Fat Talk with Virginia Sole-Smith

Annmarie Kelly:

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I used to wonder why my mom had so many clothes. Scarves overflowed from her closets and pants and cardigans took up permanent residence in laundry baskets in the hall. Why did one person need so many clothes?

I thought about this recently as I stood in my own closet and marveled at the number of things in there that I seldom, if ever wear anymore. On one side were the work clothes that fit but aren't super comfortable.

Next to them, the clothes that haven't fit since I gained my COVID-19 pounds, but I was still hoping to get back into.

On the other side were dresses and pants that really don't fit anymore but I've been holding onto them for sentimental or financial reasons. I spent way too much on that green skirt and I wore that halter on my honeymoon.

I've been pregnant four times and I have three children. I've done every fad diet you can remember and even some of the ones you'd like to forget like that Suzanne Somers thing in the mid 2000’s. As an adult, I've been a size 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and I've fought my body for years, stuffing it into Spanx to look good in a dress or sucking in my gut when I meet new colleagues.

I like looking good. But I have been thinking lately about how problematic my definition of “looking good” even is. What does it mean to be beautiful? I'm tired of trying to fit into some capitalistic beauty standard I've seen on the cover of magazines.

I have to stop falling for that nonsense. I have to stop battling my body, if not only for me then for my kids who are watching. And who if I'm not more careful and more self-assured in my own appearance are going to grow up and struggle with the same things I have.

So, I've been working on it. I finally got rid of my bathroom scale. It just made me feel bad. It wasn't helping. I am a big girl and I'm beautiful. Unlike what I've been led to believe for the decades I've been alive. That's possible. I'm fat and I'm beautiful.

If you've ever felt like you are at war with your own body, if you used to wear red or pink and now wear black to try to blend in. If you find yourself shying away from being in photographs because you don't like the way you look, I urge you to seek out the work by today's guest.

I am bigger now than I've ever been before and Virginia Sole-Smith is helping me not only to be okay with that, but to love it and to figure out how to raise my kids with different patterns.

I can't wait for you to hear today's episode. As a journalist, Virginia Sole-Smith has reported from kitchen tables and grocery stores, graduated from beauty school and gone swimming in a mermaid's tale.

Virginia's latest book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture investigates how the “war on childhood obesity” has caused kids of all ages to absorb a daily onslaught of body shame from peers, school, diet culture, and parents themselves.

And this book offers research-based strategies to help parents name and navigate the anti-fat bias that infiltrates our schools, doctor's offices, and family dinner tables.

Virginia is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her work also appears in Scientific American, the New York Times Magazine and many other publications.

She writes the newsletter Burnt Toast, where she explores fatphobia, diet, culture, parenting and health, and also hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast.

Virginia lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband, two daughters, a cat, a dog, and way too many houseplants.

Virginia Sole-Smith, welcome to Wild Precious Life.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Thank you. I am thrilled to be here.

Annmarie Kelly:

So, I am a little obsessed with your new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. In it you dismantle so many biases that I honestly thought I had worked through. I listen religiously to Maintenance Phase. I am eagerly awaiting the Aubrey Gordon film entitled, Your Fat Friend.

I already got rid of my bathroom scale. I thought I had done all the work I needed to do, but then you started talking about the pervasiveness of diet culture with respect to our kids and I kind of lost my mind.

So, this is a necessary companion for me, and I think for anybody who is reckoning with how their relationship with their body is going to impact their children.

So, thank you for the gift of this book. Can you just for folks who aren't familiar with you, can you tell us why you first became interested in writing about fatphobia and anti-fat bias?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

The backstory on me is I was a women's magazine writer for about a decade, which is to say I was a diet culture creator. I wrote a lot of … it was very much the like it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle plan, kind of diet stories. It wasn't like the full on super aggressive ones, but honestly it's worse because it's more insidious when you're dressing it up as something else.

So, I did that for the first 10 years or so of my career and I never felt great about it. I always felt stressed out by trying to follow the rules I was writing about, aware that they weren't working for people, et cetera, et cetera.

And really started to get radicalized around this issue about 10 years ago now when my first daughter was born. And I too kind of came up against this brick wall of like oh, I don't want all of this in my parenting.

And so, my first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America explores how diet culture shows up in so many different places around food and eating that you wouldn't expect it to. And so, that was kind of my starting point. I think food is often the starting point for folks.

But when I was out promoting that book when it came out in 2018, I was hearing over and over from people asking me very nitty gritty questions about their children's picky eating or what the pediatrician said about the growth chart, all these sorts of things.

And the kind of through line of all of that was really people saying what you and I are both saying, which is okay, I thought I'd done a lot of this work. I know I don't want to replicate like the WeightWatchers and the SnackWell’s of my childhood. I know I don't want it to be that, but I don't really know what else to do and I am really scared of what will happen if I have a fat kid.

