Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith
The Burnt Toast Podcast
We Need To Talk About Fat Fertility
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We Need To Talk About Fat Fertility

Some thoughts on "maternal fitness," medical anti-fatness, PCOS and menstruation diet culture, with Nicola Salmon.
11

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, and today my guest is Nicola Salmon.

Nicola is a leading voice for fat folks seeking fertility support, and author of the book Fat and Fertile. As a fertility coach and fat activist, Nicola works to challenge the fertility industry’s entrenched weight bias and empower marginalized folks to take control of their reproductive health. (You may know her from Instagram.)

The intersection of anti-fatness and infertility is a story I've been covering for over six years now, and depressingly, the situation seems to only be getting worse. I hear from so many of you all the time who are navigating fertility treatment and encountering doctor after doctor who all tell you to lose weight before they'll consider helping you.

As I wrote for The New York Times in 2019, this is pretty clear cut medical discrimination—and yet we haven't made much headway in getting clinics to change these policies. If you want more on this whole conversation, check out episode 29 of this podcast, where I talked through all of my reporting and the research on weight and fertility, as it stood at that point. And then go listen to episode two of

, where we explored the fat mother narrative—and the kind of healthcare that fat moms, and fat pregnant people, get.

Cult of Perfect
The Fat Mother Narrative
Welcome to Cult of Perfect…
Listen now

PS. If you enjoy today’s conversation, please tap the heart on this post — likes are one of the biggest drivers of traffic from Substack’s Notes, so that’s a super easy, free way to support the show! And, 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!)


You’re listening to this episode because you value my input as a journalist who reports on these issues and therefore has a lot of informed opinions. Neither my guest today nor I are healthcare providers, and this conversation is not meant to substitute for medical or therapeutic advice. AND: If you are in the thick of your own fertility journey, and today’s episode doesn't feel good for you to hear, please take good care.

Episode 160 Transcript

Nicola

I am what I call a fat positive fertility coach, which means specifically that I support fat folks who want to get pregnant in bigger bodies. So that involves lots of different things: Working one-to-one with people, doing courses and basically just getting lots of information out there which fat folks might need, and then navigating the healthcare system when they are looking to get pregnant and maybe not finding that support with their doctors or their clinics. Just doing everything I can to make sure that fat folks have everything they need to get pregnant and don’t feel guilted or shamed or judged in the process.

Virginia

Which is all too common. We know that anti-fatness shows up in every realm of healthcare and fertility seems to be a particular hot spot. I’m curious: Why do you think fertility care is where we see so much medical anti-fat bias?

Nicola

People want this so bad—growing their families, having babies. And I think there is often this lack of control that we have around the process. We cannot control when we ovulate. We cannot tell our bodies, “okay, now’s the time! Go, go, go!” 

I think because of that lack of control, people are desperately seeking other ways of controlling the process, controlling their fertility, controlling their health somehow. And especially the diet industry, has really got their claws and latched onto that, and they’re offering people a way of being able to control something about the process. Supplementation, dieting, eating foods, cutting out foods, following all of the different things, regimes. I think giving people that element of possibility that they can control and somehow influence this process is what people really hold on to.

The diet industry is really feeding into this idea that people need that control, and they really want that control in order to navigate getting pregnant and being able to influence how they navigate that journey. I think the healthcare system is really just playing into that because we have this idea that is our responsibility to somehow fix ourselves as fat people in order to get pregnant. If there are ever any problems, if there are any other issues, then we never get looked at. We never get the test offered. We never get the treatments offered. It’s just, “it’s your weight. You need to do something about that. Go away, sort that out, and then come back when you’ve lost weight.” And I think just all of those combinations of factors have led to this cesspool of fat people not being able to access any kind of fertility support. 

Virginia

I mean, it completely makes sense. We’re conditioned our whole lives to think this way with whatever is hard in our lives—try to control your weight, try to control how you’re eating and you’ll fix it. Women in particular are given that message from so early, and then, in this most vulnerable time of life where you’re trying to do, as you’re saying, this very hard thing that you have very little direct control over. It’s just a perfect storm.

You posted a few months ago that the most common reasons fat folks get stuck trying to get pregnant is because they hesitate to give themselves permission to even try in the first place. 

Nicola

I think it goes back to what you said earlier about the conditioning, right? We are conditioned to believe that we need to be smaller in order to become a parent, and that’s shown in the media. With pregnancy, all you ever see is the very slender person with the beautiful bump. I know so many other incredible folks trying to disrupt this. But still, the general narrative is it’s small people getting pregnant. And that is what we see all over the pregnancy magazines. If you’re in any of the apps, like, it’s just this one person who gets pregnant, which is a thin, white lady. We don’t see any representation. 

And what that means is that we don’t believe that this is a problem that other people face. So many people I talk to feel so isolated because they don’t see anybody else in bigger bodies getting pregnant, necessarily. They think it’s something to be ashamed to talk about. They don’t want to share that with their friends or with their family because of the judgment that they might get back. It’s just really normalized for people to comment on their bodies and to judge them for wanting to grow their families. 

I think the thing about permission—with that post, I didn’t want people to think, “Oh my gosh, it’s my fault that I am doing this, like I am not giving myself permission.” This is not something else that we need to beat ourselves up about. It is the social conditioning that has led us to believe that we need to be something different in order to be able to do this and to be worthy of doing this. To give ourselves permission to even go to the doctor, for example, or get tests if things are taking a little while longer than you’d expect. So it is really just giving people the permission to think about that and go, actually, yeah, I’ve been putting this off because I think I need to be smaller and just shining a light on it really.

Virginia

It’s hard to give yourself permission to do something that culture is not giving you permission to do. 

It’s very, also very tied to our ideas about who will be a good mom and to “maternal fitness.” That phrase gets turned thrown around a lot, which I would like to just send right off into the sea if we could. 

Leave a comment

Nicola

Oh yes, please. 

Virginia

So does that come up for folks you’re working with, too? This fear of, “Can I be a good mom in a bigger body?”

Nicola

Yes, because it’s always this conversation of, “Will you be able to pick up your kids off the floor when they’re little? Or will you be able to play in the park with them and run after them?” And I think it comes from such an ableist place. We believe that only one type of person can be a good parent. And actually, the world is made up of so many millions of different types of humans and I think that’s what makes it really special. 

I think that we all have different ways that we can contribute in terms of mothering. My size has never held me back from being a great parent for my children. I mean, sometimes I can’t sit on a swing or sometimes I might not be able to fit on the roller coaster, for example. But that’s the swing’s fault. That’s not my fault.

Because my body isn’t accommodated, there are ways that I have to be a bit mindful about that if we’re going somewhere that may have restrictions and things that might not accommodate me. But day-to-day life, my kids don’t know any different, right? They understand that I’m their mom. This is my body, and they love me for me. Their lives are no less because of the size of my body. It makes me so cross that so many doctors will tell their patients, oh, it would be unethical for me to try and support you in getting pregnant or you’re doing something irresponsible. That puts that responsibility, that shame, that idea that you need to be fixed in some way on people again and again and again. 

Virginia

I mean, it’s wild. I think about what we know from parenting research on what makes kids feel safe, happy, what helps kids grow up to be good, contributing members of society. Parent body size is never on the list! 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because one of the themes my trolls love to focus on is that I must be a bad parent because I’m in a bigger body. Because being a fat mom is seen as so selfish. I kind of want us to unpack the ableism of that for another minute, because I think that is a core fear that folks are up against, and we want to hold hold that together with what we actually know about what kids need from caregivers.

Nicola

Obviously the biggest one is that kids need safety. Kids need to feel secure, feel a sense of belonging, and feel understood and validated. We are so capable of giving that to our kids. And, it shouldn’t be down to solely us, either. We should have a community around us, and we don’t live in that world really anymore where that is often an option or available. But we should not be the sole provider of all that for our kids. We can all have different parts to play in our children’s lives. I think giving them a variety of adults and humans that they interact with and can get different things from is a really good way of helping them become well rounded adults.

Virginia

What other barriers do you see fat folks encountering? Maybe you’re getting over the this initial “Am I worthy of this? Can I do this?” piece, and then you actually are going to the doctor. What hurdles are you going to encounter there?

Antonio_Diaz, Getty Images

Nicola

By far the biggest one is the anti-fat attitudes of the healthcare providers and the policies that are in place, not only with doctors, but with the fertility clinics they work for. That is the biggest barrier that fat folks face, by far. Because there’s nothing often that you can do, individually. Like this is a system-level problem, there are bad policies in place. There are often procedures in place at clinics. There are doctors who’ve had however many years of education that is anti-fat education. It’s really difficult to sometimes navigate that when you’re coming up against doctors time and time and again who have either strict BMI limits or have very anti-fat attitudes around “you need to go and lose X pounds or X kilos.”

