Virginia Sole-Smith, THE EATING INSTINCT
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[0:33]I'm here today with Virginia Soul Smith, who is the author of the book The Eating and
[0:38]Stanked Food Culture, Body Image, and Gilt in America, which is her first book.
[0:44]She is a co-host of the Comfort Food Podcast and is a contributing editor at Parents Magazine.
[0:49]Her work has been published in the New York Times Magazine's self, real simple Newsweek
[0:53]Harper's and L. She currently lives with her husband and two daughters in the Hudson
[0:57]Valley.
[0:58]So welcome, Virginia.
[0:59]Thanks for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[1:01]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:02]It's great to be here.
[1:03]Of course.
[1:04]We've been chatting before recording and I kept being like, save that for the podcast.
[1:08]So now we can finally talk if she had such good stuff to say, but remember it all now.
[1:14]So the first sentence of your book is September 17th, 2013.
[1:19]It is the day before my daughter Violet's one month birthday.
[1:22]It is also the first day that she will almost die.
[1:25]You go on from there to narrate this horrifying, traumatic experience that you went through
[1:29]with your daughter Violet, the beginning of her life, the after effects.
[1:33]Can you briefly tell listeners what happened to her?
[1:36]Sure.
[1:37]So, you know, during my pregnancy with Violet, I, you know, like every first time mom thought
[1:42]I was doing everything perfectly.
[1:44]It was trying really hard to eat all the right things, do all the prenatal yoga, you know,
[1:49]the acupuncture.
[1:50]Like I really felt like building a perfect baby was like all on me and my choices.
[1:56]And then when she was born, you know, the delivery was normal and she seemed really healthy
[2:01]at birth.
[2:02]And so they sent us home saying, you know, go to it, like here's your newborn.
[2:06]And then the first few weeks of her life, I was breastfeeding and it was really hard,
[2:10]been exhausting.
[2:11]But again, I was thinking, you know, this is what it is, like this, you know, like I am
[2:15]feeding her with my body, we are doing the thing.
[2:18]And then the breastfeeding sessions started to get shorter and shorter.
[2:21]So we went from like those 45 minute per side kind of sessions to 20 minutes to 12 minutes
[2:27]to 6 minutes.
[2:29]And to be honest with you, I just thought like, oh thank God, it's getting easier.
[2:32]Okay.
[2:33]I can take a shower, you know, this is, this is good.
[2:36]I have an easy baby, but that's not what was happening.
[2:39]What was actually happening was Violet was born with a rare set of congenital heart defects.
[2:44]And in the first month of her life, she was going into heart failure.
[2:47]And so when the feeding sessions were getting shorter, it wasn't because she was eating
[2:51]enough quickly.
[2:52]It was because she was really, she was in heart failure.
[2:56]She was struggling to breathe and she was starving.
[2:58]And nobody around me could tell, you know, that we saw we read the pediatrician's office
[3:03]for the two week checkup.
[3:05]Things looked fine.
[3:06]And it was really in the next two weeks, like, you know, they give you like a two week window.
[3:09]Right.
[3:10]Yeah.
[3:11]That everything really fell apart.
[3:12]And so on that day that I talk about in the book, she plummeted really rapidly.
[3:16]So your blood oxygen level is supposed to be 100% and by the time we got to the pediatrician's
[3:21]office that morning, she was at about 70% by the end of the day.
[3:25]She was below 20% and it all happened really, really, really fast.
[3:29]And was, yes, of course, hugely traumatic.
[3:32]But the weird thing about the whole experience, I mean, one of so many weird things, was,
[3:37]you know, that whole day I was thinking, well, gosh, I should be feeding her, you know,
[3:40]this hospital that we're sitting in this emergency room, are they not very breastfeeding
[3:44]friendly?
[3:45]Like, what's going on here?
[3:47]And of course, it was because she was, you know, nearly dying and they were trying to save
[3:51]her life and it didn't make sense to stop to feed her.
[3:54]But what I didn't know was that morning was actually the last time I would feed her
[3:57]because the trauma that she experienced that day, necessary trauma, life-saving trauma.
[4:03]The result is she completely shut down, eating had become too hard in those early weeks.
[4:08]She'd learned associated with all fear and madness.
[4:11]And so she stopped eating and she was dependent on a feeding tube for the better part of
[4:15]the next two years.
[4:16]Oh, my gosh.
[4:17]And you detailed, so beautifully in the book, all the sort of ins and outs of the medical
[4:22]issues and traumas and, you know, I said, at one point, I wrote like, OMG in this
[4:27]sideline, the sergeant, the margin is silent, I guess, I'm looking at too many football
[4:31]homes.
[4:32]The margins of your book, because I just couldn't believe after you would get through
[4:35]one scare, then something else terrible would happen.
[4:39]And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like it's hard enough to be a new mom with a well-child.
[4:44]Yeah.
[4:45]Having to go through this, my heart was just breaking for you.
[4:47]I mean, I mean, really, I learned to be a mom and to be a medical mom at the same time.
[4:52]Those things are like really intertwined for me, which now that I have a second child who
[4:57]is typically developing and hasn't gone through any of that, I realized almost after the
[5:01]fact how strange that all is to have those things forged.
[5:04]But what was really, you know, what was interesting as we were navigating, you know, so
[5:09]the heart condition is this big complicated thing.
[5:11]Is there any history?
[5:12]Do you have any idea where I came from?
[5:14]No, totally random.
[5:15]It is a random genetic mutation flute.
