Today’s interview is with
, author of the brand-new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. Virginia writes the Substack and is also the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. In this episode, we’re chatting about how body ideals interrupt the task of raising kids to have a healthy relationship with food, how the Division of Responsibility can be co-opted into a diet, how to get dads on board with the anti-diet movement and more.Find out more about Virginia here and follow her on Instagram and Tik Tok here.
Resources mentioned in this interview:
Virginia’s newsletter pieces:
Christy Harrison’s Anti-Diet
The American Academy of Pediatrics Clinical Report: Preventing Ob*sity and Eating Disorders in Adolescents
Virginia’s opinion piece for The New York Times Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me
Join the Raising Anti-Diet Kids Facebook Group.
Learn more about Diana’s coaching services: Tiny Seed Family Nutrition.
Follow Diana on Instagram and Facebook.
Episode Transcript:
Introduction:
Hello everybody, welcome back to The Messy Intersection, to the new and improved Messy Intersection I should say. I'm Diana Rice, a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, and mom of two. You can find me on Instagram at @anti.diet.kids or in the Raising Anti-Diet Kids Facebook Group.
And as you may already know,
is now on Substack! It is now both a podcast and a newsletter. I have rolled the newsletter that I was previously calling The Anti-Diet Parent right on into The Messy Intersection. And you can check out the archive of both newsletter essays and podcast episodes at dianarice.substack.com.I have such a great episode for you today. This interview is with Virginia Sole-Smith, who is the author of the
Newsletter, as well as the brand new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture that was just released on April 25th. I think I say it at some point in the interview, but seriously run, do not walk to go get your copy of this book.I will link to places you can buy it from in today's show notes, but seriously, This book is just so, so important to the overall conversation of raising anti-diet kids and unpacking the baggage and the biases and the poor advice that all just turns into a perfect storm of not knowing how to feed our kids and not knowing how to actually support them in having healthy bodies and healthy relationships with food.
So let's get right to it! Just a reminder that the content on this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice and all views I express are my own.
Let's hear from Virginia.
Interview:
Diana: Virginia, welcome to The Messy Intersection. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Virginia: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.
Diana: So, Virginia Sole-Smith is the author of the book Fat Talk, which is coming out on April 25th and I just wanna dive right in, Virginia. What is so important about this book? Why did you have the idea to write it, feel the need to write it? Why this book, why right now?
Virginia: Oh, very good questions. This book really came out of conversations I had with readers after my first book just called The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America came out in 2018 and in the sort of promotional period of that book, doing events, interviews, talking to readers, I kept getting all these questions from parents. And in particular I kept getting these questions that made it clear to me that parents right now are sort of caught between these two impossible tasks, which are: We want our kids to love their bodies. We don't want our kids to get eating disorders. We want them to have a healthy relationship with food. We care so much about that and we don't wanna have fat kids and like you can't achieve both these goals because you can't have a healthy relationship with food and body if that's conditional on body size.
And I realized in talking to parents and hearing from so many parents and readers, like this is where we were getting stuck because our generation of parents, we really grew up in the “ob*sity” epidemic. You know this messaging has been built into every interaction we have with public health, with doctors, with, just every institution that “ob*sity” prevention's the most important thing.
And then at the same time, millennial parents also know a lot about the diet culture that we grew up in and feeling bad about our bodies. And so there's just this sense over and over of like, “I don't want this for my kids. I want something different, but I don't know what I'm allowed to want.”
And so that's really what led me to say, okay, we have to reclaim fat, which I am not the first person to do by any means. That's decades of fat activism. I'm invoking there. But we need parents to reclaim fat. We need parents to understand what anti-fat bias is, to know how to name it, how to spot it, and start to think about how to navigate it with our kids.
Diana: Yeah, absolutely. This is something I've noticed in my own work is there's a lot of information out there for adults recovering from diet culture, recovering from eating disorders,, embracing fat liberation. But there is very, very little directed, well not specifically at kids. Like ideally, our seven year old kids aren't on Instagram, but directed to parents on how to talk to their kids.
And that's why I think your work is so important in this space. And it actually reminds me, I believe it's in
's Anti-Diet. She has a quote about how at some point we can't just keep pulling people out of the stream. We have to go upstream and end what is getting people into this mess in the first place. And to me, and knowing what I know about your work, that's childhood. It’s raising another generation of kids who, for one, doesn't suffer this way, but for two does not perpetuate these harmful ideals in their own families. And if we don't do that right, well we are just SOL.Virginia: Absolutely. And often, if there is any conversation around this, it starts in the teenage years, because that's when eating disorders tend to show up. But at that point it's, I'm not gonna say it's too late, because I'm sure you have parents with teenagers listening.
It's not too late. You can always do this work. But like, I often hear from parents like, oh, but I don't wanna talk about this with my three-year-old or my seven-year-old. Because I don't wanna teach them to feel bad about their body. And unfortunately, what we know from research is the world is already teaching your kids this, like between three and five, kids start to equate fat with bad and understand these messages.
So we have to be out in front, we have to be counter-programming this. And there's ways to do it that won't overly impart the sort of like, scary, like you can do it in a very positive, loving way. There's no need to avoid these topics,
Diana: If I recall correctly, you have a piece about, like, particularly for liberal parents, it is easier for them to talk about being anti-racist and other things along those lines.What's the gist of that piece? Why is it so hard to talk about anti-fat bias with little kids?
Virginia: Yeah, and to be clear, I don't think white liberal parents are doing an amazing job at talking about racism. We all still have a lot of work to do there. But I do think in the last...my older daughter is almost 10, so in the last decade I've seen a real shift where particularly like white liberal parents feeling very conscious of, “I have to learn how to talk about racism.”
I think gender identity is another one. We've started to do a much better job about talking inclusively about gender, about pronouns and sort of breaking down the binary of what it means to be a boy and a girl and all of that. And I think a lot of us have like, really put in the work there.