Not only is that a physical barrier in terms of you can’t physically access the tests and treatments that you might need, but it is exhausting. Mentally, when people are having to have these conversations and the doctors judging them, and putting their nervous systems through appointment after appointment, or even just sending off emails and getting the same response back time and time again. That labor is so exhausting and it’s not labor that people should have to do in order to access basic fertility care.

Virginia

How do you encourage folks to start? What support do we want to get in place as you’re navigating this?

Nicola

The first thing is to not assume it’s going to be hard, right?

Virginia**

I like that. That’s helpful. 

Nicola

It can feel like a mountain, and when I talk to folks about it, I want people to be fully informed of all the potential pitfalls because I don’t want people to be surprised. But if we go in prepared for the worst, but expecting the best, we could come across a great doctor who’s going to give you everything that you want, and that’s what we want. We want the outcome of being supported, of having evidence-based healthcare, and we just have to be prepared that that might happen. But that also might not happen. So having tools in our back pocket for if that doesn’t happen, what we can do instead. 

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I think it can be really helpful to zoom out as well when you’re getting started and really looking at okay, where does this blame truly lie? I understand that culture has given me this blame of it’s my fault, It’s my body’s fault that maybe I haven’t got pregnant as quickly as I wanted to. But then really zooming out and looking okay, well, what systems are in place that are really to blame?

It is the healthcare system that has been based on very racist and anti-fat roots that have led to doctors believing that fatness is bad, that fatness is unhealthy?

It is all the researchers who are doing their best as researchers, but also live in the diet culture soup where they truly believe that and make assumptions about fat bodies, which biases the research that they do?

It is the people who are doing the procedures and the IVF pioneers, who decided we’re only going to look at IVF in straight sized bodies? We are not going to include fat people when we decide what kind of drug levels we give, how we design the protocols. Because once we leave fat people out, that means it doesn’t work as well for fat people, which makes total sense, right? But you cannot then use the research and go, oh well, it doesn’t work for fat people if you’ve never included them in the first place.

There are so many people that are to blame for the fact that you cannot access fertility care, but you are not one of them. 

I think being able to zoom out and see that bigger picture and see really where you sit in it can be really helpful when your mind kind of goes, oh, it’s my fault. You can get in this spiral of shame, which so many of us do all the time, about so many different things around our bodies. It can be really helpful to be going, okay, I understand why I feel like this. It makes total sense that my brain is telling me all this stuff. And I think reframing it like that can just really help people to go, yes, this is a problem. Yes, it’s not my fault, and still I need to take some responsibility to move forward to make sure that I get the care that I deserve.

Which, again, not their labor. Should not be having to do this. But right now, we live in a world where that’s the only choice. It’s that or perform weight loss for a short term to be able to go through the BMI barriers. And I do not judge people for going either way. It’s such a hard place to be in and you just have to make the decision that you have to make that’s best for you. But it, yeah, that is, for me, the first pieces of people being able to move forward with this, really believing that they are worthy of it, because it is not their fault. 

Virginia

Here in the States, when I reported this out, I found that there was a real difference in private fertility clinics, which can set their own BMI cutoffs, and the BMI cutoffs were sometimes as low as 26. Basically anyone out of the “normal” range, they wouldn’t treat. Versus university or major hospital clinics, like within hospitals and university healthcare systems, which tended to have either no BMI cutoffs or much higher BMI cutoffs and better set up for the care that fat folks need. Like having an anesthesiologist on hand who understood how to do that, and bigger tables and gowns that fit—all the like basic human dignity issues.

Is there a similar strategy in the UK that you would recommend? I know the healthcare system is quite different, but I’m just curious if you have any practical advice on, here’s where you might be more likely to find affirming care.

Nicola

It’s really tricky because of the way that our healthcare system is set up. We have the NHS, which is a free at point of care healthcare system, which is amazing. But it’s got a finite pot of money, and they are very limited in what they can and cannot do. So anybody with a BMI over 30 doesn’t get to access IVF care under the NHS guidelines, which is low. That’s about a third of people, I think I’ve worked out, that actually get denied based on BMI. 

We have a couple of, like, big major hospitals, obviously, but they don’t really have the big fertility departments in the same way. They’re often NHS / private. So the same consultants are working under both and what that means is that the anesthesiologists just don’t have the same expertise or because they’re under the NHS most of the time, they don’t have the confidence to be doing these procedures. 

