Speaker 1: I want to tell you about the day ten years
Speaker 1: ago when I learned how to truly walk again. It
Speaker 1: was a sunny morning, which is a pretty special thing
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, only a couple months before I had
Speaker 1: made the big decision that I was never going to
Speaker 1: diet again. There I was standing at my front gate,
Speaker 1: like I did every morning, having the same thought I'd
Speaker 1: had every day since that decision. I thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to go for a walk. Not a walk
Speaker 1: for exercise, not a walk to burn some calories, not
Speaker 1: a walk to punish myself for something I felt guilty
Speaker 1: about eating, just a walk before I broke up with
Speaker 1: diet culture. I walked quickly because that helped burn calories.
Speaker 1: Trees were just my scenery that helped my daily jog
Speaker 1: feel less terrible. Basically, the beauty of the world was
Speaker 1: just a backdrop for punishment. But that morning, when I
Speaker 1: walked out my front gate, I saw the emerald of
Speaker 1: the trees. I saw the sparkle of the sun. I
Speaker 1: heard the cars, the birds, the far off laughter of
Speaker 1: kids playing in Golden Gate Park. That morning, the omnipresent
Speaker 1: little voice up in my head, the same one that
Speaker 1: had told me for twenty long years that everything every
Speaker 1: step I took had to be about finally becoming thin.
Speaker 1: It shut up, It just stopped. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I had wished it away in those
Speaker 1: early days of my recovery and it had not listened.
Speaker 1: But that day I got my wish. I could see
Speaker 1: the world again in all of its technicolor glory, like
Speaker 1: when Dorothy gets the Land of Oz. And maybe this
Speaker 1: sounds a little hard to believe, but it felt like
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen any of that since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: since before I learned to hate my body. This moment
Speaker 1: was my homecoming. I stepped out onto the sidewalk into
Speaker 1: a world I had remade for me, for my enjoyment,
Speaker 1: for my delight, for my pleasure, and let me tell you,
Speaker 1: it was fucking awesome. Today, I want to introduce you
Speaker 1: to someone who works really hard to reclaim the world
Speaker 1: for themselves and their community, Chef Fresh Roberson. They are
Speaker 1: an activist, a chef, a healer, and a farmer. For
Speaker 1: Chef Fresh, the land and the food they grow on
Speaker 1: it is their inheritance. It's part of their homecoming. When
Speaker 1: I asked what treat they wanted to share. While we talked,
Speaker 1: they said that they're not really into sweets, but except
Speaker 1: I love pecan pie, and that is there is something
Speaker 1: really funny about that because like most pecam pie is
Speaker 1: mostly sweet. I don't really know how to make sense
Speaker 1: to that, but I don't think I have to. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, are you? Are you enjoying already? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: just took a bite. Oh my god. Oh and this one,
Speaker 1: this one, mind is like a little different. I feel
Speaker 1: like I taste this in chocolate or something in mine.
Speaker 1: Oh what is what it like? The filling? You know,
Speaker 1: it's so shiny and it gets stuck on your fingers
Speaker 1: and it's such a you know what I mean. M
Speaker 1: I love it. I love that. I mean I remember
Speaker 1: I went to this like I was in New Orleans
Speaker 1: and they were giving a tutorial on how to say
Speaker 1: the camp. They were like, a peacan and is what
Speaker 1: happens during is what you need during Mardi Gras? And
Speaker 1: then a pecan is a nut. Um. I don't know anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy. Oh I love that because I
Speaker 1: definitely say Peacan, but sometimes, but I love that description
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So you don't you
Speaker 1: don't know why you just have this like I don't know,
Speaker 1: this like connection to peacan pie that you can't you
Speaker 1: can't explain that transcends words and reason. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: have a connection to pecan pie. I get part of it.
