The Burnt Toast Podcast

Virginia Sole-Smith
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Burnt Toast is your body liberation community. We're working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants. Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).

  1. Meet the Newest Burnt Toast Team Member!

    1D AGO

    Meet the Newest Burnt Toast Team Member!

    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 TranscriptVirginia We have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin.  Kim Hi, hi, hi.  Virginia We are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting. Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her. Kim   I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions.  Virginia Truly harrowing. Kim I'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet. Virginia   Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced? Kim 230,000. Virginia 230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you. Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions? Corinne   My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work? Kim   When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now.  That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?" So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise. Virginia   Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive. Kim   When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff. That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered dietitian, and she blew my mind and saved my life. Virginia   That's amazing. Yay, registered dietitians who do that work! Also, yay, Food Psych! That was a great podcast. Corinne, wasn't it one of your entry points, too? I feel like we've talked about this. Corinne   Yeah. I was a regular listener. Virginia   Just hearing people's stories over and over. The way Christy structured that was so healing and valuable for so many people. I've always been a fan of your culture writing. You always have amazing book recs, movie recs. Your newsletter The Blonde Mule is definitely one of my go to's for like, Ooh, what culture am I missing out on? Kim will know. So I would love to know who are some of your fat culture inspirations, icons, or just people you really love in that space? Kim   For sure Aubrey Gordon. She was an original, and back then, she was anonymous. Her Instagram posts back in the day - she still sometimes reposts those old ones in her stories. She still means so much to me. I learned about her early on.  And then, of course, Lindy West. I had read Shrill, and because I worked at an alt-weekly, she also worked at The Stranger in Seattle, which is their alt-weekly, and we had similar jobs, so I looked up to her. She had this great essay in The Stranger where she came out as fat. In real time, I wasn't there yet, but when I got into recovery and started learning, I realized how ahead of her time - ahead of all of us - she was.  And then, Virginia, you and people I found through Food Psych and through Christy. Back then we were all still using social media with wild abandon. You could learn about people through Instagram stories. Christy Harrison would repost all these people to her Instagram stories and I would click through and follow who she reposted. She'd repost something of yours, or, I can't even remember all the people back then. Oh, Ragen Chastain. I've been reading her stuff this whole time. I hope everyone reads her and knows what amazing work she's doing in this space. I can't get a sense of how many people know how much she's doing. Virginia   She does such deep dives into the research. She really is someone who is taking the time to take apart scientific papers, look at the methodology, look a what bias went into the research. I have learned so much from Ragen. I started following her back in probably the early 2000s when she was writing about being a fat dancer. I remember I interviewed her for a woman's magazine. Kim Oh right. I forgot about that, her original handle. Virginia Dances With Fat. Oh, you're making me nostalgic for this time. Now everyone's like, Body positivity is dead, and it was never really good, but there were these really good folks doing great work in the mix.  Kim   There was an organic way to find, I don't want to say community in the way we say it now, but I didn't know anybody in real life going through what I was going through, or who was learning what I was learning. All I had, truly, was Food Psych. So if someone was on Food Psych, I would look them up. I would follow them. And then that reposting thing, that's how I found so many people. Virginia   Yeah, it's so true. Corinne   Kim, where does the name The Blonde Mule come from?  Kim   Oh, this question. Corinne If you want to skip it ... Kim It brings up a lot of embarrassment. I should address it.  Virginia It's time. Kim, it's time. I don't know the backstory. Kim In 2006 I started a personal blog on blogspot because everyone was doing it. Back then it was the thing to have a cutesy name. No one used their government name online back then. Your email wasn't your name, your blog - none of that was your name. I'm a Taurus and I am actually stubborn, so "the mule" was kind of a nickname. There was this formula of a physical descriptor plus a nickname. All my friends had a version of this. I thought, Oh, I'll just do the blonde mule. I'll change it later, nobody cares. No one followed me.  Then I had to buy my domain name and get handles on social media sites. So 2006 to 2026, how many years is that? Is that 20 years? So unfortunately, I'm locked in. Because now I own that name. I don't love it because I wish I hadn't self identified with my hair color. Especially because it's blonde and that means a lot of things that don't align with my values. Also, during the pandemic, I quit coloring my hair and so I'm not really blonde anymore. Virginia   A blonde-ish mule. Corinne   I would consider you blonde.  Virginia   I still would consider you blonde.  Corinne Also Virginia, aren't you also a Taurus? Virginia I am also a Taurus. I am also pretty stubborn. Corinne This is an earth sign podcast. I'm a Capricorn. Kim John, my husband, is a Capricorn. Virginia   I don't know what that means.  Kim We're very compatible. Corinne   Yes, I also have a Taurus Moon. Virginia   Sure. I've been meaning to get one of those. I don't understand astrology. But I do relate to picking a name and sticking with it because now you're stuck with it. In many ways that is the backstory of Burnt Toast. So relatable. I named it on a whim. People are always like, What's that about? And I'm like, I mean, not a lot. But it is what it is.  The Blonde Mule is sticky. It sticks with you. Kim   There are people who make me feel better. One is Samantha Irby because she is still bitches gotta eat. She also is from, like, 2006. There are a few of us that are locked in. What are you going to do? I literally bought this name. Virginia   I'm stuck with it. You might as well own it, for sure.  Another part of your work life is that you work at the famous Parnassus Books, owned by best-selling author and icon Ann Patchett. I am a former bookstore girl. I love bookstores. Most authors, we love bookstores. So I really love talking about bookstores. I want to know, what's the most fun part of bookstore life? Also, does this bookstore hav