And then I've had parents say to me, “I know exactly what I would say if my kid pointed out that someone was black, but I don't know what to say if they say, oh, that man's so fat in the grocery store.” And this is an area where I think we just haven't done the same work yet. We haven't started to develop the scripts.
And so that's a big thing that I think the book helps parents do is start finding that language. But it's also because this is an issue that you are probably struggling with yourself and so you immediately have that knee-jerk fat as bad. Don't say fat, don't talk about it. Put it away. And that gets in the way of your ability to talk to your kids.
Diana: Yeah, that's so important. So I'm so interested in how this book evolved out of the reactions you were getting from your first book and as a follower of your work since that first book I know that you would be posting on social media about your process of putting this book together, looking for sources, even just collecting reactions from people on certain topics.
What was that process like? I know, we all think that social media is kind of this ball and chain that we're tied to, but I imagine it facilitated the writing process in a pretty unique way. What was that like?
Virginia: Yeah I really feel like this is a book that I wrote with and for my community in a kind of really special way.
I started my Substack newsletter Burnt Toast when I was a few months into this book research. So I really think of this as like the book that Burnt Toast built in a way. And it is different. My first book came out of some deeply personal experiences. I then spent a lot of time reporting out the issues in those books, traveling, talking to people. Like, this is what I do as a journalist, right?
I tell people’s stories. My work has always had that through line of like finding sources and sitting with them and hearing their stories. And so what was different with this book was I also wrote it during covid so I couldn't travel and like, hang out at someone's kitchen table.
Like people did not want me at their kitchen table. Right? So, I really couldn't report this book in the same way I reported my first book, or in the same way I was used to working in general as a journalist of going and spending time with people. And that does change how you think about finding sources.
And so social media did really fill that gap and that what I did have was access to 30,000 people on Instagram or 25,000 people on a newsletter where I could say, “This is what I'm looking for if you have stories to share” and that did a couple of things, that really helped ground me in what parents are most struggling with and most concerned about.
Like I'm hearing very directly from readers all the time now in a way that's new and really awesome. So I do feel like I was able to shape the book. Very specifically towards what readers are looking for. On the other hand, the downside of it is that you're in an echo chamber, right? Because people who are following me already sort of are interested in this and maybe they're not like, wouldn't say they're a hundred percent fat liberation, but they're at least like questioning diet culture and starting to do this work.
And so I did have to push to make sure I was finding sources that weren't just like my typical reader and to sort of push beyond that. And. Again, social media is helpful. Like, I found more of that on Twitter where my presence is a little more diffuse or you just have to like, kind of like go a little bit further in how you're locating people.
And pay attention to, the gender makeup, the racial makeup, the socioeconomic makeup of sources, and make sure that I was, gender identity, all of that, trying to be fairly inclusive. I probably didn't do a perfect job on that because it's really hard, but it was something I was being really mindful of.
And yeah, I would say mostly I think it was a real strength that I was able to connect so directly with readers and understand what they're really struggling with.
Diana: There are so, so many stories in the book, I honestly had a little bit of a hard time keeping all of the families straight.
Virginia: Yeah, that's right.
Diana: In a good way. Like, “Is this the mom who grew up with restriction or not?”
Virginia: I know. I would love, you know how like with epic novels, they often have a flow chart at the front so you can keep all the generations straight. There's not really a good model for that with non-fiction, but I would've loved to be like, “This mom that you met in chapter two and now we're here in chapter 12…”
Diana: Right. But that just illustrates that there are so many stories of real people in the book, real families that are struggling with these things and I think that you did a fairly good job with the diversity of it as well. I was really encouraged to see that you explored, I mean, there's so many things that you cover in here, but for me and what I know that my followers get confused about, I was encouraged to see that you explored the role that what people learn about The Division Responsibility plays into what you were describing at first. “I wanna do this right, I wanna raise kids with a healthy relationship with food. And I don't want them to be fat.”
So you have a whole section called “When DOR Becomes a Diet.” For anybody who's unfamiliar, that's a child feeding principle where the parents choose the what, where and when of food and children choose whether and how much.
And it's interesting because as someone who has studied with the Ellyn Satter Institute, I have a pretty good concept of how it is both not a method to shrink bodies and it's actually not a nutritional intervention at all. It's considered a behavioral intervention, right? But take one look at social media and you would think it's a nutritional intervention. And there's a very interesting parallel, I think, as someone who's also a certified intuitive eating counselor, as to when influencers take and run with the concepts of intuitive eating and talk about how much weight they lost on intuitive eating.
And so basically, diet culture, anti-fat ruins everything. And you have an excellent newsletter piece, which I will link to as well, about how diet culture has, I don't wanna say ruined DOR, because whenever I say that people are like, “Wait, we're not supposed to use it anymore?”
Virginia: Yeah, it's still really useful, but it's not, a.) It was not a perfect model to begin with because there's no such thing as a perfect model. And b.) It is very easy to co-opt.
Diana: So how exactly did you explore that? How does it become a diet? What are parents doing here?
Virginia: I mean, I think what it is, is it's all in the, “parents are in charge of the what” and so that is a great idea in theory. It's something I really firmly believe in. Try very hard to practice in my own home. But if you are defining what as, “okay, so my kids can't really eat carbs and they can't really eat sugar and I mostly only feel good if they eat fruits and vegetables and my kids don't like fruits and vegetables” like, that's a diet.
It's very easy to define the “what” through diet culture. And then you're in a position where you are exerting all this control over what food they get offered and your child will experience that as restriction, because it is because you're restricting them! And so the whole challenge is in order for parents to be in control of the “what,” we actually have to give up a lot of control.
And we have to realize that like, it's not our job to only be offering these perfectly balanced, rainbow bento boxes that you see on Instagram with the strategically placed three blue M&Ms and all the 47 types of produce cut into flower shapes.