So we have maybe two or three clinics in the UK that I know of that will go up to a BMI of 40, and that’s it. 

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Virginia

Wow. That is dire. 

Nicola

People have to go to Europe. That is their only option if they have a BMI over 40, and it’s a great solution for many folks. Like, it’s generally cheaper, even when you include flights and hotel accommodation. Obviously, you get to go to a nice, sunny place, which doesn’t happen here very much in the UK. But obviously it’s not financially accessible to everybody. 

Virginia

Definitely not. Like time off work, whatever. 

Nicola

Absolutely. So it’s hard, right? Navigating language barriers, potentially, and navigating meds across two different countries. It’s not the funnest thing in the world to do, especially when you’re going through such a vulnerable thing like IVF and the the number that it does on your mental health, your physical health, is huge. It’s not a small undertaking to take. 

It’s wild here and it’s so sad because there are so many people who are missing out because they think that’s the norm. Like, oh, it’s 40, that’s the cutoff. And they may not think to look abroad. They may not think to look anywhere else, and they just believe that that’s not for them, and then they don’t get to grow their families. And I have a list on my website of clinics in the UK and the US that folks can find great BMI limits, but that’s the only way I’ve been able to find to help folks find the resources that they need.

Virginia

I’m just sitting with the anti-fatness of that. The NHS, the National Health Service, so the government funded health care that everybody pays for with their taxes. So I’m a taxpayer, but my BMI is 31 or 32 or whatever, I don’t get to access health care through the national health care system. 

Nicola

100%. It’s purely to do with money. It’s nothing else. Like, of course, it’s more socially acceptable to do that. This is the only socially acceptable way that they can exclude people, apart from obviously queer and trans people as well get excluded by this. But, yeah, people accept it because they firmly believe and have been conditioned to believe that it is their fault and they just need to lose the weight and then they can access the healthcare service. But no. And it’s not just fertility. My uncle has just had a heart attack and gone through trying to access a heart bypass. He can’t do that until he’s lost weight. And it’s it makes me so angry.

Virginia

Yeah, sure, you want to wait on that.

Nicola

Yeah, of course you do. Of course you do. 

Virginia

Definitely take 18 months to lose some weight first before we rush to actual life saving medical care. Oh, my God. I mean, obviously the United States, we’re even further behind, because we don’t have very much in the way of socialized healthcare. But that is even more enraging in some ways that you have the system in place, but there’s this bias denying people access to the system they pay for. 

Nicola

It makes me really angry. But in the US as well, there are some people who, like, geographically, can’t get to a clinic, or they have to travel across states and states to find someone who’ll support them. It’s just wherever you look, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, it is a pretty similarly dire picture, unfortunately. 

Leave a comment

Virginia

Can we talk a little bit about PCOS and the misconceptions around the role of weight loss here?

Because obviously PCOS is a a very common underlying reason people are seeking fertility care and there’s this narrative that PCOS causes weight gain and therefore the only solution to PCOS is weight loss. I often see that delaying people’s access to fertility care. You’re then told, like, “go lose weight for a year, then come back and we’ll see,” that kind of thing.

Nicola

Oh, yeah. I have PCOS. I was diagnosed at 16 and I was told I’d never be able to have kids.

Virginia

What a lovely thing to say to a 16 year old child. 

Nicola

This was 20-odd years ago now, so it was like, no Internet, no resources, I don’t know anything about PCOS, nothing. And of course it’s like, weight loss will cure it, which makes total sense. PCOS is such a tricky one, because it manifests in so many different ways. 

I think the problem that fat folks tend to have is that they can often be misdiagnosed with PCOS. A doctor will see your fat body and go, “PCOS.” They won’t do the appropriate testing. They won’t do the appropriate work up to diagnose you properly. You know, heaven forbid they’ve heard of a differential diagnosis. And it can be really harmful for folks to get a diagnosis that’s not helpful to them. They might get put on drugs like metformin and things that may not help them, and they miss having the correct diagnosis. Hypothyroidism, for example, is a really common thing that folks in bigger bodies can experience, and if they’re not getting the appropriate treatment again, that can just delay things even further. 

But for folks with PCOS, yes, sometimes it can be a co-occurring symptom to have PCOS alongside an increased body mass. But we don’t have any evidence to support the idea that one causes the other. We don’t have any evidence to support the claim that weight loss will support your fertility or your PCOS. 

