The Burnt Toast Podcast

In the original episode, we asked, "Is Mel Robbins a Diet?" Plot Twist (or is it?): Mel is now selling nutritional supplements. Protein shots, to be exact—so we decided to give them a try. Paid subscribers can listen or WATCH Corinne try Mel Robbins' Pure Genius protein shot and give us her honest review. 👀 Free list: You won't want to miss this! Subscribe here. Become a paid subscriber here, and unlock even more Burnt Toast! EPISODE CREDITS Co-hosts: Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Producer: Kim Baldwin. Logo design: Deanna Lowe. Theme Song: Farideh. Video Editor: Elizabeth Ayiku Audio Engineer: Tommy Harron Follow us on social! Virginia is on Instagram and Threads as @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith. Corinne is on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay and on Patreon at Big Undies. Support the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Thanks for listening and supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your April Just Toast episode! This is a special episode because we recorded in person! I traveled to New Mexico to see Corinne, have new Burnt Toast headshots taken and visit Meow Wolf with my kiddo and my boyfriend. It was a glorious trip and I'm excited to share some of the behind the scenes with you today. In this episode we're talking about: ⭐️ Why it's so hard to have your photo taken. ⭐️ Thin friends not putting their fat friends on the grid. ⭐️ The art of a good selfie. One audio note: our Airbnb in Santa Fe was an acoustical odyssey, so please bear with us on the sound quality. You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Sign up for just $5! Join Just Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 241 Transcript Virginia We're recording in person from an Airbnb in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If the audio is not perfect today, it's not Tommy's fault. It's that we're doing it in an adobe room and that creates some echoes. Corinne We have covered the floors with soft things, but it's still very echo-y. Virginia So bear with us. This is only our second ever in person episode, so it's going to be a really fun one. This is a Just Toast episode. As we explained on our previous Extra Butter episode, we're no longer calling it the Indulgence Gospel, although we always will in my heart. We're trying to make it clear what kind of episode you're listening to. So if you are listening to this whole episode right now, you are a Just Toast subscriber, which means you are a regular paid subscriber tier. There's also our premium tier, Extra Butter, for a little more money where you can get behind every single paywall. Whichever tier you are, we're very happy you're here. Corinne We're going to talk about something we did yesterday. Virginia Corinne and I did something together for the first time. Corinne If you're a longtime listener subscriber, you may have noticed that we have no photos together. Virginia Except one we took in a hot tub two years in Hot Springs. Corinne Yesterday, while Virginia is here in New Mexico, we got some photos taken by a photographer named Molly Haley. Virginia Who is an old friend of yours. Corinne We went to middle school and high school together. Virginia Since we were doing a photo shoot, we thought, well, we've got to talk about photos on the podcast because it's a whole thing. Corinne Photos can be hard! Virginia I would amend that sentence and say photos are hard. Corinne Although your child would disagree. Virginia My 8-year-old keeps telling us that that's a silly thing to think and photos are great and they love having their photo taken. Corinne They're not wrong. Virginia No, it's a lot of stuff. A lot of diet culture noise. It's a lot of being seen, I think. Being perceived. Corinne Would you say that you've struggled with photos?

