#122: Virginia Sole-Smith on Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture

The Full Plate Podcast with Abbie Attwood, MS

Virginia Sole-Smith joins me on this revisited episode to talk about one of the most difficult, yet most important, pieces of healing from the effects of diet culture: Not passing it on to the next generation.

Virginia is such an important voice on raising kids in an anti-diet and weight-inclusive way, on confronting anti-fatness as a parent, and looking back to our own upbringing. She is also a talented writer and journalist (I highly recommend both of her books!) and I highly recommend her podcast, Burnt Toast.

There is something for everyone in this episode. Because whether or not we are parents, we’ve been parented in some way.

We chat about…

• Hard questions and conversations that led to Virginia's book "Fat Talk"

• “I don’t want my kid to have a messed up relationship with food, but I also don’t want them to be fat”

• The Gilmore Girls effect

• Holding compassion for our moms and their influence on our body image and relationship with food

• Why mothers bearing the blame of eating disorders and fatness

• How dads are left out of the conversation and ED 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

• …and so much more

This episode will help you reflect on your own childhood and provide tools to break the inheritance of body shame and disordered eating.

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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Looking for more support and concrete steps to take to heal your relationship with food and your body? Apply for Abbie's next 10-week group program: https://www.abbieattwoodwellness.com/group-coaching

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Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

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