    36 min
  2. [PREVIEW] The State of GLP-1 Discourse

    FEB 12

    [PREVIEW] The State of GLP-1 Discourse

    Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode! Listen to hear about: ⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life ⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture ⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole life Plus, serious stuff, like: ⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress ⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse ⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for February To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Join Extra Butter!This transcript contains affiliate links. If you're going to buy something we mention, shopping these links supports Burnt Toast at no extra cost to you! Episode 232 TranscriptCorinne Today we are talking about the state of GLP-1 discourse. A few recent media pieces have us wondering if the GLP-1 backlash is finally beginning, and if so, why is all of the coverage still so anti-fat? Virginia We're going to use two primary texts for this conversation, but I also want us to talk more generally about how we're seeing the conversation shift, because I feel like there's been an amorphous shift. Corinne I think the initial craze has died down and we're starting to see a more nuanced conversation. Virginia Which in many ways is good. There's more nuance on both sides, but there's still a lot of harm being done in the way the media is framing this conversation. Corinne For sure.  Virginia Exhibit A on that front is a piece by Dani Blum that ran on January 15 in the New York Times. The headline is The Hard Truth of Weight-Loss Drugs: You Probably Need Them Forever. Corinne what is your immediate first reaction to that headline? Corinne No shit, Sherlock. Why were people confused about this? Virginia I guess people were. It seemed obvious that if a drug makes you lose weight, and you go off the drug, you won't continue to lose the weight. Corinne Unfortunately, except for maybe antibiotics, that seems to be how drugs work. You have to stay on them. Virginia There's a lot that comes up for me in this piece. It's looking at new research, bringing to light the fact that when people go off the weight loss drugs, which many people do because they can't tolerate the side effects and it's too expensive, they just get tired of it. There are lots of reasons that people fatigue about being on a weekly injection drug. They're seeing now that people regain the weight. This is being framed as a grave disappointment and a surprise in the article. Corinne Not to me, but to Oprah. Virginia Oprah particularly. Oprah was surprised. They referenced the fact that even Oprah said that she had stopped taking a weight loss drug cold-turkey for a year and then gained back 20 pounds. "I tried to beat the medication," she told People Magazine. It was then she realized it's going to be a lifetime thing.  Brilliant marketing for Weight Watchers, Oprah. She thought she could go off it, but you can't. You should be on it forever. So buy your GLP-1s from Weight Watchers. Of course she wants us to be on it forever. She has a business incentive to make that work.  It gets into ableism. Why is it problematic to be on a medication for the rest of your life? I have asthma. I expect to use an inhaler to manage that for the rest of my life.  I have sleep apnea. I expect to use a CPAP for the rest of my life. Most people with mental health conditions expect to be on an SSRI for the rest of their life. Why is that a problem? Corinne I think there's something about human nature where people think, I don't want to be on a medication for the rest of my life. I've heard so many people say that. Virginia Often it's the main resistance to starting a medication. Why? What is it about that that makes us sad? Corinne We want to believe that we're strong and independent and don't need pills to make us ok. Virginia You and I are going to wear glasses for the rest of our lives. Corinne I am extremely screwed. So many medications, so many glasses. Virginia If the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm out in the first week because if they break my glasses or I lose an inhaler, I'm sorry, I'm not going to try that hard to survive. Even my acid reflux medication - I don't have debilitating acid reflux - but it's irritating. I would be out. Corinne Same.  Virginia Take me now.  Corinne I take multiple medications every single day that I would be lost, if not dead, without. Virginia I don't understand the aversion to that because it's great that I get to breathe through the help of medication. I'm a big fan. Corinne I think what you're hinting at is it's ableism. Virginia It's ableism. We want to believe we can overcome these challenges. We see it especially in conditions that are weight linked in any way. This is why people get told to diet before starting a blood pressure or cholesterol medication when those drugs work really well to manage those conditions ... Corinne ... and diets don't. Virginia And diets tend to not do so. Is it such a moral failing to have to go on a statin? I don't think so. Corinne The other thing they're not talking about directly is - and we've talked about this before - that studies show people who take these drugs for conditions like diabetes and/or insulin resistance, don't tend to stay on them long-term because they're hard drugs to be on.  