks and valleys, and that has been a kind of wake up call ten years into being a novelist, for sure.VirginiaThe industry is so complicated. I think the ageism is very real in our industry. I mean, and everywhere. I just turned 44 so I’m kind of getting into this zone that you’re talking about. Perimenopause is definitely with me. It has begun. And I think a lot there is an invisibility that’s starting to kick in, compared to what I experienced as a woman in my 20s or 30s being out in the world. I can, sort of slip by unnoticed a little more sometimes. And sometimes I really like that, and sometimes it makes me angry. Kind of depends on the day. And I don’t even just mean male attention. I just mean the way people interact with you. I’m starting to notice some of those shifts.SaraiI think that’s one of the things that’s so strange about this time of life. There are a lot more adults who are younger than you all of a sudden. So all of a sudden, you’ve got 20 or 30 years worth of adults that are younger than you that start to see you as not important anymore.VirginiaMy kids like to remind me that Taylor Swift is 35. as if that’s an entire different generation from me. That’s not that much younger, guys! Okay, anyway.SaraiI mean, yeah, 35, she’s getting up there. But it’s kind of like you don’t matter as much anymore, in a way. Like that’s what society wants you to believe. That you’re kind of fading. I think that’s one of the things that you kind of have to push back against.And, you know, I’m Gen X. VirginiaI’m elder millennial, but I’m one year off of Gen X or something.SaraiI do think Gen X, despite all of our problems and flaws, are writing more about menopause and perimenopause and aging. And your generation will pick up that mantle and do even more with it. So I feel like, we’re trying to change things at least and make it so that we’re not fading away. I’m in my 50s now. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m still going to write. You’re not going to silence me. It’s kind of like just insisting that we’re still here, we still have a voice. But, yeah, it’s hard.VirginiaIt’s hard, and when you’re feeling that kind of personal, muted thing you were talking about and then it’s getting reinforced by the cultural perceptions of being a midlife woman. Then it’s like, am I going to summon up all the energy I need to push back against that? Or am I going to take some of that as, like, it’s a little bit liberating. I don’t have to be the young, shiny superstar reaching for the brass ring right now. It’s kind of a mixed thing, I think.SaraiWith Dietland, I was idealistic and passionate and fiery. And I’m different now, but I’m not putting as much pressure on myself either. I’m not saying everything I write, I have to change the world. That’s what I wanted before. And now I’m older, and I realize you’re not really going to change the world. You might change a few people, and that’s great. But one novel is not going to change the world. And I don’t need to aim for that anymore. I want to write different things. I want to not put that kind of pressure on myself. So yeah, there’s a kind of liberating part to it as well. I think when I’m not so taking myself as seriously and putting so much pressure on myself, I kind of loosened up a little bit. So that’s kind of the flip side of the more negative stuff I was talking about a minute ago.VirginiaI appreciate how honest you’re being about the struggle, because I just think it is deeply relatable. And then to this end of what you’re working on now, we want to hear all about the next book. You have an announcement for us?SaraiYes, so last year, I sold my third novel. But we didn’t want to announce it till I had all the edits done and we had the manuscript ready to go. So summer 2026, my third novel is going to be published. It’s called Furious Violet, and it’s a suspense novel, which is something I always wanted to do. Like a detective story.It’s different from what I’ve written, but I do think there’s a little bit of the spirit of Dietland in it, just in the voice, maybe. I guess, because The Cherry Robbers was in the 50s mostly, whereas I’m back and writing about contemporary culture.So I’m really excited about it. I’ve always wanted to write a book like this, and it’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing a novel.VirginiaI love that.SaraiMy main character, is 49 almost 50, going through perimenopause. I got to write about that experience in a sort of darkly comedic way, which is a medium that I really like, like that dark comedy that Dietland had. She’s a true crime writer. She’s writing a book about a serial killer, but she’s also the daughter of this very famous poet who is deceased, but like a giant of American poetry. This woman who has this cult following, and sort of is always a shadow over my my character’s life.So she has that, but she’s a true crime writer, and she kind of embraces her mediocrity. She’s not a genius like her mom. She’s just a true crime writer. And when the book begins, somebody starts stalking her and telling her, “You’re my mother.” And she doesn’t understand what’s going on, because she doesn’t have kids. And so it’s this mystery about what does this mean, who is this person, and what do they mean? And it’s all entangling all of that and all of the other aspects of her life, and how they all intersect. VirginiaI can’t wait to read it. I’m riveted just hearing you talk about it.SaraiI had so much fun working on it. It was a wild ride. So thank you. I’m excited.VirginiaI hope you’ll come back next summer when it comes out and talk to us about it some more. And I just have to say, I am filled with so much admiration for how you’ve evolved as a writer and how you like are going in. This book feels so different from Cherry Robbers feels so different from Dietland.SaraiThank you. I don’t like to get bored. I want to do new things.SaraiI think publishing kind of wants to put you in a box, and I don’t want to be in that box. I wanted to do something different.VirginiaIt’s awesome. I can’t wait to read it. I’m so excited.SaraiOh, thanks, thank you.ButterVirginiaSarai, do you have any