You are listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole Smith. Today my conversation is with Keri Harvey. Keri is an NASM certified personal trainer and a pain-free performance specialist specializing in beginner strength. She's a part owner of Form Fitness Brooklyn and has recently gotten into powerlifting. She just competed in her first sanctioned meet and won first place in her weight class. Keri began her career in personal training after her own fitness journey transformed from aesthetic focused to working on feeling strong and capable in everyday life, a very Burnt Toast trajectory. Her training style involves feeling less focused on the number on the scale and more on how people feel. She's a firm believer in setting performance-related goals, such as feeling less winded after the dreaded subway station steps. Keri was featured as one of Self magazine’s Everyday Athletes and collaborated as a fitness expert in Shape, Self, Livestrong, and Women’s Health magazines. Her ultimate goal is to help cultivate an inclusive and welcoming environment in the gym, and for all of her clients to leave each session feeling strong and powerful. Keri is hosting a pop-up strength class called Strong on Purpose in Houston, Texas on April 11th. Keri joined me to chat about her relationship to fitness and movement, getting stitched by toxic gym bros on TikTok, misconceptions about fat personal trainers and so much more. We've also got answers to some of your listener questions. This is a great episode. I think you're going to get so much out of it. Here is Keri. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 240 Transcript Virginia We are really big fans of yours here at Burnt Toast. For anyone who doesn't already follow you on Instagram or TikTok, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your work and your relationship with fitness and movement? Keri I am a certified personal trainer. I currently am a part owner at a gym called Form Fitness Brooklyn, which is a personal training studio. The reason that I'm here and the reason that I exist in this field is because there's not a lot of body diversity in the fitness industry. I wanted to be a part of helping other people feel seen. I live in a larger body and I show up every day in this body and do a lot of really cool things with it because I want to and because I want other people to feel like they can, as well. My relationship with fitness is one of exploration, being curious about what I can do and trying to approach it from a viewpoint of being balanced in acknowledging the fact that no one is ever at one hundred percent. I'm trying to make sure that I don't stress myself out too much trying to be perfect and just focusing on showing up as me and seeing what I can do. It has done wonders for my mental health and my physical health, because I'm showing up consistently. Virginia I love that. I was just watching a reel you did about working out with a migraine, which as a fellow migraine girlie, I found deeply relatable. That feeling of, This isn't going to be the best, but it's probably going to make me feel a little bit better. And I'm annoyed about it, but I'm here anyway. Immediately, I'm like, Why don't I live in Brooklyn so I can come to your gym? We need more body diversity. We need more of this whole ethos in the fitness space, for sure. Keri Absolutely. Virginia If I remember correctly, you went viral on TikTok. Some gym bro ... Oh, the gym bros of TikTok. I could do a whole podcast just on that, but we'll move on. A gym bro stitched you as an example of who not to hire as a fitness trainer - sorry, I can't even say that without laughing - then another less gym bro stitched him and schooled him on anti-fat bias. Then you made a response video. Am I remembering that narrative correctly? Keri That's absolutely how it went. Virginia How did you feel...

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your April Extra Butter episode! This normally where we would say "Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark, " but today we're saying, "Welcome to Extra Butter." Longtime listeners know that we used to call the Virginia and Corinne episodes "Indulgence Gospel" in honor of a troll comment. We still love the name and are having a hard time letting it go, but we wanted to make it easier to know what kind of episode you're listening to when you listen to Burnt Toast. Burnt Toast has three membership tiers: Burnt Toast free member 💛 (Free!) Just Toast member 🍞 ($5/month or $50 annually) Extra Butter member 🧈 ($10/month or $100 annually) And Today we have an Extra Butter Episode! If you're listening to this episode, you're part of the premium tier, which means you're one of our favorite Burnt Toasties. You can get behind every paywall! Your support makes all our work possible and keeps Burnt Toast and ad and sponsor free space. Today we are talking about: ⭐️ Fat fashion. Is it getting harder to shop? ⭐️ Virginia's bad boyfriend (J. Crew). ⭐️ How the oversized fashion trend leaves out fat people. We're also answering listener questions about: ⭐️ Skinny jeans, yay or nay? ⭐️ Managing a wardrobe to fit weight fluctuations. ⭐️ How are we wearing layers during perimenopause? To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Who doesn't want extra butter on their toast? Join Extra Butter! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 239 Transcript Corinne: Today we have a very exciting (for me) topic, which is we're going to talk about fat fashion, spring edition. Virginia: Is it getting harder to shop? Corinne: I mean, quick answer: yes. Virginia: Absolutely. It's terrible out there. Is it the state of the world, is it retail, or is it both? We're going to get into how it's feeling like there are fewer plus-size options, and we're going to get into some of your practical questions.

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your March Just Toast episode! Today we are talking about: ⭐️ The new, skinny American Girl dolls ⭐️ Does taking a GLP-1 make you a better parent? We're also answering listener questions about: ⭐️ The diet culture voice in your head ⭐️ Colonoscopy prep and the feelings it brings up ⭐️ Virginia's review of the Heated Rivalry books You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/virginiasolesmith/join. Sign up for just $5! Join Just Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 238 Transcript Virginia Today we are catching up on some things we are mad about in March. Corinne Some people have been annoying us. Virginia We have a list, and you may or may not be on the list. First up is ...

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala Nolan. Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more. Today is the second part of my conversation with Savala. In part one, we talked about bodies, race and gender. Today in part two, we're getting into sex, divorce and classy and trashy Butters. This conversation is for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one. One last thing! If you order Good Woman from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Savala. You need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month! Join Just Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 237 Transcript Virginia All right, we've got to talk about men a little bit. Savala Do we have to? No, I'm kidding. I love them. Virginia I really questioned whether we did. You write really well about men in this book. You articulate a lot about a certain kind of man that is going to be very familiar to a lot of our listeners. You call him the "voting booth feminist." Define voting booth feminist and tell us how that particular type of man, perhaps without realizing it, contributes to this narrative about what a "good woman" should be. Savala Well, the voting booth feminist is alive and well, Virginia. I was married to one.