Virginia Yeah. Corinne This article is so sad for people who got to lose weight on these because they will have to be on them forever if they want to "keep the weight off." It's also sad for people who need to take them to manage chronic conditions. These drugs suck in a lot of ways and people don't want to be on them. Virginia That's a valid reason to think, I don't want to be on a drug for the rest of my life if it's giving me terrible side effects. My inhalers don't give me terrible side effects. I just like breathing and want to do it all the time. I’m an oxygen addict.  If it's a medication that's giving you side effects, I understand not wanting to be on it for life. For folks who are pursuing this just for weight loss, independent of metabolic health, maybe that's a reason to reflect on whether you need to do that. It is a depressing thing to say, "I will be on a medication that gives me diarrhea, fatigue or whatever side effects, but at least I can be a smaller size." That feels like something to reflect on. That reflection is nowhere in this article, however. Corinne The article doesn't mention side effects at all, does it?  Virginia It mentions that it's why a lot of people in the studies are going off the drugs.  It's this Catch-22 where they're saying, Oh, people are saying, wow, it's so expensive, or, wow, I have terrible side effects, so I go off it. Then they're framing it like those people were quitters. That they gave up.  On the other hand, some of this aversion around "you wouldn't want to be on this medication for the rest of your life" is another layer of anti-fatness. The message is we shouldn't let fat people get away with thinness this way. We don't want them passing for thin because they can stay on a GLP-1 forever. We want them to do the "real work" of weight loss. The idea that you could only achieve weight loss by staying on the medication forever makes the weight loss feel fake to people.  It's interesting because all intentional weight loss is fake to some extent. It's all manipulating your body in a direction it doesn't naturally want to go in. So why do we penalize medication-based weight loss versus excessive-running-based weight loss? There's also a nice shout-out to RFK, Jr., who also thought the drugs would just be a short-term fix for people and then we'd go back to eating beef tallow to stay thin. Turns out that's not science, but I don't think we're surprised he's not science.  Another flavor of anti-fatness in this piece is the casual normalization that you could do this the old fashioned way. In talking about folks who are able to lose the weight even after they go off, the article says: It's not impossible, but it is extremely difficult. Dr Hauser estimates that fewer than 10% of her patients have successfully kept off 75% or more of the weight they lost after going on a GLP-1 without turning to another weight loss medication or undergoing bariatric surgery. "Those are the people that are working out two hours a day, tracking what they eat. They're working really hard," she said. "I haven't had anyone that just tapers off and isn't really putting that much thought into it and just keeps the weight off. I've never seen that happen." That's just casual normalization of eating disorder behavior. Working out two hours a day and tracking what you eat is not a normal way to live. Corinne The choice is either drugs or an eating disorder. Virginia That's not interrogated by this piece, or in any of the discourse I've seen around the whole idea that you have to be on it forever. It's either you have to be on it forever, or we expect you to do this the old fashioned way, like a good fat person would. Corinne It's also getting into the Rosey Beeme of it all. She lost some weight with a GLP-1 and then was like, Well, I guess weight loss surgery is the way to go here. Virginia Right, to continue her health journey. I haven't checked on her in a while. Do you know how that's all going? Corinne No, I don't and I don't honestly want to know. I just think that will become a more common storyline where people are saying, I didn't want to stay on this drug. It didn't lead to permanent weight loss, but maybe bariatric surgery will. Virginia Well, that's depressing. Corinne Speaking of influencers, the second article that we wanted to discuss today ran at the beginning of January in Vulture. It's titled ‘Less People Click If You’re a Size 16’ How plus-size influencers are faring in a GLP-1 world. Virginia This one is payw