[5:18]They have no explanation for, you know, no one in our family.
[5:21]I had a completely healthy pregnancy at a healthy delivery.
[5:24]I mean, there were no red flags.
[5:25]And that's what's really scary.
[5:26]And when I do tell our parents is there is a screening test that they should do on newborns
[5:31]in the hospital now that if she had had that test done, she wouldn't have passed
[5:34]it.
[5:35]So we probably would have been fast tracked into that.
[5:37]I see you.
[5:38]The date she was born.
[5:39]Because they do can't check the, it's called the pulse oximeter check test.
[5:43]They're staying in slower.
[5:44]The pulse oximeter test.
[5:46]The pulse oximeter.
[5:47]Yes.
[5:48]And so if you're a new expecting parent or a grandparent to be, make sure they do that
[5:53]test on your newborn because, you know, it wouldn't have, she still would have had the
[5:56]heart condition, but we wouldn't have had the scary day she almost died situation.
[6:01]She would have been stabilized sooner.
[6:02]And for whatever reason, our hospital neglected to do it, which is a sort of separate issue.
[6:06]But oh my Lord.
[6:07]But yeah.
[6:08]So, you know, this whole experience of having a medically fragile baby and learning how
[6:13]to parent during that time again, what I kept coming back to as her mom was this desire
[6:19]to want to feed her because that's so fundamental to the human existence.
[6:23]I mean, that's like the first thing babies do within a few hours of life, they breastfeed
[6:27]or they bottle feed.
[6:29]And you know, this is how we bond with our infants.
[6:32]And we have all kinds of research on this.
[6:33]We know that when babies are eating and it's going well, their heart rates slow down,
[6:37]their rates of oxytocin and the feel good hormones rise, parents when we're feeding our
[6:42]babies, we experience all these same benefits.
[6:44]It's really how we bond with our children and how we fall in love.
[6:48]And suddenly I didn't have that.
[6:49]So, you know, the heart thing was complicated and hard to navigate in its own journey.
[6:54]But not being able to feed my baby was the true heartbreak for me day and day out in that
[6:59]year because, you know, I had to figure out all different ways to bond with her, which
[7:03]I did work extremely close.
[7:05]She's five years old now and really healthy, but it really brought home to me how fundamental
[7:10]and crucial eating is to our happiness as humans and how when it goes wrong, like nothing
[7:15]else works.
[7:16]I mean, when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong.
[7:18]When I had twins first who were almost 12 now and my daughter had an allergy to my milk.
[7:25]So I had to stop nursing her before my son.
[7:29]So for a month, I was still nursing him and then I would have someone else like feed her
[7:33]at the same time, like my mother, my husband, maybe nurse or whatever.
[7:38]And after a couple weeks, like she wouldn't go to me anymore because I was only breastfeeding
[7:43]my other son.
[7:44]So then I decided I would just scrap the whole thing.
[7:46]But anyway, it is like some sort of like, you know, this is what I'm here for.
[7:50]Am I still her mom?
[7:51]Right.
[7:52]Like huge feelings of failure and like, you know, and a lot of that what we have to recognize
[7:57]is like, yeah, I mean, biologically our bodies are made to do this thing, but there's
[8:01]also all this cultural conditioning around these expectations we put on ourselves.
[8:05]And that's what I was really wrestling with during that first pregnancy when I thought
[8:08]I could do it all perfectly.
[8:10]Like that's not, that's not biology.
[8:12]That's culture telling me I have to be a certain kind of mom.
[8:15]And there's a lot of messages we get about the kind of mom we need to be with food in
[8:18]our kids.
[8:19]And it starts with breastfeeding and then it goes right on to what are you packing in the
[8:22]lunch boxes and, you know, how many vegetables are they eating?
[8:25]Do they love kale smoothie?
[8:26]It's probably not, you know, this whole thing, not many kids.
[8:31]And so, you know, that was really what led me to write the book was, you know, I had
[8:35]this strange surreal experience where I was pushed so far outside the normal paradigm
[8:40]of how we relate to food and we had to kind of tip toe our way back in, figure out how
[8:45]to get back there with her.
[8:47]And I realized like, I don't want all that back.
[8:48]I don't want those negative cultural messages.
[8:50]I don't want to be holding myself to unrealistic standards.
[8:53]And the more I talk to other moms and other women, I realize like, a lot of people
[8:57]are struggling with that in different ways.
[8:58]A lot of people are struggling to feel safe around food for themselves or with their children.
[9:04]And that's a conversation we really need to be having.
[9:06]That's true.
[9:07]It's so true.
[9:08]How did you deal yourself?
[9:10]Not just the medical, not dealing with the medical crisis aspect of the whole situation,
[9:14]but you, it's hard enough for moms to, you know, have self care and all that other stuff.
[9:18]But how did you literally like deal with yourself?
[9:20]How did you take care of yourself?
[9:21]How did you, like, how did you get through it?
[9:23]Did I take care of myself as a question?
[9:25]I was like, how did you get, like, power the ways you saw it affecting you?
[9:30]There were a couple of such employers.
[9:32]They don't know.
[9:33]It's fine.
[9:34]I mean, I think it's important to talk about because we don't have a good roadmap for
[9:36]dealing with trauma and a particularly trauma with parenting.
[9:40]You know, a lot of me coping didn't look like super great coping.
[9:44]Like I remember when she was in the hospital in the beginning, people were always saying
[9:47]to me, like, go take a walk, get some fresh air, and I wanted to punch them in the throat
[9:51]because I could not leave my baby every time I left that hospital room, I was worried
[9:55]she wouldn't still be there when I come back.