And so, I realized we have to start there. It makes sense that so many of us start with our own relationship with food, but we have to start with anti-fat bias. We have to name it. We have to understand where it lives in us and in our children's lives if we're going to start to do anything differently here.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well thank you for sharing that. And I should also start with a bit of disclaimer for listeners that many of us, and I'll include myself in this, have a tricky relationship with the word fat and with talking about fatness.

I am still trying to get comfortable using it as what you refer to as a neutral descriptor. I am five foot four, I have brown hair and I'm fat. It is so hard to unlearn the decades of judgment that are just packed into that word. Do you know what I mean?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think part of why I am able to use it as neutrally and even positively as I do is a function of the thin privilege I grew up with. I did not experience this word being weaponized against me as a kid because I was a thin kid. I am a fat adult.

So, I have had experiences as an adult where that word has been used unkindly certainly since the book came out. And a lot of trolls want to write to me. I've experienced that.

But that is not the same deep trauma as it is when you were a child, and this word is weaponized against you. So, for anyone listening just like absolutely recoiling to hear me use the word fat, I do not intend this as harm for you, I understand that everyone needs to sort of take their own time to get there. That reclaiming the word may not ever feel safe or accessible for you.

But I do think, and this is what I've learned from many great fat liberation activists, Aubrey Gordon who you mentioned, Marquisele Mercedes. So many other amazing people doing this work is Ragen Chastain who always says like, “I reclaim fat because that's how I take my lunch money back from the bullies.”

If we can take the negative connotations out of this word, then it stops holding this power over us and then thinness stops holding this power over us and we can just step back from the whole thing. And so, I do think it is a really important place to start, but it's loaded for a lot of people.

Annmarie Kelly:

And when it comes to kids, because a lot of us grew up believing that the word fat was impolite. I learned this from your book and relearned this from parenting my own kids. It's not unusual for us to say — a kid will refer to someone as fat, and you’re like “That person's not fat, they're beautiful.” Which sounds like a great thing to say.

But it in your book, and for folks who haven't read this, that's actually demonizing fatness, isn't it?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Right. Because you just put fatness in opposition to beauty. You just said like they're not fat, they're beautiful, which means fat people can't be beautiful? Which is wrong. Fat people are beautiful.

So, it's a totally understandable thing. I mean the other thing parents will just rush in and say like, “That's not nice. Don't say fat, don't say fat.” And they're doing it because they're so worried about everybody's feelings, but in the process, they're not really thinking about everybody's feelings, which is now you've just told anyone who's fat that their body is not nice, that it's not okay to talk about it. That we have to pretend it's not there that we're not even really seeing them.

And so, yeah, a better way to go about those moments because I have had them too. Fat is a very neutral word in our house, so my kids say it all the time.

So, we are in the grocery store and there is the like “Look at that fat lady over there mama.” And yeah, absolutely. Because you don't know how that person is taking the comment.

So, a better approach is to say something like, “Oh yeah, bodies come in all shapes and sizes like fat, thin, whatever, it's all great.”

We don't really talk about people's bodies without their permission. Just emphasizing the consent piece of we don't talk about people's hair; we don't talk about … and you would use that across the board with bodies. You wouldn't just make that about weight and then you're still neutralizing fatness at the same time.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, I love that. And that is work to keep learning and relearning as your kids grow and change and even refer to their own bodies talking to them about yeah, bodies come in all shapes and sizes.

So, despite the fact that I am all in with your book and putting my post-it notes, and one of the things I do when I'm reading a book is I talk to other people about it. And we had birthday parties recently and we've just had stuff. And so, I'm bringing up this book at the table and I had such a hard time talking to people about this research.

I mean, one of your premises is so simple. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and it is okay and normal in fact to be fat.

But when I tried to talk about this research with my own extended family, lovely humans, I got so much pushback. I got responses like “It's just calories in and calories out.” And, “If people just ate healthier, they would look healthier.” And I got another one was like, “It's just physics, people need to eat less.”

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh yeah. I love the physics.

Annmarie Kelly:

I mean, and again, these are people I love and shout out to my family, but it is really hard to change these mindsets. How do you do it?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I mean, I had to write 120,000-word book and I don't know that we're doing it yet. It is really hard. It's difficult because we're also good at taking in information, but we're not very good at critiquing the sources of our information. And we certainly don't all stay up to date on the research and nor should we, I get it. People have lives and whatever.

But calories in, calories out, that has been debunked for decades at this point. The thing that that these folks need to understand is even the mainstream obesity researchers, the people who are developing Ozempic and developing Bariatric Surgery, the reason they're doing that is because calories in, calories out does not work.