What I’ve seen, as a sample size of one, is that not when I diet, not when I lose weight, but when I prioritize things that meet my needs, in terms of supporting my nervous system—reducing my stress levels, getting better sleep—those things have a positive impact on my menstrual regularity. Which makes total sense, right? Because I think for me, what makes sense is that I was on diets from a really, really young age. I was in the phase of low-fat dieting from maybe ages 10 to 12. That was the trend. And it makes total sense to me that being on a very low-fat diet at those ages would impact my hormones, which are made of fats, and would impact how I went through puberty and how my menstrual cycle was set up. 

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Virginia

I want to talk a little bit about the role of menstruation diet culture in all of this. I get press releases all the time for seed cycling, and these plans where you should eat a different set of foods every week of your cycle. You should exercise differently every week of your cycle. All of which sounds exhausting to keep track of! Is any of this useful, or is this all just kind of more of wellness culture’s anti-fatness, pushing weight loss, but calling it something else?

Nicola

I think it’s maybe a little bit of both. I feel like there is some wisdom that as folks who menstruate, we are never really taught about how our hormones impact our energy levels, how they impact our mood throughout the month. Like I know for me, it was helpful to learn more about how in the first phase of our cycles, from when we bleed to when we ovulate, we have estrogen as the dominant hormone. And the second phase [there is more ]progesterone. It really helped me to lean into knowing that I’ll probably feel a bit more active and be wanting to start projects at the beginning of my cycle, and then at the end. That first phase is when I have more completer energy. And then I find I’m not wanting to do anything when I’m menstruating. But feeling like Superwoman when I’m ovulating. I feel like knowing those things can be really helpful and they do tend to ring true.

I think the concept of yes, your body varies over your menstrual cycle with different hormones, makes a lot of sense, and is something that we should all be taught. But then I think diet culture sees anything that’s like, “oh, this is interesting and valuable” and shifts to: How can we manipulate this? How can we profit on this? 

Virginia

How can we both optimize and complicate it as much as possible? 

Nicola

Because of the culture we live in, we’ve been conditioned to break that trust with our bodies. And obviously it starts with food, around not being able to trust our fullness and our hunger cues, not being able to trust what we crave or what we don’t crave to eat, like forcing ourselves to eat specific foods and not others. But I think it goes so much deeper than that.

Like for folks in fertility, especially, there is this underlying fear and idea that we can’t trust our bodies to do the very thing that we want them to do, which is to ovulate, to get pregnant, to do all of the steps that lead up in that process. Anything that they can tap into that kind of feeds into this idea of, oh, this is how you can hack your body or fix it in some way. The thing is, our bodies aren’t broken, so we don’t need a quick fix. We don’t need seed cycling to help us with our hormones, because they are so great at doing that on their own. And so many people, fat folks especially, say, “Well, the doctor tells me that because of my weight, my hormones are all over the place.” Yet when they do all the hormone panels, nothing comes back. And I’m like, make it make sense. If there’s some problem with your hormones, if there’s an imbalance somewhere, that’s what the tests are for. To look at the imbalances, see what’s going on, see what the root of the problem is. But if it’s all coming back normal, then how can we say that weight is having an impact on your hormones? 

Virginia

I like the reframing that you’re suggesting. You’re talking about body literacy, you’re talking about people understanding their bodies and how they work. The diet industry is taking all of this and saying, how can we convince you your body is a problem to solve, and then sell you solutions for it. And that is what doesn’t serve us. Knowing our bodies better serves us. But knowing our bodies better in order to pay other people money to make them smaller does not serve us. 

Nicola

There are so many apps nowadays for tracking menstrual cycles and tracking where you’re going with that. To some degree, I think it can be helpful. Some data can be really useful. We can use data to inform us and to make decisions about our healthcare. But to track them for months on end, for years on end, getting the same results back? That can be really harmful for our mental health, and it takes you away from the signs and the signals of your body. So sure, we can track our ovulation by looking at our basal body temperature or peeing on a stick. But we can also listen to what our energy is doing, what our mood is doing. Do we notice a change in our cervical mucus? Do we notice a change in our libido? All of these things as well can be really great ways of not only figuring out when ovulation is occurring, but getting back in touch with our body and really understanding and listening. Like you say, body literacy around the cues as to what ovulation feels like for us and how we experience it in our bodies.