Diana: Oh my gosh, who has the time? I just. Every time I'm just like, I don't know how they have the time.
Virginia: I know. I have like, a little stress response every time I describe one of those images. And like, look, if you're listening to this and you're like, “but I love my cookie cutter flower shapes,” like, If that gives you joy, that's great, but please understand that it's a hobby, not a requirement to parent.
Diana: Right, right. It's like the laundry room thing.
Virginia: Right. Yeah. KC Davis says that, like having a beautiful laundry room is a hobby, not a care task. Like, we have to feed our children. We don't have to feed them like, lifestyle photo shoot quality meals, that's not the goal. We just have to feed them enough so that they can grow and thrive and the plates don't have to be pretty at all.
So yeah, so that I think is a big piece of it. And then the other piece of it is like, the diet culture shows up when you're trying to control the “what” in that sense, and then you're still wanting your child to control the “how much,” but you don't really feel that comfortable with how much your child wants to eat.
And so when you see your kid having three servings of pasta and no broccoli, or asking for more cookies and you. Didn't mean to control the wet, but you actually only put out two cookies per person. And what do you mean you want another cookie? Or like, like I have my afternoon snack here, my Uncrustable.
Like these come like pre-packaged and so wait, my child wants to eat two of them, but there's only one in a package. Like that kind of stuff is still like these sort of sneaky ways that parents start to try to control the, how much that's di culture showing up again.
Diana: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there's this sense of, if I do DOR, which has this whole research institute behind it, everybody agrees, this is the best practice of child feeding. This is what will “get” my kid to eat the food that I'm putting out. So I just have to stick with it. Play the long game. And there's someone you interviewed in your newsletter piece about this, who was playing the long game for kind of a while.
And it wasn't working out for her kid. And I don't think that you mentioned that that kid had any neurodivergence, but I know you interviewed Naureen Hunani in the book. Who basically has a very strong opinion about what DOR is doing, especially with neurodiverse kids.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Virginia: I mean, Naureen points out that DOR does state, I mean, Ellyn Satter states very plainly that the goal of this method is that over time your child will learn to eat most of the same foods you eat. And the reality is that not all kids are gonna do that for a variety of reasons.
Not all kids are going to thrive on a sort of typical DOR feeding schedule of three meals and three snacks, perfectly spaced and always sitting down at the table and eating as much as you're hungry for and no more. Like, that is a very ableist model because not every kid, not every human is wired to eat that frequently.
Or to eat on that kind of schedule, or to be able to sit at a table for the entire duration of a meal. Like, there's so many pieces of this that if you're dealing with any kind of neurodivergency or what really kids of any age, like my kids are neurotypical by most measures and we really struggle with a lot of this.
And I think having that expectation that this is going to fix things is really fundamentally ableist, because it's assuming there's like a right way to feed a kid. And a right way for them to be as an eater, as opposed to saying like, okay. What if my child never becomes a more adventurous eat?
What if my child is always extremely cautious, always mostly only gravitates towards carbs and cheese or what, whatever the foods are that you are like, they never stop eating these. What if that doesn't ever change? How do I want them to feel about their relationship with food? Do I want them to feel good about it?
I don't want them to feel shame and live their life feeling bad that they could never achieve this like, standard of eating that is fairly arbitrary and were they, like a man in the fifties, nobody would even be questioning. It's so defined by our current cultural norms and expectations like, I want my kid to feel great about their relationship with food, even if they only have nine safe foods.
That kid deserves to feel good about food and feel like that they can trust their bodies. And so how do we then step away from like, Trying to control this with a eye towards outcomes. I think that's really what it comes down to is like whenever you're really focused on the outcome as opposed to the process and what's making your family meals more pleasant and more, like building more trust between you and your child, that kind of thing.
And so that, yeah, talking to Naureen and following your work and lots of other folks who've kind of raised these questions really helped me to start to, like just even in my own personal life, feeding my kids, like think about like, well, when is DOR useful and when is it not? and I think that's a more responsive feeding approach does have a lot more potential where parents can say like, “where am I getting stuck and why am I getting stuck? And is it because I'm putting an unfair expectation on my kid? Well then how can I let that go?”
Diana: Yeah. And I don't think that a lot of parents are necessarily drawing the straight line from the outcomes that they want from DOR into conforming to be ultimately a grownup who eats according to the way that diet culture says we should eat. But ultimately that is the outcome when we're looking at these rainbow bento boxes of food and things. It’s kind of subconsciously embedded in us.
One thing that I often bring up with my coaching clients who, as we discussed, are generally sort of open-minded parents to say, “if your kid chose a certain gender identity or wanted to choose a profession or whoever they choose to marry would you fight against that, would you try to put your square peg in a round hole?” “No. No. Of course not. If my kid wants to be an artist and not a doctor, absolutely. I want them to.” It's individuality. Right? And then I bring it back to, “well, if they chose to eat this way for the rest of their lives, what would that mean?”
And it's a light bulb moment, but, I think it really gets into that performance of health that you. Discuss in the book. So can you tell us a little bit about what you found on that?
Virginia: Yeah. So, we think of health as very binary, right? We think you're either healthy or you're not healthy. And if you're healthy, it's because you're doing a lot of things right. And if you're unhealthy, it's because you're doing a lot of things wrong. Like this is kind of, I don't think people would say it that plainly, but I think on some level that's how we've been sort of trained to think about it. But the reality is health is really much more of a resource. And it's a form of social capital. And so health is something that if you are privileged in terms of race, gender identity, socioeconomic status, body size, et cetera, it is much easier for you to attain health because people just look at you and assume you're healthy. Pretty much if you're thin and white and able bodied. Like people just look at you and are like, that's a healthy person. I bet they're doing great. And we look at anyone in a more marginalized body and assume that they're unhealthy and probably doing something wrong and maybe also ignorant about how to eat and exercise and need all these interventions.
