The Burnt Toast Podcast

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel!Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!) We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team.Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday.Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 233 TranscriptVirginiaWe have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin. KimHi, hi, hi. VirginiaWe are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting.Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her.Kim  I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions. VirginiaTruly harrowing.KimI'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet.Virginia  Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced?Kim230,000.Virginia230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you. Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions?Corinne  My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work?Kim  When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now. That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?"So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise.Virginia  Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive.Kim  When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff. That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life.Virginia  That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this.Corinne  Yeah. I was a regular listener.Virginia  Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people.I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space?Kim  For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on. And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was. And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing.Virginia  She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine.KimOh right. I forgot about that, her original handle.VirginiaDances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix. Kim  There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people.Virginia  Yeah, it's so true.Corinne  Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from? Kim  Oh, this question.CorinneIf you want to skip it ...KimIt brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it. VirginiaIt's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory.KimIn 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me. Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore.Virginia  A blonde-ish mule.Corinne  I would consider you blonde. Virginia  I still would consider you blonde. CorinneAlso Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus?VirginiaI am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn.CorinneThis is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn.KimJohn, my husband, is a Capricorn.Virginia  I don't know what that means. KimWe're very compatible.Corinne  Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon.Virginia  Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology. But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is. The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you.Kim  There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name.Virginia  I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure. Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore have any pets?Kim  The bookstore has so many pets. We have shop dogs. Ann famously has a dog, Nemo. He appears in most of the videos. Before Nemo she had a cute little guy named Sparky, who I loved so much. There's a back office staff and they almost all have dogs and bring their dogs to work. VirginiaLove this. KimThere's one bookseller who has a dog, but she's on maternity leave, so we're a little bit short on dogs that are out on the floor, but in the back office, it's dog central. This is my second time working there. I worked there in 2019. I've mostly been self-employed and worked from home for a really long time. My mood was starting to get dark and my therapist suggested it would be nice to have some socialization and to leave my house one or two days a week. I was friendly with Parnassus, so I asked, "Is this a thing?" And they were excited, so they hired me to be a part-time bookseller back in 2019. Then the pandemic hit and they closed for a long time and it just didn't make sense anymore. I went and did a whole other job for a few years and left that job last year and went back to the bookstore. Same thing. I still work from home and I work at the bookstore one or two days a week. I do actually love a million things about it, but my favorite thing this round is everyone I work with is 24 years old, give or take. I love them so much. It is so invigorating to be around a whole staff of 24 year olds. They all love their parents. They have really good parents. They're mostly queer, which makes it extra nice that none of their parents were bad. Their parents are super accepting. They're all really smart and they're all funny. The things that are funny to them are so strange. There are all these long running jokes about, like, which Muppet are you? That's a fun thing for Gen Z.Virginia  That sounds delightful. I mean, I think bookstore people are just the best people and the most charming weirdos. And I love hearing that 24 year olds love their parents. Because even though my oldest kid is 12, and we have a ways to go, fingers crossed we'll get there.Kim  Yeah. Our generation, not so much.Virginia  It's not a given. Let's put it that way. It's not a given.We're going to do a lightning round of fun, goofy questions so we can all get to know you better. Corinne, why don't you kick it off?Corinne  All right, first question. Tell us about your pets.Kim  Ooh, I have two official pets. I have two cats. They came in at different times. They're both street cats. One is Nomi. He's kind of a Siamese cat. The other one is your regular striped street cat. His name is Benny.VirginiaAnd you have an owl in your backyard. KimI have an owl. I live in the country, so we have deer, turkey, owls, hawks, a skunk and a lot of snakes.Virginia  Nice. Favorite hobbies? I know from Instagram you are into collage making and you are into puzzles and I'm here for both of them.Kim  Yes, you are part of my puzzle journey. I knew that you got that table and you were doing them, and I thought, Ooh, that seems relaxing. We moved into this house last year, and I thought, Who am I going to be in the country? I'm going to be someone who does puzzles, and I'm going to get a puzzle table. And I did.Virginia  It's so relaxing. The best.Kim  The collage thing is new. I went to a divorce party and we were doing blackout poetry collages. I had never heard of any of this. I had the time of my life and my friend was like, You can just do this at home. And so now I do.Virginia  Corinne was nodding because Corinne is cooler and of course she knows what black out poetry collages are. I do not. CorinneI think you do, as well. VirginiaIs it like what Kate Baer writes? Like blacked out words? Okay, that is cool. I love that.Corinne  Kim, tell us your favorite comfort food or snacks.Kim  I've needed a lot of comfort this week. My go-to is chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. You do need carbs when you're this stressed out because your body's trying to slow you down and get you to rest and sleep. So there's been a lot of tendies in my life.Corinne  Are these from a specific restaurant? Or the freezer section?Kim  This week they're from a grocery store. There's a proliferation of chicken stuff here - the Nashville hot chicken. Truly, everywhere you go, there's hot chicken and there's tenders. The driving force of Nashville is chicken tenders.CorinneSounds like heaven.VirginiaBurnt Toast retreat in Nashville?? We just eat chicken tenders for three days? Start planning it now. That sounds great. Favorite thing you wore recently, and what makes it your favorite?Kim  Let's talk about jeans. I don't know what we're supposed to be wearing anymore. I am still comfortable in skinny jeans. VirginiaIt's okay. This is a jeans safe space.KimI'm locked and loaded in those high-rise, skinny jeans. But that is not what we're supposed to be wearing anymore.Virginia  They're real mad at us for still wanting to wear them.Kim  Let me tell you what the people I work with wear. It looks like I work with the Insane Clown Posse. They are wearing jeans so big and baggy it blows my mind. So I thought, Let me try. I bought a pair of - everything comes from Big Undies - I bought these Old Navy barrel jeans and I feel nuts in them. But I wore them to work and everyone was like, That's what you're supposed to look like! I've never been more uncomfortable in my life than when I wear these jeans. Corinne  You realize you're going to have to send us photos, right? We're going to be texting your co-workers to take secret photos of you. KimOh, my God.Virginia  We're going to need a photo.Kim  I went to a museum recently and wore those Old Navy barrel jeans - light wash, I will add - very uncomfortable.Virginia  You went right into the deep end of that swimming pool.Kim  I went in. And then I have this Universal Standard shirtdress. They have them in white and black. It's just a button up, floor length thing. I wore that, obviously unbuttoned from the waist down, and then I have those Crocs Dylan platform clogs.Corinne  My God, this is very chic outfit. KimI have the ones that are like clown shoes.CorinneThey're platform Crocs. Kim  I wore that to the museum and I think it's the coolest I've ever looked, but it's the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life.Virginia  So cool though.Corinne  Dying to see it. KimIt's my only outfit. Everything else is workout clothes.Virginia  You have one outfit. You're set. I mean, jeans are a whole conversation. That silhouette and changing from how we've been programmed, I feel you. But even wearing something where you're like, I know this is cool, but it feels so different from what I like. The way the trends have changed. I do feel like that is one of the oddest things about getting older - suddenly realizing the clothes are so unfamiliar. Corinne is the baby of the podcast, so she might not be able to relate to that.Corinne  Kim, how old are you?KimI'm 49. I turn 50 this year.Virginia  Ooh, exciting. When's your birthday? KimIt’s a whole thing. I'm working through it.Corinne  Wait, what if you guys have the same birthday?Kim  I'm May 20. VirginiaI'm April 30. KimOh, you're an April Taurus.Virginia  And that means a thing?I feel that it is a whole thing about clothes. You're just like, It's making less and less sense. I'm trying, but I don't know.Kim  It's hard. I think we're just supposed to feel stupid.Corinne  Well, not to change the subject, but how do you feel about brownies? Are you an edge, corner or center of the pan person? KimCenter. I can't deal with the edges.Virginia  Same. KimIt needs to all be the same texture.Virginia  You've got to pair up with your edge people so that you can get the brownies you want.Corinne  Following up that groundbreaking question, peanut butter in the fridge or pantry?Kim  Pantry. I didn't know anyone put it in the fridge. But during the storm, we stayed at a hotel for eight days, and then we moved into someone's empty house, and they had their peanut butter in the fridge. I was like, are we supposed to be doing this?Virginia  Yes, that's what the Lord intended. I am.Corinne  I am also a fridge peanut butter person.KimAre you supposed to?Virginia  Not from a food safety perspective, but it spiritually feels correct to me. It feels like it should be cold. I threw this in here because it was a recent poll on Burnt Toast and the people were against me on this. CorinneOh, wow. VirginiaWhen my boyfriend moved in, he was like, Why is the peanut butter in the fridge? What's happening? You're insane. And I was like, well, let's check with the public, assuming that my Burnt Toasties would rally around me. Instead they were all like, What are you doing? Corinne  The only open stuff in my pantry is crackers and cookies. Open stuff goes in the fridge. VirginiaIf it has a lid, it needs to be cold.KimBut what about hot sauce?CorinneFridge.Virginia  Yeah, in the fridge.KimWe do, too. But I have started to think i'm not supposed to because, at restaurants, it's just on the table. CorinneThis is true. Virginia  You have a good point. I'm not saying it's correct, but I'm saying it's correct. Another favorite Burnt Toast question that a reader submitted that we think is very fun to ask people is, which liquids would you want shooting out of your fingers? If you could have fingers that shoot liquids.Corinne  Each finger can be a separate liquid.Virginia  But also, if you don't want to think of five, it's fine. If you're like, I just want a Coke finger. That's all I need.Corinne  It could also be a liquid that's not something you drink.Kim  Like what?CorinneGasoline. That's my new best answer. I would want gas to be able to shoot out of my finger.Kim  I did just had to buy a generator. I hope this episode doesn't give me PTSD when I listen to it in a month and remember how traumatized I am from the storm. I'll be like, Why did I keep mentioning generators and hotels? Ok, I think it would be iced coffee, like a cold brew; Pamplemousse La Croix; honestly, orange juice. Love orange juice. Love an acid. That's it. Those are my three. I'm not a soft drink person.Corinne  Well, are you an electrolyte person?Kim  Oh, my God. I've been dying to talk to you about this. No, they're fake science, Corinne.Corinne  Well, fake science works for me.KimNo, I'm not. I used to be.Corinne  Talk to me when you come to high elevation.Kim  You know what? Honestly, that's fair. I have been in your part of the country a lot the last few years. We have to go to L.A. a few times a year. During COVID we couldn't fly, so we started driving, and now we are obsessed with driving cross-country.Corinne  Oh, wow. We really should talk.Kim  I didn't know you yet, but the last time we were in Albuquerque I told Virginia I wanted your phone number to ask you where to get a breakfast burrito. CorinneOh, my God! Yeah, you should have!Virginia  Corinne always has that intel.Kim  But no, the high altitude, that's legit.Virginia  I'm excited to have another electrolyte skeptic in the podcast. That's going to be helpful for me.Virginia  The beverage I will never be needing less of is Diet Coke. Are you pro or con Diet Coke, and if you are not pro Diet Coke, what do you drink?Kim  I'm pro Diet Coke, especially with pizza. I drink one on the days I'm at the bookstore. I just need one halfway through to keep going. I do love Diet Coke. I just wake up and drink coffee. That's typically it for the day, but if I'm out to eat or if I'm at work, I drink a Diet Coke. VirginiaYeah, it's a nice little treat.Corinne  I just learned that there's a difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero.Virginia  Obviously! There's a huge difference!CorinneBut what is it? No one can really articulate it.VirginiaThe taste.Corinne  But why are they making two zero calorie Cokes?Virginia  Diet culture.Kim  I think it's gender. I think they think women want Diet Coke and men do not.Virginia  Men are drinking a manly Coke Zero? That doesn’t sound more masculine.Corinne  But what is the difference? Is it different sweeteners?Virginia  I am Googling it to get to the bottom of this. "Coke Zero aims to replicate the classic Coke taste using a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium." Diet Coke uses only aspartame.Corinne  So it is the sweeteners. They both have caffeine?Virginia  They both have caffeine. They both are calorie-free and sugar-free. Diet Coke is where you want to go for that pure aspartame hit, which is what I'm looking for. Corinne  Speaking of Diet Coke, any other diet-y foods or habits that you've reclaimed?Kim  Recently, I've started eating Uncrustables, which I hadn't had for a long time. When I was doing Iron Man training, that was what you'd take on a long bike ride. So I've associated that with needing to refuel during workouts. But I've started eating them again.Virginia  They're so good. A great purse snack. I like to have one for errand running.Kim  I've also started doing that. I just throw them in there. They're great because the purse thaws it out.Virginia  Yes, exactly. I put it between my sunglasses case and my wallet. It gets nice and toasty.Kim  And honestly? Yogurt. I quit eating yogurt for a long time, but it turns out you can have yogurt for fun.CorinneYogurt is good.Virginia  Especially if you can have the full fat yogurt.KimOh, my God. Game changer. I bought it on accident because they were out of the one I buy. I was like, Oh, it never occurred to me to switch.Virginia  The one thing RFK, Jr. and I agree on is full fat yogurt. The one overlap in our otherwise completely disparate Venn diagram circles.KimThat disgusting, broken clock of a man.Virginia  Any diet-y foods or habits that you'll never touch again that you're like, Nope, that ship has sailed?Kim   Turkey bacon and turkey sausage. VirginiaLet that go. Just, why?KimI'm just going to eat pork if I'm going to eat pork. Oh, Lean Cuisine. Never bringing that back. All kinds of snacks. I could never eat a pretzel again for the rest of my life.Corinne  Oh, wow. I love pretzels.Kim  Or unbuttered popcorn. All those zero point foods.Virginia  The ones that I hear people fully reclaim are cottage cheese, but again, pivoting to full fat cottage cheese. Rice cakes surprisingly have a lot of devotees. That's one where I'm like, No thanks. People like the crunch. I don't know.Kim  The exercise stuff I remember more. All of that has just gone away. Corinne  Never going to do another Iron Man? KimNo, I am not. I just take little walks.Virginia  So much better.Corinne  Do you have any current favorite TV shows?Kim  Oh, my God. My favorite topic is television!I am watching The Wire for the first time. I watched season one and I'm obsessed with it. I'm going to start season two as soon as I have internet in my house again. I am a middle-aged white woman, so I love RuPaul's Drag Race. I am its main demographic. I'm watching that right now. There's a new season. And I'm watching The Pitt.Virginia  I can't watch The Pitt because of medical trauma, but I do think I would like it. I need a website that gives me spoilers, so I can pick and choose which episodes, then I can do it.Corinne  Our last question is what are you reading right now?Kim  Ooh, I'm reading Lindy West's next memoir that's about to come out in March. It's called Adult Braces.Virginia  🎉 Spoiler, but Kim did get Lindy to come on the pod soon. So get excited, folks!Kim  I've read all of her books. I think this is her fourth book and second memoir. Man, it's blowing me away. I love her writing, and this is beyond anything she's written before, not to disparage her other books, but this is a whole new level of vulnerability. It's so good. I'm reading Heated Rivalry, also. CorinneOh, fun!Virginia  I have both of those on tap to start as soon as I finish what I'm reading right now. I can't wait to read Lindy, and I can't wait to read the Heated Rivalry books, which I ordered from your friend's bookstore, Tropes & Trifles. Kim  That's awesome. My friend Lauren owns that bookstore. She's great. Her bookstore is great.Virginia  It felt like a really good way to support Minnesota, and also my own need for more gay hockey after Corinne got me into Heated Rivalry.Corinne  Finally! It took so long. Virginia  It did. People were so mad.KimIt took longer than it needed to.VirginiaI know. I just missed it somehow. And then I was like, Okay, I'm here. I get it.Kim  I'm in a romance group chat. One of the people in the group chat is Lauren, who owns Tropes & Trifles. The first episode hit HBO, the group chat lit up. They all just said, "All of you, watch it now."Virginia  Like, just stop what you’re doing.KimWe have to talk about this collectively. So I watched it in real time. It was a mandate.CorinneAmazing.VirginiaDelightful.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginia  Well, this was so fun. I'm glad we got to chat with you more. Before we wrap up, of course, we have to get you to give us some butter. What do you have for us?(Editor's note: my mind went blank, so we skipped to Corinne and then came back to me.)Corinne  I'm going to recommend a book that I'm reading right now and really enjoying. It's called Long Bright River, and it's by Liz Moore, who wrote God Of the Woods that a lot of people read last year. I've been listening to the audiobook version and it's great. It's kind of a detective/crime situation, but there's a lot of twists and turns, and finding out things about the main character that you didn't know at the beginning. I'm really enjoying it. I'm also not quite done, so if something crazy happens at the end, don't blame me. I think I have only an hour left, so I feel pretty confident recommending it.KimDo you know it's a TV show, too?Corinne  Oh no, I didn't, but that makes so much sense. I was listening to it and thinking it would make a great show. What is the show?Kim  Same name. It has Amanda Seyfried in it.VirginiaOh, I love her. KimIt's a great cast. It's actually a great show.Corinne  I'll have to check that out.Virginia  I love that book. Kim, do you want to go next?Kim  My butter is boba. I somehow had never had it even though there are great places all over Nashville that have it. But back to chicken tenders, near the place I live now, there's a little strip mall and it has a chicken tenders restaurant and a boba place. They're the only two things there. I went over there and they were so nice. They had me taste a bunch of stuff and they made me an iced coffee boba with a brown sugar top off. I'm obsessed with it. Anytime I'm there - it's actually across the street from where I am right now. Will I get one today? Yes, I will.Virginia  I think you need one after our morning.Kim  Why did I wait so long for boba? It's so fun and delicious.Virginia  I have to confess, I don't think I've ever had it.Corinne  This reminds me that there's an amazing TikTok of some guy trying boba for the first time. Virginia  I will endorse an item of clothing. It's fast fashion, which we know makes for a problematic butter, but I know I'm going to stand by this one because it is the third time I've bought this cardigan. It is the pranayama wrap from Athleta. I wear the 2x. It's roomy on me, but it only goes up to 3x. It's not a super size inclusive brand, but Corinne just said she doesn't care.Corinne  I never said that. I feel like a wrap is a flexibly sized item of clothing.Virginia  I agree. Athleta is a brand that frequently makes me mad because Old Navy is making plus sizes. You're the same company. The same as with Gap! I am at the point in winter where my perimenopausal self is cold and hot at the same time, and I can't wear my sweaters because I'm so sweaty. It's a real thing. You just get to a point where your sweaters are too warm, but it's still cold, and what are you going to wear?I've been getting more into the sweatshirt space, but even some of them are too heavy. This wrap is a really good one. It's lightweight, but it's warm, and it comes in different colors. I got this purplish-blue color on sale and I'm living in it. My butter is a layer that you can actually be warm, but not die in.CorinneAmazing.KimI support that. Virginia  Thank you, but I do acknowledge that it is not a great brand, and I would like them to make larger sizes. Kim, this was a delight! Tell folks where they can follow you, at your website and the name you don't like.Kim  The Blonde Mule everywhere is me. As I mentioned, I bought that name.Virginia  She owns it.Kim It’s easy to find me. TheBlondeMule.com is my newsletter where I write about books and pop culture. When I've got the bandwidth, I write essays. And then @TheBlondeMule on all the platforms.Virginia  You'll also find her in the Burnt Toast comments and Big Undies comments. And know that she is working a lot of magic behind the scenes here. You'll probably hear from her more every now and then, as well. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Two women dig into how media frames GLP-1 drugs and whether the backlash has begun. They unpack ableism around lifelong medications and who gets written out of the conversation. They critique a major news headline and point out missing context about side effects, cost, and why people stop these treatments.