The reason they're doing that is because they have now definitively showed that body size is determined by genetics and by all of these biological processes you can't control. And since they're at the end of the spectrum that says, “I still want to control the body size.” They're trying to find workarounds.

And I'm over here saying, so body size isn't really something we can control. So, what if we stopped demonizing people for that.

But that's what's so interesting is people always throw back these arguments that are like 1980’s pseudoscience and it's even the field that you think you're on the same side as doesn't agree with you anymore. So, really we could just put this to bed, but it's taking a very long time.

Annmarie Kelly:

No, well, I mean, because it's so difficult to change mindsets and because you bring up the word health. I mean, let's just unpack that because I think for a lot of people that's their first thing. Well, kids can't be fat because it's unhealthy for kids to be fat.

I feel like this is, I mean for anyone who's middle aged who grew up with the, was there an obesity epidemic or not? Kids are bigger now. If the number is I think it's one in five that is sometimes quoted that they're considered obese, which is a problematic term in and of itself.

But let's circle back just to the statement, is it unhealthy for kids to be fat?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

It's really not. What's unhealthy is how we pathologize kids for being fat. If you are concerned about your child's long-term metabolic health, their long-term heart health, which is what everyone says. Everyone says, “We don't want kids to be fat because they'll get type 2 diabetes and they'll get heart disease.”

If you are concerned about those issues, which I get, I'm concerned about those issues too, we should all be concerned about them. The best thing you can do for your child's health is to take weight out of every health related conversation you have.

And the reason for this is because we know the top predictor for future development of eating disorders is experiences of childhood dieting and childhood weight-based shaming, teasing stigma. And if you are talking about your fat child's weight and constantly trying to manipulate their weight and putting them on a diet to lose weight, you are doing all of that.

And if you are concerned about their future metabolic health, preventing eating disorders is a really great way to promote metabolic — an eating disorder will trash your metabolic health much faster than eventually developing diabetes. It can also help pave the way to that.

So, this is the health crisis in front of us as parents of kids. What we are concerned about right now is helping them feel safe and empowered in their bodies, helping them develop a healthy relationship with food and doing what we can to prevent eating disorders.

Now, of course there's a genetic neurological component and we're not going to prevent every single eating disorder, but doing what we can to reduce what is really an epidemic of disordered eating. And that goes for kids in all body sizes, that is not just the fat kids, that is not just the skinny white girls who we think get anorexia. Eating disorders happen in all shapes and sizes.

If we can move the needle on that, my guess is you would eventually see some improvement in those longer term health outcomes, or at least you would not be piling a mental health crisis on top of any physical health issues that you're worried about.

So, there's a lot to untangle there, but fundamentally yeah, I get it that I am also really concerned about kids' health and the most health promoting thing we can do is to take our focus off weight.

Annmarie Kelly:

Because I mean, and this is another thing to unpack, but for the vast majority of kids, and I suppose I could lump adults in there too, but we're focusing on children. For the vast majority of kids, diets do not help with long-term weight loss, correct?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

No, diets don't help anybody with long-term weight loss. I mean the studies we have on the efficacy of diets show that they have a failure rate of like between 80 and 95%. And just think would you put your child on a drug that had an 80 to 95% failure rate? Would you do a surgery that had an 80 to 95% failure rate?

You would not, this is not an evidence-based protocol. And the reason is because our bodies are genetically programmed to be in certain weight ranges called your set point. And once you push yourself out of your set point, your body has all of these great defenses that kick in your hunger hormones rise, your metabolism slows down. Your body is like, “I am trying to get us back to baseline here, what are you doing?” And that is how we survived millennia of famines and food scarcity.

And I know that people are like, “But now there's not too much food, blah, blah blah.” But our bodies haven't evolved to understand the difference. Your body doesn't know that you're just trying to do keto. Your body is like, “Okay, we're in a crisis. I'm going to do what I do. I'm going to keep you safe.” And that is a feature, not a bug.

So, yeah, dieting does not work. As I said, it also really increases your risk for disordered eating and eating disorders. That is also all ages though we particularly see like a really strong relationship in the research around that in kids.

I mean, there was one study that found that teenage girls who dieted at a severe level were 18 times more likely to develop eating disorders. But even the so-called moderate dieters who I bet were following programs recommended by a doctor or a parent were five times more likely to develop eating disorders.

So, this is not just like a, oh, maybe a little bit of an increase. That is a really strong relationship. So, yeah, dieting does not work. I mean it's also just like kids are supposed to be growing and gaining weight and we have to step back and say like, “Okay, there's a reason, there's a hundred points on the growth chart.”

Bodies are going to come in all shapes and sizes. Kids are going to be in the bodies they have for a lot of different reasons, but you controlling your child's place on the growth chart is not your job as a parent.