And this is harmful, obviously, for anyone in a marginalized body because you just wrote them off. Obviously that's terrible and leads to, like they're not receiving the healthcare they deserve, they're not treated with dignity and respect. Like there's clearly harm there, but it also really harms the privileged white person, thin, thin mom type of person as well.
Because so much of our social identity then is tied to our ability to perform and maintain health as a form of social capital to like provide it to our children to continually strive for it in terms of what hobbies does our family enjoy? Like are we skiing and bike riding, or are we watching TV, playing video games and staying home?
Like are we joining a farmer's market and a CSA or are we shopping at Walmart? What do their lunch boxes look like? Can I let my kids pack their own lunch? My five year old packed herself, goldfish, cheese and Hershey kisses for lunch today, or do I have to intervene and do the bento box rainbow thing?
So when we start to understand that health is actually much more about how we present to the world and these standards, we're worried about being judged, by then we can start to say like, “okay, I don't wanna buy into that whole system.” Like when I am pushing so hard to achieve that version of health for me and my family. Like it's costing us something and I'm playing into this whole hierarchy and reinforcing all these biases against anyone who doesn't have my privilege.
Diana: Yeah, but it's just as hard to reject at that point, like you might cognitively understand, okay, fat bodies thin bodies, all good bodies.
But not my, not my fat body, right? And, and I think that it's really hard for women in particular, and you have a whole chapter on this, to buck the norm and say, “Actually my kid can have Hershey kisses in her lunchbox.” Or whatever, because you may very well be facilitating your kids' healthy relationship with food but you're now the mom who everybody knows, you pack the Hershey kisses in the lunchbox. And maybe you don't wanna talk about it, because it has to do with your own triggers and your own relationship with food. And it's just easier to put a good face and maybe have the Hershey kisses back at home or something like that.
And just what do you think, like what are the pressures that women in particular, mothers in particular, are under here?
Virginia: Oh, well, only all of the pressures. Like how much time do we have? I mean, the reason we work so hard on the damn lunch boxes is that we are so judged by them. It's the classic, my husband takes the kids to the grocery store and even if one of them is lying down on the floor of Walmart screaming and kicking, some old lady's gonna come by and be like, you're doing such a good job, what a good dad you are. Can I help you? Can I buy your kid a cookie to cheer her up?
And if I take the kids to the grocery store and someone lies down on the ground, I just get dirty looks and judgment that I'm such a lax mother who can't control her children. So the double standard we have around parenting and gender is so intense and it especially shows up in food because in general, women are socialized to be the feeders.
And the caretakers. And so we are the ones menu planning for the week. We are the ones grocery shopping. We are the ones facing down the kitchen at 5:00 PM on a Wednesday being like, “okay, how am I gonna do it again? What's everyone going to eat?” And all of that pressure. It's understandable that you're gonna try to control what you can control, right?
And what you can control is what the lunchbox looks like. You can't actually control whether the kid eats the lunchbox unless you're really resorting to high pressure tactics. And you can't control very much about whether they grow up to be whatever kinds of eaters.
But if you are meticulously making the rainbow lunchbox, you feel like you're checking off some box and I don't want anyone to feel bad for participating in this. Like I have also participated in this. For sure. I just want us all to step back and say, “how is this serving us?”
And what can we let go of and how would it be different for our kids and for us if we let go of some of this pressure and started to say like, maybe I don't have to cook from scratch five nights a week or seven nights a week, however many nights a week you try to cook from scratch, like, maybe.
We can do whatever shortcut dinners and take out and fast food. And realize that like the time spent together as a family where we're enjoying eating together, no matter what we're eating, is actually much more valuable for our kids than if I'm standing over them like counting out Brussels sprouts.
Diana: You are speaking my language because I recently hosted a meal planning class where I thought we would just mostly talk about making meal planning easier, but what we got into was like, the judgment people felt for buying a jarred sauce. And I, and I'm like, I'm like ladies. We gotta buy the jarred sauce, right?
Virginia: I mean, I say this as someone who grew up with an Italian stepfather. Yes, I really value homemade pasta sauce. We buy jarred sauce, we go through a jar a week in my house, minimum, like yes, making my own sauce from scratch is like, again, it's for me, it's a hobby. It's something to do on Sunday afternoon.
When we're puttering around the house and it's gonna, I'm gonna like how it makes the house smell. And that's gonna be a fun thing to do on a cozy weekend. That is not something I am expecting myself to execute on Tuesday night.
Diana: Absolutely. No. And then, and then we get into the alternative is first of all, you feel very guilty about not making a from-scratch dinner.
Which, guilt and shame are never going to serve our actual, long-term health. And everybody's gotta eat something. So what are we eating? Expensive takeout, right? Nothing wrong with chicken nuggets. But, you know, like then that spirals back into guilt and shame again.
And maybe it's not so much pasta sauce, but like, these like Alfredo sauces that have preservatives and stuff like that
Virginia: Yeah. But are delicious! And if your kids like them and they get dinner accomplished, like…
Diana: A hundred percent. But speaking of moms, you actually have an entire chapter dedicated to dad's role in this. And this is kind of the first of its kind, right? Like we don't, we don't have, other than a handful of your newsletter pieces, I'm not sure where else we can point to explore the role that fathers, male figures play in the influence of anti-fat bias on our kids.So yeah, go. What's that about?
Virginia: It is a completely a conversation that's not happening. I mean, even in the research when I was looking for studies on like the role dads play in eating disorder development. There's like three versus like hundreds on mothers, I mean, there's a whole body of literature on mothers and eating disorders and the research we do have on dads is usually like if the dad is married to a mom with an eating disorder, like it's all still like skewed through, so there's this like longstanding double standard that somehow how men relate to food and bodies doesn't impact children at all, or the family dynamic at all, which is garbage for anyone who has grew up with a father.
