Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith
The Burnt Toast Podcast
"I Can Eat Without Somebody Judging Me Now."
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"I Can Eat Without Somebody Judging Me Now."

Navigating divorce, co-parenting and single motherhood in diet culture, with Lyz Lenz
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Transcript

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You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about anti-fat bias, diet culture, parenting and health. I’m Virginia Sole Smith.

Since we’re on winter break this week, I picked one of my favorite episodes to rerun for you—and it’s a conversation that feels more relevant (to my life, anyway!) than ever.

Today we’re chatting with about divorce in diet culture.

This conversation was inspired in part by a piece I wrote in fall of 2022 about how diet culture shows up in co-parenting. And it was previously paywalled, but I’m releasing the whole episode for free today because it’s just such a good one!

Lyz writes the excellent newsletter Men Yell at Me. She’s also the author of God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America, and Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women. And she just launched a brand new podcast, This American Ex-Wife, which is also the title of her next book, coming out in February and available to preorder now!

Don’t forget, you can always take 10 percent off that purchase at Split Rock Books if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple PodcastsSpotifyStitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)


Lyz Lenz

Episode 123 Transcript

Virginia

So Lyz, you have written so brilliantly about divorce. You are the smartest person I know about divorce. I text you whenever I want to know about divorce.

Lyz

Which isn’t that often, for her husband who’s listening.

Virginia

Just… when I have general questions. About people. In general. Y

ou are extremely knowledgeable about this topic and your next book, This American Ex-Wife, is about divorce. So you are here as my divorce expert and I’m curious: Do you see diet culture playing a role in American divorces?

Lyz

Oh, absolutely. Something initially with divorce that hits on diet culture is the “revenge body.” Anybody who’s gotten divorced will tell you about the stress and the weight loss associated with it—or not! Sometimes it’s weight gain. But there is the expectation of having that “post-breakup revenge body.” I’ve seen TikToks that are kind of making jokes like, you want to sit on the couch and relax, but you remember you have to be the hot one in the breakup.

Virginia

I never thought about this. 

Lyz

You know, like the “getting back out there” body. I know for a lot of men, divorce involves some free time, which, that time used to be managed by someone and now they don’t know what to do. So there is an aspect to the culture of the Divorced Dad in the gym. I follow quite a few TikTok accounts of divorce influencers which are out there…

Virginia

Wow, divorce influencers.

Lyz

So the divorced dad going to the gym, the mom trying to get hot and get back out there. It hit me so personally when I got divorced because I was so stressed out, and my response to stress is to not eat. I lost a lot of weight, and it was not healthy. And I remember people being like, “Oh, you look so good,” and me being like, “I’m so stressed out, I’m not sleeping or eating. You should be asking me if I’m okay.” I would get so angry about it, too, because then also people—as you know—people treat you differently. All of a sudden the men would see me differently because it was a very unhealthy amount of weight [to lose].

Virginia

It sounds like a a parallel with postpartum “get your body back” pressure.

Lyz

Yes. 

Virginia

So for a lot of women you’ll have just done that in recent years and now you have to do the “revenge body.” And why are we not allowed to just let our bodies be during times of stress and trauma?

Lyz

Right, right. And I think, too, it’s so hard when you layer on that the idea that exists in the divorce world that you now have to find someone else. I hate that. I hate that whole idea. That’s what most divorce books are. It’s like, okay, well, you did it, now how do you find love again? So that comes with that added pressure of being good looking which then translates to diet culture. Thinness, muscles.

Virginia

I’m just remembering a piece of yours where you were like, “actually all women want is to live alone in the woods with our wolves.” No, we don’t want to get remarried. That’s not the goal but that is immediately the expectation. Why do you want to get right back into the thing you just got out of?

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Lyz

Well, I think there’s that pressure of singleness, right? There’s that stigma of singleness. But you’re right, most women post-divorce don’t remarry. It’s the men who remarry. It’s somewhere around 70% of women initiate divorces and I think it’s less than 40%—I need to fact check myself on that.2 But it is a lower number who then get remarried. It’s an overwhelming number of men who then try to remarry because, like, “I don’t know how to find mustard in the grocery store without a woman.” But no, you’re right. I mean, every married woman I know wants to just live alone in the woods with a wolf, so.

Photo by Angela Rohde / EyeEm via Getty Images

Virginia

And part of that freedom would be not needing to be hot while you do it, just being able to be. 