    11 min
  3. When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder

    FEB 5

    When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder

    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 Transcript Virginia I am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time. Lauren Comrades, for sure.  Virginia I've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions. Lauren I should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating.  Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied.  But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments.  So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive. We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work. Virginia Can you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in eating disorder treatment, or just don't know the world well, it's like, 'What do you mean eating disorder treatments are not weight inclusive? Isn't that where you go to feel better about your body?' Give an example of what CBT used to do that was harmful, and how you've updated it. Lauren When I was trained in CBT, I always thought it was a non-diet approach, because the focus is on regular eating and including all foods. So the center of the model is still good. But some of the fatphobic elements that were in the original treatment were - one was this insistence on regular weekly weighing and the client knowing their weight. And that if the therapist refused to weigh the client weekly, it was the therapist's own anxiety and avoidance of tolerating the client's distress over being weighed. But if you're in a bigger body, being weighed is more than just exposure. It can be traumatic.  Virginia Yeah.  Lauren We don't need to put people through that, where every week they see their weight. So that's one of the first things that we eliminated.  The other thing, there's behavioral experiments with a focus on challenging what they call the broken cognition. The broken cognition is this belief, and again, this was developed on primarily thin, white women who had the belief that if 'I eat a cupcake, I'll gain five pounds.' The behavioral experiment was to have them eat a cupcake, weigh them before and weigh them the following week, and prove that they didn't gain five pounds, but that's also hugely fatphobic. Because you're trying to prove to people that it's all in their heads, that weight stigma is not a thing. Virginia Well, and you're saying, 'Look, the scary, terrible thing didn't happen.' Lauren Which reinforces that that's the scariest thing. Virginia Even what you're saying, weighing folks in bigger bodies can be traumatic, not because inherently it's bad to be in a bigger body, but because if you're in a bigger body and you've been weighed in medical settings, you've had that number weaponized against you for so long. That's the trauma you're alluding to.  Lauren Yes, exactly. Virginia I see, so it was a lot of methodology around weight numbers meant to reassure thin women that 'Don't worry, you won't get fat.' Lauren Exactly. Virginia Which really leaves out any fat person with an eating disorder, and doesn't really do the thin women any favors either. Lauren Right. Because it just reinforces this fear that weight gain is the worst thing that could happen to somebody. Virginia That's fascinating. It sounds like a lot of very much needed updates and a really terrific resource for folks. I saw in the back of the workbook under Resources, you listed Burnt Toast as one of the newsletters with an online community dialogue. It means a lot to have us spotlighted in this way. We do work hard to have our chat rooms and safe spaces in the comment section for folks coming for support. You also listed a lot of folks that we love and look to as leaders in this space: Christy Harrison, Ragen Chastain, Rachel Milner, Sabrina Strings, Bree Campos, Chrissy King, etc. How do you think about the importance of community in the work you do with your clients as you've been reframing CBT in this way? Lauren We are big fans of yours and all the people you've named, and it was really important to us because here we are, three white women with privilege doing the updating of CBT and we wanted to take it further.  It was really important to us that we learned from people with more marginalized identities. We negotiated with our editor to have sensitivity readers and we had people advising us on some of the things that we might not have been as aware of, like food insecurity, gender considerations, and the experience of people in larger bodies. As references, we tried to include some of the thought leaders that we've really learned from.  Community is super important in this work because we're asking people to go against the grain of society. Many of the people that come to us for help with eating disorders are people in larger bodies who have been told by medical doctors and people in their lives to lose weight. And then they come to us and we say, 'Well, you're not eating enough.' And they think we're kind of crazy to say that.  It really helps when you're asking people to do this work, which is so hard, to have other people in their lives who are supporting this. Many people don't have people in their personal lives who are anti-diet. Where do you find those people? A lot of it is online and in podcasts. I always tell people it helps, even if it's you and me and the person listening to the podcast. They're hearing the interviewer and the guest and there's two other people who are in this world with you.  Virginia That's right. Lauren It helps a lot. And I do think that is the missing piece for people in bigger bodies who experience disordered eating - they don't have the support. Virginia Especially right now. We're in a really dark cultural moment. You know, just like a swirling vortex of badness in a lot of ways. So it feels even harder, because what the federal government is telling us, what we're seeing in the news, etc, etc, is also running counter to what will actually promote healing.  To that end, I'd love if we could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your work in this dark time. We just had RFK’s latest USDA dietary guidelines come out. Lauren, how are you feeling about the new food pyramid? Lauren Sadly, I feel like I am not going to be able to retire anytime soon. The culture just propagates and perpetuates disordered eating in so many ways. Obviously eating is so much more individualized than just following a guideline, but what I can say is that I have never seen a person with binge eating who was not restricting their carbs.  Virginia That’s really interesting. Lauren Carbs are basically the building blocks of what we ea