Butter for us right now?SaraiI just came off months and months of edits, and when I’m doing that, I can’t read. I can’t read other people’s stuff. So I don’t have any book recommendations. But I’m really excited to start reading again. But I was listening to a lot of music. I often listen to music while I’m writing, but it can’t have lyrics, has to be instrumental.I discovered this Canadian classical violinist named Angèle Dubeau. She plays the work of a lot of contemporary composers. And I don’t know a lot about classical music. I’m not plugged into the contemporary classical music scene. But through her, I’ve discovered all these different composers. And she has one piece in particular called Experience. So if you’re on Spotify or Apple Music or wherever, I would recommend looking this up. This piece I just absolutely love it. It’s so beautiful, and I listen to it so many times. As I was editing, and then I keep listening to her work, and I don’t know it just meant a lot to me during this time. So yeah, it was really exciting to discover that.VirginiaThat’s incredible. It’s so fun to discover an artist and realize there’s more and more of their work, and you can go down the rabbit hole of everything they’ve done. I find that so satisfying.SaraiShe’s introduced me to so many different composers, and I really love it.VirginiaThat’s so cool. I’ll do a music rec as well, although it’s not nearly as sophisticated as that. But my seven year old and I are currently on a big kick with the Hamilton soundtrack. Obviously Hamilton, the musical, had its moment a minute ago. Like, it’s been around for a while. But it stands the test of time, and it’s very fun to listen to with kids. I end up having to answer a lot of strange questions, because for a seven year old, it’s just a lot of things that she doesn’t know, that she needs translated. So we have some very funny conversations. It’s still a banger of a show and really great and fun to listen to a kid. It’s our little bedtime ritual. Before we read, she’s a kid who needs to really get her energy out. And we have a swing that she likes to swing on, and we play the Hamilton soundtrack and do three or four songs, and it’s just like a fun end of day ritual that I’m really enjoying right now.SaraiI love that. I’m still listening to the Xanadu soundtrack or something for my childhood.VirginiaThese things, they’re classics for a reason.Obviously, we want everyone to go pick up a 10th anniversary copy of Dietland!Get it if you haven’t read it, or if you read it and loved it, but you’ve lost your original copy, you probably need another one. It’s a great gift for someone else, some friend, mom, sister, whoever. Tell folks anything else about where we can find you, how we can support your work.SaraiSo I have a website, and, you know, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Blue Sky, and I do have a Facebook page I don’t update very much. I do have a TikTok account that I don’t really know what to do with, but I’ve done a few videos. So I’m out there, pretty easy to find. My next novel coming out next summer, but that’s got a ways to go on that.VirginiaWell, we will keep people posted about that for sure. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.SaraiThanks. It was so much fun. So thank you, Virginia.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! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.comMy dear friend (and our nation’s leading momfluencer scholar) Sara Petersen joined me for a very fun Substack Live yesterday to discuss: Momfluencer Brooke Raybould’s protein-packed postpartum journey! Why $700 calendars are not the systemic support moms need! Would we eat seven hardboiled eggs in one meal! And so much more. Longtime Burnt Toasties will recall that …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.comICYMI yesterday… Corinne Fay and I did our first-ever Substack Live! If you’re a casual Substack user, you may or may not have noticed these popping up more frequently. Yes, they work just like Instagram Lives. Yes, they are another way Substack is becoming social media and we can all have complicated feelings about that. Yes, it’s weird that writers now have to b…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.comYou’re listening to Burnt Toast!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your Indulgence Gospel!We’ll be getting into:* How to navigate it when you’re taking a semaglutide for your health but your kids are noticing your weight loss?* Fat fashion* Some good old fashioned hate mail* And Corinne got a tattoo!This is a paywalled episode. That means to hear the whole thing you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscriptions are $7 per month or $70 for the year.If you’re already a paid subscriber, you can add on a subscription to Big Undies, Corinne’s newsletter about clothes, for 20% off.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—subscribe for 20% off! The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Today Virginia is chatting with musician and comedian Farideh. Her new album, “The Mother Load” came out on Tuesday and we're obsessed! 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. Philly Fat Con is THIS WEEKEND! And Burnt Toast is a proud superfat sponsor. It’s going to be an amazing weekend of fat joy, with speakers, movement classes, the Philly Plus Swap and more. All the info and tickets here.And don’t forget to check out our new Burnt Toast Podcast Bonus Content! Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she and her guests give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.BUTTER & OTHER LINKSThe Mother Load is on everystreaming platform Farideh on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or FacebookSuch a Good Dadthe diet songthe mom bod songhairy nipplesUsed to be a Hothe 45 minute poopthe vacation songI’m a good mom, not a perfect momThe Eating InstinctSarah J. Maas book seriesA Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting and A Lady's Guide to Scandal both by Sophie IrwinFAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.CREDITSThe Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe