When I read Fat Talk, I was a new mom with a six month old and I was starting to go down the no sugar or salt EVER path. Fat Talk helped me recognize the diet-culture and anti-fatness showing up in the advice for feeding my perfect little baby and once that happened my own intuition became the loudest voice in my head again. My toddler now eats lots of broccoli and lots of cookies and I mostly don’t care, in a good way.
I am recovering from an ED and was clueless on how to navigate food and conversations around food with my kids. It was a topic I brought up in therapy constantly because I was being triggered by my own children! After reading FatTalk, I was able to finally have a way to peacefully feed my kids without being triggered myself (division of responsibility) and I now have language I can use to help them through questions they have about food, health and their bodies without being triggered! It’s been a huge win!! This is too funny because last night we even went to “family fitness night” at my kids’ school, which we have skipped the past 2 years because it’s been too triggering for me, but I sat my kids down beforehand and talked to them about how health is different than what society will tell them. We had a great discussion, went to Dairy Queen, then did family fitness night and had a blast!! Fat Talk has changed my life because I couldn’t escape my triggers and now I have a way to work through them.
I’m a former fat kid with two young daughters. I spent decades of my life restricting and harboring a lot of resentment for the body shaming I experienced from my own mother growing up. When I started to realize that my older daughter was probably going to be like me (not a thin kid), I started to panic and realized I needed to make sure that history didn’t repeat itself. Luckily for me, this happened to coincide with the release of Fat Talk which I devoured as fast as I could. It allowed me to let go of any fear I had about my daughter’s body or appetite and whenever I feel that fear start to creep in, I remember Virginia’s words “I trust her body.” Fat Talk also allowed me to give a lot of grace to my own mother after understanding that she too was a victim of decades of diet culture and was trying her best to protect me from a world that isn’t kind to fat folks, especially in the early 90s. It was such an important book for me and my family.
Fat Talk helped me stop stressing and obsessing about how my daughter was eating. I was somewhat deep into the kid food-influencer space and felt AWFUL that my nine year old still wasn't eating seaweed snacks or kale, and I always felt I wasn't trying hard enough to introduce new foods or serve a big enough variety and it sucked. I always felt like I was doing something wrong. There was a line in your book about the most important thing about feeding kids was that they get enough food, not that they eat particular kinds of foods. I swear I started crying when I read that I was so relieved.
I ended up returning to work full-time for the first time since my child was born last summer, so the fact that I read your book a couple of months before that has been crucial for me. I am relaxed enough to let her make her own lunch even if it means she packs two kinds of crackers. I don't stress about us all eating the same dinner. I think the biggest thing your book brought me was relief and freedom. I really thought that the Instagram account I was following was the right way to do things and the book gave me permission to say nope, if this is causing me stress it's not the right way!
I have recommended this book so many times, congratulations Virginia!
Reading (and re-reading) Fat Talk helps me to "reparent" myself around food, and retrospectively untangle shame and pain I felt as a kid about my body. It's like someone authoritative saying "there was never anything wrong with you" about the deepest area of shame in my childhood.
I’m not a parent yet, but I appreciated Fat Talk so much as both a former fat kid with dieting trauma as well as a current psychiatrist treating folks with eating disorders. It was super informative and also brought up a lot of feels. The amount of anti-fatness is in the world is truly daunting sometimes and it was awesome to read something that was both very clear eyed about that problem while also offering practical strategies for protecting kids from that. I definitely wish it could be required reading for every parent as well as everyone in my department.
Before reading this book I thought it would just be a repackaging of stuff I already knew, absolutely no shade to Virginia in this statement, more myself thinking I knew a lot of what there is to know about ditching diets and fat acceptance/politics. I would also have considered myself to have been parenting really well around food and most of my peers would consider my approach 'radical'. Upon reading this book I realised that there was still so much to learn and even though I thought my approach to food wasn't rooted in diet culture there were still ways it was sneaking into my own relationship to food and my parenting around food. This radical needed to be even more radical! This is a book that I will go back to again again and I recommend it to so many people. Thank you Viriginia for giving us this book, I'm so delighted to hear it is in its 3rd run, it should be compulsory reading in school/parenting courses and stocked in every library!
I am a human, a trained therapist, and administrator in health, human services, government, and nonprofit. This book has been hugely important to me personally and in calling out bias in the workplace. And I also tend to read every recommendation you make as well! Thanks for starting so many of us on the path.