Speaker 1: So there's like, growing up, there were certain things that
Speaker 1: I do not remember paying for, and pecans were one
Speaker 1: of those things. Growing up, Like my aunt would live
Speaker 1: next to feel that had a peacantry and you go,
Speaker 1: you pick them all up, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: I would ride with my grand that out and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. I guess it was like some
Speaker 1: man that he worked for he had like a whole
Speaker 1: grove of pecan trees, and so I could go and
Speaker 1: I could pick as many as I want to fill
Speaker 1: a bag. And then I came to college in Chicago
Speaker 1: and Evanston, and I wanted to make pecan pie. And
Speaker 1: so I went to the grocery store and it was
Speaker 1: a bag of peacans, a very small bag of peacans
Speaker 1: for nine dollars and ninety nine cents. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm guess I'm not making pie twenty bucks like
Speaker 1: and that just felt so inaccessible to me, and I
Speaker 1: was and I think I hadn't thought about that before.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about, like, you know, that this thing
Speaker 1: that was always abundant for me, we had peacans, that
Speaker 1: would be this thing that like I would be struggling
Speaker 1: to get at that point. And so I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just think like that was a big like shift
Speaker 1: and understanding for me. And so yeah, but I just
Speaker 1: love pecamp huh. Chef Fresh is a food activist in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Their life's work is to make good food accessible to everyone. Recently,
Speaker 1: they founded a collaborative food project called Fresher Together, and
Speaker 1: they provide meals for programs that increase food access for
Speaker 1: unhoused people, street youth, and seniors. They're also a highly
Speaker 1: trained chef. I've just always known that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to work in the kitchen of a restaurant I couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to eat in the dining room of And so
Speaker 1: a lot of the work I do is just like
Speaker 1: rooted in like food and connecting people and access and
Speaker 1: feeding people and taking care of folks. Yes, I kind
Speaker 1: of want to dive back in a little bit into
Speaker 1: your into your childhood, into your path. So what was
Speaker 1: your relationship to food? Like as a kid. Oh it was.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. I think I am the youngest um child,
Speaker 1: so I'm the baby. And definitely I grew up in
Speaker 1: a household where when I was still very young and
Speaker 1: before my um sister moved out, it was like my
Speaker 1: sister and my mom, and my experience around them is
Speaker 1: that there was always a diet that happened, you know,
Speaker 1: and there was always this need to like shift your
Speaker 1: by our bodies. And I remember my sister like wrapping
Speaker 1: herself in plastic wrap and like I just didn't understand it,
Speaker 1: but it was just like very like normative and okay.
Speaker 1: And I also learned that like movement and exercise was
Speaker 1: also specific to like weight loss, you know. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, my mom would like, oh, oh I need
Speaker 1: to lose some pounds, like I'm gonna go walking around
Speaker 1: the lake. It was just like very much this piece
Speaker 1: that I saw, it's like this bonding mechanism around like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, my mom and the and the people she
Speaker 1: talked about at work. It was just like they were
Speaker 1: like going to the lake to walk around together because
Speaker 1: they were in some kind of competition. And so like
Speaker 1: then when I look back now, I have a hard
Speaker 1: time remembering whether like I was put on diets, like
Speaker 1: I was just like expected to be a part of
Speaker 1: this diet, or whether that was like a mean of
Speaker 1: me feeling connected to my mom. You know, I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by this because what I've found is that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: as horrible and life sucking as weight restriction and food
Speaker 1: restriction dieting are, we have been socialized to use it
Speaker 1: as a way to create intimacy, especially if you're socialized feminine.
Speaker 1: There's just something so deep about that. I first met
Speaker 1: Chef Fresh at No Lose, a really rad conference for
Speaker 1: fat queer people and allies. At the time. No Loose
Speaker 1: for a national organization of lesbians of size, and I
Speaker 1: was like, what, there's a group of like fat dikes
Speaker 1: that get together, like have a conference. What is that about.
Speaker 1: No Lose was the first time I saw a big
Speaker 1: group of fat babes just living their best lives without
Speaker 1: any sense of shame. It was like, I could imagine
Speaker 1: how amazing a world without fat phobia could be, complete
Speaker 1: with pool parties, fashion shows, and a killer snack table.