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Dr. Lauren Muhlheim. Lauren is a psychologist, a fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a certified eating disorder specialist and approved consultant for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She's also a Certified Body Trust Provider and directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA, a group practice in Los Angeles. Lauren is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder and a co-author of the brand new The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Lauren joined me to chat about how she and her colleagues have been working to make eating disorder treatment less fatphobic, because, yes, that really needed to happen. We also get into why it's feeling harder than ever to treat eating disorders, or live with one, in this era of RFK, Jr., MAHA and GLP-1s. Plus what to do if your child is hiding food, lying or otherwise showing signs of developing an eating disorder. When do you intervene? And how do you do so in the most supportive way possible?If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscriiption is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 231 TranscriptVirginiaI am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time.LaurenComrades, for sure. VirginiaI've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions.LaurenI should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating. Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied. But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments. So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive. We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work.VirginiaCan you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in eating disorder treatment, or just don't know the world well, it's like, 'What do you mean eating disorder treatments are not weight inclusive? Isn't that where you go to feel better about your body?' Give an example of what CBT used to do that was harmful, and how you've updated it.LaurenWhen I was trained in CBT, I always thought it was a non-diet approach, because the focus is on regular eating and including all foods. So the center of the model is still good. But some of the fatphobic elements that were in the original treatment were - one was this insistence on regular weekly weighing and the client knowing their weight. And that if the therapist refused to weigh the client weekly, it was the therapist's own anxiety and avoidance of tolerating the client's distress over being weighed. But if you're in a bigger body, being weighed is more than just exposure. It can be traumatic. VirginiaYeah. LaurenWe don't need to put people through that, where every week they see their weight. So that's one of the first things that we eliminated. The other thing, there's behavioral experiments with a focus on challenging what they call the broken cognition. The broken cognition is this belief, and again, this was developed on primarily thin, white women who had the belief that if 'I eat a cupcake, I'll gain five pounds.' The behavioral experiment was to have them eat a cupcake, weigh them before and weigh them the following week, and prove that they didn't gain five pounds, but that's also hugely fatphobic. Because you're trying to prove to people that it's all in their heads, that weight stigma is not a thing.VirginiaWell, and you're saying, 'Look, the scary, terrible thing didn't happen.'LaurenWhich reinforces that that's the scariest thing.VirginiaEven what you're saying, weighing folks in bigger bodies can be traumatic, not because inherently it's bad to be in a bigger body, but because if you're in a bigger body and you've been weighed in medical settings, you've had that number weaponized against you for so long. That's the trauma you're alluding to. LaurenYes, exactly.VirginiaI see, so it was a lot of methodology around weight numbers meant to reassure thin women that 'Don't worry, you won't get fat.'LaurenExactly.VirginiaWhich really leaves out any fat person with an eating disorder, and doesn't really do the thin women any favors either.LaurenRight. Because it just reinforces this fear that weight gain is the worst thing that could happen to somebody.VirginiaThat's fascinating. It sounds like a lot of very much needed updates and a really terrific resource for folks. I saw in the back of the workbook under Resources, you listed Burnt Toast as one of the newsletters with an online community dialogue. It means a lot to have us spotlighted in this way. We do work hard to have our chat rooms and safe spaces in the comment section for folks coming for support. You also listed a lot of folks that we love and look to as leaders in this space: Christy Harrison, Ragen Chastain, Rachel Milner, Sabrina Strings, Bree Campos, Chrissy King, etc. How do you think about the importance of community in the work you do with your clients as you've been reframing CBT in this way?LaurenWe are big fans of yours and all the people you've named, and it was really important to us because here we are, three white women with privilege doing the updating of CBT and we wanted to take it further. It was really important to us that we learned from people with more marginalized identities. We negotiated with our editor to have sensitivity readers and we had people advising us on some of the things that we might not have been as aware of, like food insecurity, gender considerations, and the experience of people in larger bodies. As references, we tried to include some of the thought leaders that we've really learned from. Community is super important in this work because we're asking people to go against the grain of society. Many of the people that come to us for help with eating disorders are people in larger bodies who have been told by medical doctors and people in their lives to lose weight. And then they come to us and we say, 'Well, you're not eating enough.' And they think we're kind of crazy to say that. It really helps when you're asking people to do this work, which is so hard, to have other people in their lives who are supporting this. Many people don't have people in their personal lives who are anti-diet. Where do you find those people? A lot of it is online and in podcasts. I always tell people it helps, even if it's you and me and the person listening to the podcast. They're hearing the interviewer and the guest and there's two other people who are in this world with you. VirginiaThat's right.LaurenIt helps a lot. And I do think that is the missing piece for people in bigger bodies who experience disordered eating - they don't have the support.VirginiaEspecially right now. We're in a really dark cultural moment. You know, just like a swirling vortex of badness in a lot of ways. So it feels even harder, because what the federal government is telling us, what we're seeing in the news, etc, etc, is also running counter to what will actually promote healing. To that end, I'd love if we could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your work in this dark time. We just had RFK’s latest USDA dietary guidelines come out. Lauren, how are you feeling about the new food pyramid?LaurenSadly, I feel like I am not going to be able to retire anytime soon. The culture just propagates and perpetuates disordered eating in so many ways. Obviously eating is so much more individualized than just following a guideline, but what I can say is that I have never seen a person with binge eating who was not restricting their carbs. VirginiaThat’s really interesting.LaurenCarbs are basically the building blocks of what we eat, and they should be. A lot of the people who complain of what has now been popularized as the term "food noise," are not eating enough, and especially not eating enough carbs or starches. I expect that we'll see many more people coming in saying, 'I'm preoccupied with thoughts of food,' or 'I'm bingeing,' or 'I'm emotionally eating.' In our work, and what our workbook focuses on, is 'Are you eating enough regularly throughout the day? Are you including the various food groups? Are you eating enough starches and fats?' That's the mainstay of recovering from an eating disorder.VirginiaFeeding your brain.LaurenYour brain needs glucose to think logically.VirginiaYeah, and not just at the tiny bottom point of the pyramid, but throughout the day. This is something I've learned from you that I want to make sure we say really clearly, because I think it's something people know but lose track of in their own work on these issues. Often folks come to you and say, 'I binge eat. I'm out of control with food.' When you start working with them your take is quite different.LaurenRight. All the eating disorders are really driven by restriction or not eating enough, and it's true that most people come to us and think they're eating too much. They're complaining about emotional eating or binge eating. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, one of the things that CBT therapists do is ask people to keep records. Early on I was taught to have people record what they're eating, and that really offers an insight into what's going on. In my group practice, we do a lot of training of more junior clinicians, including graduate students. It's really exciting to me when I have a graduate student who's been with me for a couple months, and I say, "Well, what do you think the diagnosis is?" And they'll say to me, "Well, I'm waiting to see the food records because the person's complaining that they're eating too much." But they know from having been through this a few times, that when you see what someone's eating, you see a lot of restriction, a lot of skipped meals, a lot of very sparse meals. People really do think they're eating so much because the culture is so focused on eating these very low intakes, and that's been kind of normalized on social media by wellness culture. People are really shocked when we tell them that they need to eat more, and that is the biggest part of it. Regular eating is kind of the antidote to all disordered eating. In our workbook, we're always like, 'Are you sure you're eating enough?' And I don't want to reinforce dieting by teaching someone strategies to prevent binge eating when they're not eating enough because I'm not going to be successful at that. Because that's the hunger drive and that's what keeps us alive. People may have short term strategies that work, but I definitely don't work on stopping the binge eating or the emotional eating until someone is really eating enough.VirginiaEating enough to support the idea that you would eat less at this one point in the day.LaurenAnd then most often, a lot of the binge eating and emotional eating decreases once people start to eat more regularly at meals and snacks. The food noise goes down.VirginiaLet's talk about food noise. The rise of GLP-1s has really popularized that concept, but also, I would say, as you noted, misdefined it in many situations. How is all of that discourse impacting your work with your clients right now?LaurenIt's definitely impacting us. We are seeing a lot of people coming in on GLP-1s, or contemplating GLP-1s. We always need to distinguish people who are on GLP-1s for medical conditions versus people on them solely for weight loss. One of the problems with being on them for weight loss is that they're on higher dosages, and that's where you get more side effects. We do get some people who come in complaining of binge eating or emotional eating, and then they're on a GLP-1 and they suddenly have no appetite. It's harder to get them to eat enough throughout the day.VirginiaRight. If you're trying to go back and say, 'Wait, let's look at where you're restricting,' and now they can't access any appetite to eat.LaurenOr they're nauseous and throwing up. VirginiaOh, God.LaurenWe have been successful in a number of cases in helping our clients advocate for their doctors to actually lower their doses. Sometimes that helps, but there's a lot of nuance, right? I think we don't know enough about the full impact of these medications. Might there be some benefit for people with eating disorders in certain circumstances? Maybe. But it's a scary thing, and it definitely makes our work harder when we're focused on trying to get people to eat regularly throughout the day.VirginiaThat concept's been getting a lot of media attention, GLP-1s as an eating disorder treatment. But it sounds like you have major reservations about that idea.LaurenBecause it does the opposite of the work we're trying to get people to do. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the best validated treatment. It was developed in the '90s and there's a lot of research to support it. The model is regular eating, including all foods, not being restrictive. And symptoms typically get better. We know that with weight loss, most people don't keep weight off long term.VirginiaRight, and most people aren't able to stay on these drugs long term is also what we're seeing in a lot of research now.LaurenWe do see some people who have been on GLP-1s and then they go off them and their weight is increasing and maybe the binge eating is coming back and starting again. It's a bit of a quick fix. That doesn't solve the problem.VirginiaIt's just rooted in that old thinking of binge eaters must eat too much, take away their appetite, solve binge eating, as opposed to what you've been steadily making the case for. And all the evidence is showing binge eaters are responding to restriction. And so a drug that encourages more restriction, how would that long term solve binge eating? I would love to also talk a little bit about managing eating disorders and disordered eating in kids. You specialize in teenagers. Whenever I have a reader or a friend, as I now parent a middle schooler, reach out with concerns. I'm always like, 'Check out. Dr. Mulheim's work. This is your first stop.' You're a big proponent of Family Based Treatment, FBT, for adolescent eating disorders. On your website you wrote, "I do not believe that parents cause eating disorders, but I know they can be an important part of the solution. Hence, I'm an advocate for the inclusion of parents in the treatment of their children."Let's talk a little bit about how parents can help. What behaviors and symptoms do you take seriously? How do you be part of that solution?LaurenThe first thing is that eating disorders in children and teens is harder to spot than you think. My advice to parents is, if you have concerns, definitely check them out. Some of the signs we see are stopping eating certain foods, eliminating dessert or not eating meals and saying they've already eaten. We may not see weight loss in in a child or a teen. They may just fail to gain, because remember, they're supposed to be gaining over time. Sometimes they're growing and they're not gaining, and that's the equivalent to weight loss in an adult. We also see things like social withdrawal. What looks like depression, poor sleep, or loss of interest in activities. It can look like depression or anxiety. Or complaints of stomach aches. A lot of parents go down the gastrointestinal route, trying to figure out what's going on. It can be very confusing. Family based treatment is a wonderful evidence based treatment. It was developed at Stanford and it's a manualized treatment that basically allows teens to recover in the home. Because traditionally, teens were pulled out of the home. Parents were blamed. There was this saying about how it was always the mother's fault.VirginiaOf course. Clearly.LaurenClearly following on the trend of the schizophrenogenic mother, the autistic mother.VirginiaWe cause autism. We cause eating disorders. LaurenThat has really perpetuated. I still meet people who say it must be the parents. I try to remember we're all in this culture and parents are doing their best. Parents are getting diet messages from all these other health professionals in our culture. I try to remember that they become the messengers of the cultural message. There is often dieting in the home, but does that cause eating disorders in itself? No. And we see that because not all siblings develop an eating disorder. A lot of parents diet and their kids don't develop eating disorders. We have to give parents a chance. The great thing about FBT is it's done through family meals and normalizing eating all foods. It's a great chance for families to come together. I find it very powerful when the parents are unlearning their diet culture with their teens. They're able to do that. Sometimes it's a little bit of a hard wake up call, but most parents can get on board pretty quickly. It's really powerful when you see a whole family change the way they've been eating. It gives the parents a chance to learn the information. Whereas if the teen goes off to residential, the family doesn't come along and then the teen goes back into that home, so it's challenging. It's a lot of work for parents because they become the treatment team. VirginiaIt is a lot of sitting at the table with a kid who doesn't want to eat, which, any parent, regardless of whether they've managed an eating disorder, can tell you that's a nightmare. That's really hard to do and often it can feel counter to some of the other messages we get. If you're looking at the Ellen Satter model of feeding kids, it will be very much not forcing kids to take bites, and in FBT, when you have a kid refeeding after a lot of restriction, you do have to require them to eat. And that feels really strange. Some of the interviews I've done with families who've done this, it is so moving to hear the parents work through their own stuff and come together in a different way to support the child. It's pretty transformative. For parents who are noticing some of the early symptoms, like hiding food, or kids may be lying about what they're eating, how do you recommend parents manage things in those stages? Like, okay, I'm keeping an eye. I'm probably going to talk to the pediatrician. Probably going to, you know, do I need to level this up? And also, how do I react in the moment to some of this stuff?LaurenWith as much compassion as they can, and in a non-shaming way. If you think that you know your kids are lying about what they're eating or hiding food, we really want to just encourage them to eat more with you. Which, again, this comes back to all eating disorders require people to eat more. If someone's hiding food, maybe they're not getting enough at meals. If someone is refusing to eat meals, they're not getting enough at meals. It's a good chance for parents to be more watchful, to try to make sure that meals are eaten and that teens and children have access to a variety of foods. That they're getting their nutritional needs met. A lot of parents, again, because the cultural messaging is so intense, think people should be eating less. If you've taken care of a growing teen, you see how much they need.VirginiaHow much your grocery bill has increased.LaurenParents may not be aware that their teens are supposed to be going through growth spurts. I do some trainings with Rebecca Peebles, who's an amazing pediatrician, and she emphasizes how teens are supposed to gain about 50 pounds as they go through puberty. Where are you going to get that weight if you're not eating enough. The growth pattern for a lot of kids is to grow out before they grow up. There's supposed to be this weight gain. We observe teens who are starting to gain weight to fuel this growth, and then someone panics, whether it's the pediatrician or a parent or the child themselves, and they start to restrict. That's the prime time for when anorexia can strike. If they had been left alone, they would have just gained and grown. Now you have to do all this work to get them back to that weight so that they can start to grow again. VirginiaI think that's so helpful to normalize. This is what we want our kids to be doing. I'm parenting middle schoolers and I am shocked sometimes how fast a group of 12 year olds can empty the snack cabinet or the ice cream freezer, but this is what we want them to be doing right now. When you see that hiding food behavior, parents often think they need to correct that behavior, instead of stepping back and thinking about what led to the hiding. And is this a food that you've given a message they shouldn't have as much of? Or as you're saying, are there other parts in the day where they're not getting enough? I also think a lot about the schedules these kids are under. They're at school all day, then they're going to sports or play rehearsal. My kid was out of the house for 12 hours yesterday. She was starving when she got home, and if you are coming with a diet mindset, you might be alarmed by that. But it completely makes sense that she didn't have enough time to eat during her school day and needed to make up for it. LaurenYeah. VirginiaWell, this is so helpful. Your work is reassuring and grounded. Whether folks are dealing with an active eating disorder or not, if you're parenting teens, if you're working on your own stuff with food, Lauren's work is an incredible resource. The workbook is really great, so thank you for that.LaurenThank you. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginiaSo we wrap up every episode of Burnt Toast with butter, which is our recommendation segment. Do you have any butter for us today?LaurenI've been having a lot of fun with gardening fruit trees in Los Angeles. It's been really fun. I just recently pruned a peach tree to get it ready to hopefully bud and produce fruit. Peach trees have to be shaped in a certain way. You don't want the central leader you've got to have key branches. So I studied, and then you have to reduce the fruit, which is very sad.VirginiaOh, you have to cut off baby fruit. LaurenYou have to cut off baby fruit because otherwise it just produces too much. You want to select which peaches are going to get bigger. That's been fun. And I'm growing an avocado tree. Pretty soon I have to go outside and spray it with sugar water to encourage the bees.VirginiaAmazing.LaurenTo hopefully pollinate it. I love that. I've been hand pollinating my passion fruit vine, which is a whole other thing.VirginiaI am so jealous that you can do all of this outside. I am currently raising a indoor orange tree because I live in New York and it is 20 degrees today. It is stressful. I have to tell you, Lauren, I don't think she's living her best life right now. I mean, who among us is in this time of year, but I just added a humidifier because I got a hygrometer. She was starting to lose leaves and her humidity was only 22% because it's so cold, even inside my heated house. It's so cold and dry. So my butter is going to be my humidifier for my orange tree. I'm hopeful, because she's got fruit on her, and it's starting to ripen, but she's dropping leaves because the air is too dry. It's high stakes over here right now with the orange tree.LaurenBeing able to grow outside. VIrginiaIt's more logical than what I'm doing, but I just love the idea of fruit trees. We do have, in my garden outside, blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, all that stuff. But I wanted year round joy.LaurenIn California we have to get the no freeze hours berries.VirginiaIt's a whole different world over there. Fascinating. Well, yay! Here's for fruit trees for everybody! I don't know if I want to recommend everybody get an indoor fruit tree, because it is quite a project, but she is bringing me a lot of joy, as well as I'm stressing and over there filling her humidifier twice a day.LaurenRight? It’s a lot of work to take care of these trees.VirginiaBut I'm on it.LaurenI'll be back spraying my avocado tree with sugar to invite the bees.VirginiaYou know what? There's also something to be said for an obsessive hobby right now to just give you a little thing to focus on. I can do this. I can spray this tree with sugar water. Because there's a lot we can't control. So you know what? Fruit tree farming seems like a great use of energy. LaurenAnd then you get to eat them. VirginiaYes, exactly, and that's what I'm really excited for. And make delicious beverages and whatnot. Lauren, tell folks where we can find you. How we can support your work.LaurenMy website is https://www.eatingdisordertherapyla.com/. That's where my group practice information is, and my books are listed there. I have blog with a lot of resources for people with eating disorders, and for parents. My books are available wherever you buy books. They're both by New Harbinger Publications and The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders is available now.VirginiaAmazing. We'll link to all of that. Thank you for being here.LaurenThank you so much for having me.Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Make sure you are following us for free in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these. The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies. This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for a BONUS January Indulgence Gospel!This episode is free for everyone. If you enjoy it, consider a paid subscription to Burnt Toast! It's the best way to support our work and keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space. You'll also get behind some of our most popular paywalled episodes like: 🧈 Why is Katie Sturino Working for Weight Watchers?🧈Don't Go On the Pete Wells Diet🧈The Mel Robbins Cult of High FivesAnd more! (Find every Indulgence Gospel episode here.) Never miss another episode! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast!Episode 230 TranscriptVirginiaSo today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions. CorinneThis is kind of my favorite type of episode, VirginiaSame. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news? CorinneOne thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry. VirginiaI haven't watched it. CorinneOkay, but do you know what I'm talking about?VirginiaWell, I'm just going to Google it real quick.CorinneOh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend. Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly.VirginiaOh come on, it’s a sports thing! CorinneThere is so little sports. Let me just tell you.VirginiaOkay...CorinneIf you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn. VirginiaOh! Okay. CorinneIt's based on, like, gay romance novels.VirginiaOhhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend. CorinneAnd I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together. VirginiaObviously.CorinneIt's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie.VirginiaSo okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters? CorinneI'm invested. VirginiaYou're invested.CorinneIt's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry. And you see their butts a lot.VirginiaWell, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay.  CorinneThen you've probably read the novels.VirginiaI may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me. CorinneThere's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey.Virginia You have learned nothing.Corinne There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know.VirginiaOh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup?CorinneI don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever.VirginiaDelightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight. I really do feel like you maybe need to consider a Buffy watch at some point.CorinneNext time I have 47 hours unscheduled weeks.VirginiaI mean, you can chip away at it too. It's on Disney Plus! Oh wait, you probably don't have Disney Plus. CorinneMy bad. VirginiaNo that's fair. Well, it's been very fun we're in season four now for the Buffy fans in the audience. And it's going to start getting a little more violent. I'll have to feel it out. But I think we're, at the point of no return. That's a good TV update. Have you been reading anything good? I read a book that I think you liked, and I don't think I liked it. But I think I'm in the minority. CorinneWhich book?VirginiaHeart The Lover by Lily King.CorinneOh, my God, you didn't like it?!VirginiaNo. What am I missing? CorinneWhat didn't you like? VirginiaI felt like they were all so annoying and pretentious. Is it because I was an English major, so I don't like English majors? We're just pretty annoying, with all the literary references. Okay, we get it. You are boys who read books. I was just like, why would you sleep with either one of them? I don't get it.CorinneOh, fascinating. I mean, I was just sobbing for the entire second half.VirginiaIt does get sad in the second half, but I didn't like him, so I didn't care?CorinneYou weren't invested.VirginiaAnd it's not hard to get me invested in a health journey of any sort! I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but—okay, spoiler alert! We're going to talk about it with spoilers, so that we can really get into it. If you didn't read that book, you'll want to skip ahead about a minute and a half. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈SCROLL TO NEXT SET OF BUTTER EMOJIS TO AVOID SPOILERS!Okay, I thought it was real weird that she gave a kid up for adoption, and then was just like, "But I know she's fine. It's fine. It's all fine." And yet she was so worried about the kid she did have who had health issues. I mean, of course she was worried about him— but she had just mentally been like, that one's fine. I picked good people. They had a nice photo. So I know she's having a great childhood. That was really weird to me. CorinneI mean, I felt like that seemed like the decision of a young, stressed out person,VirginiaYeah, maybe. And how she keeps talking about it is meant to be a trauma response?CorinneIt was a questionable young person decision.VirginiaYes, definitely. But it felt weird that she would never reflect further upon it as she got into her own motherhood. I'm not saying she was wrong to give the baby up for her adoption. I also think abortion exists, and that would have made sense. But I'm not saying she should have kept the child. I just thought, don't you think you would have gotten any more nuanced in your feelings about it as the years went on?CorinneThe book is her getting more nuanced about it. Right?VirginiaNot really! Not about the baby. She's like, Yeah, she's fine. I mean, she finally tells him about it, but.CorinneI don't know. I think she was kind of in denial about it, or just avoiding it, and then the book is her coming to terms with it. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈END OF SPOILERSVirginiaWell, I just felt like everyone was pretentious and unlikable. And it feels like everyone loves this book so much, and I don't know what I missed. CorinneHave you read her other books? VirginiaNo, this was my first Lily King, CorinneOkay, because there's also, like a connection to one of the other books. VirginiaWell, I'm not going to read it because I didn't like any of these people. But Corinne loved it, guys, so if you love it, if you've read it, let us know in the comments! I was just surprised. This is the first time I've ever not liked one of your book recs.CorinneI am a little surprised, but I think maybe I'm primed to like those college, academic group of kids books. That's a genre I really like. Virginia I think it's a genre I don't like. I think I actively dislike reading about people in college.CorinneYeah, it's interesting, because I'm not like, looking back fondly on my own experience at that time. Yeah. I think I just like, enjoy the dynamics. Did you read A Secret History? VirginiaNo, CorinneI love that book. So I feel like, this was maybe tapping into that.VirginiaI think I just think academia is very pretentious? CorinneIsn't one of your parents a professor? VirginiaYes I was raised by professors. CorinneSo maybe there's something there. VirginiaThree out of four of my parents have worked as professors. So yes. I grew up in academia. CorinneOkay, well, none of mine have. VirginiaWell, I am now reading The Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's about this woman, who's sort of lost  in her life and moves into a convent. And I keep thinking "Corinne would really like this book." CorinneIt does sound good to me. Virginia I don't know if I like it, but I do think you would really like it. Usually I'm a big do not finisher if I don't like a book. And I will say Heart The Lover was a snappy read. So I kept going. Because I was like, well, Corinne loved this book, so I'll keep reading to find out when I'll love it. And that was never, but it was a fast read, and this one is too. I'm moving through it quickly, but I think I do need to really root for the characters.CorinneThat's funny. I have a conversation like this a lot with my mom, because she doesn't like books where the characters are too flawed. We always say it like, if she doesn't like them, she, doesn't want to read it.VirginiaI am okay with flawed, but they have to be flawed and likable.CorinneThey have to have redeeming qualities,VirginiaAnd maybe some awareness of their flawedness in a interesting way?. I don't know. I don't need them to be good people, but I guess, endearing? And in these two books, I'm not finding anyone that endearing. But they are interesting, all right. CorinneWell I'm also extremely curious to hear about your 30 Day Strength Challenge.VirginiaOkay, yes! So despite the fact that in our New Year's Day episode, I was like, "We're not doing any January fitness challenges!" Three days later, I was like, Oh, I'm doing a fitness challenge. It's a challenge created by friend of the show, beloved podcast guest, Anna Maltby, who writes the How to Move newsletter. And she has a 30 day strength training challenge going on this month. And I saw it, and I love Anna, but I wasn't going to do it. Because I was just like, oh, I'm not going to do that. And then my friend Mary texted a bunch of us and was like, "I really want to do the strength training challenge. Who's in?" and I was like, "Oh, all right, sure, I'll do it with you!" And, it's very fun. It's getting me to work out consistently five days a week, which I never do! Oh, let me pause and say, we're going to talk some specifics on weights. If you don't want to hear numbers, skip ahead. Man, I'm just getting people to fast forward through this whole episode! We're done with book spoilers, but we might mention weight numbers. So if you don't want that... skip ahead again.CorinneAnd just to clarify, you mean weight lifting numbers. Not body weight numbers. BUTTER EMOJIS AROUND WEIGHT TALK🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈VirginiaNo, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with body weight. I am not doing this to lose weight. I am doing this to support my friend who wants to do the challenge, and because I kind of liked the idea of seeing what it would feel like to increase my weight training for a month. CorinneSo, my question is: It's a 30 day challenge, but you're not doing strength workouts every day for 30 days, right? VirginiaNo, Anna makes her programs very customizable, so you could really do anything. You could do one workout a week and be like, "This is my 30 day challenge." She lets you make your own plan. She does include a suggested schedule, which is six workouts a week, but only three of them are weights. It's three days of weights, two days of cardio and then a Pilates day. I'm trimming it down to five days. [Post-recording correction: It's actually 2 days of weights, plus a "core and conditioning" HIIT workout where only one move involves a weight. Plus 3 suggested cardio and Pilates days.]And my main goal for this is to see: Is this helping me reliably carve out a few more workout windows in my week? It's getting me to try out days when I wouldn't normally do a workout., and see, does it make sense with the schedule? If so, when I'm done with this challenge, then I'll reflect on, do I want to keep this schedule? Do I want to do go back to two days of weights but do a little more cardio? I'm kind of just using it as, a see how it feels to do more weights and more workouts. To see how it feels to do more movement, and then think about what kind of movement I think I want to keep doing. CorinneCool.Virginia Yeah. it's been fun so far. I did print out the little calendar and write down my plan, and I've been giving myself little stickers. So we love that. I'm only a week into it at this point, so it could all fall apart. But I think Anna's so good at creating challenges that aren't about losing weight. She says this is more prescriptive than her usual work. She is encouraging you to make a schedule and stick to a schedule, to give yourself some accountability, which I think can be interesting. But there's no weight loss goal. She really wants people to feel empowered to develop weightlifting workouts they do on their own, not with the aid of a video. And I love you Anna, but I'm not going to do that. I just want you to tell me what to do all the time. CorinneTotally. VirginiaI don't want fitness mental load, but I am following her advice to, keep track of how much weight I'm lifting. And then to see over the course of the month, if I can increase that weight. So right now there are some moves where I only use 10 or 15 lb weights. Can we go up to 20 or 30? We'll see! CorinneI spoke to someone else who is doing this challenge. They were very sore!VirginiaYeah, I'm pretty sore. Yesterday, we did a weights workout, and there was one move that required bands, and we didn't have bands. And two of my friends came to do it with me. So we substituted side planks for those moves, and it turned out to be quite a lot of side planks, and my obliques are real unhappy, But, you know, it's like, the good kind of sore where you're like, Oh, I did a thing, yay. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈WEIGHT LIFTING TALK OVERWhat about you? How's power lifting going these days?Corinneit's going good. I kind of haven't been going very much, because it was just December. Like, did I go at all in December? I feel like maybe just the first week or two.Virginiabut then you were driving to Oregon and back.CorinneYes, my mom was here and we traveled. So I'm kind of, getting back into it after a little break. And that's always a little hard. For the first couple workouts back, you're like, Oh, I'm weak. VirginiaOr I like to reframe it as, Wow, I can really feel like I got a hard workout without doing too much.CorinneSo that's where I'm at. Beginning again! VirginiaWell, it is the time of year for that. And also, I support everyone not doing workout challenges. One of my friends who's doing this challenge, as of this recording, has yet to do a workout even though we're six days in because she has Covid, poor thing. So I think it's really good to do these things, but not do them in a overly obsessive way. Oh and I have a low key goal for myself this year of improving my flexibility. I really would like to have an easier time getting off of the floor. CorinneIs that related to flexibility or not? VirginiaI think it's a combination of flexibility and strength. If I think more about my glute muscles, I can get off the floor more easily. But there is also some reaching involved, and I don't know there's mobility, for sure. And I feel like as I've been getting stronger, I've also been getting a little stiffer. And getting off the floor is hard. CorinneYeah, it is.VirginiaAnd it's not a moral imperative, but I end up on the floor a lot because I have kids, so I would like it to be easier to get out of that position. CorinneMaybe you need to get rid of all your furniture.VirginiaThat's the thing. That's what we'll do. CorinneBecause sometimes I sit on the floor when I'm watching TV. I don't know why. I'm just more comfortable. So maybe I should just get rid of all my furniture.VirginiaProbably that's the next logical step. CorinneI am not sitting on the couch while I watch TV. VirginiaBut make sure to keep it in your neighbor's house or your in-laws house. CorinneMy auxiliary house. VirginiaSo you can go work on it during the day. For folks who are like, what are they talking about? This is a reference to an episode we did where we looked at is everything a diet, and we looked at an article from Dwell by a man who had given up all of his furniture in service of his family's health. And we're here to say you don't have to do that. Chairs are great.Okay. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is my new orange tree.CorinneWow. This is an indoor tree.VirginiaIt's an indoor tree. It's my favorite thing I got for Christmas. My mom got me an orange tree, and my eight year old has named it Olive Piper. So it is Olive Piper, the tree. CorinneOlive the orange tree. VirginiaDon't overthink it. But it has two oranges on it! They're green, but I'm tracking them turning orange. My mom has an orange tree, and she's been getting lots of oranges off it. And I think she has better light than I do, but I'm really optimistic. It's an exciting new thing to obsess over.Corinne That's really exciting.VirginiaAnd if we do get oranges, how thrilling will it be?CorinneIt seems like an orange tree would smell good.VirginiaIt doesn't smell like anything right now, but I think maybe once the fruit ripens. CorinneOr I guess I was thinking of flowers,VirginiaOh yes, Well if anyone does indoor citrus, hit me up with your tips. Because I don't know a lot about it's life cycle, I'm worried about how much to water it, all that kind of stuff.CorinneI wonder if in the summer, you can put it outside.VirginiaWell, my mom strongly advised against it. She tried that and it was like an orange tree crisis. I guess citrus trees are prone to bugs and funguses and so if it's happy, just keep it where it is, just keep it happy. It's pretty big, too. CorinneShould we do some questions?VirginiaLet's do some listener questions.CorinneAll right. The first one is, What should I say to a friend when they are complaining about their own body?VirginiaOh, these are always such annoying moments. Truly, just annoyed for you. CorinneI think there are two sides here. One side is: It's clearly bothering you. And the other side is: Can you empathize with your friend who's clearly having a hard time. So I think you kind of need to balance how much it's bothering with you, with, how much it's bothering them. Do you want to just set a hard boundary? Like, "I'd rather not talk about this." Or do you want to be like, "That's really hard, my body bothers me sometimes too." VirginiaHow much do you think the relative body sizes of the friends matters here?CorinneI think if it's someone smaller than you, it might be triggering to you in a different way. And you might want to just set a boundary, versus if it's someone who's bigger than you complaining about their body. VirginiaYeah, I think it does matter. I think if it's someone smaller than you, it's okay to say, Hey, I'm sorry you're having a hard time, but I am not the person for this conversation. Wish you well with that, but I'm not the person for this. If it's someone bigger than you—I don't want to invalidate your own struggles with your body, but can you understand it more from the perspective of they experience bias and stigma that you don't deal with, and find empathy for it is harder for them to navigate seating or doctors or clothing access, etc. I think that has to play into it.CorinneThere's also layers of privilege with this stuff though, that you might not know about. Like a thinner person could also be more disabled, or a transgender person or a person of color. VirginiaGood point. CorinneAlso, there are no details in this question. Like, what are they complaining about? VirginiaI assume weight, if they sent it to us! CorinneYes, but maybe they're complaining about, my butt is too big for this chair, or people stare at me when I do XYZ thing, versus, just like I have flabby muffin top, right?VirginiaThat's interesting. I think if someone is just denigrating their body, that is harder to absorb as a friend than someone who's like, "I'm talking about what's difficult in my lived experience of my body." CorinneTotally,VirginiaBut on the other hand, of course, people do really struggle emotionally with feeling negative about how their body looks. So I'm not saying they don't deserve a place to vent about that. But if they're venting requires the use of anti-fat language, that's a problem. If your best friend is New York Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells, I think you should set a boundary and say, "Pete, I don't want to hear about how you lost the weight of a basset hound." If the only way they can talk about their struggle is to invoke anti-fat rhetoric and language, I think you should set a boundary. CorinneI think that's a good way of talking about it. Like, what are they complaining about? Is it anti-fatness, or is it something else.VirginiaThe next question is a very fun one. Please tell us about your pets, including their names and origin stories.CorinneI'll go first because I only have one pet.  I have a dog named Bunny. I've had her for almost 10 years, and she's around 11. I got her from a shelter in Albuquerque when I moved here, or not long after I moved here. I had been knowing I wanted a dog, and I was living in a bunch of situations where I was not allowed to have a dog. So as soon as I entered a situation where I was, I got a dog. She's a pit bull. She was a scrawny little shelter dog. And now she's kind of entering her old ladyhood.Virginia11. Wow.Corinne I love her. She's also kind of bad. She's, not great with other dogs, not great with, like, smaller creatures in general. But yeah, she's my dog, so! VirginiaShe's allowed to have preferences and feelings about the world. I admire Bunny from afar. When Corinne drives to Maine, and I'm always like,"Come and stay on your way to Maine in New York!" She's like, our dogs can't be friends. So we haven't figured that out yet.CorinneAlso, also chickens. VirginiaWell, the chickens are in a coop. I mean, it's easy to keep Bunny away from the chickens. I promise, okay. Speaking of, yes, I have chickens.CorinneHow many pets do you have? Would you say?VirginiaI currently oversee? Manage? I manage a flock of 13 animals. CorinneWow. Does that include the chickens?Virginia That includes eight chickens. I would like to underscore that I am a cat person who would be happy owning one cat. One to two cats is, to me, the correct number of pets. I do like dogs. I am much more of a dog person now that I have a dog. But they are so much more work than cats. It's not even funny. It's not the same conversation at all. So if I had a different life, I would be a one to two cat person. However, I have a child who is an animal whisperer. Like truly, that is her love language, that is her passion, that is her whole world. And you're supposed to really try to encourage your children's interests. And so somehow, now I have 1000 pets. When the kids were born, we had, at the time, three old man cats that were dying off in their early childhood. And then once we were down to one cat, we got the dog. So we have a Bernedoodle named Penelope. And at that point, in 2020, we also had the dog, a cat named Walter, and a fish tank. And when we divorced, I said, I will keep the dog and Walter the cat who hates the dog will go to their dad's house and the fish tank went to their dad's house too. Oh, I'm sorry we also had a leopard gecko at that point. So I kept the gecko. And I've talked before on the podcast the story of Blue the gecko. I won't go into it now, but Blue the gecko did disappear for a while. So we adopted a second gecko, and now we have two geckos, Blue and Kat. And the dog, Penelope. CorinneWhat is the lifespan of a gecko?Virginia it's like 25 years. It didn't know that when I got a gecko.CorinneAre you kidding me?VirginiaNo. Blue and Kat and I are in it for the long haul. They can live a really long time. But I will say they are very low maintenance pets. When they're not lost in your house, they just sleep in their tanks all day, and you feed them wax worms every couple of days. It's no work. Compared to a dog, it's fine. They're less work than a cat. So for a while, we were a household of just dog and geckos, and then the kids convinced me to adopt two kittens, so we added Licorice and Cheese, our two cats. And Cheese is my favorite of all of the pets. And I tell all the other pets this all the time, because I'm always hoping to inspire them to be more like Cheese. Cheese is the most laid back cat. He's like, You do you. I'm fine. I'll come and curl up next to you, but I'm not in your business. I don't create drama. I don't create interspecies drama. Like Penelope and Licorice are always working stuff out. Cheese is my favorite child. Everyone knows this. And then after we were really at indoor pet capacity, I would say, with the two geckos, the two cats and the dog, Jack, came into our lives, and he really encouraged my 12 year old's passion for chickens, and now we have the eight chickens. CorinneWow. VirginiaAnd the chickens do have names. Let me see if I can do it. Pom Pom, Turkey, Shiva the destroyer, Lord Peanut of Doom, Peggy, Alex, Lily and somebody else. Oh, Thomas J Finnegans. CorinneWill you be getting any other animals. VirginiaNo. CorinneAsk your children.VirginiaI say no, okay, but I cannot with confidence. I mean, for sure, if we have a casualty, there will be a strong argument for replacement. I have held firm on no second dog, because as much as I love Penelope, they are so much work. Dogs are like adding another child to your home. And I don't want that. And I don't think anyone wants another cat, because, I mean, we make Jack do the cat litter now that he's here but none of us were real enthusiastic about litter box cleaning. So that’s the one downside of cats. And for anyone whose kids are pet curious: I don't think reptiles are actually great pets, because they are not very interactive or interesting. This is an unpopular position, but I think if you're inclined to go reptile and you live in a neighborhood where you can do it, chickens are a better option. They are also tiny dinosaurs and you get eggs, and they're more fun and interactive, CorinneThat makes sense. VirginiaAnd it's about the same work wise. They're not a ton of work. Also, just be a cat person, though. I mean, it's fine, nobody needs this many pets. But they do bring us a lot of joy.CorinneAll right. Well, on to the next topic. Question, do I need to buy a sex pillow? Instagram keeps making me think I do not sure if they are size inclusive.VirginiaI think you do. You don't need to buy one off Instagram. But we learned from Brianna Campos, when she came on to do our fat sex episode, that they are definitely size inclusive and, a really good option for fat sex. CorinneI feel like, if you're wondering about it, why not? At the very least, you have something to try out.VirginiaSee if you're into it. I wonder if Instagram keeps sending this person the same one they send me, which is like a very high end linen sex pillow. CorinneOh, wow. VirginiaCalled Tabu. CorinneI'm not getting advertised this. VirginiaWell, you will now. I've been curious about it. I've been, seeing the ads.CorinneI would definitely look into whether it's size inclusive. Maybe see if there are reviews from anyone? Or how strong the foam is? VirginiaAre we worried about it getting flattened? Are we worried about width? Like, you don't want to feel like something's narrow? You don't want it to feel like a yoga block underneath you? So maybe check some measurements. But I think there's got to be some good, fat-friendly sex pillows out there, because the sex wedge is really helpful for working it out with bodies with bellies. It gives you new angles to get to. We say go for it and report back and let us know. CorinneGo for it. VirginiaOkay, I will read the last question: Hi. I am wondering if you find that personal responsibility vis a vis sustainability to be a diet ever? For example, pledging to do something to help the planet in absolute terms. Like, I will never, ever drink bottled water. I will never buy a new article of clothing, etc. It seems blasphemous to say personal responsibility, efforts towards sustainability is a diet, but I'd be curious to hear your and Corinne's thoughts on it. I do think it's great and necessary to take steps to reduce, reuse, recycle, have a smaller footprint, use resources responsibly and sustainably, but sometimes the rigidity of people's rules around this and the moralizing feel familiar to diet culture.CorinneI do think it can be a diet. it's one of those things where you kind of have to find the sweet spot between it feeling like a restrictive diet, and not being so jaded that you do nothing. So it's not being like, I will never, ever drink bottled water, but also not throwing every plastic bottle you encounter in to the landfill.VirginiaI think anytime we're absolute about something, we start to enter into a perfectionist territory, which goes diet-y, fast—if by diet we mean using a set of external rules to judge yourself, setting high standards that are impossible to achieve, and deciding there's an arbitrary standard of goodness by which to measure yourself. Those are all the main components of how Burnt Toast defines a diet. And I can see them showing up here. But it doesn't mean like you're saying that the actual impetus to want to live more sustainably is problematic. I think it's that we are so used to feeling like if we're doing something, there's one right way to do it. That's how we apply a diet lens to this topic. And it's sort of ironic, right? Because the whole goal is to live more sustainably. And there is nothing less sustainable than a diet.CorinneI've definitely, felt this way about the sustainability fashion conversation sometimes where people are, like, "There's absolutely no excuse for shopping from fast fashion brands." VirginiaBudget, accessibility...come on, guys. CorinneHave you ever been a size 26 and needed a pair of pants immediately.Virginia I can think of so many reasons why folks need to shop fast fashion at least sometimes. And I just think anytime we remove the possibility for gray areas we remove the ability for something to be sustainable, I also think a lot of the steps that people take towards sustainability and get really obsessive about doing "one right way" are not necessarily the things we most need to happen to save the planet.What we really need is, big legislative change, industry regulation—all these big things. And it's not to say that personal choices don't matter, but you becoming overly rigid about bottled water is not going to make or break anything. So how is it useful? How is it getting you towards the goal? And at what cost? If we're always kind of moving the goal post on what's enough here, that's not useful. Which is not to say, don't do some of these things. But the absolutism, I see it all the time, and I think a lot people start those projects and are not able to sustain them. And I say this to someone who regularly feels like she's not doing nearly enough for the planet. So I'm not saying I've got to figured it out. There's certainly more I could be doing. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterCorinneWell, I think we made a podcast.VirginiaI think we did that! What's your Butter today?  CorinneOkay, my Butter is something which I also just recommended on Big Undies, but it is called Ponaris, kind of guessing on how you say it. And it is a nasal emollient. So it is like a little glass bottle with a dropper that is filled with oil and minty herbs or something.Virginia Beef tallow. CorinneAnd you drop it up your nose and it immediately drips down the back of your throat and clears everything out. VirginiaOhhhh....so not beef tallow. CorinneIt feels amazing. Someone recommended it on the Big Undies Fall Must Haves. And last week, I just, reached a tipping point where I was like, my legs are scaly. My sinuses are scaly. VirginiaI am becoming a lizard. It's too dry. CorinneIt was like a desert inside of me. And so I ordered a new lotion and some Ponaris. Anyways, apparently it was developed by NASA for astronauts to use in space as. part of their first aid kit. VirginiaOh, my God. Oh, my God. CorinneSo that’s science, if you've ever heard of it. VirginiaIt's good enough for the astronauts noses, guess it's good enough for my nose! CorinneIt's a little bit weird. But I do feel like it's really making a difference.VirginiaWell I totally want to try it. I also totally want to say that this is your second MAHA-adjacent recommendation.CorinneIs this one MAHA? I was thinking this was more like the solar shield. VirginiaWell it's in the woo, woo supplement territory. CorinneOkay, well, yeah.VirginiaWe're getting into ear candling vibes. People are going to be like, I love ear candling.CorinneIs that MAHA?VirginiaI don't know. CorinneI don't know that it is. Ear candling is, crunchy hippie, right?VirginiaBut it's the crunchy hippie that then circles back around to MAHA. I'm just saying, we're concerned and we're tracking. CorinneThank you for your concern. VirginiaWell, to make you feel better, my Butter is also going to be a weird nasal supplement.CorinneOh, amazing. Wow. We did not plan this. VirginiaIt's also perfect because this is the pets episode! Mine is a weird supplement that I'm giving my cats so I won't be allergic to them.CorinneWhoa, does that work?VirginiaI can't believe I'm saying this, but... yes, it seems to be really working. Question Mark?CorinneWhat is it? VirginiaOkay, it's a brand called Pacagen. It's a chicken flavored powder, and you sprinkle a little on the top of your cat's food. And they claim, I guess this too, is science. Question mark? They claim that it changes the protein in your cat saliva, and that's what we're allergic to. And cats lick their fur everywhere. So that's why you react to cat fur. I, despite being an avowed cat person, am allergic to cats. I live in a lot of denial about it, because I love them and wish to have cats, and don't wish to acknowledge the cat allergy that I live with, but I was reaching a point last fall where I was like, I mean, I am definitely, really allergic to my cats. Every time I pet them, my eyes were streaming and, you know, I wake up with a stuffy nose all the time. Is it sleep apnea? Is it cat allergies? Who knows? Anyway, someone on Instagram influenced me to try this because she claimed it totally worked for her. And I was like, whatever, we'll try it. And both Jack and I, within like, two weeks, were like, oh my god, we're really a lot less allergic, and I can pet the cat now and not have an immediate reaction.CorinneWow, that's amazing. VirginiaNow, couple of caveats.It's quite expensive. I'm locked in now, but it's like 60 bucks a month, or something. Like, it's not nothing, especially because I have two cats, so I need to buy, like, multiple things, and itcomes in these little, teeny bottles. Also, my family, who are all much more cat allergic than me, when they visited for Christmas, were like, You're crazy. We're still allergic to your cats. So I don't know what level of allergy severity it works for. I would have described my allergy as mild to moderate. But also I don't know, maybe they were having colds or something. Nasal stuff is very mysterious. It's very hard to nail down what's causing it. So we don't know. But it's working well enough that I'm going to keep buying it for the lifespan of these cats, I guess, and as long as I feel like it's still working. It's something to try, because otherwise I was like, am I at the allergy shot stage? And that felt like a whole big project. I hope this is helpful information for anyone else whose nose is dry and stuffy. You can put oil in it, and you can feed your cat something weird.CorinneAmazing. VirginiaAll right. Thank you all for listening. We would love to know what is new with you and what you're putting in your nose. Take that in whatever direction you want! Tell us in the comments. Make sure to rate and review us in your podcast player and tell friends where they can listen for breaking news about nasal substances. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies. Our producer is Kim Baldwin who also writes The Blonde Mule. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your January Indulgence Gospel! Today we are talking about former restaurant critic turned diet crusader Pete Wells—and why the New York Times always spends January turning into a women's magazine from hell. CW for discussions of intentional weight loss and lazy fat jokes (from Pete), including some that are offensive to both humans and bassett hounds. You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!Don't want an ongoing commitment? Click "buy for $4!" to listen to just this one.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with the one and only Melani Sanders. Melani is a digital creator and the fearless founder of the We Do Not Care movement. If you are a woman in your 40s, 50s and beyond, you are very likely already in this club. Melani's viral club meeting videos, where she runs down a list of everything "We just do not care about anymore," are the kind of thing that my friends are constantly sharing and dropping in our group chats, and I'm sure it's the same for you. Melani perfectly articulates the pressures we're under, and when she names it, it feels easier to let it go. So I loved this conversation. Welcome to the Burnt Toast chapter of the We Do Not Care Club. Let's get this meeting started.If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work!Join Burnt Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 228 TranscriptMelaniHello and welcome to all members of the We Do Not Care Club. I started this club for all women in perimenopause, menopause and post menopause. We are putting the world on notice that we simply just do not care much anymore. This is a special body liberation edition. Yay.VirginiaI'm so thrilled to have you here. I just love your work, and I'm a huge fan. So thank you for doing this.MelaniThank you for having me. VirginiaWell, you just kind of exploded into all of our lives in the last year. Where did the We Do Not Care Club come from? What's the origin story?MelaniThis was something that happened by chance. I was at Whole Foods in the parking lot. I was waiting on Whole Foods to open up because I was out of ashwagandha. Ashwagandha has been a huge part of my perimenopause journey. It is my prerequisite to life, that and coffee and a few other things. I got to have that. It helps me to feel more stable. I realized I didn't have any more. I woke up, and I keep it on my nightstand, and I turned the bottle over to look for some. And I pulled the cotton stuff out, and I said, 'Oh, crap.' And it was about seven something in the morning. They weren't open until eight. I was in the parking lot when it opened. When I got back in the car, I popped open my ashwagandha. I took the ashwagandha, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I honestly just didn't care much anymore. I didn't comb my hair. Everything was unstructured. I had on a bra that was half the size of my boobs, and it was, it was all out of order. And I didn't care that I didn't care. And I thought, I'd been a creator for a while, for over four years. And I said, 'You know what? Maybe I could start a club called a We Do Not Care Club.' And I hit record and I asked, "Did anyone else out there feel the way that I did, and if so, join me. Join the club." And sure enough, by the time I got home from hitting that record button, my phone was blowing up. It was blowing up. The notifications: "Absolutely, I want to join, I want to join. I want to join." Yeah, I'm in it, I'm in it.And sure enough, my platform grew to maybe about 500,000. The WDNC is at 6 million now, across all platforms. VirginiaUnbelievable.  