I am constantly recommending your work, and having Fat Talk has become my go-to first step. When I hear even a glimmer of interest from someone or hear that they are grappling with diet culture/parenting/bodies/capitalism lol I find it's easier to recommend Fat Talk as a starting place. I've found that starting with "she has a podcast and a newsletter and you can spend many many hours learning it all" is a harder sell than "give this single book a read and see if it resonates!"
Fat Talk helped with so much, but one big thing it did was give me and my partner the language and depth of knowledge to engage with our well meaning but very bought-in to diet culture parents. We are much better able to interrupt our families when they say and do harmful things with our kids (or in front of our kids). My sister actually read the book and she told me "Wow, Now I really understand why you talk about food with your kids the way you do." We can't insulate our kids from the culture, but Fat Talk has given us the tools to try and make their home a safer place.
I am a parent to a child at the other end of the body size spectrum (my toddler son is in the third percentile for height and weight) and still found Fat Talk to be really meaningful and useful to read. I think I stopped following many of the parent food influencers on instagram after reading your book and have become more accepting that my kiddo is gonna eat what he’s gonna eat and trying to change his food preferences or size based on some idea of “normality” was not my job and a fool’s errand. What I really appreciated was the mix of science, personal anecdotes, and the easy to read feel of the book. It didn’t feel like reading a heavy non-fiction tome— it was engaging throughout.
Fat Talk absolutely raised my awareness about ways that diet culture shows up (with the best of intentions) at school and in classrooms and provides practical strategies and considerations for me as a parent. As a woman with a body (who is also a parent) this book has done more to challenge my own thinking and behavior with food and eating than any other resource I’ve encountered. That fear of fatness is so deeply embedded in our culture and there is true joy in working to let that go!
My sister read it in September, and it has helped us with so many conversations about my 7 year old nephew who hit a growth spurt and has had some family members concerned about him “eating too much.” I am nearly done with it, and it has been helpful to me when articulating part of why I am anti diet to coworkers, and I shared a Substack post about my experience with having an eating disorder because the book made me think about it. It helped me have more illuminating conversations with my mom and close friend about my experience since they found out more about how it felt for me, and it helped my husband understand my history better as well since we hadn’t talked about it much recently. My 4 year old is a pretty good eater, but the book has also renewed my determination to push back against diet culture and make sure that we model as healthy a relationship with food for her as we can.
During and after reading this book, I sobbed tears of pain, regret, and sorrow. I cried for the fat toddler, child, and teen girl I was in the '80's and '90's where there was no book like this to tell my family, doctors, and peers that I was o.k. and wonderful and perfect the way I was. That I was not a monster, a 5 year old heart attack waiting to happen, or a body that needed deprived and restricted and put on diets as a 3 year old. I rejoice that possibly little fat girls can walk in this world experiencing less hurt from society than I did. Possibly.
The most important parenting book I have ever read, but it is for you even if you are not a parent. This was a very tough read. I can’t imagine any person who hasn’t been damaged by diet culture and this book will help promote healing for all people in any size body. As a person with a history of disordered eating for myself and my sister, it was very hard to read what triggered eating disorders in different families. Research is top notch, from a sociological perspective I loved how in depth Sole-Smith went in her discussions and follow ups with the families. My 6 yo has had a recent growth spurt like me at this age and I have heard more body comments lately that made me feel this was a very necessary read to get ahead of it if I can possibly protect him more from frankly a lifetime of feeling like I needed to be smaller. I’m thankful to my kids for helping me appreciate my body and get past my misguided attempts at intentional weight loss and participating in diet culture. I haven’t spoken badly about my body in front of them since my 4 yo was born, the mental process is a work in progress.
There were so many moments I screenshotted pages for future reference. The line that moved me to tears on the last page cemented my 5 star review.
“We’ve been told that fat kids are failures and proof of our own poor parenting. They are not. Fat kids are just as smart, capable, strong, beautiful, and lovable as their thin peers. And every child deserves to grow up in a world that celebrates, protects, and respects their bodies and their fundamental right to body autonomy.”
I hope my kids can grow up in a world where the anti-fat bias does change and the answer to being bullied over weight isn’t to say it would be easier to change your body. All bodies are beautiful and I hope they know that and will always believe it.
I’m a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders. I now consider this book on the short list of essential reads for parents who want to raise children with a healthy relationship to food and their bodies. I appreciate that it is well-researched and illustrates those points with stories relatable to anyone who has struggled with dieting and diet culture. Thank you.