    33 min
  4. The Pets + Gay Hockey Episode

    JAN 29

    The Pets + Gay Hockey Episode

    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 Fives And 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 TranscriptVirginia So today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions.  Corinne This is kind of my favorite type of episode,  Virginia Same. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news?  Corinne One thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry.  Virginia I haven't watched it.  Corinne Okay, but do you know what I'm talking about? Virginia Well, I'm just going to Google it real quick. Corinne Oh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend. Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly. Virginia Oh come on, it’s a sports thing!  Corinne There is so little sports. Let me just tell you. Virginia Okay... Corinne If you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn.  Virginia Oh! Okay. Corinne It's based on, like, gay romance novels. Virginia Ohhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend. Corinne And I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together.  Virginia Obviously. Corinne It's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie. Virginia So okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters?  Corinne I'm invested.  Virginia You're invested. Corinne It's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry.  And you see their butts a lot. Virginia Well, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay.   Corinne Then you've probably read the novels. Virginia I may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me.  Corinne There's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey. Virginia  You have learned nothing. Corinne  There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know. Virginia Oh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup? Corinne I don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever. Virginia Delightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight. I really do feel like you maybe need to consider a Buffy watch at some point. Corinne Next time I have 47 hours unscheduled weeks. Virginia I mean, you can chip away at it too. It's on Disney Plus! Oh wait, you probably don't have Disney Plus. Corinne My bad.  Virginia No that's fair. Well, it's been very fun we're in season four now for the Buffy fans in the audience. And it's going to start getting a little more violent. I'll have to feel it out. But I think we're, at the point of no return. That's a good TV update. Have you been reading anything good? I read a book that I think you liked, and I don't think I liked it. But I think I'm in the minority.  Corinne Which book? Virginia Heart The Lover by Lily King. Corinne Oh, my God, you didn't like it?! Virginia No. What am I missing?  Corinne What didn't you like?  Virginia I felt like they were all so annoying and pretentious. Is it because I was an English major, so I don't like English majors? We're just pretty annoying, with all the literary references. Okay, we get it. You are boys who read books. I was just like, why would you sleep with either one of them? I don't get it. Corinne Oh, fascinating. I mean, I was just sobbing for the entire second half. Virginia It does get sad in the second half, but I didn't like him, so I didn't care? Corinne You weren't invested. Virginia And it's not hard to get me invested in a health journey of any sort! I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but—okay, spoiler alert! We're going to talk about it with spoilers, so that we can really get into it. If you didn't read that book, you'll want to skip ahead about a minute and a half.  🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 SCROLL TO NEXT SET OF BUTTER EMOJIS TO AVOID SPOILERS! Okay, I thought it was real weird that she gave a kid up for adoption, and then was just like, "But I know she's fine. It's fine. It's all fine." And yet she was so worried about the kid she did have who had health issues. I mean, of course she was worried about him— but she had just mentally been like, that one's fine. I picked good people. They had a nice photo. So I know she's having a great childhood. That was really weird to me.  Corinne I mean, I felt like that seemed like the decision of a young, stressed out person, Virginia Yeah, maybe. And how she keeps talking about it is meant to be a trauma response? Corinne It was a questionable young person decision. Virginia Yes, definitely. But it felt weird that she would never reflect further upon it as she got into her own motherhood. I'm not saying she was wrong to give the baby up for her adoption. I also think abortion exists, and that would have made sense. But I'm not saying she should have kept the child. I just thought, don't you think you would have gotten any more nuanced in your feelings about it as the years went on? Corinne The book is her getting more nuanced about it. Right? Virginia Not really! Not about the baby. She's like, Yeah, she's fine. I mean, she finally tells him about it, but. Corinne I don't know. I think she was kind of in denial about it, or just avoiding it, and then the book is her coming to terms with it.  🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 END OF SPOILERS Virginia Well, I just felt like everyone was pretentious and unlikable. And it feels like everyone loves this book so much, and I don't know what I missed.  Corinne Have you read her other books?  Virginia No, this was my first Lily King,  Corinne Okay, because there's also, like a connection to one of the other books.  Virginia Well, I'm not going to read it because I didn't like any of these people. But Corinne loved it, guys, so if you love it, if you've read it, let us know in the comments! I was just surprised. This is the first time I've ever not liked one of your book recs. Corinne I am a little surprised, but I think maybe I'm primed to like those college, academic group of kids books. That's a genre I really like. Virginia  I think it's a genre I don't like. I think I actively dislike reading about people in college. Corinne Yeah, it's interesting, because I'm not like, looking back fondly on my own experience at that time. Yeah. I think I just like, enjoy the dynamics. Did you read A Secret History?  Virginia No,  Corinne I love that book. So I feel like, this was maybe tapping into that. Virginia I think I just think academia is very pretentious? Corinne Isn't one of your parents a professor?  Virginia Yes I was raised by professors.  Corinne So maybe there's something there.  Virginia Three out of four of my parents have worked as professors. So yes. I grew up in academia. Corinne Okay, well, none of mine have. Virginia Well, I am now reading The Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's about this woman, who's sort of lost  in her life and moves into a convent. And I keep thinking "Corinne would really like this book."  Corinne It does sound good to me.  Virginia I don't know if I like it, but I do think you would really like it. Usually I'm a big do not finisher if I don't like a book. And I will say Heart The Lover was a snappy read. So I kept going. Because I was like, well, Corinne loved this book, so I'll keep reading to find out when I'll love it. And that was never, but it was a fast read, and this one is too. I'm moving through it quickly, but I think I do need to really root for the characters. Corinne That's funny. I have a conversation like this a lot with my mom, because she doesn't like books where the characters are too flawed. We always say it like, if she doesn't like them, she, doesn't want to read it. Virginia I am okay with flawed, but they have to be flawed and likable. Corinne They have to have redeeming qualities, Virginia And maybe some awareness of their flawedness in a interesting way?. I don't know. I don

    40 min
  5. [PREVIEW] A White Man Thought He was Fat and Quit His Job.

    JAN 22

    [PREVIEW] A White Man Thought He was Fat and Quit His Job.