MelaniI was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day. VirginiaOh, my God. How are you? Because that's a huge shift in your life.Melani Yes. In the beginning, I was very scared. I've freely shared emotionally what this is doing for me, mentally, all of it. I'm just openly sharing because I'm just a girl in perimenopause, and I hit record as it was happening. I didn't quite understand it, because when you get new followers, it's like, 'Oh, I got 100 new followers. Yay. That video did well.'But when you look and you're gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day, it's like, 'What is going on?' I was trying to be sure, like, did something else come up besides this video? But then, typically, I'll post and I’ll post on several platforms at one time, and they were all going viral. They were just going. So it scared me. And honestly, in the beginning I ran because I wasn't the content creator that showed up every day doing a lot of content. Sometimes I don't post for a week or so. VirginiaYou're living your life. MelaniYeah, I'm living my life. I'm not stuck to my phone or to social media. I got very nervous, because look at me running my big mouth. I started a club and now I'm not even all there. I don't even know who I am most days. So how's this going to work out? I think I've migrated from scary to just a bit nervous. You know, this is the internet, and there are so many things that are so out of the box. It's very surreal. Very surreal.VirginiaWell, I feel like it blew up because you voiced something that so many of us are experiencing and didn't know how to voice. It's a good kind of blowing up. You're giving voice to this thing, women's experiences in our 40s and 50s and beyond are not talked about. It's not made visible at all. But I can imagine it's, yeah, coming with quite a cost to you personally. So thank you for your service on behalf of all of us.MelaniWell, thank you. The one thing I do want to add is that I feel as time has gone on, I've felt like I was meant to do this, if that makes sense. As I cry openly. I cut my computer off for a while. I really just examined everything that was going on in the sisterhood, all of the comments like, what do they see? What do they hear? And to your point, just being able to say things out loud. I'm getting stronger in that. But before this happened, balance was something that I really, really, really tried to master, if that makes sense. And just paying attention to Melani and what it is I need. I was on this journey before WDNC started. So now that I'm here, it's like I can apply all of those things that I have been trying to do to make my life better. I'm able to take that and put it into WDNC.VirginiaOne of the themes of your content that resonates with me really deeply, and I think with the Burnt Toast listeners, something we're always talking about is how to let go of perfectionism and these expectations that are put on us as women, as moms, especially around cooking and other domestic labor. One of my favorite entries on the list recently was 'We do not care if we said we were cooking dinner this morning. That was this morning's energy, and this afternoon is different.' And I was like, yes, that is how I feel today. Thank you. MelaniAbsolutely. That was when the coffee was hot.VirginiaDoes naming these specific things that you want to let go of, does that actually help you let go of those expectations for yourself?MelaniYes. The announcements are comprised of me and my thoughts, but also the sisterhood. I take a lot of the content from that. So collectively, if our sisters don't care about that, then we don't care about it either. And yes, it definitely does. What really helps is just we are all high fiving each other, and it's like, like you just said about the kitchen and cooking and all of that. Yeah, it feels good to know I'm not the only one.VirginiaWe're all not cooking dinner tonight.MelaniIf you're hungry, the kitchen's not locked. Figure it out. Figure it out. We got stuff to figure out.VirginiaThe main thing at Burnt Toast that we don't care about is diet culture. We are trying to make peace with the bodies we have now. We are trying not to keep chasing the dreams of the bodies we maybe used to have, or never had, but thought we should have. What are some of your favorite body related things to stop caring about?MelaniOne, and I speak about this in the book, in The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook, is my arms. It's one thing that I have been so… I've kept my arms covered up, no tank tops, for years. I have a 24 year old, and when I when I got pregnant with him, my body stretched out a lot, and I got a ton of stretch marks on my arms, and then I ended up having surgery some years later, under my arm, so I just felt like it just looked bad. And I covered it up for a very long time. And after starting the We Do Not Care Club, I really just started to take inventory to be sure that I'm living up to what I'm saying. And I said, 'You know what? I'm about to go put on one of them tank tops, and I'm going to go to TJ Maxx.' And so I walked into TJ Maxx with my tank top on, and I looked around, and I'm trying to figure out who you know. I know they're looking, they're judging, and nobody really gave a damn about my arms. I'm the one that cared so much. So now it is what it is, darling.VirginiaEverybody deserves to not be hot and sweaty. Tank tops are great. MelaniEspecially in midlife, tank tops are life. You look at how many years--my son is, 24 years old, and I went through all of this time, and it was in that moment where it's like, 'Girl, don't nobody care. You better show your arms.'VirginiaYou have a right to show your arms. It’s just a body. MelaniIt sounds so easy, but mentally for many of us, it's not. We know we will judge ourselves. We're waiting to be judged. We're comparing ourselves, and it's like the hell with all of that. VirginiaIt's true that there are times body things do get commented on. One of mine is the way I gain weight. I get mistaken for pregnant quite often. I carry my weight in my midsection and it's this awkward moment that for years, I was like, 'Oh God, am I going to look pregnant in this dress? Someone's going to say something. It's going to be this weird conversation.' And then I was like, 'Well, that's on them for saying the rude thing to talk about.' If they feel uncomfortable in that moment that is not my problem to worry about. They're the ones commenting on someone's body when they shouldn't be. And that really turned that around for me.MelaniYeah, exactly. The one thing that I really focus on now as I study the sisterhood is empathy. I have this saying, and the saying is, 'If our sister's coochie is dry, then we all have dry coochie.' And it pretty much means that her story is our story, and not everyone has that quick confidence or that ability to just turn it off. You know how some things just come so easy to some people, and it's like, it sounds so good, but then it's discouraging, because it's like, 'Damn, why can't I just let go of these insecurities?'I'm okay with being vulnerable. I'm okay with it. It's fine, although I still do have my insecurities, such as showing my arms. But I think together, just being able to share this stuff, we get stronger together. You know what I was going to do, and I might still do it. I think I'm going to go live and I'm just going to sit up there and show my arms, my under arms. VirginiaI love that. MelaniYou think? Well, seriously, I think I'm going to do that, and then, or maybe I can start a challenge or something, and it's like, post what you're most embarrassed about? And then I'm normalized, yeah, let's not, let's normalize it. How about it? Yeah, wow. I had coffee earlier, so I'll probably just wear out in a little while. But the inspiration is there now. No, seriously.VirginiaWe're recording at 9 A.M. There are a lot of big dreams.MelaniYeah, by 5 P.M., it's like, 'No, not doing it. Get out my face.'VirginiaDon't want to show the internet my arms today. MelaniThat's dumb.VirginiaBut I love the intention behind it. And you're right. I think it's making space for 'we are allowed to show these parts of our bodies and not feel shame' and not downplaying actually how difficult that is in a world that's been throwing us these messages our whole lives. You didn't think of the idea that you should feel bad about your arms, that's a society wide message that you've been fed since you were a little girl. So it is really hard work to stand up against that, and not every day is a day to challenge the patriarchy in that way.MelaniYeah, exactly. No. I was joking, but I do think I am going to do that. I think I'm going to start a challenge, and I think that that's going to be good.VirginiaI think it's a great idea. So you mentioned the book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook. Would love to hear a little more about this. The main thing I know is that the dedication is to the asshole who told you you had a computer box booty. So I read that and was like, 'Okay, well, I'm ordering it for everyone I know.'MelaniYeah, that was the intention behind it, for sure. And I wanted to preface it with that, we can have some words in it, but it's a bit of fun. It's what Melani is, and what I'm comprised of is there's a very humorous side to me, there's a very serious side to me, and then there's this educational part to it. So I think that we have to be sure, as we're going through this stage of life, in perimenopause and beyond that we can definitely say what we don't care about, but then we also need to have intention about what we do care about. Let's have fun with it. Let's have fun with it and talk about why we do not care what the back of our hair looks like. It's the front that matters. That's what we can see, and being able to be okay with that. But then, we have to still just kind of pay attention to how that affects us mentally. Like, we do not care if our room is junky, but at some point we want to be able to clean up that room and to dive into it a little bit. So it's just bits and pieces of some fun. Some pieces where it's like, 'Come on, girl, let's get up girlfriend.'And I'm sharing this through my own personal journey, from childhood to where I am now, and how I put over the years, a lot of expectations on myself, and now that I've reached midlife, it's like, as we said, the kitchen is not locked. That was a priority when I was raising a family and trying to be that perfect wife and make sure things are together. Now, it's like, 'Baby, I'm in survival mode. I don't give a damn about what y'all have going on over there right now.'Reprioritizing is where we have to be, and be okay with it. We're at capacity. We're at capacity. Don't add anything else to our plate. If anything, take something off. So that is the gist of The We Do Not Care Club Handbook. VirginiaI think a lot of what you're articulating is this larger inequity. I don't see a man launching a We Do Not Care Club. I don't think they need it in the same way. I don't expect a midlife dad to because he's been getting to say 'we do not care' his whole life.MelaniSince birth.VirginiaRight. He's been allowed to not care. And I think what I love about what you're saying there is, like, we're allowed to say we do not care about these expectations. But we can care about ourselves. We can care about our own values. And it'll benefit us to clean up the room at some point. But doing it because people are coming over and they're going to judge us, that's a different conversation.MelaniThat is exactly what the We Do Not Care Club is. Because we just have to come to a reality, you know, and be honest with ourselves. Because the pressure is real. Nine times out of 10, most things that we're doing in life is like, we do it because of what it looks like or feels like to others versus how it looks or feels to ourselves. Just being able to just migrate to that mindset of not caring if my house looks like this. And you want to come to my house? This is how my house looks. If you have judgment, don't come. But if you want to clean up, go ahead, get the broom. But before this, I would be like, 'Oh no, they're coming over. Let me run and do this, and run and do that.' And it's like, why am I driving myself crazy? Yeah, I'm already not all there sometimes. VirginiaAnd if they're really your friends, they'll come and sit with you with the laundry basket, like they don't care. That's the other power of the sisterhood you're building is we're all saying to each other, 'Oh, wait, you don't care about that either. Oh, great. We don't have to be more expectations on each other.'MelaniThat's right. It feels so good when you can just be around someone and you're not worried about them judging you or comparing yourself to them, or vice versa, and just live. There's such quality in those type of friendships.VirginiaMy group of friends now in my 40s, is just everything. These are the women who, like, have held you through so many hard things in your life, who are like, we're showing up for each other, and especially now in this life stage with parents who are sick and dying, or teenagers going through their big feelings, just all these really, real things. I do not have time to care if my house is perfectly decorated for the holidays.MelaniI'm so happy that you have those friends. I would say that I do, too, but so many of us don't. And hopefully in this sisterhood, we can find that connection with other like-minded sisters. And it's like, 'Hey, you can find your tribe here.'Because we end up - the pressure, the stress of caring so much - many of us internalize that. I was reading about this with suicide. As far as the suicide rate, it's because there are all these bottled up feelings of comparison, rejection, and not being accepted, all of those things. And I just hope that this is opening up the door to be able to be okay with who you are, where you are, and what season you're in. It's okay.VirginiaPart of the expectations game has been that you don't talk about what's really hard, right? Someone asks, 'How you doing?' You say, 'Oh, I'm fine.' 'Oh, hanging in there, you know.' And you don't really get into a real conversation. I think women are taught that we have to protect the marriage, protect the image of the perfect family, to the degree that then we don't let people in when things are hard and that's really dangerous.MelaniIt really can be. It really can be. And like you said, we're the nurturers, we're the protectors. Men are there, and thank you so much, men, but we have to really be the ones to keep it all together. And we're the ones typically that are falling apart.VirginiaIs there anything you've let go of? You talked about the arms. I'm interested if there's any other things that you used to really put pressure on yourself to do that now you're like, 'I've fully stepped back from that.' And 'Wow, I can't believe I used to care so much about that.'MelaniI think I'm a work in progress as it relates to not caring. I think it's more of a reminder, because subconsciously, I think we do a lot of things that we don't even realize that we're doing. Then it's like, once I sit with it, the quieter I become, the more empowered I become, and also the more aware I become. I think with me, body image has definitely been one. And maybe the clothes. I'm not really chic and aesthetic and I'm about to go on this tour. It's like, what am I going to wear? Because I got some jogging suits in there that I could throw on, you know? And I'm okay with that. VirginiaBe comfortable. MelaniYeah, be comfortable. Some things I'm extremely vulnerable. I don't care. But, like I said, subconsciously, I don't even pay attention to some things that I might be a little bit ashamed about, or worrying what people think of. I was trying to think of an example. A lot of it comes around, like, cleanliness around the house. Like, my baseboards. I looked at them the other day, and I'm like, 'Good lord!' And then I kept walking.VirginiaI don't consider the baseboards to be my business. They're on their own journey. MelaniThey are. VirginiaThey are not for me to know what they're doing. MelaniYeah, that's their life. This is our life. VirginiaMy eyes are up here. I'm not down there looking at them.MelaniYeah, stay in your lane. We stay in our lanes. And so that was a lane that I definitely bypassed and kept going because I can't care. One day.VirginiaFair enough. So you're publishing this book in January, and January is honestly, historically, a time of, like, so much caring, right? Like, this is when people are like, I'm going to start the diet, I'm going to start the new workout routine, I'm going to be a perfect, healthy individual and organize every closet. Was that deliberate to publish in January, to give us a little bit of an alternative? It’s like, you're giving us a really useful counter name, right?MelaniThis is going to be real helpful, right? VirginiaYeah, I think people need to hear it in January most of all. No, you don't have to go so hard, like, pace yourself.MelaniYeah, pace yourself. And it's so funny. The word "pace." I started therapy last year and my therapist, she wanted to come up with a word with me. And every session I would go, I go weekly, every session I would go, and I could not come up with that word because a lot of them were so cliche, like "intentional" or "growth," or "finding," whatever it is. But when she came up with the word "pace," I said, 'That's it.' I mean, for sure, this year, I have told myself so many times you have to pace yourself, pace it. So, unintentionally that word is my word. But as it relates to the intention behind the date? Nope. This book got started in June. Harper Collins, they are under the Harvest imprint. They crashed this book. They crashed it. And it's like that, 'We need it. We want it bad. It needs to get out here.' And I was like, 'Okay, I don't know the first thing about writing a book, but I can run my mouth.'VirginiaI'm not surprised they crashed it, having been in book publishing for a long time, I had a feeling that's what happened to you. It makes sense they want to get it out here right now, in this moment where we're having this conversation about your work. But I actually think the January timing is very smart. MelaniYeah, I like that you said that.VirginiaUsually by the end of January, everyone's exhausted because they spent the whole month trying to, like, not eat sugar and not drink any alcohol. I mean, maybe some people should not drink alcohol, but, like, they don't necessarily serve us to put all that pressure and external expectations on ourselves. So for you to be publishing a book that's like, 'Hey, here's another way to go.' I think it's brilliant timing.MelaniI'm so glad. It's funny because I did not put those two together. Yeah, January is definitely the year to start over, new me, new year, new everything's going to be perfect. And then by February, it's like, okay, let's scale that back a little bit. Did I say that?VirginiaJanuary is morning energy.MelaniYeah, right, it is! I like that. January is morning. So, what is February? February, I think around noonish, we're on that decline.VirginiaMarch is dinner, for sure. March is, we're ordering takeout. It's like, oh my god, winter's not over yet. And yeah, this is brutal. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginiaWell, to wrap up Burnt Toast, we have a segment we call butter, which is where we each talk about something we've just been really loving lately. Like, what is buttering your toast right now? And it can be a TV show or a book or something. It can also just be, like, a color I love, or, something funny someone said, like, anything that's brought you a lot of joy recently.MelaniSomething I would say that I'm loving right now is Melani. When this journey first started for me on May the 13th of this year, I was extremely fearful, and I doubted myself, and I said it so many times, 'I'm not enough. I'm not enough.' I had to decide, Melani, if you're not going to be enough, just go sit down. Girl, just go sit down somewhere and be quiet.Or it's like, you know what? Let's dive into this a little bit. And so I've decided that that is what I'm going to do. I'm not used to being at the front of the class. I'm used to being the person that's in the back of the class, or I'll be the one to get things together and definitely put that quality aspect behind it, and to be sure that we meet whatever goal needs to be met. I say I'm the sister that will hold the door for you and grab your pocketbook while you go up on that stage and do your thing. That is me. But I have had to to turn into this to do something different, and I'm being forced to challenge myself. And I wish that I had have had this kind of mindset, or this type of where it wasn't so forced some years ago, because that definitely would have been beneficial for me. What makes me happy now is my mindset towards where I'm going. And you know this sisterhood and collectively how I mean when you go through the comments and you see things, it is the beauty. It's the beauty in high fiving each other. Nobody cares what color you are, what religion you are. What kind of car you drive, what kind of pocketbook you have, what size your waistline is. Who cares? And so it makes me so happy to see that without judgment. So the whole We Do Not Care Club, and I guess myself, and today on this show, actually - it will be the first time that I'm going to give myself my flowers.VirginiaI love that you're giving yourself your flowers. You need them!MelaniI'm going to cry a little bit. I mean, I am really. I am just, no, just really thinking. I'm so thankful. You know, I'm thankful, and I'm understanding my value more. But I'm frustrated a little, just because it took me being forced into the situation. And it's like, damn, I'm 45 you know? If I had to do this at 30? So I pray that younger generations like have that. You don't necessarily have to be forced in situations, you know? If you have that inner feeling or whatever, bring it out girl. Go stand at the front. When you're in the back, get out the back. Go get on that stage. Speak up. Speak up. VirginiaYou don't always have to be the one who organizes behind. Yes, you actually get to have the moment too.MelaniYes, have that moment. And so I'm going to embrace this time. I'm going to do it scared.VirginiaI just think, like, on behalf of everyone who admires you so much and feels like you've given us this gift. We want you to have this moment. Enjoy it. Like, enjoy it for all of us. You know, because you deserve it, and you've really created something super special that we really needed, so thank you.MelaniI'm curious to hear yours.VirginiaWell, I've just been thinking because I was coming to talk to you, and thinking about again, about the sisterhood and the power of all of this. I've given this one in the past on the podcast, but I'm going to give it again to my book club, which is my kind of core group of ladies. We just had book club last night, and one of our members, her mom just passed, and she was coming back from the celebration of life for her mom, and it just felt so good that we could be there to welcome her back with a lot of cheese and a cocktail. Because that's what she needed. It’s been a time, and that we could all like, be together. So I think female friendship - your best friends in your 40s, which is, I'm lucky to have a whole, tier of those people. MelaniYes. And preferably within the sisterhood, the WDNC sisterhood, the bigger this movement becomes. I want to see us everywhere. In different rooms together. And as long as you hear WDNC, you know that this door is open and you can walk through it and you will not be judged.We're all in this together. We're like I said, 'If our sister's coochie is dry, then we all have dry coochie.' It's her story. It's our story. We're in it together.VirginiaYes, I love that. Well, Melani, thank you so much. This was an incredible conversation. I'm so glad to have gotten to, yeah, get to know you and talk with you.MelaniAbsolutely. This was definitely an honor to even you know just everything that's happening, but to even be able to sit here with you, I definitely appreciate it, and I feel empowered like what you got a little magic power over here on Burnt Toast. What is that about? Good Lord.VirginiaThe Burnt Toast is where we're a small group, but we yeah -MelaniYeah, small but mighty, right? And any ideas or anything within the sisterhood? I want to welcome ideas. This is only the beginning. So if you have ideas, sisters, the We Do Not Care, Club dot com, there are going to be places where you can go and just put your ideas in. I'm having teams being built right now because I want all of us to be - just feel heard. Yeah, so, and I'm trying. I am trying my darndest. VirginiaAwesome. Well, we are rooting for you, and everyone needs to go get the book, The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook. And if you're not already following Melani in all the places, obviously, make sure you do that too.MelaniAt (@) Just being Melani. "Just being Melani" across all platforms.Thanks for listening to Burnt Toast. If you enjoyed the conversation, please support our work with a paid subscription. They start at just $5 a month, and you'll keep Burnt Toast an ad and sponsor free space. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join.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!