When I read Fat Talk, I was a new mom with a six month old and I was starting to go down the no sugar or salt EVER path. Fat Talk helped me recognize the diet-culture and anti-fatness showing up in the advice for feeding my perfect little baby and once that happened my own intuition became the loudest voice in my head again. My toddler now eats lots of broccoli and lots of cookies and I mostly don’t care, in a good way.
I am recovering from an ED and was clueless on how to navigate food and conversations around food with my kids. It was a topic I brought up in therapy constantly because I was being triggered by my own children! After reading FatTalk, I was able to finally have a way to peacefully feed my kids without being triggered myself (division of responsibility) and I now have language I can use to help them through questions they have about food, health and their bodies without being triggered! It’s been a huge win!! This is too funny because last night we even went to “family fitness night” at my kids’ school, which we have skipped the past 2 years because it’s been too triggering for me, but I sat my kids down beforehand and talked to them about how health is different than what society will tell them. We had a great discussion, went to Dairy Queen, then did family fitness night and had a blast!! Fat Talk has changed my life because I couldn’t escape my triggers and now I have a way to work through them.
I’m a former fat kid with two young daughters. I spent decades of my life restricting and harboring a lot of resentment for the body shaming I experienced from my own mother growing up. When I started to realize that my older daughter was probably going to be like me (not a thin kid), I started to panic and realized I needed to make sure that history didn’t repeat itself. Luckily for me, this happened to coincide with the release of Fat Talk which I devoured as fast as I could. It allowed me to let go of any fear I had about my daughter’s body or appetite and whenever I feel that fear start to creep in, I remember Virginia’s words “I trust her body.” Fat Talk also allowed me to give a lot of grace to my own mother after understanding that she too was a victim of decades of diet culture and was trying her best to protect me from a world that isn’t kind to fat folks, especially in the early 90s. It was such an important book for me and my family.
Fat Talk helped me stop stressing and obsessing about how my daughter was eating. I was somewhat deep into the kid food-influencer space and felt AWFUL that my nine year old still wasn't eating seaweed snacks or kale, and I always felt I wasn't trying hard enough to introduce new foods or serve a big enough variety and it sucked. I always felt like I was doing something wrong. There was a line in your book about the most important thing about feeding kids was that they get enough food, not that they eat particular kinds of foods. I swear I started crying when I read that I was so relieved.
I ended up returning to work full-time for the first time since my child was born last summer, so the fact that I read your book a couple of months before that has been crucial for me. I am relaxed enough to let her make her own lunch even if it means she packs two kinds of crackers. I don't stress about us all eating the same dinner. I think the biggest thing your book brought me was relief and freedom. I really thought that the Instagram account I was following was the right way to do things and the book gave me permission to say nope, if this is causing me stress it's not the right way!
I have recommended this book so many times, congratulations Virginia!
Reading (and re-reading) Fat Talk helps me to "reparent" myself around food, and retrospectively untangle shame and pain I felt as a kid about my body. It's like someone authoritative saying "there was never anything wrong with you" about the deepest area of shame in my childhood.
I’m not a parent yet, but I appreciated Fat Talk so much as both a former fat kid with dieting trauma as well as a current psychiatrist treating folks with eating disorders. It was super informative and also brought up a lot of feels. The amount of anti-fatness is in the world is truly daunting sometimes and it was awesome to read something that was both very clear eyed about that problem while also offering practical strategies for protecting kids from that. I definitely wish it could be required reading for every parent as well as everyone in my department.
Before reading this book I thought it would just be a repackaging of stuff I already knew, absolutely no shade to Virginia in this statement, more myself thinking I knew a lot of what there is to know about ditching diets and fat acceptance/politics. I would also have considered myself to have been parenting really well around food and most of my peers would consider my approach 'radical'. Upon reading this book I realised that there was still so much to learn and even though I thought my approach to food wasn't rooted in diet culture there were still ways it was sneaking into my own relationship to food and my parenting around food. This radical needed to be even more radical! This is a book that I will go back to again again and I recommend it to so many people. Thank you Viriginia for giving us this book, I'm so delighted to hear it is in its 3rd run, it should be compulsory reading in school/parenting courses and stocked in every library!
I am a human, a trained therapist, and administrator in health, human services, government, and nonprofit. This book has been hugely important to me personally and in calling out bias in the workplace. And I also tend to read every recommendation you make as well! Thanks for starting so many of us on the path.