And we really need to step back and let them follow these growth trajectories, let them go through puberty. I mean weight gain during puberty is crucial. And that's often the time when doctors get really anxious about how kids' bodies change. Somehow forgetting that kids' bodies are changing, this is a good thing. I could rant about that for a while.

Annmarie Kelly:

And we do all these things, we're so well intentioned as parents, but it's sort of our obsession with the fear of their fatness rather than the actual being fat themselves. So, we do all these things in the name of trying to keep our kids thin.

I mean and I have done like, I'm not calling out, I've done some of these things. I've told them, “Well, you can't have a cookie until you eat your broccoli.” We've played sports to “be healthy”, but what do we mean by that?

Let's run off that belly fat. I mean, kids go to school and in the book, I think you say there are 26 states that make kids be weighed and they do these activities. They have to be weighed at school and they calculate the BMI and doctors' offices do this to chart the kids' growth.

But often kind of again, because they maybe haven't kept up with it, they do what they think is best and they talk about weight management strategies, but we're doing these things well-intentioned, but it turns out that so much of what we've been doing to try to keep our kids safe is actually having the opposite effect, right?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Yeah. And I just want to say too, we've all been there and the reason we're all there and the reason our parents did this kind of stuff to us is because it is harder to be a fat kid and a fat adult. I mean, we are talking about a systemic form of oppression.

It is understandable that you think if there's a fighting chance you can protect your child from that shame and stigma, you want to do that. So, it comes from this really well-intentioned place of you experienced this growing up, you don't want them to experience it, you know life is easier in a thin body.

But that's where we really have to flip the conversation and say, “Why are we trying to change that by changing our kids? Why are we not trying to make the world a better place for our kids?” I mean, that's what we really want to be doing.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. Oh, there's so much work to do, Virginia. I don't know how you sleep or how you wake up.

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So, another question that came up at my table where I was ineffectual at trying to convince people to join my team was like, they're like “But what about good nutrition? How do we teach a kid that an apple is better than an Oreo?”

But I feel like what I'm learning is that I don't teach a kid that an apple is better than an Oreo. That's bananas. How can we say that? We're going to get so much mail, Virginia. Talk to me about apples and Oreos here.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Okay, there's a couple layers to this. When we say the apple is better, so you have to eat it first in order to get the Oreos. What kids hear is the apple is garbage, but I have to get through it to get to the Oreos that you said I couldn't have. So, they must be the best thing ever.

So, you've immediately … just your plan has backfired because all you have done is taught them not to enjoy the apple (which is delicious, apples are great), and to focus all their attention on the food you're putting restrictions around.

This is just human psychology 101, this is how we're all wired to respond to any kind of restrictions. Okay, now I want it more because you said I can't have it. Especially kids, just think of like the level of pushback a toddler gives you or a nine-year-old or whatever any age child gives you. Of course they're going to focus on the thing you just put all the rules around.

So, if you want your child to enjoy apples or whatever, I mean it's always fruits and vegetables is what people are concerned about. What you actually want to do is neutralize all the foods and let them understand that we have, you are in charge of what foods are offered at different meals, but you're going to offer the treat foods, the foods that they're fixated on, just as often as you offer the foods you're hoping they'll eat.

And you're keeping a level playing field. You're not going to demonize them for choosing whatever, they're having three helpings of pasta, no salad at dinner. You're going to let them sort those choices out themselves. We have some cool studies from the 1930s back when you could do more ethically questionable research.

Annmarie Kelly:

Zap this person with an electrical shock.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Right. This pediatrician gathered up all these orphan babies and kept them in a hospital for — I mean this is questionable but she fed the orphan babies in a hospital for two years and it was like we watched them … I think it was a couple years and watched them grow up through early childhood and was regularly offering them just a wide mix of foods and letting the kids pick what they wanted to eat.

And the kids very naturally gravitated towards all the different food groups over the course of a week as opposed to when you're sitting there like they haven't eaten a green vegetable in a month. And oh, my God, because you're pushing them so hard and it's like this huge power struggle.

So, we know that there's like something innate in humans because we're omnivores, we're pretty good at seeking out variety and that kids will do it if we're not pressuring them around this and making the power struggle.

And what you'll really see happen is it's not — I mean like I use the word treat because there are foods that are just joyful and fun to eat and that doesn't mean that the salad's not joyful. It just means I get excited about chocolate and that's fine because food is joy and that's valid.

But my kids understand that when we're having treats, we're not having to earn them. We're not having to atone for them. There's no oh now I have to do more exercise or eat differently tomorrow.

And because there's not this whole framework around treat as a forbidden, indulgent, you're being bad concept. They have their treats, they enjoy them, they move on. And they don't get hyper fixated. They don't inhale the entire bag of Oreos because they know the Oreos will be there and they can have more tomorrow and it's totally fine.