    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. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast! Episode 229 TranscriptCorinne Ugh. That's all I can muster. Virginia And it's not a new ugh. They do this every January, guys. We have to emotionally prepare ourselves—those of us who still have an admittedly increasingly problematic subscription to The New York Times—we have to emotionally prepare ourselves that every January they become like Cosmo from 2004, and do this ridiculous weight loss challenge b******t. And it's so odd and misaligned with actual journalism.  OK, so dd you see the piece that came out like two days ago? Corinne “Our Former Restaurant Critic Changed His Eating Habits, You Can, Too?" Virginia The before and after journey of Pete Wells. Corinne I sure did see it. I mean, my first thought was... the food looks good.  Virginia Food does look good.  Corinne I might be making some of these recipes. And guess what? I'll still be fat. Virginia Virginia comes in hot and angry. Corinne...angry, but also willing to make a delicious chickpea dish? Corinne I'm definitely going to eat this. But don't get me wrong, also very angry. Virginia One of the listeners said in the chat today, Why does New York Times Cooking do this to me? They have good recipes and then they have to,take this weird turn. Like, just make good recipes. That's what you do. That's what we pay for. We just want the pretty food pictures and the useful recipes. We don't want this. We don't need this.  Corinne Articles like this are literally putting people off the recipes. Virginia Before we talk about the current "Reset Your Appetite" challenge, and the way he's talking about his story now, we'll just quickly back up for people who blessedly missed this whole thing.  Pete Wells is a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. And last July he wrote a piece titled, "After 12 years of Reviewing Restaurants, I'm Leaving the Table." It was all about how the job had made him fat, and so he couldn't be a restaurant critic anymore because he felt bad about being fat. Wells talked a lot about his own health issues, too. He said, “my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I expected. The terms pre diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around.”  And sure, that is all upsetting, and a lot to deal with. But he blamed it all on his weight and then made all these really lazy fat jokes. He wrote, “I've decided to bow out as gracefully as my state of technical obesity will allow.” Which just, why? Why do you need to frame it like that? Fat people are graceful. F**k you. There's no need for talking about bodies in such a gross way. Even though he's making a joke about himself, which I'm sure makes him think it's okay. Corinne I mean, I hate it. It makes me feel really weird. Virginia It is really weird. It's like we're watching one man's midlife crisis just unfold in our nation's supposedly most reputable newspaper.  Corinne There is just something confusing about it, too. You wanted this job! Why can't you eat the way you want to eat? I don't know. He makes it sound like he's being force fed or something.  Virginia I do think restaurant reviewing is a job where you often have to eat even if you're not hungry. Like you have to taste things, right? He talked about how he was eating an average of 125 multi-course restaurant meals a year. Which is not how most of us eat. Corinne That is like, twice a week? I bet a lot of people go to restaurants twice a week.  Virginia But you don't necessarily get appetizers and cocktails and dessert every time, because you don't have to try the whole menu when you go. And let's see, 52 meals a year... it would be 104 if it was twice a week. So it's two to three times a week.  Corinne Okay. It's a lot. Virginia So I agree there's an open question of: Did eating this way take a toll on his health? Possibly. Does he need to make it all about his weight and make lazy fat jokes? He doesn't. We don't need to do that. And do you need to tell America that the reason you're quitting your job is because of health reasons? I don't know that this was news. A lot of people quit jobs after 12 years. I don't care. Corinne And a lot of people quit job for jobs for health reasons, and then don't write weight loss stories.  Virginia That was the other layer to this piece last year that really bugged me. He talked to other former restaurant critics, including Adam Platt, who was at New York Magazine for a really long time. And Adam Platt called the job "the least healthy job in America." I'm sorry, sir. You are not an underwater welder. You are not working at coal mines. Corinne Professional athletes come to mind, too. Football players.  Virginia The least healthy job in America? You get to eat in beautiful, comfortable places. You get to expense the cab ride home. You're not being underpaid. You're not being abused. You're not being forced to have sex against your will to stay employed. You're not being held captive in a workplace. There are a lot of jobs that are less healthy than this, sir. And just the total lack of acknowledgement of that privilege made me insane. I find it just so exasperating.  Another great quote from Platt: "Your body changes over time. You have this giant distended belly which wants to be filled. All those weird sensors in your brain that cry out for deliciousness are at DEF CON one all day, you become an addict."  It's just such a dramatic—and again, super anti-fat— way of talking about your experience with a career which brought you...a lot of success and financial privilege. Corinne It's troubling. Virginia So that is the back story.  Corinne A successful white man thought he was fat and decided to quit his job. Virginia He felt bad about his body, so he quit his job. That was the tragedy that befell Pete Wells. And now he's back, Corinne! Because he lost 60 pounds in a year! Corinne "An entire basset hound." Doesn't he say that? Virginia Yes, I'm sorry. And trigger warning that we're using numbers. He's using numbers, we're just quoting. “Today, I'm about 55 pounds later than I was at my zenith, a loss roughly, roughly equivalent to dropping an entire male basset hound.”  Is there nobody at The New York Times—I am truly asking, as someone who has written for this newspaper, been interviewed for this newspaper—is there not one editor in any of your departments who can spot anti-fat bias? Is there not one person in the copy editing department, or maybe one senior editor reading a draft of this, who would say, "Wow, this is wildly offensive, dehumanizing language to use about people's bodies?" Corinne Or notice how ableist It is against people with diabetes. Because that's what struck me when I read this. Virginia Yes, to Pete Wells, diabetes is a death sentence and a moral failing. It is the nightmare scenario he's desperate to avoid.  And I'm not downplaying the stress of managing a chronic condition. But that is extremely offensive to the many millions of people who live functional, happy lives with diabetes. Corinne And who don't have a choice to focus all their energy on avoiding it and get a New York Times column to write about how they avoided it.  Virginia Let's talk about after he describes his "basset hound" weight loss. He then says: "...Slimming down was not my main purpose. I never counted a single calorie. Somehow that took care of itself because of the new ways I started shopping, cooking and eating back then, and it more or less stuck to since.” Corinne I mean, could it get any more diet-y? You're selling us a diet. Virginia It's absolutely about slimming down. All you're talking about is how unhappy you were that you got fat. Obviously, you care about slimming down. Yes, you were worried about your biomarkers. But if that was all you were worried about, you would shut up about the basset hound! You would not use that phrase. It's so egregious. What's also egregious is that this is the first of four articles Pete Wells will be writing on this theme. We are recording this on January 7. You are hearing it on January 22 which means by the time you listen, there have been two more atrocities that we can't even get into because we haven't read them yet. But I can bet they're crap! Corinne I think it's also kind of interesting to think about this whole thing within the greater GLP-1 era. He doesn't really say whether he's taking a GLP-1 or not, although it feels like he's implying that he's not? And with that, there is some kind of moral judgment. Virginia That struck me as well. This first article is all about how to break up with sugar. That's literally a headline in here. Which, again, they stole from a women's magazine from 2005. Like I wrote that! "Break Up With Sugar" is classic women's magazine b******t. But okay, Pete Wells. When a white man writes it, we get to pretend it's real journalism.  Corinne Doesn't he also talk somewhere about how sugar makes you crazy? Virginia Yes, he writes: "And having raised two boys, I probably should have known that going through sugar overdrive many times a day was not producing the most rational behavior." There have been mu