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with none other than the beloved, the brilliant, Lindy West. Lindy is the author of four books, The New York Times bestselling memoir, Shrill, as well as the essay collections, The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually, and her brand new memoir Adult Braces, out now. Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel and many others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast, Text Me Back!!! and the author of the newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film, Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state. Lindy joined me to chat about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces. We get into her relationship to fatness, having people comment rather relentlessly on her marriage, why more best friends should start podcasts and so much more—including a quesadilla she invents in real time while we recorded. You are going to love this one. This conversation with Lindy is so juicy that we're breaking it up into two episodes! In Part 1 we’re talking about her brand new memoir, Adult Braces, as well as her eating disorder therapy, being a public fat person and having people comment on her body and her marriage. In Part 2, we're getting into non-monogamy, the benefits of being in a throuple, podcasting and so much more! If you're already a paid subscriber, you've got both parts of the episode right here, right now in your inbox! Everyone else: Join Burnt Toast today to hear the whole thing! Membership starts at just $5 per month and also gets you commenting privileges. One last thing! You will want to read Adult Braces after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Lindy West. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Virginia We are here to talk about your new memoir, Adult Braces. My producer Kim and I both read it. We loved it. Like, crying laughing, full body experience reading this book. Lindy Thank you so much! Virginia Do you want to give us a brief summary of what the book is about? Lindy The book is about a road trip that I took in 2021 from Seattle to Key West and back, which I decided to do when I was having a crisis in my life. I needed to get away from my house, and I needed to get away from my family and my responsibilities. I had found out a couple years earlier that my husband had a secret girlfriend, which was sort of illegal in our relationship, sort of not. That was quite a topic of conversation for several years, and we eventually figured it out. But then I was exhausted from a year of COVID and three years of non-stop couples therapy. I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I left and I drove to Florida in a van that I rented. I slept in the van. I just wanted to be out in the world and be brave and alive. The road trip stories are interspersed with chapters about my life before. A big message, at least for me, is that it's really easy to read my crisis as this monogamy/polyamory conversation, but when I think back on it, everything about my life was messed up before that. I had so many other problems, in my mental health, in the way that I managed my career, my life and my brain chemicals. I wanted to build a full picture of that, because I think the easy story is like, 'Oh, no good husband.' But it was a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of it stemmed from work that I had to do on myself, which is ultimately the only work that I can do. I can't do...

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with the brilliant Savala Nolan. Savala is a writer, public speaker and professor at UC Berkeley. Her brand new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning is out now. Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and celebrated as a “standout collection” by the New York Times. Savala's writing has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, TIME and more. I have a lot of conversations about bodies. I have a lot of conversations about gender. There is a lot that I thought I knew about race and bodies and gender in America. Reading Good Woman and talking to Savala blew my mind apart in ways that I'm still putting back together. This conversation is a must listen. This book is a must read. There was so much good stuff in this conversation, we are breaking it up into two episodes. Today in part one, we’re talking about bodies, race and gender. Part two will drop in two weeks, and that's when we're getting into sex, divorce and Savala’s classy and trashy butters. That conversation will be for paid subscribers only, so go to patreon.com/virginiasolesmith to join us. Membership starts at just $5 per month. You're not going to want to miss this one. One last thing! Trust me, you will want to read Good Woman after hearing this conversation. If you order it from my local independent bookstore, Split Rock Books, you can take 10% off if you have also ordered a copy of my book Fat Talk from them. Go to Split Rock Books and use the code "fat talk" at checkout. Here's Savala. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 235 Transcript Virginia Why don't we just start by having you tell listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do? Savala I'm a writer. I was thinking about this question quite a bit, actually, because my very first instinct is to say I'm a mom, which makes perfect sense. Motherhood is all consuming. But I thought I'll start with something that doesn't include my relationship with another human being, just in the interest of practicing my own wholeness. So, I'm a writer and a mom and a lawyer. I direct the social justice program at UC Berkeley's Law School, which is really a privilege and gives me a lot of hope, because I get to see hundreds of law students every day who want to change the world and make it better. I'm also a former dieter. Like a hardcore, former dieter, which is what initially brought me into your world and your work. I was put on my first diet when I was two or three, and rode those waves up and down until I was maybe 36 or 37, so I've got a few decades under my belt. I include that in my biography because that experience of going on and off diets for so long, and of being almost pre-verbal when I was indoctrinated into that world of dieting, informs a lot of what I do, including as a mom, including as a lawyer, including as a writer. Body liberation, gender and race, they fascinate me endlessly, how they play together and kind of co-create each other. Most of what I write about, and definitely what I write about in Good Woman, stems from that experience of dieting, and then breaking free from dieting in my thirties. Virginia That is the best intro I think anyone's ever given themselves on the podcast. Savala Oh, stop. Virginia No, really. I love that you are like, 'Let me own this part of my story. This is the origin point. And then now let's get into the conversation.' That's fantastic. We are here to talk about your exquisite new book Good Woman: A Reckoning. It is a collection of 12 essays about what it means to be a woman. It's this incredible blend of memoir, reporting and history. I would love you to read us the first paragraph, just to set the stage for everything we're going to talk...