But it's a tricky process if you're used to thinking of food in this very binary way to start to move towards thinking of food as primarily what's going to taste good, what's going to fill you up.

And the other thing is there are times where an apple is not enough food. You would be better off eating a bunch of cookies or some cake or something that would actually fill you up more than just having some strawberries or whatever.

So, we also need to question when we say is it better? It's better in certain contexts. It's better if you're trying to get more fiber today. Is that the entire goal of eating for you every day of your life? No, of course not. If it is your birthday, birthday cake is a better food, it just takes.

And so, we have to really kind of unpack what we mean when we say better and understand that there are lots of situations where the better food is not the “most nutritious food”, but that still makes it the right nutrition choice for you.

If you are spending your evenings driving your kids around to a million sports practices and you need to eat dinner in the car and you don't have time to pack anything because you just came from work and you're having one of those Wednesdays where you question all your life choices, the drive-through is the right choice for dinner. It is the better choice because there is no other choice.

And even if there were other choices, it's fine that you're choosing the drive through, this gets everyone fed, this makes dinner happen, we get through the day, it's great.

And when we layer all that guilt on we're just ignoring the tremendous amount of privilege that goes into being able to eat in those sort of “perfect healthy way.” The amount of labor that goes into all that home cooking and from scratch preparation.

It's also not terribly well aligned with kids’ developmental trajectories around food. It's very normal and developmentally appropriate for kids to be pickier at various stages of childhood and for them to crave carbohydrate dense foods because that's their source of energy and their brains need a lot of glucose to grow.

And when we put our sort of diet culture agenda in on top of that, again, all we do is create the power struggles.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. And I got to thinking about food as something, control and food. That as a parent, if I am trying to control access to food, that I'm inadvertently teaching my kids that food is something that needs to be controlled.

That the idea of counting out almonds or logging calories that that would … I've taught them that. I've taught them that that food needs to be controlled. And that again, with the best of intentions we pass these things along to our kids.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

And we're teaching them, don't trust your own body, don't trust — your body's saying it's hungry, but I'm saying you've had enough or your body's saying you're full and I'm saying you haven't eaten enough salad.

So, we're teaching them to disconnect from what their body says and yeah, this is the pipeline to diet culture. Because all of the diet industry rests on the premise that you cannot trust your body to get it right around food.

And so, you need to pay money for their books and products and do it their way. And so, I do think it can be a helpful mindset shift to realize, again, when we're thinking about promoting kids' health, when we're thinking about preventing eating disorders is actually a bedrock of promoting health. Taking your focus off nutrition is also health promoting.

Because when you take your focus off nutrition in that super amped up anxious way, you can instead focus on body autonomy, which is also fundamental to good health in just all of the ways.

Annmarie Kelly:

And for parents who are afraid that from then on out all their children will do is eat buckets of donuts. That it is likely that if you do make this shift that yes, in the beginning they might gravitate toward the thing you told them that was-

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

Forbidden. The bad boyfriend food that you're like, “Oh, give me more of that.” Because she said it was so bad.

But then eventually their bodies would be like, “Okay, well I'm done with … I'm sick of those.” That they will recalibrate.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Yeah, it's called habitation and our bodies are really good at habituating to foods. This is why it is not actually biologically possible to be addicted to food the way you can be addicted to alcohol or drugs. This is a different pathway. We don't actually have that same response.

Our dopamine centers light up. We experience pleasure around food, but we experience pleasure the way people experience pleasure when they see a puppy and no one's like, “I'm a puppy addict and I need to go to meetings.” It's not the same thing.

Annmarie Kelly:

I would totally go to a puppy addiction meeting though. That'd be adorable.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Amazing.

Annmarie Kelly:

Everyone would have their pictures and maybe you could like bring the dogs with you.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Well, not if you're trying to achieve puppy abstinence.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, I throw that meeting off then.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

That may not have been the most perfect analogy I ever came up with.

Annmarie Kelly:

Now I'm all thinking about the puppies. It's all good.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

But yeah, no, but habitation happens with food. You eat as much of something as your brain actually wants to receive of it. And then it's like, “Okay, I've had enough, I can move on.”

And the one footnote I want to give that is I think sometimes that message gets distorted into another kind of diet culture where people are like, “Okay, so if I just let them eat what they want pretty soon they won't want sugar anymore and we'll be a sugar free house.”

And it's like no, no, no, no, no, it's not going to turn it off completely. That's not the goal. It's just you're not going to see kids sneaking food. You're not going to see kids anxiously binging on food when it's finally available because you didn't let them have cupcakes at the last three birthday parties and you finally said yes.

It's a less fraught way of enjoying food. That's what we're going for.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. So, again, so much unlearning and relearning and baby steps through that. I've been working on — and watching a child take more than one ice cream bar and not saying anything was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I'm so glad you did though. That's awesome.