Like they still talk about food, they talk about bodies, they make fat jokes. Like my dad did like 50 pushups every morning and talked about why. And I don't wanna shame the dads. Like, I don't wanna shame the moms like they are swimming in the same soup, we're all swimming in.
But I do think what's even more complicated when we start to look at this with men is, number one, we don't have the scripts for this. We don't have the language for this. So it's really hard for men who are struggling to even identify that they're struggling versus just like, “this is how I expect to relate to my body.”
And then even if they can sort of identify, “oh, I'm really struggling with food and my body image.” They can't get help because doctors aren't aware. Like, it's just not on anyone's radar that they're really struggling. They don't know how to talk about it. They don't know how to say to a guy friend, like, “I feel really bad about my body and I'm skipping meals and I'm scared about that.”
There's none of that language. So that's really troubling and really, like, super concerning in terms of how the men are, they are not okay. But also the other piece of it is like, we not only sort of ignore when they're struggling. We also reinforce and celebrate it.
Like when you think about who we consider the leading the thought leaders on food and the quote “ob*sity” crisis. It's a lot of thin white men. It's the Michael Pollans. It's the guys who are all about the intermittent fasting, Hard 75. Like there's all these male-oriented diets and they are always given much more gravitas than diets marketed to women, which we might think of Weight Watchers as kind of silly, or Noom. Well even Noom is kind of marketed to men too actually. That's a weird one.
Diana: Noom is weird on the whole, but yes. Right.
Virginia: Right. Sidebar. Noom is weird. But just think like the way Gwyneth Paltrow gets made fun of, right? Yes. Like Goop is something where you make jokes about. Like, “oh my gosh, it's so extreme.” Jack Dorsey, you know. Twitter CEO, well more former Twitter CEO, eating once a day is held up as like, “oh God, the willpower, so macho” and like, “wow, the science on intermittent and fasting is so impressive.” And it's like, if a woman was eating like that, it would be a red flag for an eating disorder diagnosis.
So that then shows up in the family dynamic, right? Because if dad is eating like that, if dad is doing his Ironman training or his, like getting ready for whatever endurance sport thing, like weekend warrior type of hobby, and all of his eating during the week is oriented around fueling his sport.
We're like allowing that, we're encouraging that because it's so great that he does these like really hardcore sports and we're not, like, is there anything a little disordered about you wanting to exercise for nine hours on a Saturday? Anything we wanna unpack there? No. No? Okay. Any weird messages for your kids who love pasta so much that you've cut out carbs while you're bulking up or whatever it is, I don't even like, speak that lingo, but, when they, when they do their cuts and their bulking and whatnot.
And, it absolutely shows up for kids because they know that dads make judgements. I also see, because like how kids get fed, Because women, again, carry so much more of this water. We are the ones doing the research on something like Division of Responsibility or more responsive feeding approaches.
And then dads are often stuck in a more old-school, clean your plate, don't eat so much garbage, like this really negative kind of stuff. And then there's that clash at the dinner table. And so for a kid who wants both parents’ approval, like what are they supposed to do with that dynamic?
Diana: Yeah, a hundred percent. I see that a lot. Most of my clients are women and they wanna do what's right for their kids. They're interested in learning, and then they go, but I don't know how to convince my husband. Like, do you have a research study? Do you have something that would...and it's, it's hard to find because first of all, all the research is somehow tangled up in “ob*sity” prevention.
But then also, you know dads will get to this point where “well, I grew up in the Clean Plate Club and look at me now I'm training for an Ironman or whatever.” And there's something else there of, when a woman's on Weight Watchers, it's for vanity purposes.
It’s to lose weight and be thin and be attractive to men. When a man is training for an Ironman, the impact on his body composition is almost secondary, like the prize is completing it and achievement and being so strong.
Virginia: And there's nothing vanity-related about that. Definitely not at all. I've seen their Instagram posts, like there's nothing vanity-related about posting pictures of yourself with your medals and your shirt off. Certainly not aesthetic. Very, very important.
Diana: So assuming that most listeners here are women. I would love it if there were some men as well, but assuming that we're mostly women listening what would you in a nutshell say that someone who is on board with raising kids hopefully to have a healthy relationship with food, unpack anti-fat bias, could say to her male partner. Where do we go?
Virginia: I know. Where do you even start? If you wanna get my book and leave it out... Or even say, I mean, I think it is fair to say to your partner, “look, I do the majority of the work on this and that is how we've set things up.” And you can either then say, “and I wanna look at shifting up that balance.” If the balance is not working for you. Or you can say, “I get that I am like leading the charge here, but I need you to be involved as well. And that means I need you to read some stuff. And I need us to have some conversations about how we're gonna approach this. And there are a couple lines in the sand for me. I don't want us to shame bodies. I don't want us to make fat jokes. I don't want us to demonize food.” And like, you can't control what he's doing with his body. That's his stuff, you know? Yeah. But you can say like, “when the kids are at the table with us, these topics have to be off limits.”
Like, “I don't want our kids exposed to that.” And talk about, if he feels comfortable, talk about how that stuff has harmed you or there is lots of research showing that how we talk about food and bodies negatively impacts kids. It's all cited in my book, so you can point to that if you need some footnotes.
And just, I think like just agreeing on a few ground rules and then also thinking about like, well, where do we align in terms of what family meals do we both really treasure and celebrate? Like how do we sync up on this so it's not just like combative, combative, combative, you know?
But like, what are the things, like what are both of our priorities around feeding the kids and feeding ourselves and how do we sort of use that as a starting point. And it might just be like, like in my house, we agree that three nights a week take out is an option.