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

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Today our conversation is with Kim Baldwin, the newest member of the Burnt Toast team. Kim is the former digital editor for the Nashville Scene. Her culture writing can be found in places like the Nashville Scene, Parnassus Books’ Musings and on her Substack. Kim has interviewed folks like Sarah Sherman, Trixie Mattel, John Waters, Samantha Irby and Tess Holliday. Originally a blogger, Kim started The Blonde Mule in 2006 and later turned her popular interview series “These My Bitches” into a podcast called Ladyland. Kim writes a weekly newsletter about books and pop culture, teaches social media classes and is a frequent conversation partner for author events in Nashville. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 233 Transcript Virginia We have a very fun episode for you today. We are introducing to all the Burnt Toasties, many of whom may already know and love her, our new podcast producer Kim Baldwin. Kim Hi, hi, hi. Virginia We are really happy you're here. Kim is doing a lot of things to improve our workflow. Yesterday she taught Corinne and me how to use Slack. Corinne, I think you already knew how to use Slack, but I sure did not. So that was exciting. Kim is joining us not just to teach us Slack, but to help with podcast production and make everything run more smoothly and efficiently. We are really grateful to her and thought it would be fun to do an episode where you get to know her. Kim I'm excited to be on the Burnt Toast team, and excited to be here today despite harrowing conditions. Virginia Truly harrowing. Kim I'm coming to you live from a public library because my home does not have water or internet. Virginia Yes, Kim is surviving the Nashville ice apocalypse, where, what 130,000 people have been displaced? Kim 230,000. Virginia 230,000 people have been displaced. So she has been heroically working on Burnt Toast while literally being out of her home, back in her home, but now working from the library. Yay, public libraries! We love you. Let's dive in. Corinne, why don't we take turns asking our questions? Corinne My first question is, what is your fat radicalization story? How did you get interested in body liberation work? Kim When I turned 40 I had to get a biometric screening for health insurance because over 40, you have to qualify for insurance. It was a really stigmatizing appointment. In hindsight, it was traumatic. My therapist was like, Enough. You have to go see someone now. That was 2018. I started working with an anti-diet registered dietitian. I thought I was going for one or two appointments, just for someone to say, "It's fine, you're all good." It became evident I had a disordered relationship, primarily with exercise, but also with eating. I went into what I now call recovery. It wasn't called that in real-time. It was just a chill, "Well, why don't you come see me every week for a while?" So I did that. I worked with Katherine Fowler, a non-diet, registered dietitian nutritionist here in Nashville. She's great. I knew nothing before her. She introduced me to anti-diet and Health at Every Size. She gave me a bunch of resources, one of which was Christy Harrison and Food Psych. I went whole hog. I listened to the back catalog of Food Psych, I read a bunch of books. I think Christy's first book came out around that time. It was so radical to me to think, Hold on, I can be fat, or, Hold on, I don't have to exercise this much. I was an Iron Man, so I was at that level of exercise. Virginia Oh wow. Oh gosh, that's aggressive. Kim When you exercise that much, for me, restrictive eating is just part of it. They really do go hand in hand. You control your food to try to control your outcomes and races and stuff. That's a long answer: back in 2018 I started working with registered...

Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay, and it's time for your February Extra Butter episode! Listen to hear about: ⭐️ Anti-diet GLP-1 life ⭐️ Who gets left out when the tradwife aesthetic takes over influencer culture ⭐️ Interrogating the ableism of not wanting to be on medication your whole life Plus, serious stuff, like: ⭐️ Corinne in a prairie dress ⭐️ How long Virginia will last in a zombie apocalypse ⭐️ Why hot cheese is in for February To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you do need to be an Extra Butter subscriber. Join Extra Butter!

