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Welcome to Indulgence Gospel After Dark. This month we asked our favorite question—IS IT A DIET?— about…

⭐️ Electrolytes! (Corinne is mad)

⭐️ Journaling!

⭐️ That viral sweet potato/ground beef/cottage cheese bowl!

⭐️ Living without furniture (yes really)!

⭐️ And so much more…

To hear the whole thing, read the full transcript, and join us in the comments, you’ll need to join Extra Butter, our premium subscription tier.

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Dating While Fat

What to do when you miss your smaller body

And did Virginia really get divorced over butter?

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Episode 196 Transcript

Corinne

Today we’re doing a mailbag episode, and today’s episode has a theme: “Is this a diet?” That is a framing that we use a lot on Burnt Toast. So we asked listeners to tell us which food, fitness, and lifestyle trends you wanted us to analyze and decide “diet or not a diet?”

Virginia

We should disclaim before we get started: This is a hot takes episode. We have not done extensive reporting. We haven’t done serious research on any of these. We’re going to look at them, and we’re going to give you our immediate assessments, and you might agree or totally disagree, and that is great. We are here for that.

Corinne

Before we dive into the individual topics, should we talk a little bit more about the whole “Is it a diet” thing?

Is Everything a Diet?
What walking pads, breast reductions, and native plants have in common — and why it makes people mad. Read full story

Virginia

Yes, because this is one of the most common “annoyed reader” comments we get: Virginia, you think everything is a diet. So I wrote an essay about this, where I sketched out why I use this framing so often. Because I think a lot of us have this sense that we are the problem. Like, “I just get really obsessive if I do step counting.” Or “I am such an overachiever," and it was so hard for me to not get straight As in school.” Or “I have to compulsively people please,” like all these ways that we like, try to be perfect.

We think it’s us, that somehow we are wired to want to be that way. And, I mean, you might come from a family of people who’ve done this. There is all of that backstory. But we also live in a culture that is telling us, especially women, that we have to live that way in order to be valuable.

So that is what I am always trying to push back against, both for myself and as a culture critic.

Corinne

I think that makes sense. And we have discussed in the past how some people have the ability to do diet-y things without it feeling like a diet for them.

Virginia

Absolutely. If we say something is a diet, we’re not saying you were on a diet for doing it. We’re saying this is a concept that has the potential to be executed in a diet-y manner.

Corinne

And we’re not saying if you like any of these things that you’re bad or wrong. There are some things we’re going to discuss which, personally, I like.

Virginia

Corinne is on all the diets.

Corinne

Is this our thing, where you’re always like, “this is a diet,” and I’m like, “this is not a diet?” Oh God.

Virginia

Well but we need to not be so afraid to say, “Yeah, it’s diet-y and I like it.” It’s okay to be in a messy middle space with this where you recognize that this is a system that you don’t totally want to buy into, but that maybe feels necessary right now. Or maybe there are some pieces of it that are satisfying It can be many things,

Corinne

Or how do you use these tools, or participate in these trends, or whatever, without buying into the larger diet culture system?

Virginia

Yes! Like, I have reclaimed Diet Coke, guys. I have reclaimed protein powder. It’s possible, you can do it.

I think for me, the sticking point is when someone wants to say, “No, it’s not a diet, you’re overreacting. You think everything’s a diet. This is totally fine!” And gets really defensive of the system. That, to me, is the red flag. If you’re not willing to think critically about it at all, then I have questions.

Corinne

I also think, if we are thinking about diets as part of a larger system of white supremacy, like—we live in that system. We can’t escape it, you know? So everything kind of is a diet. Sorry.

Virginia

Okay, great, episode done. Everything is a diet! It’s not your fault that everything is a diet, and it’s still worth naming it and naming the larger relationship to white supremacy, because that’s how we make little bits of progress.

I will say, there was one thread in the comments on that essay that I want to very lovingly push back on. Several of you were like, “Okay, but just stop using that as branding.” The way we often put “is x a diet?” like is Mel Robbins a diet? in the subject line. And people were saying, “You’re dumbing it down.” You can just name the word. You can say “is blank perpetuating a patriarchal system of oppression?” “Is blank a conduit for economic dominance and community isolation?” And don’t be afraid of the big, complicated titles, and don’t reduce everything to “diet.”

And I so appreciate this. I want that to be the world we live in. And, I do have to market a newsletter. I do have to write emails that people will click and open.

Corinne

There is a limit to how many characters you can put in the subject line of an email.

Virginia

If it goes onto two lines, people’s eyes glaze over, and they don’t open the email. You can be frustrated about that if you want! But provocative subject lines are an important part of being a successful newsletter writer.

And yes, I’m being provocative when I use the diet framing, and it’s grounded in this other thing that I hope you guys all understand. Yes, I’m talking about the conduits for economic dominance and community isolation. I just can’t sell a newsletter that way.

But I do understand that pushback and while I do think it’s going to always be a refrain of Burnt Toast to ask “is x a diet?” and I think there’s value in that, I am actually mindful of how often we use it. Sometimes I’ll be like, no, we ran a version of that headline too recently. Like, we can’t do that right now. We think about it.

Corinne

Should we talk about the bullet points that we use when we think about what defines a diet?

Virginia

Yes! So this is how Burnt Toast defines a diet.

• A diet tells us we’re doing it wrong.

• A diet makes ambitious, if not blatantly unrealistic, goals around what “better” or “best” should look like.

• A diet lays out a list of rules or steps to follow, which sound really easy but then quickly become very difficult to incorporate into your actual life because they ignore the practical context of your life, which might conflict with said rules or steps.

• A diet fra