[9:58]So, you know, these suggestions to like...
[10:00]run down to the cafeteria and get a nice salad, I was like, that's not what I need.
[10:03]I need you to bring me food so I can continue to sit here. No, I don't want to drink more water
[10:07]because if I have to drink more water then I have to pee and I have to leave a gather and I don't
[10:11]want to leave. Oh my gosh. So, but, you know, that on paper didn't look like people were worried
[10:15]about me like overgent you won't leave the room, but that was what I needed to be doing. I was
[10:19]where I needed to be. And then as she became more stable, you know, we could branch out and find
[10:24]other coping to be honest. I did a lot of online shopping that year because I wasn't sleeping.
[10:29]And a little three a.m. retail therapy helped. You know, but also, you know, I work with a therapist,
[10:36]I still work with a therapist. You know, that was a huge part of my support plan. I have my best friends
[10:42]who are all moms themselves on a group text who I could text, you know, from the hospital,
[10:47]from any of these moments at any time. I get support. My husband and I, you know, I mean, we were
[10:51]figuring out how to support each other, but sometimes also looked like saying, you know what,
[10:56]you need to be taking care of yourself. And I need to be taking care of myself. And we're going to
[10:59]give each other that space to do that. But also knowing that, of course, like, he was the only other
[11:03]person who was feeling all this the way I was feeling it. So, and so did it lead to like, what was
[11:10]it like? So, Violet, you said that she was throwing up like what happened four to seven times every day
[11:14]and you were in your husband was just like trying to deal. Yeah. How did that impact? Like,
[11:18]talk to me. So initially she was in the hospital for a month following that first day I talked
[11:25]where she had first in emergency surgery and then an open heart surgery. And then she was
[11:29]medically stable but still dependent on the feeding tube. And they said, you know, you can take her home,
[11:34]but you have to take the feeding tube with you. And so at that point, we went home, but we were
[11:38]basically running a hospital out of our house because we were managing this feeding tube and feeding
[11:42]tubes. They sound like this knee in the easy solution, but they are really difficult to live with.
[11:47]And in Violet's case, they triggered a lot of vomiting because, you know, they kind of hold your
[11:51]stomach open all the time. So, you know, it's tough on a baby's anatomy. And at that point,
[11:55]it was a tube that threaded down her nose, down the back of her throat. So it's also, you know,
[12:00]the baby is like they have little hands and they're going to rip at this tube on their face all the
[12:03]time. So that, you know, it would come out and we would have to replace it, which is a really
[12:08]stressful and traumatic thing to have to do to your child. Those, we still talk about those
[12:12]months as being, you know, kind of the darkest time of our life because, you know, everyone around
[12:17]us was saying, oh, you must be so glad to be out of the hospitals. And this is so great. And we were
[12:20]like, we're sleeping in chefs. She's so sick. We're afraid to do anything. You know, I was,
[12:26]I think we were both still off work. We're really fortunate. My husband's job, everyone donated a
[12:31]lot of vacation time to him so he could take a lot of time off as well. So we could, you know,
[12:34]we could really trade it off between the two of us really well. But it definitely underscored to me
[12:39]how much we need better support systems for families in trauma in this country, you know, better
[12:44]maternity leaves and paternity leaves better, you know, ways because we were relying heavily on our
[12:50]extended families to help and come in and take shifts with her, you know, when we needed to start
[12:55]getting back to work. And it was, yeah, it was a, it was a mess really for a long time.
[13:00]So if I have a friend who's going through something like this, because you said how helpful your
[13:05]friends were, what was most helpful to you that a friend or colleague or something did to help out
[13:10]while you were going through this? People did such amazing stuff. I mean, I think one of the best
[13:14]things to do, I think there were definitely people who I could tell wanted to be there and just
[13:19]didn't know how or what to do. And they freeze up and they don't do anything. And that's what
[13:23]not to do. Okay. You know, you're worried you're going to be imposing or, you know, too much. And
[13:28]you're actually, there are times where that can happen. But, you know, if you can do something like
[13:33]small but concrete, like sand food or clean their house, you know, sand the cleaning service to
[13:40]their house to take care of that. You know, we had friends who went and shoveled our driveway for us
[13:44]because one time we were in the hospital during snow storms and they knew our, you know, dryway was
[13:48]snowed. And then so they just went over and dealt with it. And we didn't have to think about that.
[13:52]Like helping take care of the nuts and bolts of life, just like you would for any friend
[13:55]with a newborn is really, really useful. But definitely like one of my favorite things that an old
[14:00]friend from high school who we really weren't even in very close touch with. But she'd followed
[14:04]this, you know, followed things I was posting about it. She sent us a care package in the hospital
[14:09]that was breakfast because breakfast food in hospitals is particularly terrible. So she made like
[14:14]these really amazing muffins and sent like some shelf stable milk and homemade granola. And that
[14:18]was like so lovely to have like a delicious nourishing breakfast versus like the sad egg McMuffin.