You're listening to Burnt Toast. I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today my conversation is with Dr. Lauren Muhlheim. Lauren is a psychologist, a fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a certified eating disorder specialist and approved consultant for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She's also a Certified Body Trust Provider and directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA, a group practice in Los Angeles. Lauren is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder and a co-author of the brand new The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Lauren joined me to chat about how she and her colleagues have been working to make eating disorder treatment less fatphobic, because, yes, that really needed to happen. We also get into why it's feeling harder than ever to treat eating disorders, or live with one, in this era of RFK, Jr., MAHA and GLP-1s. Plus what to do if your child is hiding food, lying or otherwise showing signs of developing an eating disorder. When do you intervene? And how do you do so in the most supportive way possible? If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscriiption is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 231 Transcript Virginia I am really delighted. We have been, I guess I would say, colleagues in this space, or comrades in this space, for a long time. Lauren Comrades, for sure. Virginia I've interviewed you for articles over the years. We're both in the fat activism world in various ways. You're someone I learn so much from. I'm very excited to have you here today. We are going to talk about your new workbook that comes out this month, called The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders. Do you want to give us a little background on how this workbook came to be? Then we're going to dive into my list of questions. Lauren I should introduce CBT for eating disorders. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for eating disorders, which is one of the leading treatments. I was trained in it back in the 1990s by one of the two main researchers who's credited with developing the treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy looks at what's maintaining a problem in the present. It looks at the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings, and helps to sort out ways to solve problematic behaviors related to eating. Fast forward to present day, we've learned a lot more about eating disorders than back in the '90s when I was trained in the model. When I was trained, it was very weight-centric, focused on primarily low weight and "normal weight." You know, thin-ish white women, and that's who was largely studied. But now we know so much more - that eating disorders affect all people, all genders, all ethnicities and all body sizes. As I've evolved as a clinician over the last 20 years, I've really become influenced by the weight inclusive movement, Health At Every Size and listening to people with lived experience who have experienced harm from traditional weight-centric treatments. So I have evolved. And in my mind I had modified what I was doing, and when I went back to look at the manuals, I was horrified to remember what was still in there that was really weight-centric. This has been a passion project for the last eight years. I've collaborated and talked to different people about it. I ultimately teamed up with two colleagues who were as passionate as I am, and we came up with the idea of modifying CBT to be weight inclusive. We coined CBTWI to be weight inclusive, and we took the 30 year old manuals and updated them to be relevant to today and to speak to people in all size bodies. A lot of people come to us in bigger bodies and the old manuals were so harmful. You know, focusing on about being the right weight and other elements that were just not conducive to people in larger bodies when they go through this work. Virginia Can you give a specific example? For folks who've never been in...

We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for a BONUS January Indulgence Gospel! This episode is free for everyone. If you enjoy it, consider a paid subscription to Burnt Toast! It's the best way to support our work and keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space. You'll also get behind some of our most popular paywalled episodes like: 🧈 Why is Katie Sturino Working for Weight Watchers? 🧈Don't Go On the Pete Wells Diet 🧈The Mel Robbins Cult of High Fives And more! (Find every Indulgence Gospel episode here.) Never miss another episode! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode may contain affiliate links. Shopping our links is another great way to support Burnt Toast! Episode 230 Transcript Virginia So today we are just catching you up on some general January news. These are things that are happening in our lives and the world. And then we're going to answer a few listener questions. Corinne This is kind of my favorite type of episode, Virginia Same. Do you want to go first? Do you have an update for us? Some news? Corinne One thing that I've been dying to ask you, and I've kind of been holding back on is... have you watched Heated Rivalry. Virginia I haven't watched it. Corinne Okay, but do you know what I'm talking about? Virginia Well, I'm just going to Google it real quick. Corinne Oh, my God. No! Don't even Google it. This is what you need to do this weekend. Wait, do you have a kid-free weekend because it's not kid-friendly. Virginia Oh come on, it’s a sports thing! Corinne There is so little sports. Let me just tell you. Virginia Okay... Corinne If you're watching it for the sports, you will be disappointed. There' is no sports, okay? No sports. Basically, if the camera was one inch lower, it would be porn. Virginia Oh! Okay. Corinne It's based on, like, gay romance novels. Virginia Ohhhhh it's the gay hockey players! Yes, alright. Watching. I am kid-free and I will be doing that this weekend. Corinne And I think Jack will like it as well. So I recommend you watch it together. Virginia Obviously. Corinne It's very horny. Whoa. And I will say: I watched like, half of the first episode, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. And then it was, like, popping off on the Internet. So I was like, all right, I gotta give it another try. And now I'm, like, obsessed with Connor Storrie. Virginia So okay, is it like you're watching it because it's so absurd? Or are you invested in the characters? Corinne I'm invested. Virginia You're invested. Corinne It's just like a romance novel. They're both different kinds of sports tropes. One of them's kind of like a tough guy from Russia, and the other one's a little softie Canadian. It's very sweet. And I think that the actors have a lot of chemistry. And you see their butts a lot. Virginia Well, I'm in. We'll watch this this weekend. I mean, I have read many a hockey player romance novel. Some of them were gay. Corinne Then you've probably read the novels. Virginia I may have read the novels. Although I don't like hockey, I have to say, I'm never going to be a pick me girl for hockey. It's a confusing sport to me. Corinne There's like, basically no hockey. Having watched the whole thing I can tell you nothing about hockey. Virginia You have learned nothing. Corinne There's like, cup that you can win? That's all I know. Virginia Oh yes. Wait. I want to call it a Stanley Cup? But isn't that the water bottles? Or is there also a hockey Stanley Cup? Corinne I don't know, Virginia and I don't care. Gay hockey forever. Virginia Delightful. This is an amazing update. We are actually watching the second season of Bad Sisters right now, on your recommendation. So we do have to finish that up. I didn't think that it could pull off a good second season, but they really are delivering. And then in my parenting life, I'm continuing to work through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 12 year old. It's a delight....