    11 min
  6. Welcome to the We Do Not Care Club

    JAN 15

    Welcome to the We Do Not Care Club

    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 TranscriptMelani Hello 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. Virginia I'm so thrilled to have you here. I just love your work, and I'm a huge fan. So thank you for doing this. Melani Thank you for having me.  Virginia Well, 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? Melani This 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.  Virginia Unbelievable.   Melani I was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day.  Virginia Oh, 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.  Virginia You're living your life.  Melani Yeah, 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. Virginia Well, 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. Melani Well, 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. Virginia One 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.  Melani Absolutely. That was when the coffee was hot. Virginia Does naming these specific things that you want to let go of, does that actually help you let go of those expectations for yourself? Melani Yes. 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. Virginia We're all not cooking dinner tonight. Melani If you're hungry, the kitchen's not locked. Figure it out. Figure it out. We got stuff to figure out. Virginia The 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? Melani One, 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. Virginia Everybody deserves to not be hot and sweaty. Tank tops are great. Melani Especially 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.' Virginia You have a right to show your arms. It’s just a body.  Melani It 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.  Virginia It'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. Melani Yeah, 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

    30 min
  7. [PREVIEW] Potato Girl Year

    JAN 8

    [PREVIEW] Potato Girl Year

    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!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This transcript contains affiliate links. If you're going to buy something we mention, shopping these links supports Burnt Toast at no extra cost to you! Episode 227 TranscriptCorinne So today we have a topic that we have done before.  Virginia I think we've only officially done it once before? But it now feels to me like a Burnt Toast institution. Corinne Yes, and that institution is called Ins and Outs. Virginia Ins and Outs for the new year, because it is 2026! Corinne It's our little way of ringing in the new year and talking about what we're feeling right now. It's not a resolution. It really is a snapshot of what we're thinking at any moment in time. Virginia Whenever we happen to make the list. I like it because it's the epitome, to me, of anti-diet resolution culture. It's really just: These are things I love. These are things I'm done with.  I suppose you could do a diet-y version of this. But we don't, and we encourage you not to. Corinne And I think we'll see, perhaps, as we look back at some of ours from last year, how fleeting some of these really can be. Virginia Which is the fun of it. So you brought this concept into all of our lives. And I'm very grateful to you, because I do like having a New Year's ritual. The part of my brain that gets excited for New Year, fresh start, blah, blah, blah. That part of my brain that likes new pencils and whatnot, is like, oh, good. I have a thing to do. Corinne I feel like in past years people have done ins and outs like on Instagram. Like they would just do them in their notes app and then post a screenshot of it. And I haven't seen any of that yet this year. It is a bit early, but I'm curious whether that's going to be happening. Virginia Or if this social media trend is dying. But not here! Corinne Not here on Burnt Toast! Virginia Ins and Outs are still In. For us. All right, should we look back at our 2025 lists before we get into the new lists?  Listen to the 2025 Ins & Outs ep!Corinne Yes. I'll read yours.  Okay, so for 2025: In for you was Bird Buddy. Out was Instagram. Virginia I do think I've done a lot less Instagram! I wouldn't say it's gone completely, although I am currently in the middle of a spontaneous extended break for the holidays, and I love it. And Bird Buddy, I do still love. I ended up getting one for my mom for her birthday, and we have both our Bird Buddies on the same app. That said, ours is currently on a technical hiatus because we had to switch our wifi network. And I have to re-sync it with the wifi network. And, you know, that's the kind of annoying chore that's going to take you, like, six months to do. But I'm getting there. And bird feeders in general, are still very in over here. We're very into them. We did them all year, and it's a major joy.  Corinne Okay, cool. In: bootcut pants. Out: Colette cropped pants.  Virginia Did I even buy any bootcut pants?  Corinne Wasn't it bootcut Beyond Yoga pants? Virginia Oh, wait. I'm wearing them right now! Corinne Oh my God. Okay, wow. Virginia I guess they're in! I didn't take it any further, though. Corinne And are the Colette crop pants still out? Virginia Well, I think those blue corduroy pants I wore over the fall are the Colette pants.  Corinne So, no. Virginia I don't know, man. All pants are out for me. They're all out, they're all in. It's ever changing. Corinne Okay. In: air fryer cookies. Out: Tate's cookies. Virginia Well, I definitely did not stop buying Tate's cookies, even a little bit. But I did make so many air fryer cookies, like at least once a week. So I think pants are always out, cookies are always in. Corinne That seems fair. All right, In: two pieces. Out: apology ruching. Virginia I do love a two piece swimsuit, and I don't think anyone needs to ruch. I think your midsection can be whatever shape it is, and you don't need to put bumpy fabric on top of it. Corinne Fair. In: buying meat and eggs from the local butcher. Out: buying grocery store meat and eggs. Virginia I think we did pretty well with this one. I mean, now our eggs are our own chicken eggs.  Corinne That's awesome. Virginia The meat we are mostly buying from the local butcher, or we have one grocery store that  stocks some local farm-sourced meat. It's a very bougie thing, but it also, if you're going to be a meat eater, trying to be an ethical meat eater, is, I think, valuable. So I feel good about that. Corinne In: teal, dark green and pink. Out: light gray. Virginia If you could see my house, there's so much teal, dark green and pink in it. Corinne  That's awesome.  