Annmarie Kelly:

It just happened the one time and the next time it was no ice cream bars and it was okay. But I had to sit on my hands because I was going to swat it or I was going to go into grandma mode, what do you think you're taking? But again, the kids are okay, I got to get out of their way sometimes.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

The kids are okay.

Annmarie Kelly:

Something else you suggest in the book that I actually tried and did very, very poorly at my first time. So, it turns out we're allowed to refuse to be weighed at the doctor's office. You know how the first thing that you do is go in there and inevitably if you had a scale in your house, you always weighed five pounds more at the doctor's office.

Didn't matter if you were wearing shoes or not and you just like at least for me, the first thing you did at the doctor's office is feel bad. And so, I did it. I went to the doctor's office and they said, “Step on the scale.” And I'm like, “No”.

And I refused to move and it was like a toddler throwing a tantrum and then the person looked hurt. And what I mean to say … and then I just blathered about how I'd weighed myself whatever two months ago and I told them to weight. I only had the one try and I was awkward.

And then so, to recap it is actually okay not to be weighed at the doctor's office, but how could I do that in a more polite less Charlie Chaplin-esque way than I did?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I mean I think it's awkward for everyone the first time because it is, again, you're bucking against the system that has told you, “This is how it works.” We get on the conveyor belt at the doctor's office and you get on the scale and then you get the blood pressure.

So, there's a couple things I want to say about this, but the top line thing is I have found if I walk in and they say step on the scale and I say “No thank you.” They say, “Oh, okay,” and move on to the blood pressure.

And that is all that is in almost every situation, all I've ever had to say is just, “Oh, no thank you.” Sometimes I add on like, “I'm not doing scales today,” or just something very quick, cheerful, polite, no sweating, no need to be panicking, just no thank you.

Now I do want to caveat this with I am fat but I identify as small fat, which is to say I'm on the lower end of the spectrum. I have an obesity BMI, but the lower end of that range.

And that comes with some privilege. I am not the level of fat where the second I walk in the room; my body is weaponized against me in a lot of those settings. And so, it doesn't feel safe or available for everyone to say a cheery no thank you and expect a zero pushback.

And so, if you are someone who has a lot of trauma around this, maybe bringing a friend with you for support, maybe sending a note ahead of time or if you can send an email through your patient portal or have it on a post-it note that you hand over at the check-in or hand to the nurse, something like that makes it a little easier for you.

Or even just recognize, I'm going to get on the scale because I have bigger fish to fry in this appointment. I don't want this to become a sticking point. If I need to get their support on something else, that's totally reasonable. You have to do whatever feels safe and accessible to you.

But if you are small fat or straight size you don't wear plus size clothings, you almost always will not experience pushback about this. If you do experience pushback, the most likely thing they'll say is, “Oh, insurance requires it.” Which is a myth, it doesn't.

So, you can just say, “Oh, just write patient declined.” What are they going to do? It is actually illegal for them to force you to do anything in a doctor's office without your informed consent. So, if you are not giving that consent, they are going to move on.

And I say this not to sound anti-doctors, doctors are amazing, but they are baked into this system that tells them to measure everything around vitals, specifically around BMI. And we have a lot of evidence showing that BMI is not a useful measure of health.

And I can tell you both firsthand and in terms of what we see in the research, when you take BMI out of the conversation, you actually have a much more supportive doctor's visit because they now have to ask you questions and talk to you like you are a person about your health.

And you have just a much more richer, more nuanced conversation because it's not just, “Oh, I saw your BMI. I made this whole set of assumptions about you.”

If you're thin, they might look at your BMI and just assume you're healthy. Just assume you're eating vegetables and exercising and maybe you're not at all and that would be a beneficial conversation.

Or maybe you're at that low BMI because you've restricted yourself there and they need to be investigating that.

So, there's all these ways that focusing on BMI serves nobody of any body size. And yeah, you can opt out.

And with kids it's a little trickier. There are times where knowing our kids' weight is useful, like car seats, transitions, medicine and just in general you want to know that kids are growing and that means gaining weight.

But when I take my five-year-old in for her 97th ear infection appointment of the season, I say, “Oh, we don't need to do the scale today.” Because we don't need to talk about her weight when we're there for an ear infection.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. So, that was another thing I learned from your book was that even if they do decide to weigh the kids, because my middle daughter had some feeding issues when she was a baby and that was absolutely our indicator that if she was not growing, it is imperative sometimes to know if a child is not growing at the rate they should be because that is a sign that something's wrong.

And I know that you too had a situation with your daughter where knowing their size was important to that.