[14:24]I could get in the hospital cafeteria. That was a really wonderful one. And then another thing
[14:29]a really good friend did a co-worker of mine. She knew that so especially in that first year
[14:34]when I was still pumping because we're trying to stop some breast milk. So I was spending all this
[14:38]time either like, you know, dealing with the feeding pump breaking down at 3 a.m. or being awake and
[14:43]trying to pump breast milk myself at 3 a.m. and I talked about, you know, being awake too much and
[14:48]having all this sort of annoying time to fill. So she just sent me like a hundred dollar, I too
[14:53]and gifts certificate so I could get whatever like binge watching shows I wanted. And then later
[14:57]she was like, here are all my passwords to all of my streaming networks. Just log on anytime
[15:01]you want because we were in the hospital. We didn't have like HBO, you know, and so we could just
[15:06]like have some mindless. Yeah. Because you really need like some good mindless entertainment. So if
[15:10]you can send like some, you know, like not very challenging novel that they might enjoy reading,
[15:16]you know, crossword puzzles where really big people sent those. You know, if someone's like really
[15:20]sitting vigil in a hospital, they need some touches of like comfort and home and also, you know,
[15:27]just to feel cared for. But that won't be intrusive. Like you'll be taking care of a basic need,
[15:32]extension cords are also a great thing to send to someone in the hospital because there are
[15:36]never enough outlets to charge your cell phones in a hospital room. So those are some little things
[15:41]that are hard to, you know, if you haven't been through it, you wouldn't think of, but they
[15:45]can make a big difference and they're like so small but so helpful. You know, I'm gonna like send
[15:49]a friend and extension cord and they're gonna be like, what? They won't though. They'll be like,
[15:53]oh, thank gosh, because when all of our relatives, especially on the weekends when like a family
[15:58]would come visit and everyone would be like, can I charge my phone? And I'm like, what am I your best by?
[16:02]Like no. We have one outlet in this room that's not dedicated to medical equipment. We're doing
[16:07]the best we can here. Yeah, no extension cord is really helpful. Handlotion too because you're
[16:11]using hand sanitizer constantly and your hands get really dried out. So yeah. Excellent.
[16:17]Did you ever write an article about this? I think I might have done a blog post. I can try to find
[16:22]it. I think you should write an article about oh, I did write for parents magazine. We did a
[16:25]feature. I'm a contributing editor of parents and we did a feature on how to survive a hospital
[16:30]stay with your kids. Okay, to talk about this stuff. Yeah. Okay, then you're doing all you need to
[16:34]do. Thank you. You don't have an assignment for me today. So you have this whole section of the
[16:40]book about your own journey, which I found just like, I could not like tear away from the page and,
[16:46]you know, as any person, but particularly as a mom. And then you pair that with a lot of research.
[16:50]And you must have spent so long used to have so many interviews and research days. I mean,
[16:56]how long first of all, how long did that all take you? Like, how did you go about doing all that work?
[17:01]It seems like must have been a while. Well, the thing about this book that's interesting is I think
[17:06]I was writing it for a long time before I was writing it before I knew I was writing it.
[17:11]So, you know, to back talk a little bit, even before Violet, I was a journalist and I was writing
[17:16]mostly for women's magazines. And so I was writing a lot about how women relate to food
[17:21]and then later starting to write about parenting and how we relate to food and kids.
[17:25]But especially when I was writing for the women's magazines and this was back in like the early 2000s,
[17:29]I was writing a lot of diet stories and you know how to get your bikini body and all that.
[17:34]And I was sort of hating it and hating myself a little bit because I didn't love this message of
[17:40]we should always be making our bodies smaller. I didn't think that was particularly helpful.
[17:44]I could also see it wasn't working, you know? I mean, like people were always telling me like,
[17:48]yeah, I tried that diet and I lasted two weeks like it doesn't work, you know. And the research is very
[17:52]clear. I'm not the dieting. It doesn't work long term. So, I was searching, you know, so I was always
[17:57]like interviewing these researcher, like obesity researchers or nutritionists. And, you know,
[18:01]I was kind of searching for a long time for like, well, okay, I just need to find the right
[18:06]plan. There's got to be one diet out there that makes you thin, but, you know, isn't miserable.
[18:12]You can still eat carbs, like you'll be this like lovely, sane way to eat and all the pieces
[18:17]will fall into place. Like now I know that unicorn absolutely does not exist, but I was really
[18:22]searching for it. So, I was accumulating a lot of research on things like detoxing and, you know,
[18:27]just cleaning like all the different sort of food trends as they came along and becoming increasingly
[18:32]critical of it. And then, like I said, it really was this experience with Violet where I had thought
[18:37]I was doing everything by the book. I thought I was following the rules about how to eat during
[18:42]pregnancy and to ensure I had a healthy baby. And then that didn't happen. And that's when I realized
[18:46]there aren't any rules. There isn't a plan here. There's nobody who can tell you the perfect way to
[18:51]eat to ensure perfect health for your children to ensure you stay the perfect size genes. You
[18:55]always want to be like, this is not how it works. And in fact, what I'd seen with Violet was,
[19:00]you know, in the first few weeks of her life, eating did work. Like she was born with all this
[19:04]knowledge about how to eat. She had all these instincts. But then it was this outside trauma. It was
[19:10]this outside thing that derailed all of that. And so that's sort of where her story really becomes
[19:15]a metaphor for the whole book because that's what's happening to so many of us with food is, you know,
[19:19]we have, we are searching for this plan. We're trying to follow this external set of rules,
[19:24]but we can't sync them up with what our bodies are really telling us they need. And that
[19:29]this cannot just what's so hard to navigate. So yeah. So when I started thinking about it more broadly
[19:34]as a book, I was able to go back to a lot of reporting it down in the past, but kind of look through it,
[19:39]look at it with a more critical lens. You know, I had this knowledge base to fall back on in
[19:43]a way and do you have written that other article when your baby won't eat? Yeah. So that was,
[19:47]that was kind of the kicking off point for the book. So I wrote a piece for the New York Times
[19:51]magazine in 2016 telling Violet's story and talking about, you know, our journey to help her trust
[19:56]food again. And it was the response to that article that made me,
[20:00]there was a bigger book because I had all these people emailing me and of course I heard from
[20:03]other feeding tube families, but then I also heard from people saying, you know, like, yeah,
[20:08]this sounds familiar, like I don't trust food. I don't feel safe around food. And there were
[20:11]all these parallels with how people respond to diet culture that made me want to really explore
[20:16]that deeper. And so then I just started collecting, you know, pretty much anyone I met
[20:20]asking them about their relationship with food, you know, to the degree that didn't freak them out,
[20:24]you know, but also thinking about these different themes of, you know, these different
[20:29]problems people were telling me about or things I was interested in and just following threads of
[20:34]different, you know, different ways of having a problem with eating. And there was some I knew,
[20:38]I knew I wanted a chapter on learning to eat again after bariatric surgery. I knew I wanted to talk
[20:44]more about picky eating and kids because that's such a dominant thing that parents are dealing with.