Virginia I'm really noticing what a stranglehold gray had on home decor from like the 2010s on. And when I go somewhere with a lot of gray now, I'm like, oh, this is kind of sad. And I mean, I had a very gray, neutral house for a long time. Corinne That's so funny, especially because wasn't the Pantone color of the year was just announced?And it's like... cloud.  Virginia If depression were a color. Not good. But for me, color is in.  Okay, let's do your 2025 list. In: wearing one thing over and over. Out: buying multiples of the exact same thing. Corinne Okay, I'll say I think I did okay at this. I don't know how I did wearing one thing over and over, but I think I did cut back a little bit on buying multiples. Although I have bought some of the same thing in different colors. Virginia Is that not buying multiples? Corinne Well, I don't know. It was unclear what "buying multiples" was supposed to mean. I think buying multiples meant buying the exact same thing. Virginia Oh, because of scarcity mindset. Corinne Yes. And I think I've done better at this. Virginia If you're buying multiples, but they're different colors, that feels like a baby step out of buying multiples of the same item. So I give you a gold star. Okay, bird watching is in. Tiktok watching is out. Corinne, how did it go breaking up with Tiktok? Corinne I have not broken up with Tiktok. I am still watching Tiktoks. I did recently start using an app blocker to block Tiktok after 10pm and that is working pretty well for me.  Virginia That seems great.  Corinne And I haven't done too much bird watching, but I do still really enjoy passive bird watching. Virginia Do you do bird feeders? Bird feeders are really great if you just want to passively bird watch.  Corinne No, I should get a bird feeder. Virginia You would really enjoy a bird feeder. The key is you hang it somewhere that you already sit, and have a window you can look out of, so then they really are just coming to you. Otherwise, you'll forget about it and you won't fill it.  Corinne Okay, let me think about that. Virginia In: Decluttering. Out: Organizing. Corinne I mean, who knows.  Virginia I'm confused about how those are different? Corinne It was based on some blog post I read where she was like, "Organizing is pointless. You need to declutter first." So if your closet is messy, don't just buy new hangers. You actually need to get rid of stuff.  Virginia You actually could stand to have like, a third less stuff.  Corinne And I will say I did do a big closet declutter, and it has been helping. So. Virginia Yes, you did, we have not yet seen post clutter, post decluttering, organizing photos of that closet. But we trust. Corinne Probably doesn't look that different to anyone else, but. Virginia You know. Corinne  Wait, I think I did do photos. Virginia Oh, maybe you did. I'm sorry. Okay, In: accessories. Out: matching sets.  Corinne Um, hard to say. I will say, I think this is still true for me. I think matching sets, I really want them to work, and then when I put it on, I just don't feel it. I just wrote this post about sweatpants, and I have a matching sweat top for all of those sweatpants, and I almost never wear them. Accessories are in, though. I'm currently wearing a bandana. Virginia And you've been wearing your new red collar quite a bit. I also struggle with the matching sets. Although I will say Naadam, which is a sustainable cashmere brand that Corinne and I both love, gifted me some pieces recently. (Full disclosure, it was gifted.) And because I've already bought myself several Naadam pieces, I didn't really need stuff. I did get this hoodie that I'm wearing, but then I got Jack a matching set, like cashmere pants and a zippered hoodie. And every time he wears it, I'm like, God damn it, I really want a matching set. This is so cute.  Corinne That's cool. Virginia He wears it around the house all the time and loves it. And now I'm like, maybe I do want that? So I don't know. I think I'm coming back around on those.  Okay, in was beef stew. Out was pulled pork. Corinne I mean, yes, sure, yes. Virginia Controversial position. Corinne I haven't had too much pulled pork this year. If it was offered to me, I would eat it. Virginia I made a delicious pulled pork yesterday. Throw it in the slow cooker and put a Dr Pepper over it. Corinne Oh, that sounds delicious.  Virginia So easy, so good. I made beef stew two weeks before that. I mean, this isn't my list, so I'm allowed to have it all.  In was passion fruit as a flavor in pastry and desserts. Out, was

    12 min
  8. All Fat People Are Strong

    JAN 1

    All Fat People Are Strong

    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 TranscriptVirginia Happy 2026! We made it. It's a whole new year.  Corinne Thank God, honestly. Virginia See you later, 2025. Excited to be here in a new in a new chapter. Corinne To 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. Virginia I'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. Virginia I 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. Christine Consistently. 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. Virginia It’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. Christine Turns 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. Christine It’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. Virginia You 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.  Christine In 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. Virginia Just 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.  Christine Especially 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.  Corinne I mean, what can I say? Perennial wisdom. Virginia Perennial 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. Corinne Yeah, 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. Virginia The first question is: Do you have any tips for focusing on how you’re feeling in you

    42 min
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About

Burnt Toast is your body liberation community. We're working to dismantle diet culture and anti-fat bias, and we have a lot of strong opinions about comfy pants. Co-hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (NYT-bestselling author of FAT TALK) and Corinne Fay (author of the popular plus size fashion newsletter Big Undies).

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