Drazen_, Getty Images

Virginia

I love that. 


Butter

Nicola

So the thing I am loving most at the moment is having a sports bra that fits and that didn’t cost me the earth. 

Virginia

A unicorn!

Nicola

I’ve started doing some more cardio, and I was just dreading moving my body, because I have big breasts, and that’s always the hardest thing for me to find. So I found this website. I got a tape measure, and I was measuring under here, and then I had to bend down and measure how far they hung, and all this stuff. But I actually got a number out, went on to Vinted found a sports bra that was in my size, which was not as easy. I think it was like, 44GG. Found one bra, and it’s amazing. 

Virginia

Oh, that’s wonderful. 

Nicola

It fits! I didn’t have to go to a shop and be looked up and down and measured by strange people that I don’t know. It just changed the way I’m looking forward to moving my body, because I’m not permanently uncomfortable. It made me realize how hard it was before, because I didn’t have a bra that fit or my trousers would fall down, or the tops if they fall down your shoulders and just constantly adjusting your body. It’s been a revelation, having one single bra that didn’t cost me like $50, $60. 

Virginia

So tell us the website you used!

Nicola

So the website used for measuring myself was called Boob or Bust, which I think is a brilliant name, and it just walks you through all the measuring, which I loved. And then I found my bra size and went on Vinted and for 10 pounds found a bra that fits. And it felt magical.

Virginia

That is such a good butter, finding a bra that works, whether it’s just for everyday wear or for sports, just always feels like the Holy Grail.

Nicola

Yeah, it really does.

Virginia

My Butter is just a sweet, fun recommendation for reading with kids or even on your own. I just reread the Winnie the Pooh series with my younger child, who is six. It was our bedtime read for several weeks and it was so magical and so sweet. I think everyone knows Winnie the Pooh. I’m not lsuggesting anything totally revolutionary here. But what I had forgotten about Winnie the Pooh is that Winnie the Pooh is fat and very proud of eating lots of honey and not at all apologetic or ashamed about that. And his friends are very accepting of him! It’s actually a pretty fat positive text. 

There is a scene where he gets trapped in the door leaving Rabbit’s house, and they have to diet him to get him out. And I was like, how am I going to handle this scene? Because this is not the not the greatest. But it led to a great conversation with my kid. There’s a line where Pooh says, “it all comes from doors not being big enough.” And it’s sort of played as a joke in the book. They’re like, “no Pooh you need to get slimmer.” But I said, “What do you think about that?” And my kid was like, “Well, why isn’t the door big enough for him?” So what a great chance to talk about anti-fat bias in the built environment. Of Rabbit’s home in the Hundred Acre Woods.

Nicola

Oh, I love that. 

Virginia

It’s not a perfect book, not shockingly for a book written in the 1920s or whatever. It’s not a radical fat positive text, but Pooh just is actually a great fat character. And you can use it as a jumping off point to talk about anti-fatness with your kids in a very charming low-key, low stakes, low pressure way. Because everybody loves Pooh and is rooting for him. And the writing is just so funny and charming and wonderful. 

It’s a book I grew up reading. My mom read them to me when I was little. And when my older child was in the hospital, it was a book I read to her a lot, and it was kind of like our comfort read. So we’re very attached to Pooh.

Nicola

Oh, I love that. I do remember reading the Pooh books when I was little and loving them but I haven’t read them with my kids yet. 

Virginia

What I will say is, I think, because they’re about stuffed animals coming to life, people often think that they’re good books to read to little, little kids. And the writing is actually fairly sophisticated. So I would suggest waiting. My kids are 6 and 10 right now, and even the 10-year-old would come and listen. She wouldn’t admit she was participating in bedtime reading, because she’s very cool. But she’d be like, in the background. 

Nicola

Oh, I love that.

Virginia

So I think they actually skew a little older, and it’s okay to wait on them, but then they’re a really delightful experience. 

Well, Nicola, this was wonderful. Thank you so much. Tell folks where we can follow you and how we can support your work.

Nicola

Yeah, so I’m generally on Instagram. My handle is fat positive fertility, and my website is Nicola Salmon, which is where I share all the courses that I do, all the work that I do over there. I’m always happy to get a DM in my inbox, if anybody has got any questions or anything so happy to chat. 

Virginia

So appreciate your labor. Really wonderful. Thank you.

Nicola

Thank you.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and

who runs @SellTradePlus, and Big Undies

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Farideh.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

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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.