Like we agree that unless he wants to cook more, which my husband's not a really big cook. He'll cook maybe once a week, but his repertoire is limited. He's not particularly interested in learning to cook more. That is fine. That is his choice. But I am not cooking seven nights a week. So we are budgeting more for takeout to make up for that labor. And. That works for us. that's not a point, that's not a source of conflict. Like, it's great. So finding those kinds of points where, I think it's really important we make all this labor very visible. I think women often, we feel like the labor's not being seen.
And I do think it's on us to like, really announce it and narrate it if necessary. And make it clear that we're doing this work and not in a passive aggressive way, but just in a, like, “this is work.” We also have a rule at my family dinner table that you do not start eating until the person who cooks sits down.
And it's just like, and that was something that Dan was like super on board with because he saw how upsetting it is. And when he does cook, he experiences that, like when everyone rushes to start eating and you're still like getting your drink and coming to the table and you're like, I'm sorry, what?
Like, I'm not the waiter. And so my kids often sit with their forks, like poised in front of their open mouths, waiting for my butt to hit the chair and then eat. But at least they're learning like, we're making this labor visible. We're learning to respect the work that goes into making dinner.
And that is something we really value as a family. And so that has helped me personally a ton to feel less like, oh, I'm the only one who's like focused on this.
Diana: And especially with little kids who can't sit for longer than five minutes, sometimes I feel like, I sit down and they're already gone.
Virginia: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's not realistic to set goals of like, you have to sit for 15 minutes, like that can be super stressful. But just like, at least wait for us all to sit down. And yeah, that, and clear your plate. Those are, those are some really important ones in my house.
Diana: So this archetype of, I think your, your chapter is even called like, “The Thin White Dads on Diets” or something like that. Why is it important? I know that this book is so important for people who are living in fat bodies to feel seen and move the needle in terms of that is not a negative, the negative is the fact that we are demonizing it. But why is it important for thin families, to be having this conversation, to be picking up your book?
Virginia: Yeah. There's really two reasons. The first one is, you don't wanna raise kids who are anti-fat, just like you don't wanna raise kids who are racist or sexist or any other -ist.
So this is on parents of thin kids to start talking about what anti-fat bias is and naming it and helping kids learn how to be good allies. Like, this is the same work you would do as a white parent talking about anti-black racism or any other marginalization issue.
The other reason though, and this comes out of my own personal story a little bit, is your thin kid may not be a thin adult. I was a thin kid. I was thin until I was about 17, 18. And then when I went to college, my body started to change. I now identify as small fat and I've been in that category of body size for the past, I don't know, five to 10 years.
And the reason I struggled was not because I thought being fat was a bad thing. It was more that I had tied thinness to my identity. It had been so praised in me as a child. It had been this default setting and it had felt like a kind of superpower that I could eat whatever I want and not gain weight, and that this was something really celebrated and special about my body.
And so then when that wasn't my body anymore, I felt like I had failed at something. I felt like I suddenly had to engage with food and exercise in a way that didn't feel good because I was like, “oh, I have to try to get my thin pass back. I have to get back to that.”
And so that's what I'm really trying to avoid. Like my own kids have straight size privilege right now, and I just really don't want them to have that same experience of feeling like, “this is something I've gotta hang on to at all costs” because it's not realistic. It's not realistic.. It is, again, only reinforcing the bias and causing harm to people around you.
But it's also like, kids deserve better. They deserve to know that their body is not their value.
Diana: Yeah. I would go so far as to say that most people will find themselves in that situation of no longer being as thin as they were at one point in their life. Like it's how human bodies work.
Virginia: Even if you stay straight sized, you are probably a higher straight size than you were as a child.
Diana: Yeah. And our options are basically to unpack that and reckon with it, and ideally, raise kids who don't have to go through the same reckoning or to perpetuate diet culture by trying to achieve the small body again. And we all know where that gets us.
Virginia: Exactly. So, I think that the other thing is like, whatever the work you're doing, even if it doesn't seem like they quote, “need” it right now. They actually do need it. And it's also true that like thin kids still encounter diet culture, right?
They still are told that their body is their value. they're the kids who are gonna get all the praise from the coach as opposed to the fat kid who the coach is ignoring. Or isn't even on the team, because the jersey doesn't come in their size. The thin kid is getting all the like, sort of intensity from the coach of like, “you're built like a runner, you're built like a dancer, gymnast,” or whatever.
And like, what that does to kids' sense of themselves is really disturbing. And I just think we want more for our kids than that. We don't want them to think that this body size is the best thing about me.
Diana: Right. So true. Your chapter on, I think you used “sugar addicts.” I found that to be the most heart-wrenching chapter. I deal with a lot of families who are in similar positions. And what I think is so interesting and important about it is, it's not just “sugar is evil, we've gotta restrict sugar from our kids.” Like, what you explore from the parents who are locking up the sweets is trauma in their own childhoods that brought them there. And I would be very hesitant to criticize or demonize any parent in this situation, but can you tell us a little bit more about that chapter and the stories you heard and where this is leaving us if we continue on this path?
Virginia: Yeah. So the chapter explores the stories of primarily one family who became concerned when one of their children started sneaking food and so they got a lockbox and locked up all the treats and started having the kids ask permission after dinner to get treats. And these parents, like, I love this family so much. Like this is a family I spent a lot of time with over Zoom to report this chapter.
And they were incredibly open and like, they knew this was something that didn't sit right with either one of them and they were trying to reflect on it, but they were also really caught in feeling super scared about what that behavior looked like to them. This sort of sneaking food, this out of control look that this child seemed like they were so outta control around sweets and so that they had to get control.
And as we talked, it became clear that there was a lot of stuff in their own childhoods around the way food had been. Like the dad grew up low-income and there simply wasn't enough food a lot of the time. So that creates a scarcity mindset. The mom grew up with a lot of diet culture messaging that had taught her that her body needed to be controlled in a major way.