I am constantly recommending your work, and having Fat Talk has become my go-to first step. When I hear even a glimmer of interest from someone or hear that they are grappling with diet culture/parenting/bodies/capitalism lol I find it's easier to recommend Fat Talk as a starting place. I've found that starting with "she has a podcast and a newsletter and you can spend many many hours learning it all" is a harder sell than "give this single book a read and see if it resonates!"
Fat Talk helped with so much, but one big thing it did was give me and my partner the language and depth of knowledge to engage with our well meaning but very bought-in to diet culture parents. We are much better able to interrupt our families when they say and do harmful things with our kids (or in front of our kids). My sister actually read the book and she told me "Wow, Now I really understand why you talk about food with your kids the way you do." We can't insulate our kids from the culture, but Fat Talk has given us the tools to try and make their home a safer place.
I am a parent to a child at the other end of the body size spectrum (my toddler son is in the third percentile for height and weight) and still found Fat Talk to be really meaningful and useful to read. I think I stopped following many of the parent food influencers on instagram after reading your book and have become more accepting that my kiddo is gonna eat what he’s gonna eat and trying to change his food preferences or size based on some idea of “normality” was not my job and a fool’s errand. What I really appreciated was the mix of science, personal anecdotes, and the easy to read feel of the book. It didn’t feel like reading a heavy non-fiction tome— it was engaging throughout.
Fat Talk absolutely raised my awareness about ways that diet culture shows up (with the best of intentions) at school and in classrooms and provides practical strategies and considerations for me as a parent. As a woman with a body (who is also a parent) this book has done more to challenge my own thinking and behavior with food and eating than any other resource I’ve encountered. That fear of fatness is so deeply embedded in our culture and there is true joy in working to let that go!
My sister read it in September, and it has helped us with so many conversations about my 7 year old nephew who hit a growth spurt and has had some family members concerned about him “eating too much.” I am nearly done with it, and it has been helpful to me when articulating part of why I am anti diet to coworkers, and I shared a Substack post about my experience with having an eating disorder because the book made me think about it. It helped me have more illuminating conversations with my mom and close friend about my experience since they found out more about how it felt for me, and it helped my husband understand my history better as well since we hadn’t talked about it much recently. My 4 year old is a pretty good eater, but the book has also renewed my determination to push back against diet culture and make sure that we model as healthy a relationship with food for her as we can.
During and after reading this book, I sobbed tears of pain, regret, and sorrow. I cried for the fat toddler, child, and teen girl I was in the '80's and '90's where there was no book like this to tell my family, doctors, and peers that I was o.k. and wonderful and perfect the way I was. That I was not a monster, a 5 year old heart attack waiting to happen, or a body that needed deprived and restricted and put on diets as a 3 year old. I rejoice that possibly little fat girls can walk in this world experiencing less hurt from society than I did. Possibly.
This was my Goodreads review in September:
The most important parenting book I have ever read, but it is for you even if you are not a parent. This was a very tough read. I can’t imagine any person who hasn’t been damaged by diet culture and this book will help promote healing for all people in any size body. As a person with a history of disordered eating for myself and my sister, it was very hard to read what triggered eating disorders in different families. Research is top notch, from a sociological perspective I loved how in depth Sole-Smith went in her discussions and follow ups with the families. My 6 yo has had a recent growth spurt like me at this age and I have heard more body comments lately that made me feel this was a very necessary read to get ahead of it if I can possibly protect him more from frankly a lifetime of feeling like I needed to be smaller. I’m thankful to my kids for helping me appreciate my body and get past my misguided attempts at intentional weight loss and participating in diet culture. I haven’t spoken badly about my body in front of them since my 4 yo was born, the mental process is a work in progress.
There were so many moments I screenshotted pages for future reference. The line that moved me to tears on the last page cemented my 5 star review.
“We’ve been told that fat kids are failures and proof of our own poor parenting. They are not. Fat kids are just as smart, capable, strong, beautiful, and lovable as their thin peers. And every child deserves to grow up in a world that celebrates, protects, and respects their bodies and their fundamental right to body autonomy.”
I hope my kids can grow up in a world where the anti-fat bias does change and the answer to being bullied over weight isn’t to say it would be easier to change your body. All bodies are beautiful and I hope they know that and will always believe it.
I’m a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders. I now consider this book on the short list of essential reads for parents who want to raise children with a healthy relationship to food and their bodies. I appreciate that it is well-researched and illustrates those points with stories relatable to anyone who has struggled with dieting and diet culture. Thank you.