Lyz

Yes, not being a hot witch. 

Virginia

Just want to be a witch.

Lyz

Why do we have to have weird witch beauty standards? There’s this great moment I think about a lot in the book Don Quixote where he’s traveling along and he meets all these shepherds. And they’re like, “There’s this one bitch, she’s awful. She broke all of our hearts. She’s so beautiful. We hate her. She’s evil.” And then they’re talking about her and she just walks up to them and goes, “I’m not evil. I don’t like any of you. Stop talking to me. I didn’t try to seduce you. I just existed and you thought I was in love with you.” And then she’s basically like, “I don’t want to be in your narrative.” And then she goes back into the woods and she never shows up in the book ever again. 

Virginia

She’s our queen. 

Lyz

I think about her all the time. 

Virginia

That’s icon behavior for sure. So, what else besides revenge body comes up? Anything about divorce and diet culture.

Lyz

Then there’s that whole aspect of divesting yourself of the body ideas that come from the relationship. I think there are so many ways that happens. You might have married a person looking a very specific way but, as we all know, time and life and children take a toll. And then the other person is like, “Well, you don’t look how you used to” and you’re like, “Well, I never will.”

Virginia

That’s life. That’s time passing.

Lyz

And marriage is so physical. It’s a bodily connection, right? So having divorce enables you—especially if you’re in a bad marriage. I mean, obviously people can have good marriages. My bias is that I think marriage is inherently unequal and bad. You can have good relationships within a bad system, but it’s still a bad system. So I’m gonna get that out there.

But so when you do divorce, part of that rebuilding of identity and rebuilding of sense of self comes with, like, who am I now? Like, what is my body now? And now I don’t have to manage that other person’s toxic body / diet stuff. I don’t have to manage the expectations of another person on my body and on my sense of self. I don’t have to have somebody judging what I’m eating. And then you can also make your own food. That was something that blew my mind that I didn’t expect. Like, I am not cooking for this other person who wants boneless, skinless chicken breasts every single fucking night. 

Virginia

The saddest of proteins, truly

Lyz

He would have lived on boneless, skinless chicken breast and microwaved frozen vegetables. I’m like, “let’s roast a chicken from Ina Garten. Let’s make vegan stew!” and none of that would fly. So, yeah, being able to feed yourself without the observation of someone around you just really changes things. And since we have 50/50 custody—and it’s always different with children around—but I get to sit and be like, “what is it that I actually want to eat? And when do I want to eat? And how do I want to eat?” It just makes me so much more thoughtful and grateful about what I’m consuming in my body.

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Virginia

One woman I interviewed described it as a “food rumspringa” because she was free from his expectations. For her it was embracing stuff like Annie’s Mac and Cheese—like I don’t have to cook, I can just enjoy eating a box of mac and cheese for dinner and watching Gilmore Girls and be so happy. What was your favorite thing you ate when you realized this liberation? 

Lyz

For a while I got really into cooking complicated recipes from the New York Times. That kind of stopped. I did the opposite of everybody in 2020, in the shutdown year. Everybody got into cooking and I was like, “I’m done, peace out. I will now be ordering food exclusively.” So another one was eating out because my ex does not like to go out to eat and and it was very stressful around, like, if you go out to eat and then what you order. You know, should you get a glass of wine or god forbid order dessert? That’s, like, so extra and why are you doing that? So just going out to eat by myself and an ordering whatever I wanted and dessert was a game changer. 

Virginia

I love that.

Lyz

And then I’d make complicated recipes just for myself because I’m like, “oh, he didn’t like curry so now I will make curry.”

Virginia

Now you can have all the curry! Revenge curry seems way better than revenge body, I’m just gonna put that out there. 

Lyz

Yes, yes. And all bodies handle stress in different ways. Divorce is stressful, even if it’s a good change. And that expectation that you then get thinner because of stress is not everybody’s experience.

Virginia

Something that came up in my conversations with the women I interviewed for this story was was how little faith they had that a judge or the legal system would do anything to intervene when they were seeing their ex continue to parent in very controlling ways around food. Like the dad who, if you didn’t finish dinner, you got it served for breakfast the next morning, so the kid was showing up at school hungry and having meltdowns because he hadn’t eaten two meals. That seems so clearly problematic to me. But I guess I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about why family court systems aren’t set up to deal with this.

Lyz

Family court systems aren’t set up to deal with a lot of different types of abuse. Going to my lawyer—who was great and wonderful—she basically was like, family court operates like an equation. You punch in the numbers, you just assume everything’s equal, and there really isn’t room for understanding some of those nuances and the different ways of talking about abuse. I mean, it’s abuse. If a parent is controlling their food access, that is abusive behavior. But you have to navigate it very, very, very delicately. Because I think, especially for women, you’re getting divorced, so already there’s a little bit of a stigma on you, right? Like, you’re a little shrewish. I noticed people treated me differently, too, around their husbands. I was like, “listen, I don’t want your nasty husband, I don’t even want my nasty husband. I don’t want anybody’s husband .”

Virginia

Weird energy.

Lyz

So there was a little bit of weird energy. My lawyer was just really upfront, like, “Listen, if you go before a judge in Iowa or a mediator—we got everything mediated—most of them are middle aged white men. They’re look exactly like your husband. You go in and you start making all these claims, well these could be things that they do to their children.”

Virginia

This could be their parenting style. 

Lyz

You could turn them against you. So, it’s like, if you go in there being the “shrill divorced lady” who only nitpicks and says horrible things about her husband, which I got actually. Divorced women, when I was getting a divorce, told me not to be the “negative divorced lady.”

Virginia

But like, you’re getting divorced for all these reasons, right? Some of which are negative, right? 

Lyz

I think the problem is that we don’t talk honestly about our relationships. Nobody knows what is actually supposed to be good in a marriage because we’ve spent so much time hiding some of these things. I would tell people, “Oh, we’re not gonna go out to eat” or “How about you just come over to our house?” just to manage things, so we wouldn’t have to get into a fight later if I had a glass of wine. But I’m not being honest with my friends about that. I’m not like, “No, we can’t go to a restaurant because jerkface over there won’t let me order wine.”

Virginia

Right. 

Lyz

So anyway, you are coming into a system that very much thinks its objective but as we all know, objectivity favors the white man and favors the system. So it really is a balancing act. I’ll just tell a story that about religion. My ex was saying that I was awful because I wanted to go to a liberal Lutheran Church—and now I go to no church, which is even worse. He was telling the mediator, “She will not raise her children with the values that she agreed to when we entered the marriage contract so it is a breach of contract,” and my lawyer is like, “You can’t react. You can’t nod. Even if he’s being unreasonable, you just have to be calm and placid so that you look like the reasonable one here.”

Virginia

So you’re not the angry divorced lady.

Lyz

Right. You’re managing so much just to get out of this situation and letting so many things go. And I know women whose exes did awful things and even then the courts were just like, “well, it’s a he said/she said situation.” So you’re just doing what you can to get out with the skin of your teeth.

Virginia

Another thing I heard was women worrying about how their bodies would be perceived by lawyers and judges. Like, if you’re fat, that’s going to be an added strike against you coming into that, especially if you have a thin ex.

Lyz

Yes. Oh, yes. The clothes you wear. I had to buy a whole new outfit for mediation. I mean, I’m a writer, I don’t have a lot of business clothes. My lawyer gave me suggestions. She’s like, “button up, nothing low cut.” Which works for me because I have no boobs. But God forbid you actually have boobs and then they’re like, “don’t dress slutty.” And you’re like, well, they’re there. Like, I have a body.

Virginia

I can almost never get them to go away. 

Lyz

Right? Like, where shall I put them that would make you feel more comfortable. The whole courtroom appearance, which of course, again, is judged more for women. Men just have a uniform they can pop into or out of, you know. I can’t just buy a dress shirt.

Virginia

It has to be an outfit.

Lyz

And of course, it’s expensive to do this. And you’re already like, I don’t have any money. That’s such a big aspect I think, not just of divorce but of our court and legal systems. 

Virginia

The body policing. 

Lyz

Yeah. We’ll judge you immediately based on appearance.

Virginia

And how we judge mothers in general, right? The fitness of motherhood is often tied to bodies and presentation of bodies.

Lyz

And then if you and your ex have very different types of bodies, then people are thinking “Well, of course they’re getting divorced because she really let herself go.” And then you get into co-parenting, which is fun.

Virginia

This is maybe a very naive question, but how much advice do you get on how to co-parent and co-parent around food?