And I think. This is so common. I mean, that story, I think some people reading it will feel like this is an extreme story, but I actually don't think it's extreme at all. There are elements of this playing out in most households in so many ways, and what it really comes down to is needing to like get at the core of, “why am I so anxious when my child seems like they are out of control around sugar?”
Understanding that probably underpinning that is anti-fat bias, and if you are ready to release anti-fat bias, that means being ready to release your fear of sugar too, like, lf you're gonna say, “okay, actually being fat is fine. It's not a bad way to have a body,” then there is really no risk to this child occasionally eating lots of, or frequently eating lots of beloved food. And the other thing we know, so then I get into the research of like, well, what actually plays into a kid being so treat fixated or food fixated, and we know it's restriction. The lockbox is only furthering the fixation and the need to sneak and the need to hide.
So whether a restriction comes from true food scarcity because of money, or it comes from a diet culture messaging like, it is human nature. It is an understandable response. It is a feature, not a bug to say, “oh, I haven't had access to this food. I now have access to this food. I will eat a lot of this food because I don't know when I'm gonna get it again.”
And parents understanding that is just…it's a really hard, it's a really hard one. Because sometimes you can't, you can't tell where the restriction comes from. Like I've had parents say like, “but I know we don't restrict. I know we don't restrict.” And then when we talk a little more, it's like, “well, we do keep all the sugar up on the highest shelf in the pantry where the kids can't reach it.” You know? Or this is not a lockbox, but it's still like, we do kind of tend to hover and be like, “well, how many cookies are you taking?”
And like, that's all, that's all another form of restriction.
Diana: Yeah. It's really complicated for people and undoing that there's such a scary initialization period. I think one family in the book does choose to sort of let up on it. And it's, basically, again, a parallel to adult intuitive eating is that when you decide to stop restricting, it is going to look like your worst fear for a while.
And, and that's really hard. I think as an adult you're like, “fine, I can eat all Doritos all day. It's my life, my choice.” But to watch the kid, and going back to that performance of health thing, go through that and you are not sure when they're going to stop.
Right. And you have no control over when they're going to stop. As an adult, you could technically put yourself back in restriction. But that just fear and the negative connotations with what kind of parent would do this. And of course this gets us into my next question, diet culture at large, pediatricians, public health professionals are all like, not in such blatant terms saying “lock up the sweets.” But basically pushing that this is what a good parent would do, or a good parent wouldn't bring it into the home in the first place. And that brings me to my question about the latest American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.
Which for any listener who has managed to get this far without hearing about it, basically they are, “ob*sity” management guidelines for kids that go so far as to recommend weight loss drugs and bariatric surgery starting at ages 12 and 13. Handful of other restrictions in there. All supposedly research backed, but people have kind of taken a look at the actual research and said, “is it though, is it though? And the AAP has a 2016 paper that I actually find very useful in my weight-inclusive practice. I link to it on my website that says, “look here, all the research why we don't put kids on diets.”
And you do reference that paper in your book but I imagine you submitted your manuscript before this latest AAP thing came out. And maybe that's a good thing because you would've had to write a whole second book. Right?
Virginia: I mean, I did go back to my editor and I was like, “is it too late? Can I, can I please add a chapter?” And she was like, “it's too late. It's too late.” I was like, Ugh. Like the timing of it kind of kills me. But I ended up like writing an op-ed about it for the New York Times and covering it a lot in the newsletter, so I certainly feel like, everything in the book, like it doesn't change anything I wrote in the book.
You know what I mean? It’s only is like, the most crystalline example that I would've loved to be like, “if you don't believe that fat phobia is alive and well in pediatric medicine here, check this out.” So it is super disappointing. Super frustrating. I am really scared for how these guidelines will impact so many kids, especially kids who are marginalized in various ways, and kids whose parents are going to see those guidelines and think, “okay, we have to do a diet, we have to try a weight loss medication, let's do the referral for bariatric surgery.” And the thing is, like none of those parents are bad parents. Those are parents just responding to this pressure and this fear, and they should be able to trust doctors not to fear monger to them and not to push them towards these treatments that are not evidence-based.
And it's just like, such a failure of medicine that we can't count on doctors to do that. It really, really frustrates me as someone who is very pro-science and pro-doctors to see this like real just... Yeah. I kind of lose my words.
Diana: Yeah, some of my mom friends and I who, you know, we vaccinate our kids. We go, “look, the AAP says, vaccinate your kids!” And now we're in the position of being like, “well listen to them on that, but not this…”
Virginia: Exactly. It's like we are working so hard to establish the importance of scientific credibility. And then you guys do this, and it's like, I don't know.
Diana: Yeah. That 2016 paper, which is it's, the title is simultaneously “preventing “ob*sity” and eating disorders,” looks at the research and it shows, “oh, look at that. Every time we try to shrink a child's body, we either end up with an eating disorder or we end up in weight cycling,” right?
Which has metabolic consequences that also have poor health outcomes. Right? Let's not do that. Let's, I mean, it literally says, “let's not use fat talk,” right? And here's what to do instead. So with that, I mean, 2016 was kind of a while ago. In my head, we were kind of working towards a new and better, braver world.
And then, bam, uh, here we are with, semaglutide gets approved for use in pediatrics, right? And bam, we get this paper.
Virginia: What we were working towards was the FDA approval of weight loss drugs for children. And now that we have that, We need some scientific documentation – I'm using air quotes – to make parents feel okay about using this.
And so yeah, it's creating a market for weight loss drugs is what they're doing right now. And the AAP is an organization that takes donations from pharmaceutical manufacturers. They are not this completely unbiased, pure source that I think we wanna believe they are. They also do do a lot of good, and I think talking to doctors as I have been over the last couple weeks, I think there's a lot of pediatricians who are very frustrated with these guidelines and very anxious about what it's gonna mean for their clinical practice because once you've made something, I mean, so the difference is the 2016 paper was a position paper, but it didn't establish clinical guidelines. Now they're giving out these, like, “this is what we think you should do,” like actual practice guidelines. And that puts pediatricians in a really tough spot because they are supposed to follow those.