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark!We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for our annual Ins & Outs Episode! This is what we do every New Year, instead of making resolutions or setting problematic body change goals. It's deeply unserious but still satisfies that urge to reflect and make some (fun) plans for the year to come! Listen to hear... ⭐️ The pants Virginia forgot she was wearing. ⭐️ The food trends Corinne is SO OVER. ⭐️ Virginia's new religion!!To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber.Join Extra Butter!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Happy 2026!!! To celebrate—and kick off the most diet-y month of the year!—we are here with a roundup of the very best anti-diet fitness advice in the Burnt Toast archives. If you find this useful, consider a paid Burnt Toast subscription! We're way cheaper than a gym or a diet app membership, and arguably better for your health too. And in addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! You'll find so much practical support, inspiration, and fat joy. Join us here! Don't diet, come hang with us! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links!Episode 226 TranscriptVirginiaHappy 2026! We made it. It's a whole new year. CorinneThank God, honestly.VirginiaSee you later, 2025. Excited to be here in a new in a new chapter.CorinneTo celebrate, we're bringing you a helpful episode to kick off the most diet-y month of the year: A roundup of our favorite anti-diet fitness advice.VirginiaI'm excited for this. I hope this is grounding to people and helps prevent you spiraling off into some new thing that doesn't serve you. We're also holding space for the fact that a lot of people do like fresh start culture. We will be coming to you next week with our annual Ins and Outs episode. So don't think we are immune from resolution culture! That's the Burnt Toast version of it. It's coming. All right. First up, we have an excerpt from an episode called “We Have Only Recently Acknowledged That Female Athletes Need to Eat.” This episode aired October 19, 2023. It's an oldie, but a goldie. And the guest was Christine Yu, author of Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. And one of the main things Christine wanted us to understand was carbs are good for you.VirginiaI also want to spend some time on your very excellent chapter about diet and sports. This was so well done. It feels like nutritional science, athletic research— all of this research—has only just recently given women permission to eat as athletes, and to eat enough to support their sports. This feels really staggering to me, that there has been this underfeeding of women athletes for so long.ChristineConsistently. All the time. And I think it’s in part because of just general diet culture in our culture and society and these ridiculous expectations that we have or we place on girls and women in terms of what their bodies need to look like. And then you have the sports performance side, you have this idea that certain body types are the ideal athletic body types. It’s almost no wonder that we create this perfect storm and a way for disordered eating and eating disorders and all these other problematic behaviors to take root. Especially because bodies are so central, obviously, in sports and performance. And we focus so much on bodies and how they look, what their body composition is, and all of these different things, the shape of you, all of that.It’s wild to me that it’s only been recently that we do acknowledge the fact you just need to eat. We talked so much about nutrition and sports as this idea of fueling your body, which I think was at first kind of helpful in the way of reframing food within this context. Your body needs fuel to be able to do all this stuff, in order to start to give folks a little bit more permission to eat or feel like they could eat what they needed. But that, I think, even still creates this idea that there’s a certain kind of fuel that you need to be eating in order to be an athlete, in order to fuel your body correctly, if that makes sense.VirginiaIt’s, again, mind blowing, but makes sense that we had to first embrace the idea of eating, period, as opposed to eating being the enemy. You have so many heartbreaking stories from athletes in this chapter talking about feeling like they were so tapped out at the end of a practice that they couldn’t function and that when they started eating enough, they were like, wow.ChristineTurns out!Virginia“I can do a 90 minute workout without a problem!” The fact that they were performing at all when they were being asked to do it while starving is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what they were being asked to do. Then seeing that immediate and logical shift that if you feed yourself, you can perform better. But then from there, this idea of food as fuel can also become very limiting because, of course, athletes are human beings, as well. And food is more than fuel for all of us.ChristineIt’s really easy within sports and athletics to look at food as almost a hack, in a way. Like, as a way to like fine tune your performance. Oh, I need more iron, or whatever other very specific thing that you need. And again, I think it dissociates food from what it actually is. I think that also just makes it really ripe to encourage a lot of these behaviors that aren’t always helpful or healthy.VirginiaYou also do some amazing work in this chapter dissecting a couple of the modern big diet trends: Intermittent fasting, keto, and you even look at some of the less extreme ones like the Mediterranean diet, and show how they underserve athletes and especially women athletes. I wondered if we could just spend a little time talking about your findings there, because that felt super important to me. ChristineIn the last several years, we’ve seen things like intermittent fasting and keto pop up within athletic communities as this way to make your body a better machine. Especially, I think, within endurance sports, it’s this idea that your body can run longer or you can somehow create these these efficiencies, if you will.But the body likes to be in homeostasis, it likes to be in balance. So anytime energy levels start to dip, your body starts to send out these flares that are like, “Wait a second, hold on. Are we going to be starving real soon?” Because if so, I need to make some adjustments, physiologically. So with a lot of these diets, you’re actually ended up with these long periods of under-fueling your body. With intermittent fasting, you’re not eating for anywhere between eight to many, many hours. So you’re leaving your body in this huge deficit of energy so it starts to freak out and starts to shut down these non essential systems.And the thing with women is that our bodies are much more sensitive to these downturns in nutrition. It starts to send up those flares a lot earlier, it starts to make those those physiological changes a lot earlier. That can have repercussions on things like your menstrual cycle and all the hormonal things that your body does. Similarly, with keto, this whole idea of eating a lot of fat and very few carbs might seem like, Oh, I’m really full, I don’t need to eat as much. But it’s the same idea that you end up inadvertently underfueling your body. But more importantly, especially for women, by not eating carbs, it sends up those same flares to the body. Women’s bodies, in particular, need carbohydrates in order to function well, in order to do all the things it does. And when we don’t have carbs, the body starts to send all these warning signs.We tend to see intermittent fasting or keto “work” in men because it seems like male bodies can get away with that under-fueling a little bit more than female bodies. But when women tend to try these diets they end up feeling, unsurprisingly, really flat, really fatigued, a lot of brain fog. They don’t see this performance boost and then they wonder what they’re doing wrong because all the podcasts, all the influencers, say I should be intermittent fasting. This is going to be how I’m going to lose weight. This is how I’m going to cut time on my race. This is how I’m going to improve performance, improve body composition, all the stuff. But I’m not seeing that. I’m feeling flat. I’m not seeing all these other positive benefits. It’s because your body is essentially saying, ah, this isn’t working for me.VirginiaJust because it works for Peter Attia does not mean—and question mark on if it even works for these guys? Thats the other thing I just want to interject. It might improve athletic performance, it doesn’t mean it’s not having other consequences on their mental health or their relationships with food and body. But that’s fascinating to realize specifically, if your goal is improving athletic performance—one of these diets is not going to deliver for you the way you’ve been told it might. ChristineEspecially the idea around carbs. I feel like carbs still have like a bad rap. People are still really afraid to eat carbs and I just want folks to know it’s not a bad thing. Your body actually needs it. It wants them. CorinneI mean, what can I say? Perennial wisdom.VirginiaPerennial wisdom. Really important. And it's just absolutely wild —the science she gets into about how little female athletes in particular, were allowed to eat for decades, and how much better everybody performs as a human being and an athlete when they eat carbs.CorinneYeah, this makes me sad. Okay, next we're going to hear a clip from an episode called It’s Time To Free The Jiggle. This one aired on December 14, 2023 and our guest was Jessie Diaz-Herrera. Jessie is a body affirming dancer, health and wellness influencer, and fitness enthusiast. You might know her on Instagram as curves with moves or from her Free The Jiggle classes. Jessie's advice is so helpful if you're thinking about starting about starting any new kind of workout or entering a new workout space, especially as a fat person.VirginiaThe first question is:Do you have any tips for focusing on how you’re feeling in your body versus imagining how your body could look? This feels especially hard with dance.JessieThis is a very honest and vulnerable question, but also very real. Especially in any group setting, whether it’s group fitness, group dance classes, there’s always this like, “How am I perceived by other people? How am I looking at myself in the mirror?” and that can be really hard. But dance is an art form, right? So let’s relate it to art, right? Let’s say our bodies are paint brushes. If I’m a paintbrush and you’re a paintbrush, you may have slightly different widths right. And my strokes are not going to be the same as yours, right? But we’re still creating art. We’re both still moving. We’re both still working through this. I think sometimes we like to compare ourselves to other people. Like, “I don’t look like the instructor.” But the instructor is more of a facilitator, right? They’re there to help you and guide you. Obviously, in more fitness classes, there’s a form and there are things that you want to make sure that you’re doing safely. But if it’s a feel good class, if you’re like in a cardio dance class where you’re just there to feel the rhythm and dance or like a Zumba type class and there’s nerves, bring a friend and laugh. Be in the back and laugh.Like, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been nervous about a class and I’ve taken a friend and we’re like, “We’re just gonna be in the back and try our best but also just laugh at each other if we’re a hot mess.” Let’s give ourselves permission to say, “We’re probably going to mess up and that’s going to be totally fine because we have the intention today of laughing at ourselves and being silly with with ourselves and trying something new.” And you’re just not going to look like the next person, so get that out of your head. Because this is your body, this is what you’ve been given. And how you move in this world is different. So sometimes, especially in dance, when it is an art form, I say own it. Own how you dance. Own how you move. It does not have to look like the the instructor or the person next to you. If you feel good, if you are feeling the energy. I know when I dance, there’s a weariness that goes away. There’s this feeling of “Yes, I just feel so good.” Like, I’m sweating. This is my favorite song. Tap into those other things, too.Maybe you’re not there yet with your body journey. Maybe you’re like, “I can’t stop comparing myself.” Well then maybe you’re thinking about other things within the class, like is this your favorite song? Are you hitting those basses? Can you get that move? Or is the rhythm really hype? Do you want to cheer on the person next to you?  I tell people at the beginning of class, “Hey, if you don’t want to dance, cheer for the person next to you.” Take a water break and just encourage them. VirginiaI also want to say to this person, do some of Jessie’s online videos. Because I am someone who has no dance experience. You know, white girl dance moves—that’s what I’ve got. It is what it is. JessieAll of those are safe here.VirginiaAnd especially being in a bigger body, I would feel self-conscious going into a group dance class. But what was really fun for me was doing Jessie’s videos in a room in my house without mirrors, because then I wasn’t constantly looking at myself and critiquing how I looked. I could just be in my body and I was able to tap into the joy you’re talking about because there wasn’t an audience. I was just doing it for me. If you’re someone who really doesn’t have a dance background, maybe try that first before you do the group class where you’re just going to feel really intimidated and depending on the context, maybe less welcome.JessieI teach kind of a myriad of different classes, but one of our mainstays is called “Free the Jiggle,” and we purposely jiggle. We purposely do things that we would say, like, I’m afraid to do this, we will do it. Kind of to laugh and also in spite of and really to say, why not?VirginiaIt’s a body. It’s moving. JessieYeah, exactly. Bodies do jiggle.VirginiaI really love this. I love embracing that bodies move and jiggle—and everybody's does, straight size, plus size, doesn't really matter. I think this is really powerful. And if you need to do that in the privacy of your own home for a while before you're ready to do that out in some group setting—that is valid, too. CorinneTotally.VirginiaOkay. Next up, I want us to hear from Disability Rights activist and author Emily Ladau. This is from an episode we did last year called I Don’t See Myself in Fat Liberation Spaces.Emily is a wheelchair user, and we had a great conversation about how ableism shows up in fat liberation work, but also in fitness spaces. And a cool spin-off from this conversation is that Anna Maltby, friend of the show, who we'll hear from later in this episode, developed a wheelchair friendly workout for her newsletter How To Move, after hearing this interview and connecting with Emily. Which I love. I love seeing fitness professionals taking wheelchair friendly workouts more seriously. And the big piece of fitness advice I want us all to take away from the conversation with Emily is that sitting down is not going to kill you.VirginiaOne that you put on my radar is all this fearmongering about how we all sit down too much, and sitting is killing us. And if you have a job that requires you to sit all day, it’s taking years off your life.And yet, of course, people who use wheelchairs are sitting down.EmilyI think about this a lot, because I would say at least a few times a year some major publication releases an article that basically says we are sitting ourselves to death. And I saw one I know at least last year in the New York Times, if not this year,VirginiaNew York Times really loves this topic. They’re just all over there with their standing desks, on little treadmills all day long.EmilyI actually decided to Google it before we chatted. I typed in, “New York Times, sitting is bad for you.” And just found rows of articles.Cool beans, NYT.EmilyThe first time that this ever really came up for me was all the way back in 2014, and I was kind of just starting out in the world of writing and putting myself out there in that way as an activist. And I came across an article that said that the more I sit, the closer I am to death, basically.It’s really tough for me, because I’m sure there’s a kernel of truth in the sense that if you are not moving your body, you are not taking care of your body in a way that works for you. But the idea that sitting is the devil is deeply ableist, because I need to sit. That does not mean that I cannot move around in my own way, and that does not mean that I cannot function in my own way, but it’s just this idea that sitting is bad and sitting is wrong and sitting is lazy. Sitting is necessary.VirginiaSitting is just how a lot of us get things done every day, all day long.EmilyRight, exactly.VirginiaSure, there were benefits to lifestyles that involved people doing manual labor all day long and being more active. Also people died in terrible farming accidents. It’s all part of that romanticization of previous generations as somehow healthier—which was objectively not true.EmilyYou make such a good point from a historical perspective. There’s this idea that it’s only if we’re up and moving and training for a 5k that we’re really being productive and giving ourselves over to the capitalist machine, but at the same time, doing that causes disability in its own way.VirginiaSure does. Sure does. I know at least two skinny runners in my local social circle dealing with the Achilles tendons ruptures. It takes a toll on your body.EmilyOr doing farm labor, as you were talking about. I mean, an agrarian society is great until you throw your back out. Then what happens?VirginiaThere are a lot of disabled folks living with the consequences of that labor.EmilyAnd I’ve internalized this messaging. I am not at all above any of this. I mean, I’m so in the thick of it, all the time, no matter how much work I read by fat liberation activists, no matter how much I try to ground myself in understanding that fatness does not equal badness and that sitting does not equal laziness, I am so trapped in the cycle of “I ate something that was highly caloric, and now I better do a seated chair workout video for my arm cycle.” And I say this because I’m not ashamed to admit it. I want people to understand that disabled people are like all other people. We have the same thoughts, the same feelings. We are impacted by diet culture.CorinneSuch great advice. Important.VirginiaEmily made me realize how much that anti-sitting agenda is everywhere, especially in the New York Times, for some reason. They're weirdly obsessed with standing desks there. And it feels similar to wanting to go back to a time before smartphones. Like, okay, maybe it's not ideal that so many people sit so much, but it's the way the world is now. It's what work is now. Unless you're preparing to completely overthrow capitalism and have us all spend our days doing different things. Regardless of ability, most people are sitting so what if we stopped being ashamed of it?CorinneI feel like this is just one of those moments where if you weren't aware of it, now you're suddenly aware of the way that we talk about certain things and how it's really fucked up for a whole group of people.VirginiaFor sure. CorinneNext let's hear from Lauren Leavell, a weight inclusive fitness professional with an awesome online workout program that Virginia is obsessed with. Lauren has been on the podcast twice, but joined us last summer to talk about some TikTok drama that erupted when a thin Pilates trainer made a video saying you shouldn't be allowed to take Pilates if you weigh over 200 pounds. This episode was called Stair Masters Are the Mean Girls of Cardio, and this conversation is a great reminder that you don't have to have the right body for any type of exercise or be really good at any particular sport. You're allowed to just do things because you like them.