[20:49]But then other things surprised me, you know, the chapter on avoidant restrictive food and take
[20:53]disorder. I didn't know very much about that condition, but it suddenly seemed like it was such
[20:57]a big piece of this. So yeah, the research, let's see. I wrote The Times piece in 2016. I really
[21:05]spent most of 2017. It was about a year. I can actually date it pretty exactly because I got
[21:09]pregnant with my second daughter right as I was diving into book research, which was a questionable
[21:14]planning choice. And I filed the manuscript two weeks before she was born. I was like right on the
[21:20]line of like, okay, I'm going to come first book or baby. And so that was, yeah, doing a lot of
[21:25]research, traveling to meet with people, sit and catch them just, you know, learn about food,
[21:30]but also talking to researchers as well. So it was a mix. That's amazing.
[21:34]In the introduction, you actually had talked about what you were saying just now about the
[21:38]eating trends and the diets. And you also talk about your own struggle with eating. And at the end,
[21:43]you said, but I am not always a piece with my body after all. I've never met anyone who really is.
[21:48]So after talking to all these different people, do you still feel that way? Do you still feel
[21:52]like nobody has sort of found the happy balance of living? I don't know.
[21:56]I don't. I think I'm actually a lot more piece with my body since even writing,
[22:02]since I wrote that chapter and since writing the book, I think this process
[22:06]taught me a lot. And actually the process of talking about the book with people since then,
[22:10]like talking to different audiences about the book and seeing what resonates with people has
[22:14]taught me a lot more. No, in my every single day of the year, waking up, putting on my jeans
[22:18]and thinking, like, gosh, this is just a great. I'm exactly where I want to be a body wise. You can't,
[22:22]you know, I mean, there's so many messages heeped on us all the time. But doing this research really
[22:27]helped me start to identify them in different ways. You know, I can really spot diet culture and
[22:32]it's tracks now, whereas before and what I think is very common for a lot of women is you have this
[22:38]kind of belief about yourself and food. I can't control myself around brownies or, you know,
[22:43]I can't eat dairy, you know, whatever. It's like we have these sort of stories that we've
[22:47]really bought into about ourselves and food. Sometimes there's a medical basis. I'm not saying
[22:51]everyone in the world can eat dairy. But, you know, but often it's more of a because it'll make
[22:56]me fat as the end of that sentence. And we don't always reckon with those limiting beliefs.
[23:01]And the process of researching the book, you know, I really did have to take everyone of mine
[23:05]on pretty head-on and tackle it. And so that really helped me let go of a lot of them.
[23:10]And I'm much more comfortable with the fact that, you know, my adult body is not the skinny
[23:15]body I had as a child that I sort of thought I was going to grow up to be. I'm comfortable with
[23:19]the fact that I look like I've had two kids because I'm pretty proud of that. You know, all of that
[23:23]is stuff that I feel really good about now. Which I mean, when I first became a mom, I was still
[23:27]really struggling with all of that for sure. I could talk for like the next 10 hours straight about
[23:32]my experience. I didn't even food and all of my stuff. But I'll tell you the one thing
[23:37]surprisingly in the last couple months that has made me like be like, okay, like giving up the
[23:43]fight struggle. Like I took this DNA like 23 and me. Oh, interesting. And you can go through
[23:50]it at the end. It says like for other people with your ancestry and DNA and whatever, this is the
[23:58]average weight that they are. And it was exactly my weight now. And you're like not the weight
[24:03]I necessarily want to be. Right. But you're the weight that my body seems to want to be at.
[24:08]Yes. Yeah. So I'm like, you know what? Effort. I'm just here. I am. You're here. I don't know.
[24:14]Everybody else like anyway. So that's whatever. Fascinating because you know, the research shows
[24:19]over and over how much weight is controlled by genetics. And that's something that we aren't very
[24:23]comfortable with that knowledge because it means that we should give up the dieting fight and that
[24:28]you know, this whole like it's about willpower mess. Like we've been sold. Like it's not, you know,
[24:32]yeah. There's, you're sure there's like a, we have a range that we can all move around in to
[24:36]some extent. But it's narrower than a lot of us like to think. And yeah, the, the weight that
[24:40]you're kind of genetically determined to be a may not be what diet culture tells you. But it's like
[24:46]the right place for your body. And that's so though, you know, I eat dessert every single day.
[24:50]I mean, so this is the, that means you're at the right way because you can eat dessert every single
[24:56]day. And you're at this, this is the way you can be out and live a happy life. I feel like when I was
[25:00]younger and I was like always trying to be like, you know, thinner than that I ever would have
[25:04]ever gotten to be. Anyway, I would always be like, why can't I be one of these people who eats
[25:09]everything they want knocking weight? And now I realized I can. It's just I have to do this way.
[25:14]Right. Exactly. That's so important though. It's so interesting because I mean, yeah, we can all be
[25:20]that person. You just have to be comfortable with the weight. As long as you're not. I mean, I eat
[25:24]very healthy most the time aside from my sweets. I mean, I feel like as long as you're eating well
[25:28]for your body protein and vegetables and you're, you know, you're not at risk for all these
[25:32]diseases and whatever. Right. But that's, you know, that's, but within the like obsessive,
[25:37]yes, but that's the problem is, you know, for most of us, what that quote, ideal way that we
[25:42]have in our head has nothing to do with health. It has nothing to do with disease. It's a completely,
[25:46]you know, like manufactured thing that that's what we need to let go of. And it's also a lot of
[25:52]stress that I don't have time for. Right. I just like took aside and like threw it, you know,
[25:57]out the window because I was like, if I don't spend my days in the club, if I don't spend like
[26:01]every time I get dressed and kind of like, right, when am I going to get back into those jeans?
[26:05]Right. Just get rid of those jeans. Yeah. Yeah. I just got rid of them all. It's like,
[26:08]it's amazing. Yeah. I know I have like two pairs of jeans, but they both fit. And I like my clothes
[26:14]and yeah, I don't have to think yeah, it turns out I hate wearing jeans. It's a ton of mental face
[26:18]you get back. It's a ton of that. I didn't mean to like, no, I didn't take over this, but I love
[26:22]hearing about that. I love hearing about people's stuff with food. It's like, I was a weight watchers
[26:27]leader. I have so much I could say, I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to just put myself on
[26:32]pause. So one other thing you mentioned in the book that research on eating disorder patients
[26:37]suggests that height. And this is related to parenting your kids to make sure they end up with
[26:42]healthy eating habits. It suggests that highly pressurized meal times early in life might play a role
[26:46]in the development of these conditions. So I was like, I feel like I overcompensate by not making
[26:52]my meal times so stressful, but then my son like wanders around and eats goldfish and says,
[26:56]that's not right. Literally. We're in that journey with my two month old right now. I feel
[27:00]you. Yeah. So I want to know like, how much pressure do you think or did you find in your research
[27:05]is too much pressure, but how much is necessary to like make sure that you know that they're
[27:09]going to actually sleep that night and that they're getting proteins and vegetables and that
[27:13]they're not going to be like constipated and all the other stuff you have to watch out for like,
[27:16]where's the line? Does it say where's the manual? So there is something of a manual that I found,
[27:22]I mean, there's not really a manual of course with all things parenting, but I think what it is is
[27:26]we're putting pressure on the wrong things. Parents feel like we need to be in charge of what
[27:32]our kids eat down to like three bites of broccoli before you can have your cookie or, you know,
[27:37]like you've had too much pasta now you need to eat this. Like we feel like we need to micromanage
[27:42]their plates and it doesn't always come across as the type of like truly owner is pressure that I
[27:47]would worry would necessarily like put that kid, you know, again, I should also note, you know,
[27:51]with eating disorders, there's a strong genetic component as well. So it's not to say every high
[27:55]pressure meal situation is going to put a kid on track to a needing disorder, but if you have
[27:59]vulnerabilities to that, these things do play a role, you know, people who have eating disorders can
[28:04]often sort of date them back to a particularly traumatic food experience. So it's, you know, it's
[28:09]we're thinking about. And, you know, the thing is, is even if it's the more benign pressure,
[28:14]even if it's just comments at a birthday party of, oh my god, you guys have had so much sugar,
[28:18]you're going to be crazy tonight, or, you know, you keep coming back, you're eating all the
[28:22]brownies, you're not leaving any fryer, your friends, like those kinds of comments really
[28:27]undermine a kid's confidence in their own body. And so what we need to be doing instead of trying to
[28:33]sort of police them bite by bite or food group by food group, what I'm trying to teach my kids
[28:39]and what the research is showing me is a useful sort of tool to try to teach our kids
[28:43]is to listen to their bodies. And when I say teach them, I actually mean just like get out of
[28:47]their way because they're born knowing to do that. Kids are born knowing when they're hungry,
[28:52]they know when they're full, and they know that food is supposed to be comforting. Like those
[28:55]are the three core eating instincts we all have. And then those get disrupted over time by,
[29:01]you know, in Violet's case, a really intense traumatic experience, but, you know, for all of
[29:06]that slowly social messaging, culture, diet, culture, all this stuff kind of chips away at it.
[29:12]Some of that's normal. I mean, you can't have, you know, the way a newborn eats like 75 times a day
[29:17]is not how a three-year-old can eat. We have to socialize them to a mealtime schedule
[29:22]to learning to eat at the table, not wander around with the goldfish, which, again,
[29:25]I might fear you, is like something we're working out of my house right now. You know, we have to
[29:30]over time teach them sort of etiquette and schedule and like general mealtime practices.
