#83: Our Mothers, Our Bodies, & Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

Welcome to season 2! This episode deals with a lot of nuance. Because we get into how our relationship with food and our body is shaped and influenced by our parents. I have Virginia Sole-Smith here and I couldn’t be more thrilled for you to listen to this episode.

Things we discuss...

  • The questions and conversations that led to Virginia's new book 

  • What you need to know about THE cheese

  • The Gilmore Girls effect

  • How to have compassion for our moms and their influence on our body image and relationship with food

  • Why the eating disorder research focuses so heavily on mothers

  • Mothers bearing the blame of eating disorders and/or fatness

  • What we’re leaving out about dads (the conversation and the research)

  • The difference between how fat kids and thin kids are fed

  • Family dinner and diet culture (helpful or harmful?)

  • Having conversations with kids that don’t center on weight

  • Parents fearing kids appearance, but placing that on “health” concerns

  • Weight is not a matter of personal responsibility

  • Why is it so important that we talk about fat?

About Virginia

She is the author of the NYT-bestselling FAT TALK: Parenting In The Age of Diet Culture and The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. As a journalist, she has reported from kitchen tables and grocery stores, graduated from beauty school, and gone swimming in a mermaid’s tail. Virginia began her career in women’s magazines, alternatively challenging beauty standards and gender norms, and upholding diet culture through her health, nutrition and fitness reporting. Motherhood inspired a reckoning, and led to her first book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Scientific American and many other publications. Virginia now writes the popular anti-diet newsletter Burnt Toast and hosts the Burnt Toast Podcast.

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#84: Anxiety, Trauma, & How to Feel Safe in Our Bodies with Stephanie Mara Fox

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#82: Unintentional Under-Eating, Food Allergies, & Physical Therapy Exercises