Lyz

Every state does it a little differently. Iowa, God bless, is a no fault divorce state. So it’s really hard to upset the balance of that, like it’s going to be 50/50 no matter what, unless you get your former partner on video doing something horrific, right? It would be very, very, very hard. So, we had to take mandatory divorce parenting classes. And I’m sure it’s different in every state, but what that involved was going to this nonprofit called Kids First Law Center here in Iowa. They’re really great. They do amazing work, helping to represent children for low cost or free. So, you sign up for your time and you go sit in a conference room with a bunch of other divorced parents and then you watch a video that’s like a basically about how not to put your kids in the middle of fights. First of all, it’s kind of shaming because the beginning of the video, at least the one I watched was just kids being like, “this is awful. My parents are ruining my life.”

Virginia

Like you’re not already worrying about that!

Lyz

I just remember a child literally drawing a broken home and I’m like, wow, already I feel like the worst person in the world. And then it shows these different scenarios of couples fighting. There’s one where the harried divorce mom comes in from her late work shift and the kids are watching television and they’re like, “we’re so hungry mom.” And she’s like, “well, we don’t have food cause your father’s late with the child support check.” Then it’s like, “don’t do this.”

There’s another one where it was like, a dad is dropping his son off back at the sad mom’s divorce department. And he’s like, “Oh, son, I would really love to take you to the big game this Saturday, but it’s your mom’s day and she won’t let me take you.” And then it’s like, “don’t do this.” 

Virginia

I mean, agreed, that seems not helpful to your child. But it’s not giving you a lot to work with. Like, what do you do instead would be helpful.

Lyz

And it does show you better ways to say it. But it’s really basic, it’s like, “Talk to the other adult, don’t talk to the children. Don’t send messages through the children.” And I remember at the time being like, “God, this is so basic,” but then going through divorce and then having to constantly remind my ex like, “Hey you need to just text me instead of telling the kid” or whatever.

Virginia

The video is assuming that you can still communicate with this other adult.

Lyz

Yes. And that was something I had to go to therapy to talk about. There are so many times when my ex, I’ll say something to his face and he will not respond. I’ll send an email, he won’t respond.

Virginia

You can’t force two people to be grownups if one of them isn’t being a grown up.

Lyz

That was a lot of my summer was trying to handle some of these diet culture things that were being taught to my daughter. Our daughter, who is 11, is going through puberty and is in swimming. At her dad’s house they were restricting access to food and snacks, I think out of concern for her weight—which, already lots of different layers of problems there. Her response was to start hoarding snacks and hiding them and this is immediately terrifying to me because this is the age when girls develop eating disorders. Out of everything that I want for my children, I want them to love themselves, right? And to not think that there’s something wrong with themselves.

So that was something where I’m like, Okay, how do I send this email which I know will get read, but I know will not be responded to. But you can’t be combative, right? And you can’t betray the confidence of the child. A lot of the things she’s told me have been in confidence. I had to have multiple therapy sessions where it was just writing an email about how to tackle diet culture with your ex and his wife, the kids’ stepmom. There is no handbook.

Virginia

None of this written into the custody agreement. You’re just figuring it out in these murky spaces. 

Lyz

And you have to assume that you have a therapist who understands these things, which I’m so lucky. My therapist specializes in disordered eating, which is something that she and I tackle a lot, and I’m still unpacking in my own life, right? So I’m lucky. She was already right there with me. I mean one of the reasons I wanted to write a divorce book was because I was looking for books about divorce, and they’re all like, “the happy divorce how to” and that’s just basically tips on how to manage your ex’s emotions.

Virginia

Like, the reason you’re not married is because you don’t want to keep managing his emotions.

Lyz

Right, which, learning how to stop managing their emotions is pretty dang difficult, especially when there are kids involved. So no, there is no manual and they’re not talking about it in that divorce class, which by at the end of the video, we all had to get into little small groups and talk about little scenarios, and then talk about what’s the good way to handle this scenario.

Virginia

How can you ever cover all the scenarios you’re actually going to encounter?

Lyz

They’re mostly focusing on like, money.

Virginia

And schedule, like, I want to do something this Saturday and it’s your day with the kids, which are logistical issues. Which are not not stressful, but they’re not emotional in the same way as something like how we’re feeding the kids or how we’re talking about bodies. These are things that just trigger such deep core beliefs and emotions for everybody.