[29:37]But we don't have to teach them how to feel hunger, and we don't have to teach them how to feel
[29:41]fullness because they know that. And anytime we talk to them about that, we're actually making it
[29:46]harder for them to hear their own bodies. And so that's where parents can back off. We don't have
[29:51]to be in charge of our child's hunger. And we also don't have to be in charge of our child's weight.
[29:55]And that I think parent is even harder when they let go of parents feel like, oh my gosh, my child
[29:59]isn't a bigger part.
[30:00]or if they're really underweight, like it's all my fault,
[30:02]I've screwed something up.
[30:03]When kids grow in like all different ways, kids,
[30:06]you know, growth charts are really complicated.
[30:09]It's normal for kids to go through a stock year phase
[30:11]right before puberty and then they lean out.
[30:13]And there's all these things that happen with kids growth
[30:16]that are beyond our control.
[30:17]And that you sitting there and counting out by it's a food
[30:19]or otherwise sort of really having a really involved
[30:22]relationship with their plate in that way,
[30:24]you're not actually impacting any of that.
[30:26]You're just stressing out your kid with food
[30:28]and making it harder for them to trust themselves.
[30:30]So that's the kind of pressure.
[30:31]And again, it can be very well-intentioned.
[30:34]It's almost always really well-intentioned.
[30:35]We love our kids.
[30:36]We want them to be healthy, you know,
[30:37]but we're just, we're going after the wrong things.
[30:40]And so some things I've learned to do instead,
[30:43]you know, when my daughter has one of those meals
[30:44]where she's like basically in carpet land
[30:46]and a couple of blueberries and you're like,
[30:48]what?
[30:49]I say to her, you know,
[30:50]does your tummy feel full till breakfast?
[30:52]Because it's dinner time now
[30:54]and there's not gonna be any more food till breakfast.
[30:56]And sometimes she'll say, yeah, I'm good.
[30:57]And it's like, I don't understand that, but okay.
[30:59]And other times she'll say, oh,
[31:00]my tummy needs three more bites
[31:02]and she'll come back and eat a little more.
[31:04]And if then an hour after dinner
[31:05]when we're getting ready for bed,
[31:06]then she does the like, but I'm so hungry.
[31:09]I always have the same response,
[31:11]which is you can have a banana
[31:12]or you can be hungry for breakfast.
[31:14]So then you can really suss out.
[31:16]Like if she's really hungry,
[31:17]she'll eat the banana, right?
[31:18]Like that'll fill her up and tie her over.
[31:20]And you doesn't have to be a banana.
[31:21]I just picked that because it's a food that my kids like,
[31:23]but don't get like,
[31:24]they're not gonna like sabotage dinner.
[31:26]Like New York City, yes.
[31:29]I just use a banana because it's sort of like a,
[31:31]you know, it's like kids like it,
[31:32]but they don't go crazy for it.
[31:34]So you know, they're not gonna like skipped dinner
[31:35]to get the banana, like nobody's ever coveted that dramatically.
[31:39]But you know, any kind of food that's like feels filling to you
[31:42]and will like take the guilt off of Oh God,
[31:44]they want to buy without dinner.
[31:45]If they're hungry, the Lita,
[31:46]if they're not hungry, they'll start whining and saying,
[31:48]no, I want something else.
[31:49]And then you know, it's just more about wanting your attention
[31:51]and wanting another bedtime story.
[31:52]Like it's not really hunger you're dealing with.
[31:55]And so you can say to them,
[31:56]like this isn't really hunger.
[31:57]And we need to talk about hunger really clearly
[31:59]because it's really important to be clear
[32:00]on when our body is hungry.
[32:02]And so then you can just let them go to bed
[32:03]and not having it in that much.
[32:04]And they'll be fine.
[32:05]They'll eat a bigger breakfast tomorrow.
[32:06]They'll make up for it.
[32:07]On the flip side, if you have a kid who fixates on foods,
[32:10]let's talk about the kid who's maybe they're in a bigger body,
[32:12]maybe they're not,
[32:13]but they're just, you know, one of those kids
[32:15]who's like, never left the table without clearing their plate
[32:17]and eats bigger.
[32:19]Similarly there, you have to say like,
[32:21]I'm trusting you to listen to your hunger.
[32:22]If you're really hungry for more, of course, you can have more.
[32:24]And you can talk about portions in like,
[32:28]well, this is the cake we're all sharing for someone's birthday.
[32:30]Let's make sure everyone has a piece
[32:31]before we go back for seconds.
[32:33]That's manners.
[32:34]That's not like portion control.
[32:36]But you know, it's just like that's a polite way
[32:37]to talk about it.
[32:38]But you don't comment when they eat way more
[32:41]than you feel like they should be hungry for it
[32:42]because you don't know.
[32:43]You're not in their growth spirit.
[32:44]You're not in their brain.
[32:45]So you can kind of step back and just trust them
[32:48]to, trust them to know the how much
[32:50]and even the weather or not to eat a food
[32:52]and you're in charge of what foods you offer.
[32:54]Wow.
[32:55]That was so helpful.
[32:56]No, I'm serious.
[32:57]I'm glad.
[32:58]Oh my gosh.
[32:59]I didn't invent that method.
[33:00]No, I'm not.
[33:01]There's rooted in a philosophy called
[33:04]the Division of Responsibility and Feeding,
[33:06]which was created by a feeding therapist named Ellen Satter.
[33:08]And I always make sure to mention that
[33:09]because she's sort of the, you know,
[33:11]she's come up with that wiger in charge
[33:13]of what the kids are in charge of,
[33:14]which I find super, super helpful.
[33:16]And she has lots of good books that I recommend people
[33:18]check out.