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

You're listening to Burnt Toast! I'm Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with the one and only Melani Sanders. Melani is a digital creator and the fearless founder of the We Do Not Care movement. If you are a woman in your 40s, 50s and beyond, you are very likely already in this club. Melani's viral club meeting videos, where she runs down a list of everything "We just do not care about anymore," are the kind of thing that my friends are constantly sharing and dropping in our group chats, and I'm sure it's the same for you. Melani perfectly articulates the pressures we're under, and when she names it, it feels easier to let it go. So I loved this conversation. Welcome to the Burnt Toast chapter of the We Do Not Care Club. Let's get this meeting started. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 228 Transcript Melani Hello and welcome to all members of the We Do Not Care Club. I started this club for all women in perimenopause, menopause and post menopause. We are putting the world on notice that we simply just do not care much anymore. This is a special body liberation edition. Yay. Virginia I'm so thrilled to have you here. I just love your work, and I'm a huge fan. So thank you for doing this. Melani Thank you for having me. Virginia Well, you just kind of exploded into all of our lives in the last year. Where did the We Do Not Care Club come from? What's the origin story? Melani This was something that happened by chance. I was at Whole Foods in the parking lot. I was waiting on Whole Foods to open up because I was out of ashwagandha. Ashwagandha has been a huge part of my perimenopause journey. It is my prerequisite to life, that and coffee and a few other things. I got to have that. It helps me to feel more stable. I realized I didn't have any more. I woke up, and I keep it on my nightstand, and I turned the bottle over to look for some. And I pulled the cotton stuff out, and I said, 'Oh, crap.' And it was about seven something in the morning. They weren't open until eight. I was in the parking lot when it opened. When I got back in the car, I popped open my ashwagandha. I took the ashwagandha, and I looked at myself in the mirror. I honestly just didn't care much anymore. I didn't comb my hair. Everything was unstructured. I had on a bra that was half the size of my boobs, and it was, it was all out of order. And I didn't care that I didn't care. And I thought, I'd been a creator for a while, for over four years. And I said, 'You know what? Maybe I could start a club called a We Do Not Care Club.' And I hit record and I asked, "Did anyone else out there feel the way that I did, and if so, join me. Join the club." And sure enough, by the time I got home from hitting that record button, my phone was blowing up. It was blowing up. The notifications: "Absolutely, I want to join, I want to join. I want to join." Yeah, I'm in it, I'm in it. And sure enough, my platform grew to maybe about 500,000. The WDNC is at 6 million now, across all platforms. Virginia Unbelievable. Melani I was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day. Virginia Oh, my God. How are you? Because that's a huge shift in your life. Melani Yes. In the beginning, I was very scared. I've freely shared emotionally what this is doing for me, mentally, all of it. I'm just openly sharing because I'm just a girl in perimenopause, and I hit record as it was happening. I didn't quite understand it, because when you get new followers, it's like, 'Oh, I got 100 new followers. Yay. That video did well.' But when you look and you're gaining hundreds of thousands of followers per day, it's like, 'What is going on?' I was trying to be sure, like, did something else come up besides this video? But then, typically, I'll post and I’ll post on several platforms at one time, and they were all going viral. They were just going. So...