But if it's not, again, my son has a sore throat today if we go to the doctor, his weight is not important today. All we need to know is it tonsillitis and to-

Virginia Sole-Smith:

And get a shot.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. And that you do have the right, not just the right but I want to even say the duty as a parent to advocate for your child in these conversations that don't need to be about weight.

The doctor can write it on the growth chart. Usually our scale at the doctor's office seems to be in the metric system anyway. So, we don't know what that is. We don't have to know what the numbers are.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

That's helpful.

Annmarie Kelly:

It's fine. Yeah. Because when I think about my own transition as a kid. I was a dancer and a sports kid and I almost remember the day, but I remember looking in the mirror and I had developed a butt and boobs. It felt like overnight.

And my ballet teacher was always asking me to like tuck in my butt not to move my hips during the Rond de Jambes and no amount of tucking and cinching at that age of probably 11 could make me be different.

And even though I liked ballet, I loved ballet, I quit because I learned that I didn't belong there. And I wasn't a fat kid, but I was too fat to be there. Which is also funny because when I look back on pictures of myself from that time through high school, even though the lesson I learned was that I was fat, I think two things at the same time.

I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I'm beautiful and why did I think I was fat?” These stories that we learned they stick. And so, I wasn't a fat kid. I was a perfectly regular kid, but I grew up believing myself to be fat. And now as an adult three kids later, a pandemic later, I am much heavier now than I ever was.

And I am still trying to reconcile that that's okay. And I'm not there yet on learning to love this body. You'll be okay and then you'll see yourself in a picture with like a — you know how like the chin and then like the whatever you call this on your arms. And then I'm right back in that ballet class. And how does a person learn to love their body?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Well, one thought I had while you were telling that story, and I just really feel for 11-year-old you in that ballet class and how that should never ever have been the message you experienced. And you're looking back at those photos now and you're saying, “Oh wait, I wasn't even fat. This is ridiculous.”

Even if you'd been fat, it wasn't okay for you to experience that. Fat kids are excluded from things like ballet and sports all the time because their bodies are not safe or welcome in those spaces.

And so, a big turning point we need to make here is to shift from, and I wasn't even fat or the sort of personal stuff we're dealing with and realize we're talking about systemic oppression. And while that doesn't solve the negative feelings you have about … that is your trauma and it is real and you deserve support for it.

I think it is helpful to realize if I keep buying into that system, if I keep letting that ballet teacher win in my own internal dialogue in my head, if that's the voice I'm hearing when I'm looking in the mirror at my body, three kids later in the stage of life where I am not trying to be an 11-year-old ballerina anymore. If that's still the loudest voice in my head, then I am in a way letting myself be complicit in this whole system I don't want to be a part of.

You don't want any 11-year-old to feel that way in a ballet class. So, it starts with doing our own work and then pushing outwards and saying, “What are we doing to make ballet, to make classrooms, to make sports teams safe and inclusive for kids in all bodies?”

And I have found it helps to just be reminded this is not my value. My value is that all bodies are beautiful and that all bodies are valuable and that our value is not our body. And that is my core truth. So, when that noise starts, it's like, “Oh wait, that's that ballet teacher. She's done. She's not hired anymore.”

Annmarie Kelly:

No, our value is not our body. So, I'm thinking about this and the kinds of comments I know you must receive Virginia for just doing this work. How do you keep yourself safe and mentally healthy enough to keep at it?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

It's interesting. I do get a lot of pretty hateful comments like emails, DMs, and it's certainly increased since the book came out.

But I will say the overwhelming response is positive. And so, every time I've blocked five trolls, I've probably also gotten some lovely heartfelt. One woman emailed me this morning and was like, “I literally just put down the book and had to email you that minute.” And I was like, “I want to cry.” I've never-

Annmarie Kelly:

Yay.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I know that feeling when you read something that you connect with that deeply and that means so much. And there's also more practically speaking, I'm hearing from researchers saying they want to reevaluate their study protocols about weight and health.

I'm hearing from pediatricians and other doctors saying, thank you, we need to be rethinking how we approach this with patients. We need to improve our language choices.

A whole bunch of health teachers came to one of my book events and were like, “We're trying to redo our curriculums.”

So, I'm seeing that. And so, that really, that's the why, and that's what I'm in it for. And the guy who emailed whatever hateful thing he just emailed, he does not matter. That's fine. I don't owe him any response.

But the other thing too is just like having to find ways to step out of it. This weekend I really took myself off social media, gardened furiously for hours. I'm a big gardener and just planted, planted, planted.

And I need that kind of mind erasing, can't pick up the phone because you're covered in dirt and just be away from it for a little bit. And that really helps-

Annmarie Kelly:

I like that.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Helps me come back.

Annmarie Kelly:

Dirt is the solution. That's great.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Dirt is the solution.

Annmarie Kelly:

We always close with just some lightning round here. Just a few multiple choice just to be fun and to get it some things we didn't get it before, so you just pick one. Okay?