[33:19]But I mean, I have looked at it in my own family's life
[33:21]and then reporting on this with other families.
[33:24]And now it's working.
[33:25]It's working beautifully.
[33:26]Okay.
[33:27]Yeah.
[33:28]And you know, my kids are five and a half and 18 months.
[33:30]And you know, my five year old is Violet,
[33:32]who's gone through this whole journey.
[33:34]And she still is a more cautious eater.
[33:36]She probably always will be.
[33:37]My younger is a more ravenous eats everything kid.
[33:40]And people will say like,
[33:41]oh, are they good eaters?
[33:42]That's the question who is get asked,
[33:44]which I hate that question because right there,
[33:46]we're putting judgment in it.
[33:47]We're putting some sort of value on this kid.
[33:49]If they're a good eater,
[33:50]when I always say is they're really good at listening
[33:52]to their bodies.
[33:52]So it looks different meal to meal.
[33:54]And it looks different kid to kid,
[33:55]but they're listening to their bodies.
[33:57]And that's very cool.
[33:58]Do you have any, well, first,
[34:00]wait, I want to mention quickly your podcast.
[34:02]Yes.
[34:03]So more about this feeding stuff,
[34:04]especially if you're a parent,
[34:06]a mom in particular.
[34:07]So I co-host a podcast called The Comfort Food Podcast.
[34:10]I host it with my best friend, Amy Polangian,
[34:13]who is the creator of the very popular food blog,
[34:16]Yummy Toddler Food.
[34:17]So she really focuses on,
[34:19]because toddlers are kind of when food goes off the rails
[34:21]for a lot of kids.
[34:22]They get through babyhood,
[34:23]a lot of babies eat everything
[34:24]when they first start solids.
[34:25]Not all babies, but there's a common trajectory
[34:28]where babies kind of eat everything.
[34:29]And then they hit 18 months
[34:31]and they suddenly start rejecting food
[34:33]all over the map.
[34:34]And parents freak out
[34:35]and they don't understand where all this picking
[34:36]this came from.
[34:37]And it's actually developmentally totally appropriate
[34:40]for toddlers to go through that face.
[34:41]And it lasts till they're like seven.
[34:43]So it's a long journey here on
[34:45]where they're just naturally more cautious
[34:47]because they're developing more independence
[34:49]and more opinions.
[34:50]And it's just part of their whole thing.
[34:52]But how you handle that can really determine
[34:55]whether you end up with like a long time picky eater
[34:57]or a kid who's like kind of eases back out of it.
[34:59]So she's a great resource for all of that.
[35:01]And the podcast, you know,
[35:03]we kind of Amy brings more of the practical
[35:05]like what to do about dinner tonight tips.
[35:07]And then I do more of this diet culture analysis
[35:09]and really looking at how diet culture is impacting
[35:11]how we feed our kids.
[35:12]And so it's a mix of we call it the podcast
[35:15]about the joys and meltdowns
[35:16]of feeding our families and ourselves.
[35:18]Cause we kind of look at it from all sides.
[35:20]So it's a lot of fun.
[35:22]Oh, yes, I'm totally in a start listening to this podcast.
[35:24]I don't know how I didn't know about it, but I'm in.
[35:26]Yeah.
[35:27]Any advice to aspiring writers
[35:29]having just published this fantastic book?
[35:31]Sure.
[35:32]I think writing as much as you can
[35:34]and reading as much as you can
[35:36]are really the cores of how to learn to be a writer.
[35:39]I think the reading piece of it sometimes gets forgotten.
[35:42]People, I see a lot of people blogging
[35:45]and putting a lot of content out there
[35:47]and that's great.
[35:48]But I think you really learned to be a good writer
[35:50]by reading a ton.
[35:51]So both books like what you hope to be writing,
[35:54]but also I actually read a ton of fiction.
[35:56]I read more fiction than I read nonfiction.
[35:58]I definitely read lots of nonfiction.
[36:00]And when I'm researching a book,
[36:01]I read a lot of nonfiction related to that.
[36:04]But in my core, I'm a fiction reader.
[36:06]And I think that's where you learn storytelling.
[36:08]And I think that's why as a writer,
[36:11]even though I'm a nonfiction writer,
[36:13]I'm drawn to people's stories
[36:14]in this case, they're stories with food.
[36:16]And that's what I think grounds us.
[36:18]Like it's easier.
[36:20]It's hard to talk about any complex social issue,
[36:23]like food and diet culture in this sort of broad sense,
[36:26]but when we make it about this individual person
[36:29]and that's Gina in the book who had weight loss surgery
[36:32]in order to have a child, someone else in the book who
[36:36]only eats like six foods and went to prison
[36:38]and had to figure out how to stay on,
[36:40]how to manage that food fear during prison.
[36:42]That's how you really connect.
[36:44]So, for me, reading tons of fiction has made me
[36:47]a much better writer.
[36:48]Excellent.
[36:49]Well, thank you so much.
[36:49]Thank you.
[36:50]It's like a little parenting counseling for me today.
[36:53]So, thank you.
[36:54]I love that.
[36:55]Thanks so much for having me.
[36:56]Thank you.
[36:57]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box.
[36:59]S-E-R-I-A-L-B-O-X dot com, cerealbox.com,
[37:03]delivering addictive book content in short listen
[37:06]or read installments.
[37:07]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[37:09]for the audio editing and mixing.
[37:11]Thanks for listening to Momstone,
[37:13]and I have time to read books.