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

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Happy 2026!!! To celebrate—and kick off the most diet-y month of the year!—we are here with a roundup of the very best anti-diet fitness advice in the Burnt Toast archives. If you find this useful, consider a paid Burnt Toast subscription! We're way cheaper than a gym or a diet app membership, and arguably better for your health too. And in addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! You'll find so much practical support, inspiration, and fat joy. Join us here! Don't diet, come hang with us! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links! Episode 226 Transcript Virginia Happy 2026! We made it. It's a whole new year. Corinne Thank God, honestly. Virginia See you later, 2025. Excited to be here in a new in a new chapter. Corinne To celebrate, we're bringing you a helpful episode to kick off the most diet-y month of the year: A roundup of our favorite anti-diet fitness advice. Virginia I'm excited for this. I hope this is grounding to people and helps prevent you spiraling off into some new thing that doesn't serve you. We're also holding space for the fact that a lot of people do like fresh start culture. We will be coming to you next week with our annual Ins and Outs episode. So don't think we are immune from resolution culture! That's the Burnt Toast version of it. It's coming. All right. First up, we have an excerpt from an episode called “We Have Only Recently Acknowledged That Female Athletes Need to Eat.” This episode aired October 19, 2023. It's an oldie, but a goldie. And the guest was Christine Yu, author of Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. And one of the main things Christine wanted us to understand was carbs are good for you. Virginia I also want to spend some time on your very excellent chapter about diet and sports. This was so well done. It feels like nutritional science, athletic research— all of this research—has only just recently given women permission to eat as athletes, and to eat enough to support their sports. This feels really staggering to me, that there has been this underfeeding of women athletes for so long. Christine Consistently. All the time. And I think it’s in part because of just general diet culture in our culture and society and these ridiculous expectations that we have or we place on girls and women in terms of what their bodies need to look like. And then you have the sports performance side, you have this idea that certain body types are the ideal athletic body types. It’s almost no wonder that we create this perfect storm and a way for disordered eating and eating disorders and all these other problematic behaviors to take root. Especially because bodies are so central, obviously, in sports and performance. And we focus so much on bodies and how they look, what their body composition is, and all of these different things, the shape of you, all of that. It’s wild to me that it’s only been recently that we do acknowledge the fact you just need to eat. We talked so much about nutrition and sports as this idea of fueling your body, which I think was at first kind of helpful in the way of reframing food within this context. Your body needs fuel to be able to do all this stuff, in order to start to give folks a little bit more permission to eat or feel like they could eat what they needed. But that, I think, even still creates this idea that there’s a certain kind of fuel that you need to be eating in order to be an athlete, in order to fuel your body correctly, if that makes sense. Virginia It’s, again, mind blowing, but makes sense that we had to first embrace the idea of eating, period, as opposed to eating being the enemy. You have so many heartbreaking stories...

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Happy Christmas if you celebrate! If you don't, happy Thursday where everything is closed! Either way, today we're taking a look back at your five favorite episodes of the year. If you enjoy the snippets you hear here, why not give yourself the gift of Burnt Toast? In addition to getting behind paywalled episodes and essays, Burnt Toasties get to join our awesome chat rooms like Team CPAP, Anti-Diet Ozempic Life and Fat Fashion! Join Burnt Toast for 2026! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 This episode contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Burnt Toast when you shop our links! Episode 225 Transcript Corinne So we dropped an episode on Thanksgiving Day, and we're back with another holiday episode. This time we're going to be looking back at your five favorite episodes of the year. Virginia This is so fun for me to put together every year. I think this is our second or third time doing it, and it's just really satisfying. Plus the top episodes are not always what I would have predicted! Some are, but some aren't. So a little background before we start: Since we moved platforms—we went from Substack to Patreon-—it was actually incredibly difficult to compare all the usual stats. The way Substack tracks episodes and the way Patreon does it—it's not an apples to apples situation. So this isn't the most scientific ranking. But I tried to find the different metrics we're interested in as podcasters —and I found the most popular episode for each of those metrics. 1. The Episode You Shared Most: Dr. Mara Will Not Sell You A Weighted Vest Virginia So this one got the most shares on Substack Notes, on Instagram, etc. This is the one that people sent to other people as much as possible. Corinne I was recently recalling this episode because one of my friends texted me to say "What do you think about weighted vests?" And I was like, weighted vests have not gone away. Virginia Did you say I wear a weighted vest all the time? Because that's what I say. Corinne My weighted vest is my body. Yeah, I feel like we had a little chat about it. it's one of those things people have got to try for themselves. if you're interested in weighted vest then me being like, "eff a weighted vest" isn't gonna deter you, necessarily. Virginia No, no. Well, and they're not harmful. Dr Mara, who is a weight-inclusive doctor and writes the excellent newsletter Your Doctor Friend, was definitely not saying they were harmful. It's just this idea that as a perimenopausal woman, can never be not strength training. it's okay to just go for a walk as well, right? Corinne Well, and also, just the thing of, you need to be at least as lean as possible, but put the weight on your body. Just not as part of your body, Virginia Yeah, only weight you can remove. That's the deep irony. Let's listen: Virginia Okay, so now let’s get into some related weight questions. I was just told by my OB/GYN that excess abdominal weight can contribute to urinary incontinence in menopause. How true is this, and how much of a factor do you think weight is in this situation? And I think the you know, the unsaid question in this and in so many of these questions, is, so do I have to lose weight to solve this issue? Mara Yes. So this is a very common refrain I hear from patients about the relationship between BMI and sort of different processes in the body, right? I think what the listeners’ OB/GYN is getting at is the idea that mass in the abdomen and torso might put pressure on the pelvic floor. And more mass in the torso, more pressure on the pelvic floor. But urinary incontinence is extremely complicated and it can be caused by lots of different things. So I think what the OB/GYN is alluding to is pelvic floor weakness, which is one common cause. The muscles in the pelvic floor, which is all those muscles that basically hold up your uterus, your bladder, your rectum—all of those...