Lyz

And I think something that is really, really difficult—and I think I’ve talked to you about this, too—is then trying to help your child unlearn a lot of things that they’re learning from your partner, which you’re also trying to unlearn. Like, I am on a journey and I will always be on a journey, right? I’m trying to help my kid unlearn stuff that I don’t even fully have unlearned and it triggers me to remember those moments from my own childhood. But you can’t put that on your kid because they’re different. You are just unraveling this whole complicated issue in the moment with somebody who doesn’t want to work with you. 

Virginia

Oh, man, it’s so much. I do want to quickly say—you and I have talked about this, of course, but I want to say for listeners—what your daughter was doing hoarding food, this came up in the piece as well. I really appreciated the advice from Hilary Kinavey, one of the therapists I interviewed, of reframing that as a really smart strategy for a kid in that situation. It’s a really smart coping strategy to get herself fed when that wasn’t available.

So for anyone parenting through the same kind of dynamic, it’s so important that we recognize the wisdom of how our kids are responding to these moments. Like, of course we don’t want that to be her only coping strategy in life, but I think what she was doing was actually brilliant.

Lyz

Yes. Virginia and I have a little text thread about our newsletters, but also I’m just asking Virginia for advice on parenting. So I remember telling you that and you saying, “that’s so great that she’s feeding herself,” and that helped me to immediately reframe the way I was thinking about it.

And another thing I really liked in the piece was about kids correcting with food. Like the mother who talked about how her kids might seem like they binge a little when they come back to her house. I notice those kinds of behaviors at my house, and of course that really stresses me out because you’re raised to be like, “no more chips! No more candy!” and just learning how to see that as a positive thing, as a way of your child getting their needs met. Now I say, “in our house, if you’re hungry, you eat.” Know what you’re hungry for, trust yourself, trust your body. That helped alleviate a lot of my fears.

Because again, this is not something that is really talked about. Hearing that it happens in someone else’s house immediately makes me think, Okay, this is a normal coping mechanism.

Virginia

It is obviously not ideal for a kid to be moving from a restrictive household and then having to respond in that way. It is a stress response and that’s concerning. But it also is a real power of divorce, that you have control over what’s happening in your house, and you can make your house the safe space for food. If you were still in the marriage, those safe spaces would be much harder to find.

Lyz

Yes. That that is something I think about a lot because I’ve got regrets about the person I chose to have children with. We all decide we’re going to be better than our parents, and we’re going to do things. So I think one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life was being in this marriage and realizing I’m not any different. I did the exact same thing. The only way out is by breaking this all apart and relearning life again. But then knowing that some of those same things will now be happening to your kid because that’s what you chose. I can’t control what happens in that house. I think, especially, too, for mothers, it’s really hard, because you’re used to controlling every single aspect. Like, you know where the shoes are, you know where everything is, you know where the milk is and the ketchup is. And then divorce is letting go of that control. And it’s really scary, because you’re like, are they even gonna get fed? And what are they gonna get fed? And how?

But it also helps you build something better. I just have to focus on in my house. I can create a space where we can talk about these issues without fear, where we’re not managing other people’s emotions, where I can have a candy bowl on the kitchen counter. You know, just feed yourself, feed your body, and de-stigmatize a lot of the food.

Something my ex would do and does is say, “You have to eat so many bites of so many things.” It just makes dinnertime miserable! Especially, like, my son is the most stubborn. He’s just a sweet little boy and everything’s easygoing until the moment you see his little jaw kind of like click into place. And then you can’t move him. He will not.

Virginia

He will die on this mountain forever. Good luck to you. 

Lyz

And sometimes the mountain is his foot is on the table, and you say, “hHey, buddy could you get your foot off the table?” And then you look under the table and he’s got his foot up touching the top of the table because he is not gonna let you win. So you can imagine that energy when… 

Virginia

Counting broccoli bites. 

Lyz

Right, one more bite of broccoli. When he was a toddler and he moved to solids, he dropped off the weight scale for a little while which was very scary for me. We had to get him monitored because they were like, does he have a healthy home? Which of course is like, oh my god, I’m a terrible parent. And I did have to unlearn some things! I remember the doctor being like, “well, what protein will he eat?” And I was like, “Go-Gurt, but they’re so full of sugar I don’t like to feed them.” I know, I’m terrible!

Virginia

No, no, I had the same thing.

Lyz

And I’ve been going to this doctor for, gosh, 17 years now. So, you know, we know each other and it’s a small town, so we know each other. But she’s just like, “Lyz. If he’s eating it, feed him.”

Virginia

Feed him the Go-Gurt.