Virginia Sole Smith:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright. So, coffee or tea?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Coffee.

Annmarie Kelly:

Mountains or beach?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, that's like the fight of my marriage, just so you know.

Annmarie Kelly:

Really, do tell.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

My husband is all mountains and I am more of a beach person, so our compromise is lakes.

Annmarie Kelly:

Okay.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Because you can often find a lake near with mountains.

Annmarie Kelly:

I love it.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

So, option C, lakes.

Annmarie Kelly:

Dogs or cats?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I would've said cats for the longest time until my daughter talked me into a puppy and she's sleeping here next to me and she's the best girl ever. So, now both.

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright, we'll put you down for both. Boxed brownie mix or those cookies that you slice and bake?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, boxed brownie mix. We make it every week in my house. It's a religion.

Annmarie Kelly:

I love it.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

For sure.

Annmarie Kelly:

Would you rather try on 50 pairs of shoes or 50 pairs of jeans?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

God, definitely shoes. I did try on 50 pairs of jeans for the newsletter and I'm never doing it again.

Annmarie Kelly:

I was reading it. And what was so funny about that is you weren't even pretending. Out of those 50 pairs of jeans, was it — I feel like it was like two. It wasn't even like-

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Correct. And they're not even like … there’s no good jeans. All the jeans are bad. I can tell you this. I tried them all on. They're all bad.

Annmarie Kelly:

That was amazing. That was amazing. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Definitely early bird.

Annmarie Kelly:

Are you a risk taker or the person who always knows where the Band-Aids are?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Band-Aids. I wanted to be cool for a minute, but-

Annmarie Kelly:

I mean, I think it's cool to know where those Band-Aids are.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Someone's got to know.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. If you could time travel, would you rather go back or forward?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Ooh, that's hard. I think both. I think both. I can't pick, I'd want to go back to I'd want to go hang out with Jane Austen, but then I also want to get to the point where we can teleport, so I'm never late for stuff anymore. So, a little bit of both.

Annmarie Kelly:

I like it. Alright. If you fill in the blanks here. If I wasn't working as a writer and I had a little magic, I would be a?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Probably some kind of garden designer.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice, with Jane Austen. I think she — you know.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Annmarie Kelly:

What's something quirky that folks don't always know about you likes, loves, pet peeves.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, I've told so many quirky things about myself. I'm out of quirks. I have no good quirks left. I've been eating the same breakfast for 15 years now.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, my gosh. What does Virginia Sole-Smith eat for breakfast? We all want to know.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Actually it's not 15. So, from the age of eight until 33, I ate peanut butter toast with banana on top for breakfast and then I switched. Now I make a really big smoothie, a really big smoothie that I'm obsessed with, and I've been eating that for the last almost 10 years.

Annmarie Kelly:

Does it have collagen in it or not?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Definitely not. It does have chocolate though.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice. What do you love about where you live?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

I live in the Hudson Valley, so from about November to March, I question all my life choices because we have a terrible winter. And I call it stick season and it's just brown and miserable. But it is now green and glorious and there is no more beautiful place in the world. So, I love our spring and our fall.

Annmarie Kelly:

Nice. What's one of your favorite books?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Well, Emma by Jane Austen, since we just time traveled me, is probably my all-time favorite.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's a good choice. How about a favorite movie or television series?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Favorite movie of all-time is Two for the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. Television series I would say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with many caveats for how problematic the institution turned out to be. But I believe in Buffy.

Annmarie Kelly:

I love it. What's your favorite ice cream?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Chocolate fudge brownie.

Annmarie Kelly:

Lovely. Alright, last one. If we were to take a picture of you really happy and doing something you love, what would we see?

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, probably me again, covered in dirt in my garden with my kids running around. Yep. That's my happy place.

Annmarie Kelly:

Perfect. I love it. Virginia Sole-Smith, thank you so much for making time today.

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Oh, thank you. This was a delight.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, you wrote that quote, “Fat people are worthy of respect, safety, and dignity no matter what their health status,” period. There is no but in that sentence, fat people are worthy of respect, safety, and dignity.

Thank you for fighting for all of us. Thank you for teaching us how to fight for ourselves. Thank you for the gift of your work and this world that you're trying to create.

[Music Playing]

Virginia Sole-Smith:

Thank you. That means so much.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, I'm grateful. Folks, Virginia Sole-Smith's recent book is called Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. You can find it wherever books are sold.

To everyone listening, we're wishing you love and light wherever this day takes you. Be good to yourself, be good to one another. And we'll see you again soon on this wild and precious journey.

Wild Precious Life is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producers Gerardo Orlando and Michael DeAloia, producer Sarah Willgrube and audio engineer, Ian Douglas. Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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