You're listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. And it's time for the episode we look forward to all year long—ever since we made it a tradition exactly one year ago! It is time for... The Year In Butters, where we look back at everything we've recommended in the past year and tell you what's still buttery and what has...gone rancid. If you're new here: Butter is what we call the recommendation segment at the end of every episode. It might be a new favorite food, a great book, an experience, or a state of mind. But since we give recs every week, some Butters stand the test of time more than others! Find out if we still love... 🧈 Tracking Virginia's hydration? 🧈 Corinne's new shower head? 🧈 The $16 sundress Virginia bought last summer! 🧈 And so many more! To get the full schmear, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Membership starts at just $5 per month and is the best way to support our work! (Just want the Butter, no strings attached? Buy this episode for just $4.)

You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today, my conversation is with Rachel Cahill, a longtime anti-hunger policy advocate based in Ohio. Rachel and her team support national and state-level organizations fighting every day to end hunger and poverty in the United States. Most of her work focuses on making SNAP (the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) the most effective, accessible and equitable program it can be in every community. JICYMI: When the federal government shut down this fall, it closed SNAP for the first time in the history of the program, pausing benefits for much of November. Benefits are up and running again in most places, but this has had major ripple effects on the state of hunger in our country right now. And it's led to a lot of long-term questions about what we do to prevent that ever happening again. Rachel knows more about the ins and outs of SNAP, and anti-hunger advocacy, than anyone I know, so I asked her to come on the podcast to explain what's happening, and what we can do to help fight hunger. We also talk quite a bit about how to give strategically because it is that time of year when a lot of us want to do charitable giving. Which is great! But there are good and less good ways to do that. Burnt Toast is a community of helpers, and I think this conversation will help us all be better at helping. If you enjoy this conversation, a paid subscription is the best way to support our work! Join Burnt Toast! 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 Episode 222 Transcript Rachel I am a SNAP advocate. That's how I think of myself. That's my identity. I live in Ohio, and I have been working on SNAP, and the food assistance programs that are connected to SNAP, for almost 20 years. I started working on it in Philly, and have now worked in a number of different states. My passion is to protect our food assistance programs that help families meet their basic needs. If we had something better than SNAP in this country, honestly, I would work on that. But because SNAP reaches 42 million Americans, and it's the best safety net we have, that's the program that I've committed to working on. I do policy, advocacy, administrative, legislative—wherever we can fight for the program, we are doing that. Virginia It's incredible. I should disclose that we have a personal connection. I first met you, I guess, 20 years ago? When you were in college, you were a student of my stepmother, Mary Summers, who has also been on the podcast. Rachel Actually, I was a fresh out of college working in the community at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. And Mary had students who she placed with us in a service learning program. Mary was one of my first and still mentors, who has supported me in lots of different ways through this career. And I think you did some interviews with Witnesses to Hunger? I worked on that program many years ago. So yeah, we've evolved a lot, Virginia, since those days. Virginia Yes! When I was researching my first book, The Eating Instinct, you helped connect me with folks for interviews. Rachel and I go way back in a shared advocacy spirit, sort of way so I just wanted to give people that backstory. And so I emailed you a few weeks ago to say, Rachel, help! Please come on the podcast. This was when the government was shut down and it had triggered the freeze on November SNAP benefits. At that point, everybody was scrambling, and I knew you were doing the most scrambling. Of course, because of politics, the shutdown is now over. SNAP benefits are once again being distributed, for now anyway. But that is not to say that hunger has been solved in this country, or that the 42 million Americans who rely on that program are just totally okay now. You were like, "Do you still want to have this conversation?" And I was like, well, yes, because people are still going hungry! Rachel Yeah, thanks for the chance to talk about this! In the 20 years I've...