Like those are their rules. And so now, one doctor said to me like, “I'm worried this is gonna open us up for litigation if we don't do it. We're gonna have to get more creative in how we have these conversations with parents.” So, It's really tricky and I think unfortunately it's putting a lot of burden on parents to educate ourselves and to advocate and to set boundaries at the doctor's office.
Like no weight talk in front of the kids. Which you can do by like, handing over a post-it note at the start of the appointment or sending an email or calling ahead. And then if it does come up anyway, being prepared to pivot and to say, we're not gonna worry about that. Like, we trust their body.
We're not going to focus on weight loss. We don't think that's a good fit for our family. And this is scary. This is really hard for parents to have to go against a doctor or push back like that. Like this is not something that comes easily and is not going to feel safe for everybody.
Diana: Yeah. I even, I put something on my own Instagram about that, about pushing back and Katja Rowell, who I imagine is cited in your book at some point, said, said on my post, “A hundred percent. But let's think about our foster families. And how they may not have a choice here. And I was like, “oh sh!t. Absolutely.”
Virginia:
I think this is gonna be used, I mean, we already see children's weight being a reason that parents lose custody. Or being a contributing factor. And so this is going to come into play there with really serious and terrifying ramifications.
Diana: Well that brings me to my last question, which is for me, and I'm sure for Katja and for everyone else who loves your work, this book is revolutionary.
It is going to be on all our bookshelves. I don't even read paper books. I have ADHD, I don't even read paper books. I do audio books. I'm still gonna have a paper copy on my bookshelf. But at the beginning of the interview, we were talking about an echo chamber, a bubble.
Your book is phenomenal in our echo chamber. But I wonder if the world at large and the pediatricians who put together these kinds of guidelines, you're a bit of a fringe writer. What is that like, what kind of pushback do you get and what is it like being fairly confident that you're on the right side here?
I always put these little asterisks on my Instagram posts that like, every time I have to disclose, like: Loving kids unconditionally is always the right side…and why the hell do I have to point this out?? So I imagine you're fairly confident in that yourself, but you may be perceived as kind of a fringe writer, people are gonna read your book and be like, “yeah, yeah, weight stigma is bad, but…we still can't have fat kids, so what are we gonna do about that?”
What is that like?
Virginia: That is the hardest part of the job, no question. I made a pretty conscious choice about two years ago to start focusing more on my own newsletter rather than previously, for most of my career as a journalist, I've been published in mainstream media outlets.
I wrote a lot for the New York Times and lots of women's magazines and all those places, and I really was burnt out on the pushback and the trolls and the men who email me when I do those stories and it's, I had just reached a point of like, it was both frustrating to get the negative pushback, and it's also frustrating to do those stories for those places because mainstream media outlets have a lot of institutional anti-fat bias that you're up against.
So I was just kind of exhausted and I was like, you know what? I'm pivoting, in terms of my own work, to do my newsletter, which has been such a joy and really just a, oh God, it's so lovely. It's so lovely. But it is also true that we cannot stay only in the bubbles, in the echo chambers if we're gonna make any progress here.
And so, I do occasionally come back. I mean, I'm gonna publish this book, which obviously is sold everywhere, not just in anti-diet spaces and doing media for that. And I still occasionally write for the bigger outlets because I do really, I'm like, this is what I can do. Like this is what I can contribute.
I'm not a dietitian, I'm not someone who works directly with families, but I can, like, keep pushing the conversation into the mainstream a little bit. And it definitely takes a toll. Like those weeks are hard. But I think having this community is so, like, it is such a balm. And like after my New York Times op-ed came out about the guidelines, like Aubrey Gordon texted me and was like, “just checking in...we need these stories, but man, they are awful! How are you doing?”
And I was like, thank you Aubrey. I'm not great. And like, it's just nice to feel like there are a bunch of us working on this and supporting each other. And on the flip side, some of the, the sort of like moments that have made me feel the most like, “okay, I'm doing something valuable here” are when I hear from a reader who's found me in a radio interview or, wherever, like mainstream place and sends a note and is like, “I've been waiting for someone to say this or, like, I needed to hear this, I grew up and I experienced X, Y, and Z and you're helping me understand it didn't have to be that way.”
And it's like, okay. It's worth doing. I'll take some angry man on Twitter. It's fine. I'll be that shield. Like, let's keep doing it.
Diana: And some of your best Instagram posts are when you screenshot what they've said to you on Twitter and everybody's like, “oh yeah, that's, that guy's an a$$hole.”
Virginia:
Well, that is like, the best advice I got on this was from
, who deals with just a ridiculous numbers of trolls. And she says, like there's no right way to handle a troll or respond. So you just do whatever feels good to you in the moment. Because like, you're not gonna convince that guy, there's no point having that conversation.So if you just wanna ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, that is your right. And if you wanna make fun of them, also fair game.
Diana: It sounds like you at least have a good perspective on it and you're taking care of yourself.
Honestly, if I were you, I wouldn't cook dinner seven nights a week either!
Virginia: Absolutely not. Yes.
Diana: Well, this has been really incredible. Seriously, run, don't walk to buy this book, everyone listening. It's really, I think a cultural landmark in this conversation, I would say.
Virginia: And there is an audio book if, like Diana, you prefer audio books, that is an option as well.
Diana: Yes! And you can pre-order the audio book, which I've done. For a lot of the books like this, like How to Raise an Intuitive Eater,I have the Kindle, the print book, and the audio book for various reasons.
Virginia: We love you! Authors love you.
Diana: Thank you. But one reason is office decor for the hard cover. That's its primary purpose. Well this has been so incredible, Virginia. Thank you for taking the time and I can't wait for everyone to check out the book.
Virginia: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
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