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.VirginiaYes, I love Lauren obviously. I'm obsessed with Lauren's workouts. but I also just really like how she thinks about this stuff, and I think it shows up a lot in how she teaches fitness. I mean, this idea that only certain bodies should do Pilates or do any sport, is absolutely wild. It's problematic at every level, but especially since most of us are not doing any of these activities with a hope of being the best version of that in the world.CorinneThis one is crazy too, because that was such a huge controversy, and then I completely forgot about it.Virginia It's a good reminder that the Internet is forever, but also these things do blow over. I can't even remember the name of the girl who made that stupid video. We're over it. You can obviously do Pilates if you weigh over 200 pounds. I did some last week. Last we're going to hear from my girl, Anna Maltby, who is an amazing anti-diet trainer, Pilates instructor and health journalist. Anna writes the newsletter How To Wove, which features weekly workout videos, which is what I do when I'm not doing Lauren's videos. Basically, my workout program is Anna and Lauren on repeat, and it's amazing. Anna has also been on the podcast twice, because whenever I find smart fitness people, I do like to keep bringing them back. And she came on last December 2024 to unpack some internet discourse that was happening then about whether core workouts are a scam. And what we distilled is: Strong core muscles are not a scam. They're really helpful for all the things we need to do with our bodies. But if you hate traditional ab workouts, you probably don't need to do those exact exercises to get a stronger core. And more importantly, you don't have to have flat abs to also have strong, functional core muscles. So this episode is called A Pudgy Belly Can Be A Strong Core, and I suspect that is really useful for a lot of us to remember right now.I’ll also just share, as someone who does identify as hating core work, I have come to appreciate it so much more through your workouts and through talking to you about it, because it’s made me realize how much the “I hate core workouts” came from knowing I’m never going to have the visible six pack. Being able to put that down means now I do notice, ohhh, when I get my core properly engaged, my back hurts so much less. Taking the giant bag of dog food in from the curb feels less painful. I get off the floor a lot more easily after giving my seven-year-old a bath. it’s these small things that are really not that small, actually.AnnaYeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s almost about safety in your body, right? I’m capable of doing these things. I don’t have to feel fear around movement. I’m comfortable moving throughout the day. There’s so much to be said for that. You say they’re they’re small things, but they’re not really small.I really want to encourage people to get to know how their body responds to exercise because of all this noise about aesthetics, we haven’t been trained to notice these more internal or intrinsic kind of things, but if you can tap into functional changes, or just how you feel moving through the day. Are you waking up a little less creaky? Are you able to pick that thing up, or are you able to bend down into the bath more comfortably?VirginiaShampooing a fast-moving seven-year-old is quite the core workout, in fact.AnnaWrestle them into their jackets and all that stuff. This goes back to the central question of why is the myth of visible abs so frustrating? There are so many other things that not just abs, but a functional and strong body, can do for you. To me, those things are better motivators.I exercise also because of back pain. What got me started on exercise, and got me sticking with exercise, was that I was throwing my back out all the time. And I do that a whole lot less if I’m active regularly. And that’s a really good motivator, and it is achievable and it’s noticeable. And I get punished if I’m not doing it, because my back hurts.VirginiaYep. It’s a real one to one connection.AnnaWe have to also talk about people who do need core-specific exercises. It’s a bit more of a rehabilitation focus, but that might include people who are recovering from an injury or surgery. And especially people who are recovering from childbirth, whether that’s a vaginal birth or C-section. A pretty functional body who’s not in that situation, they’ll get really great core work from whatever the else they’re doing, chances are. But in these situations, I do think that isolating your core and targeting your core muscles from a rehabilitative standpoint, is really important. And I think if, like those of us who are who are listening, who’ve had a baby at home, like a brand new baby that they gave birth to, have probably had that experience of like, “Oh my god, where, where are my abs? Where is my core?”VirginiaThey have left the building.AnnaI can’t do anything. They’ve left the building. And it’s temporary. It’s okay. They will be back. You need to heal. You need to recover. But it’s kind of funny, because you’ll get the advice that you shouldn’t lift anything heavier than five or ten pounds or don’t pick up anything heavy. Try not to do anything until you’ve had more time to heal. But like when you have a new baby at home, you’re picking up and putting down a growing babyVirginiaPlus a car seat!Anna75 times a day. I just remember nursing in bed and then trying to get up out of the bed while holding the baby, and you’re basically doing a weighted sit-up. It’s so, so brutal. And it’s not realistic to say you can’t do any of that stuff until you’ve rehabilitated your core. You need to be able to live your life. But I think that working with rehabilitative exercises as you’re working through your day to day life, is going to make it easier. You’re going to get better, you’re going to start to heal, you’re going to regain that strength so much better than if you’re just not doing any of the rehab and only doing this sort of demands of daily life.So I want to say, if you’re in that situation—and I think this is also true if you’ve had some kind of abdominal or pelvic or hip surgery—and you’re recovering and you have to have that rest period, rehabilitative exercises can be really, really supportive.VirginiaWhat I’m thinking as you’re talking too, is how all of these benefits we’re talking about have absolutely nothing to do with weight loss. This isn’t about, are you losing the baby weight? This isn’t about anything to do with that.And yet, again, because of the way diet culture trains us to think about core in the past, if I wasn’t losing weight, I wasn’t aware of these benefits. It was harder to tune into these benefits, or if I did notice these benefits, I credited them with any weight loss that was happening. But whether your weight changes or not from exercise is its own separate thing. We could just put that over here. It might happen, it might not. And the core stuff, you can achieve that whether or not the weight changes. And I just want to name that, because I think that’s another place this gets so, so tangled.AnnaYes, I think that’s so important. There’s a wonderful perinatal coach named Jessie Mundell, who I’m a huge fan of. She takes a super inclusive approach. And she’s in a larger body. I think I texted you when I did her postpartum certification program, and I was like, “Virginia! There are fitness models in this program in larger bodies! It’s so helpful. It’s amazing. It exists.” And she likes to say, and I’m gonna gonna get the exact words wrong, but it’s something like, you can have a round, pudgy, poochy, cellulite, diastasis recti belly and a functional core. The aesthetics do not predict the functionality.VirginiaThat’s so helpful. It’s so important. Especially if you have the diastasis or the poochy belly, you just think, “Well, that’s it. I will never have a strong core.” And that can just be defeating to even starting with this kind of exercise. So, so important to name.AnnaYeah. There are elite athletes who are competing with a three or four finger diastasis.CorinneThis is a great episode. Anna Maltby is so smart.VirginiaAnd just like Lauren, se really helps me reframe some of the toxic messages. I had a really troubling relationship with core workouts for such a long time because of diet culture. But as someone who's really prone to back issues, they are super important for me to do. And being able to do them and appreciate the non-aesthetic benefits of them has been really helpful. So I really appreciated this reframing. All right, any final thoughts, any words of wisdom about how you're going to be navigating January Fitness culture? Is the entire month of January a diet, Corinne? Shall we skip it?CorinneWell, I would not like to skip it, because my birthday is in January.VirginiaThat's right! Corinne is turning 40 this month!CorinneYes, I'll be turning 40 and I will be not starting any new fitness programs.VirginiaLove this for you. I'm very excited. Do you ever start workout stuff in January, or do you just, like, kind of try to opt out of that whole piece.CorinneWell, it's funny because I just kind of passed my three year anniversary of starting to go to the lifting gym that I go to. And so I did start that in December, which is very close to January. But yeah, I don't think I'll be starting anything new. VirginiaYeah, same.Corinne It wasn't like a New Year's thing.VirginiaThat'sjust when you went. I don't have any new goals. Maybe this is the year I'll learn to do push-ups? We can always hope, right?Corinne Yeah, why not? VirginiaI don't have any plans to set out specific goals towards them. I feel like in the last year, I did a pretty good job of keeping movement in my life, even when my life was chaos, and that is new for me. Like, often I would have long periods of like, life is chaos, so I don't have time for that, and then my back would go out. So I feel like, if there's anything I want to maintain this year, it's just to keep doing things I enjoy and keep enjoying the benefits of having movement in my life—to whatever extent that makes sense for my life at any given point.CorinneJas your back gone out this year?VirginiaIt did go out over Thanksgiving. That was a bummer. But not as extremely as it has in the past. I was able to get it back on track in like, three or four days. Whereas I've had times where it's like two weeks of I couldn't stand up. It was just like, oh, okay. It's, you know, it needs some extra attention. And I think it was a stress response. ButterVirginiaMy Butter for this episode is that I'm lifting heavier weights now! That has been really exciting. I historically thought of myself as not a strong person. CorinneWait, really?!VirginiaEmotionally strong, whatever. Like, psychologically strong, yes, like, I'm a powerful woman. I know that. But I didn't think of myself as physically strong. CorinneI'm just like.. all fat people are strong. VirginiaWell, okay, I didn't start out life as a fat person, Corinne, so it's taking me a while to step into my power. I still had an inner skinny girl who thought she wasn't strong. But you're correct. And, you know, getting into weightlifting because of Burnt Toast, really, like you being a power lifter got me interested and meeting Lauren and Anna and all that, you know, like, a lot of it has to do with, like, conversations on burnt toast that I got into weightlifting and, yeah, upgraded to a heavier. I actually got kettlebells, two heavy kettlebells.[CW for numbers talk if that's not good for you!]CorinneWait, I want to know how much.VirginiaMy previous heavyweight was 20 pounds, and like when I do deadlifts, or--Corinne20 pounds in each hand?VirginiaYeah, I could do 20 pounds in each hand for deadlifts. So like, 40 pound deadlifts, 40 pound RDLs, 40 pounds for lunges, or farmer carries. And I have even been able to use the 20 pounds with some upper body, like, sometimes bicep curls. I can do that. And so I got two 30 pound kettlebells.CorinneWow.VirginiaI can definitely do both of them for a deadlift and an RDL. I'm working on a farmer's carry, like a grocery carry type of thing. I'm working on them for some other stuff. Just playing around with this idea of oh yes, you can lift heavier. CorinneAwesome.VirginiaIt's super satisfying. CorinneI love that. VirginiaWhat about you? CorinneWell, now I feel like I should have a fitness related Butter, but I don't have one. I'm also going to show you my Butter, and I just have to grab it. VirginiaI'm excited. CorinneOh, okay, this is a Butter that was also sent to me. It is a Butter that I'm giving to my little baby nephew.VirginiaOh, I'm excited to see this.CorinneIt is the cutest little sweater I've ever seen in my life.VirginiaI mean! There's a sheep on it.CorinneIt's from the brand Misha and Puff. This is an expensive baby sweater, let me tell you. It is nearing $200. It's also the softest thing I've ever felt, and it has a sheep on it.VirginiaI mean, so no pressure to your sister, but she has to have like, five more kids so that that sweater can get enough use. Because the thing about baby sweaters is they fit for five minutes. CorinneI know. It's 18 to 24 months. Virginia That's a good range. He'll be able to wear it for a while. But I'm just saying, like, she's got to have more kids now so you can have more cute babies in that sweater.CorinneYeah, yeah. I want to say, like, I was kind of skeptical of, like, a wool sweater for a baby, but it's just like, it's so soft.VirginiaI will say we are very lucky, I have several knitters in my family. So my kids had some hand\knit sweaters, including some handknit sweaters that my grandmother made for me when I was little, that we had handed down. So I think it's a totally great investment. Knitting is an incredible talent and worth supporting. All right, well, I hope this has everyone feeling good about the new year and what's coming up for us. I want to hear about people's fitness goals or lack thereof! We support it all.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies!The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.Happy Christmas if you celebrate! If you don't, happy Thursday where everything is closed! Either way, today we're taking a look back at your five favorite episodes of the year. If you enjoy the snippets you hear here, why not give yourself the gift of Burnt Toast? In addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! Join Burnt Toast for 2026! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links!Episode 225 TranscriptCorinneSo we dropped an episode on Thanksgiving Day, and we're back with another holiday episode. This time we're going to be looking back at your five favorite episodes of the year.VirginiaThis is so fun for me to put together every year. I think this is our second or third time doing it, and it's just really satisfying. Plus the top episodes are not always what I would have predicted! Some are, but some aren't. So a little background before we start: Since we moved platforms—we went from Substack to Patreon-—it was actually incredibly difficult to compare all the usual stats. The way Substack tracks episodes and the way Patreon does it—it's not an apples to apples situation. So this isn't the most scientific ranking. But I tried to find the different metrics we're interested in as podcasters —and I found the most popular episode for each of those metrics. 1. The Episode You Shared Most: Dr. Mara Will Not Sell You A Weighted VestVirginiaSo this one got the most shares on Substack Notes, on Instagram, etc. This is the one that people sent to other people as much as possible. CorinneI was recently recalling this episode because one of my friends texted me to say "What do you think about weighted vests?" And I was like, weighted vests have not gone away. VirginiaDid you say I wear a weighted vest all the time? Because that's what I say.CorinneMy weighted vest is my body. Yeah, I feel like we had a little chat about it. it's one of those things people have got to try for themselves. if you're interested in weighted vest then me being like, "eff a weighted vest" isn't gonna deter you, necessarily.VirginiaNo, no. Well, and they're not harmful. Dr Mara, who is a weight-inclusive doctor and writes the excellent newsletter Your Doctor Friend, was definitely not saying they were harmful. It's just this idea that as a perimenopausal woman, can never be not strength training. it's okay to just go for a walk as well, right?CorinneWell, and also, just the thing of, you need to be at least as lean as possible, but put the weight on your body. Just not as part of your body,VirginiaYeah, only weight you can remove. That's the deep irony. Let's listen: VirginiaOkay, so now let’s get into some related weight questions.I was just told by my OB/GYN that excess abdominal weight can contribute to urinary incontinence in menopause. How true is this, and how much of a factor do you think weight is in this situation? And I think the you know, the unsaid question in this and in so many of these questions, is, so do I have to lose weight to solve this issue?MaraYes. So this is a very common refrain I hear from patients about the relationship between BMI and sort of different processes in the body, right? I think what the listeners’ OB/GYN is getting at is the idea that mass in the abdomen and torso might put pressure on the pelvic floor. And more mass in the torso, more pressure on the pelvic floor.But urinary incontinence is extremely complicated and it can be caused by lots of different things. So I think what the OB/GYN is alluding to is pelvic floor weakness, which is one common cause. The muscles in the pelvic floor, which is all those muscles that basically hold up your uterus, your bladder, your rectum—all of those muscles can get weak over time. But other things can cause urinary incontinence, too. Neurological changes, hormonal changes in menopause, can contribute.Part of my size inclusive approach to primary care is I often ask myself: How would I treat a thin person with this condition? Because we always have other treatment options other than weight loss, and thin people have urinary incontinence all the time.VirginiaA lot of skinny grandmas are buying Depends. No shame!MaraTotally, right? And so we have treatments for urinary incontinence. And urinary incontinence often requires a multifactorial treatment approach.I will often recommend my patients do pelvic floor physical therapy. What that does is strengthen the pelvic floor muscles particularly if the person has been pregnant and had a vaginal delivery, those muscles can really weaken, and people might be having what we call genitourinary symptoms of menopause. Basically, as estrogen declines in the tissue of the vulva, it can make the tissue what we call friable.VirginiaI don’t want a friable vulva! All of the language is bad.MaraI know, isn’t it? I just get so used to it. And then when I talk to non-medical people, I’m like, whoa. Where did we come up with this term? It just means sort of like irritable.VirginiaOk, I’m fine having an irritable vulva. I’m frequently irritable.MaraAnd so that can cause a sensation of having to pee all the time. And that we can treat with topical estrogen, which is an estrogen cream that goes inside the vagina and is an amazing, underutilized treatment that is extremely low risk. I just prescribe it with glee and abandon to all of my patients, because it can really help with urinary symptoms. It can help with discomfort during sex in the menopausal transition. It is great treatment.VirginiaItchiness, dryness…MaraExactly, yeah! So I was doing a list of causes of urinary incontinence: Another one is overactive bladder, which we often use oral medications to treat. That helps decrease bladder spasticity.So this is all to say that it’s multifactorial. It’s rare that there’s sort of one specific issue. And it is possible that for some people, weight loss might help decrease symptoms. If somebody loses weight in their abdomen, it might put less pressure on the pelvic floor, and that might ease up. But it’s not the only treatment. So since we know that weight loss can be really challenging to maintain over time for many, many reasons, I think it’s important to offer our patients other treatment options. But I don’t want to discount the idea that it’s inherently unrelated. It’s possible that it’s one factor of many that contributes to urinary incontinence.VirginiaThis is, like, the drumbeat I want us to keep coming back to with all these issues. As you said, how would I treat this in a thin person? It is much easier to start using an estrogen cream—like you said, low risk, easy to use—and see if that helps, before you put yourself through some draconian diet plan to try to lose weight.So for the doctor to start from this place of, “well, you’ve got excess abdominal fat, and that’s why you’re having this problem,” that’s such a shaming place to start when that’s very unlikely to be the full story or the full solution.MaraTotally. And pelvic PT is also underutilized and amazing. Everyone should get it after childbirth, but many people who’ve never had children might benefit from it, too.VirginiaSo the excerpt we just listened to is Dr. Mara talking about urinary incontinence. The listener's doctor was implying that it was because of their weight. And we were just getting into how many health issues, especially in perimenopause and menopause, you're gonna hear that explanation for. And that's just not always true, and even when weight is a factor, there are almost always other treatment options besides weight loss. CorinneIt also makes sense to me that this is the