Lyz

Yeah, feed him the Go-Gurt! And so making dinnertime a place that is not stressful is is just so nice.

Virginia

Yes. I’m so glad you can do that for them. Cooking complicated recipes that make you happy or not cooking because that also makes you happy.

Lyz

Oh my god, eating cheese over the sink for dinner. Amazing. Love it. 

Virginia

Love that.

Leave a comment


Butter for Your Burnt Toast

Virginia

So what is your butter for us? 

Lyz

My recommendation is not going to be super deep, but when I saw that question, I immediately thought that the thing I recommend right now is “Wednesday,” a TV show on Netflix. It’s so good. I’m watching it with my 11 year old daughter. I love it. She loves it. It’s so fun. It’s so smart. It’s so interesting. The mother / daughter relationship is great. 

Virginia

Oh, I can’t wait. Do you think my 9 year old can watch it? Will she be into it?

Lyz

My 9 year old is kind of a weenie beanie and got scared by the horse in “Tangled.” 

Virginia

That was a very large horse, in their defense. I can understand that. 

Lyz

What I’m trying to say is my kid’s threshold for scary things is very low and I know other people’s kids’ are much higher. So, it is too intense for my 9 year old but my 11 year old loves it. But I think if I was 9. I’d be totally into it because I was a weirdo. 

Virginia

She is really into the Lemony Snicket show which we’ve been watching and that is quite dark. 

Lyz

If she can do Lemony Snicket she can do Wednesday. It’s also very hilarious and smart and interesting. This should be fun because at least this has a happy ending. I remember watching Lemony Snicket with my daughter and getting to the end and her being like, there has to be another episode and it was like, “No, honey, sometimes life is just bad like that.” And then I was like, Oh my God, you’re the worst parent ever. But also, suck it up.

Virginia

Well, my recommendation is a game that my kids and I have all been really into called Ransom Note. Have you ever played this? I think you and your kids would like it too, Lyz. So it’s magnetic poetry, the little word tiles. It’s basically a box full of the word tiles and then everyone gets their own little board and you draw a question and it’s like a prompt. Like the reason it’s ransom notes, it could be like “write a ransom note for kidnapping someone,” or it’s like write a parking ticket for very absurd, funny scenarios. And then you have however much time to play with all your magnetic poetry words and write your own little sentences. And then you just judge whose is funniest. That’s the whole game.

We really love it, our nine year old is weirdly great at it. She’s very funny and often wins the round. Also we’re just judging each other which is a fun family activity. Even my five year old, she’ll play on a team with me because she’s like half-reading and she can pick out high frequency words. Or we just let her pick random words and then it’s funny to see what she comes up with. Anyway, it’s so fun. It’s low stakes because I guess you could play it in a competitive way, but we just like to make up the word things. It is marketed for ages 17 and up, so if you care you can edit the cards and the words a little bit because there’s some vulgarity. But my nine year old did a great job with a sentence involving genitals the other day.

Lyz

I love those games, especially now as they’re getting older. We played one on my sister’s Switch. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was something a little similar where you had they come up with scenarios and you had to invent a solution to the problem. And the scenario was how do you make a fish be modest? My daughter’s solution was to was to convert fish to Christianity. And I mean, like she’s obviously joking but I was just like, you’re twisted. Your mind is twisted. It’s just so rewarding as a parent because you’re like, “Oh thank God, you have a personality.”

Virginia

Well, and as writer parents to be so proud when they come up with clever little word combinations. I was like, Oh, I think this may actually be an educational game but we will not think of it that way. It’s a very cards against humanity kind of vibe but you can play it with your kids because the skills translate. 

Lyz

Well, we love games so we will be picking this one up. 

Virginia

Lyz, thank you so much for being here! This was awesome. I am very excited for everyone to read your book even though I know it’s not out for a while. But stay tuned for that. Tell folks where they can follow you and support your work.

Lyz

I also have a newsletter! It’s called

. You can find me there. I’m also on Twitter but I guess the internet’s dying. But I’ll be there tweeting along until I get hit by a meteor. Those are two of the best places to find me unless you’re in Iowa, then you know how to find me because you live here.


Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti diet journalism. I’ll talk to you soon. 

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Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith
The Burnt Toast Podcast
Weekly conversations about how we dismantle diet culture and fatphobia, especially through parenting, health and fashion. (But non-parents like it too!) Hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and author of THE EATING INSTINCT and the forthcoming FAT KID PHOBIA.