most shared epsiode, because I feel like menopause is such a hot topic right now.VirginiaOh, it is. And we will continue to see this theme as we talk about our most popular episodes.CorinneOh, interesting, yes, for sure.2. Episode With The Highest Open Rate: You Can Count Your Protein And Still Be Nice to PeopleVirginiaSo for folks who don't know: "Open rate" means the percentage of people on the Burnt Toast newsletter list who actually open the email each time. It's okay, we know you don't all open the emails all the time. But it's helpful for us to know which emails get more or less opens than average. This podcast episode, when it got emailed around, had the highest open rate all year. It was the Indulgence Gospel episode where Corinne and I both talked about the diet-y or diet-adjacent behaviors we still participate in: VirginiaDo you personally have any diet-y somethings, Corinne?CorinneI struggled a little bit to think of some, but I actually feel like I have so many!First of all: Right now, I am wearing a fitness tracker.VirginiaOh my God.CorinneI wear a Fitbit. I love wearing a Fitbit. I am not one of those people who gets into a certain type of headspace about steps. I almost never look at the steps. What I love it for is the sleep tracking. I like waking up and getting a grade on my sleep, which might be—VirginiaYou like being judged first thing in the morning?CorinneYeah! It’s like, good job I did great. Or I find it kind of validating sometimes, like, if you wake up feeling like shit and you’re like, Yeah I didn’t get enough REM last night.VirginiaThis is a big revelation, because I have written pieces critiquing Fitbits, which you have edited and never told me.CorinneI go in and out of it. I will wear it every day for months, and then sometime I’ll take it off and just not put it back on. And this is part of where, like, I’m not addicted to it.I like getting the grade on the sleep. I like the watch element. I’ve never been a watch wearer, but then when I started wearing it and was seeing the time on my wrist, I was like, “h this is actually helpful to not be pulling my cell phone out to look at the time.”VirginiaYes. What must that be like?CorinneSometimes at the gym, I will use the stopwatch thing.VirginiaSure.CorinneSo it has a few elements that I like using that I could use my phone for, but it’s easier to just have on my wrist.Also, I would say I’m very susceptible to supplements, which feels diet-y to me.VirginiaThis I did know about you, because you are an electrolyte girlie.CorinneI’m an electrolyte girlie. I like electrolytes. I like fiber. I’ve dabbled in creatine, which is another gym one.PLUS: CorinneThat one we’ve talked about before because you’ve written about protein girlies or whatever, the growing popularity of people kind of tracking their protein and gotten a lot of pushback on that. Then I’m like, “Virginia, you eat protein powder.”VirginiaEvery day! Every day I have it for breakfast unless it’s like the weekend and I’m making eggs or something fancy. But yes. I am a morning protein girlie. I couldn’t tell you how many grams of protein is in it, but I do know I feel better and more functional if I have a significant amount of protein in the morning time. I have high protein needs then.Another of mine that’s maybe a little more of a mental game I play is when it comes to my exercise routines. As you know, I mostly lift weights, I do resistance training videos, and I walk the dog, and I always have a goal that every week, four of those workouts will happen.But if I know it’s a busy week and I’m not going to get in all four workouts, I think the math I do to decide which workouts I’m going to skip is often rooted in a diet-y place. For example, I’ll never give myself permission to cut the easiest workout.I’m like, “Well, you have to do whatever’s feeling hardest right now in order to feel like you did enough this week.” This is definitely a diet culture holdover, because why not just do whatever workout makes sense for my schedule, or it sounds interesting, and trust that over the course of life, it’s going to be enough? But I’ll feel this pressure that whatever I’m enjoying the least, I still have to do. I don’t know, but I have a weird sort of punitive attitude towards it. Which I often recognize and talk myself out of, but, that’s the starting point. So that’s more of a mindset than a specific habit.CorinneI think when we look at these individual behaviors, sometimes we’re reclaiming legitimately useful things that the diet industry stole from us—VirginiaLike Diet Coke!CorinneLike Diet Coke. So in these scenarios, reframing the intention can change a habit from diet-y to a form of genuine self-care.VirginiaLike you using your FitBit for sleep, not for weight loss.CorinneYes, I remember this episode.VirginiaDo you remember my being scandalized when you shared that you were wearing a FitBit while we were recording?CorinneWhen did this come out? Because you know what actually happened since is that my FitBit broke. It just stopped working. And I think I tried to replace it, and then that one broke, and I was just like, fuck this. So currently living FitBit-free. VirginiaCorinne is showing me her FitBit-less wrists. CorinneI do miss having the time on my wrist.VirginiaWell, they make watches. CorinneI've never heard of that. VirginiaYeah, this is an episode from last January, and we deliberately did it in January because January is peak diet culture noise time. And we were like," let's talk about some of the diet-y things we do," because we wanted to reduce the stigma. Because it's okay that you do some diety things, you can still stand up for fat liberation. We're all just flawed people. And sometimes you can reclaim a diet practice or product, and do them in a non diet-y way! Like, your FitBit relationship really did not seem diet-y to me at all. You could pick it up and put it down again. CorinneOkay, well, before we listened to the clip, I could remember what mine were, but I had completely forgotten what yours were.VirginiaDiet Coke and protein powder! We also talked about how I have a thing where it's hard for me to give myself permission to do an easier workout. So if I'm trying to decide which workout to do, I think I should always do the one that sounds the least fun. I think I've actually made a lot of progress on that issue this year! I really feel like I'm getting a lot of joy out of my workouts lately. So that's good. CorinneThat's awesome. VirginiaI would love to hear which ones other folks are either struggling with. Like, yeah, this is a little diet-y, but you know what? It's fine. It serves me in other ways. I think it's an interesting conversation, and it's good to be honest about it. 3. Episode With The Most Comments: How Much Did You Pay Your Pumpkin Stylist?VirginiaOkay. Next up we have the episode with the most comments, and it's really interesting to see what generates the most conversation. Would you have a guess about which episode it will be, before I say it?CorinneLet me think. I would think it would have been, like, maybe the Mel Robbins one?VirginiaWell, we'll get to Mel Robbins. But no, the episode with the most comments was the one where we talked about my love of porch pumpkins.CorinneWait, that was such a recent one.VirginiaIt was! It's because this was the episode where we talked about our problematic favs. And people really liked sharing their problematic favs. CorinneThat makes total sense.CorinneIs this just like putting a pumpkin on your porch?VirginiaNo, it's putting piles of pumpkins on your porch. CorinneOh, okay, I have seen people do that.VirginiaWait, there was a Wall Street Journal article. I'll find it.CorinneWhen I see people do this, I'm like, I'm tired. I don't have the energy to be stacking pumpkins on my porch.VirginiaAccording to the WSJ, "Families are paying north of $1,000 to create Insta perfect tableaus for porches and yards."CorinneOkay, so how much did you pay for your pumpkin stylist?VirginiaLet me tell you about me and my porch pumpkins. I've been craving this look for a few years, ever since Julia Marcum first posted it. And she bought fake pumpkins, which she just keeps on hand and brings out every year to make her pile of pumpkins. And I was like, well, that's actually a more like responsible way to do it, right? To buy and reuse your pumpkins every year?Except then I priced out her pumpkin collection, and it was like, $800 and I said to my then-husband, like, should I buy all these pumpkins? And he said, no.CorinneAnd that's why you got divorced.VirginiaExactly, yes. No — he was right. But every fall, I'm like, I kind of wish I had that. It looks pretty. I'm not going to spend that money, but it does look cool. So then this year the kids wanted to get pumpkins. And so Jack and I took them to a little local pumpkin patch, and I discovered the trick is to go the Saturday before Halloween. The pumpkins are on deep discount. And I now have 14 pumpkins on my front porch that I spent only $70 on.Corinne14 pumpkins is a lot. VirginiaIt is a lot! They just kept giving us more. I paid $70 for maybe, like, seven pumpkins. And I was still like, well, $10 a pumpkin. We'll feed them to the chickens. Jack's like, I can bake something with this cheese pumpkin. I was like, it's it's fine. And then they were like, here. Take more. Take more. I was like, well, now the pumpkins are basically paying me to be on my porch.CorinneSo funny. VirginiaI think it looks delightful and harvest-y, and I like that. It's a trend that works for both Halloween and Thanksgiving. So you can leave it up for a while. And then you could feed the pumpkins to your chickens, or bake with them, if that was the type of person you were, or throw them in your woods and let the deer eat them, which is what I would also do. CorinneWhen I was at my mom's house in Maine, we did get a pumpkin for her front steps, and it immediately got eaten by squirrels.VirginiaAnother reason to wait until the Saturday before Halloween. So you're not trying to make this trend last all fall. I think it's also like, at this time of year, I'm getting sad about the leaves falling. I'm getting sad about the coming cold, anything that makes me like anything better. It's a pile of pumpkins. They're pretty, that's all.CorinneThey are. The pumpkins in this photo are very beautiful.VirginiaYeah, no, that's the key. You don't just get orange pumpkins, you get the Cinderella pumpkins, the fancy gourds and whatnot.CorinneAnd also, how is this WSJ article/photo, leaving out the fact that there are 14 foot tall skeletons in the background?VirginiaYes, in that photo, they are also doing the very tall skeletons, which is a trend I'm not on because I don't know where to store it. Where does one store the 12-foot skeleton the rest of the year?CorinneI don't know. And those are also like $500, I think.VirginiaThey're not cheap. That's like $2,000 in Halloween decorations just on their porch. It's a commitment. And I didn't go that route, but I just enjoy it. That's all.CorinneDid you put them out and step back and rearrange them? VirginiaI sure did.VirginiaNow that I think about it, this episode is very similar to the episode where we talked about our diet-y habits. People just like us to talk about problematic stuff, I guess? CorinneThey like us to be three dimensional people with flaws.VirginiaI'm here for it. These are the most fun episodes to record, too, I think. So we need more ideas on this theme! I definitely would re-do problematic faves in a year or so to see if we have new ones. What are other what are other ways you want to hear about our flaws? Tell us in the comments. What else do you want us to fess up to? We'll think about it. 4. The Episode That Converted The Most Paid Listeners: Mel Robbins Has a PHD in Diet CultureOkay, now we get to Mel Robbins! The episode that converted the most paid listeners is a very important metric for us as podcast business ladies. Paywalled episodes exist to convert new paid subscribers, and that is how we pay all of our bills, and survive this lifestyle of making internet content. So I'm not shocked this was our biggest converter. Well, I guess my only surprise is that I honestly wasn't super aware of who Mel Robbins was before we did this episode. But then I realized she was, like, a pretty big celebrity, so it makes sense that this converted a lot.VirginiaDo you want to talk us through the morning routine post?CorinneSo, “this is the morning routine that’ll supercharge your energy all day.”Virginia“Backed by science,” that’s what she says.CorinneStarts with getting up when the alarm goes off. Once again, it’s not bad advice. Like, yes. But also is Mel Robbins telling you to do it going to make you do it? I don’t know.VirginiaSometimes you’re just not going to do that, and you might still have an okay day. It doesn’t mean the whole day fell apart because you didn’t get up the second your alarm went off.CorinneThe next thing, making your bed, tidying your space—another very common self help tip!VirginiaIt’s “the simplest way to practice discipline,” Corinne. “A promise kept no matter what.”CorinneI’m going to be honest, I feel okay with the first two. Number three, “high five yourself in the mirror.” Like, no. I’m never going to do that. I hate that. I really hate it.VirginiaI can’t stop laughing. She’s so serious in the photo. She has a selfie of her high fiving herself, and she’s so serious in the photo. Like she is earnestly high fiving herself.CorinneLet me tell you, “giving yourself a high five in the mirror rewires your brain to focus on self love and positive reinforcement.”VirginiaThe science behind that is all in her book, The High Five Habit. So there you go. The PhD level science that she’s done to confirm. I just imagine saying to someone actually struggling with depression or anxiety, like, “why don’t you just high five yourself in the mirror?” And, like, I think they would be justified in throat punching you. Like, “I’m sorry your mom just died. Have you tried high fiving yourself in the mirror?” Like, fuck you.CorinneThis is the thing, right? This is what we talk about. It’s like, exercising does make us feel better, but you can’t tell someone struggling, “Just exercise.” Like, this advice is good. Like, get out of bed, have a glass of water. Exercise. And, no one needs that advice. Everyone knows that.VirginiaHigh fiving yourself in the mirror I’m going to say is not good advice. Like, I’m going to say for most of us, that’s not going to be transformative in any way. It’s just going to be dumb.CorinneI have been surprised to see how much staying power her book has had. I'm still seeing people talking about it! And one of the things we talked about in this episode was the scandal around it being...VirginiaPlagiarized, question mark? Allegedly plagiarized? Certainly, some lack of clarity about source material and original authors? CorinneI just kind of thought that would make people stop paying attention to that book. But it really has not.VirginiaNo, does not seem to have made a dent. Also, I would have thought people would have stopped paying attention when she told everyone to high five ourselves. And yet, here we are. Have you high fived yourself yet in the mirror?CorinneAbsolutely not, have you?VirginiaAbsolutely not, never will. Truly terrible advice. And frankly, very patronizing towards anyone struggling with actual mental health issues. This is the last thing you need to hear, in my opinion.CorinneI think I agree with that.5. The Most Downloaded Episode of 2025: Is Dr. Mary Claire Haver Making Menopause a Diet? CorinneOh, back to the menopause.VirginiaBack to the menopause. This was a great episode we did with Cole Kazdin, 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. It's a really great resource about the industry of eating disorder recovery. And then Cole emailed me and was like, "Can we please talk about menopause and why it is a diet, and why I think so many millennials are going to get eating disorders in the season of life because of the diet culture being created here." VirginiaAll 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.ColeIt'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.VirginiaI think Dr. Mary Claire Haver is very similar to Mel Robbins in a lot of ways. I mean, she is a medical doctor, Mel Robbins has no relevant credentials to tell people what to do with their lives. But they have the same kind of energy on social media. They are both tiny women with a really good blowout telling you how to run your life. And you do not have to dig far to get into their super diet-y and anti-fat content. It's all right there at the surface.CorinneYikes. No, thank you. VirginiaBut this is a good episode. If you missed it, if you missed any of these, I recommend giving them a listen. What do you notice about these five? Any standout themes or observations? Other than, yes, we're all obsessed with menopause.CorinneDefinitely menopause. And like you alluded to earlier... flaws.VirginiaIt's interesting that there were two about problematic white lady influencers, which has been a cornerstone of Burnt Toast coverage for a while. We do a few of those every year, so I'm not surprised two of them made it into the top five. But then the others in the top five were like Corinne and Virginia just being humans.So that's kind of like a nice counterpoint. Because it's us just being messy people, right? CorinneTwo were about menopause, and two were about problematic white ladies, and two were about us having flaw. VirginiaThat's right, yes. One was about both menopause and a problematic white lady. We had some overlap, yes. Then the ones that were not in those two categories were us just saying, "here's some weird stuff we do."So, all right, more hot mess express in 2026. We can do it. CorinneOh God. VirginiaI mean, honestly, it's easier than trying not to.CorinneDo you have any further thoughts about those topics?VirginiaNo, but I'm curious to hear from listeners if you have a favorite among those five, or if you have a different favorite episode for the year?There were also a lot of little episodes that didn't hit the top metric on something but did generate great discussion or that I'm just really fond of. One that I really wanted to get in here was the interview with Jessica Slice, author of Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World. That was one that was second place for a couple of these categories. It did generate a bunch of comments. It did generate a bunch of shares, and I feel like really resonated with folks. So that's an honorable mention.CorinneThat's one that really stuck with me. I've just thought about a lot since I listened to it. I would say also maybe, the one with Lisa Sibbett.VirginiaYes! Lisa who writes The Auntie Bulletin. I loved that conversation with Lisa about community and divesting from consumerism. Perpetual Burnt Toast goals. Oh, it was such a good year making the podcast. It really was.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterCorinneOkay, I'm going to endorse a problematic Butter.VirginiaOh, a problematic Butter! We love it.CorinneBorderline. I mean, okay. I'm going to endorse this product, which was sent to me. So it was gifted. I received it for free. VirginiaOkay. Thank you for disclosing.CorinneI was just like, whatever. It's a lotion. It's called Talova. And I realized once I got it that it's made from...beef tallow.VirginiaOh, that you're rubbing on your body?CorinneI did have that realization after I started using it and really liking it. And I feel like beef tallow is one of those things where I'm like, I hear it and I'm like, that's MAHA-coded.VirginiaVery Huberman Bro. Yes. CorinneIt's like, the crossover point between lefty crunchy mom heading into RFK territory. VirginiaOh dear. CorinneThat's why this is a problematic fav. But I started using it before I realized that it was beef tallow. And I was using it, and I was just like, why is this stuff so good? I love it. And then I looked at the ingredients, and there's tallow and emu oil.VirginiaOh, no. Aren’t emu endangered?CorinneI don't know. I'm also like, is Emu oil what it sounds like? Okay, but I will say it's a body balm. It's incredible. It smells so good. It doesn't smell like beef or emu, it has a citrusy scent. It's my winter in the desert thing. It's so good. I love it.VirginiaI am confirming on the Internet that emu oil is a traditional Australian moisturizer derived from the fat of the emu bird, used topically for skin and hair care. Okay, Down Under listeners, we're going to need you to weigh in on this. Is Corinne being problematic using emu oil? Do we need to cancel her? Or is she allowed?CorinneIf emu oil is problematic, I think the brand could be canceled, not me. But anyways, I really like this product, and I'm sorry to say, it's made with beef tallow, and it's it really working for my dry desert skin, and it smells good.VirginiaAll right, all right. Well, I'm going to give a non-problematic Butter, just so we don't end the year on such a controversial note. My Butter, as you all are listening to this on Christmas Day, or perhaps during the winter break, is to go take a nap. I took a really great nap the day after Thanksgiving, and I thought to myself, why do I not take more naps on holidays? Usually because I'm busy hosting them and parenting my children, and it's difficult to do. And I'm here to say, if that's you as well, take 30 minutes just stop whatever you're doing and go lay down in a room by yourself and close your eyes or read a book, whatever. It is your holiday as well, and you deserve that.CorinneI'm a huge nap fan. VirginiaI am not a lifelong napper, but I've been getting into it recently. Or even if you don't sleep, just take some quiet, no people time. I think that can be really helpful when you're in the thick of holidays. CorinneAs a big introvert, 30 minutes alone can really turn things around for me.VirginiaAnd make you like the rest of the day! Instead of getting increasingly spacier and grumpier. So yeah, I want everyone to go take a nap either today or tomorrow or whenever. All right, this was a super fun episode. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈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!