Speaker 1: There would be these like lounges where they would turn
Speaker 1: like a hotel room into like just a place where
Speaker 1: you could like chill and there was like every snack
Speaker 1: you could think of, you know, and so there would
Speaker 1: be like bowls of beautiful eminems and cookies and chips
Speaker 1: and and like carrots and hummus and like just a
Speaker 1: variety of things. You know, that image you get where
Speaker 1: you're just laying out and you being fit. Grapes there
Speaker 1: were always tripes too, you know. Yes, No, And I
Speaker 1: think it's that it's that idea of being welcomed into luxury.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just it's interesting, right, because food,
Speaker 1: for me has long been a big part of asserting
Speaker 1: that I am this human who deserves to have these
Speaker 1: really pleasurable experiences. And do you remember, like I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about like how I felt like as a fat person,
Speaker 1: I was only allowed to eat like steam, vegetables and
Speaker 1: chicken breast. Yeah. I think that was just making me
Speaker 1: think about like having space to kind of freely eat
Speaker 1: however it is that you want to eat. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think sometimes like I remember like this thing around
Speaker 1: being a good fatty and when you're out in public,
Speaker 1: you know, like you eat a salad, or you eat this,
Speaker 1: or you eat that, and then I remember like having
Speaker 1: this shift and also like then being like, well, out
Speaker 1: in public, I'm gonna eat a big sloppy burger because
Speaker 1: fuck you diet culture, you know, yes, but also it's
Speaker 1: exhausting because sometimes I do want to sell it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just always appreciate it that like you can have whatever
Speaker 1: you want. If you want some carrots and hummage, you
Speaker 1: can have carrots and hummage. And if you want some
Speaker 1: donuts and oreos, you can have those two. And like
Speaker 1: there's no shame and not one is not right and
Speaker 1: wrong and one is not better, and like you know,
Speaker 1: you have what you need and what your body wants. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, Like, I love that you
Speaker 1: brought that up because I've been thinking so much about
Speaker 1: that kind of this. I don't know what you call it.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's like a double bind or something. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, on the one hand, we
Speaker 1: are living in these marginalized bodies and navigating the world
Speaker 1: and navigating food and navigating how people are treating us
Speaker 1: or imagining how they're experiencing us. And then you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the empowerment space, it does become about rebelling actively,
Speaker 1: which is another form of labor, which is another form
Speaker 1: of of you know, performing the work of being marginalized.
Speaker 1: Like I have to like, not only do I have
Speaker 1: to navigate all this stuff, I have to control how
Speaker 1: you're experiencing me um and whether you're doing it like
Speaker 1: by you know, being quote unquote a good fatty and
Speaker 1: like you know, uh like eating salads and doing all
Speaker 1: the things in publicum or you're like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat the sloppy burger. Um. They're they're sort
Speaker 1: of like opposite sides of the same coin. And I
Speaker 1: feel it is really interesting. It is something that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking so much about, you know, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people ask me, I mean, on my Instagram, I
Speaker 1: do not like posting pictures of me eating the carrots
Speaker 1: and the hummus and the salad, even though that's a
Speaker 1: part of a part of my life. Right everyone needs
Speaker 1: food from the ground, right, Um, it's like medicine. But
Speaker 1: I do feel this kind of obligation. If I'm going
Speaker 1: to be photographing myself and curating an image, it's going
Speaker 1: to about rebellion. It's going to be about destigmatizing the
Speaker 1: foods that I as a fat person, I was quote
Speaker 1: unquote not allowed to have. And I do think about
Speaker 1: how sometimes this creates a box for me that I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I can navigate with full humanity, Like like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like the longer I've been
Speaker 1: in fat activism, the more I'm like, Okay, how do
Speaker 1: I create texture around what feels good, what I like?
Speaker 1: The totality of how I exist without acquiescing to anybody's
Speaker 1: expectations except what I need and what I want, which
Speaker 1: I think is really I don't know, it's really challenging.
Speaker 1: And I think this is like the trap of the
Speaker 1: marginalized person. You know, Yeah, it's totally a trap. The
Speaker 1: next thing I'm going to tell you feels really vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I've never spoken about this publicly before. For a long time,
Speaker 1: that trap, the trap of the marginalized person that Fresh
Speaker 1: and I are talking about, was enough for me. It
Speaker 1: worked for me. I was mad as hell at diet
Speaker 1: culture and fat phobia, so I was content dedicating my
Speaker 1: life to showing what a farce it all was by
Speaker 1: any means necessary. You tell me not to show off
Speaker 1: my body, Well, now all I'm gonna do is where
Speaker 1: the tightest clothes I can find? You say fact girls
Speaker 1: are sad, Well, I'm gonna wear the biggest grin all
Speaker 1: the time. You tell me I'm not desirable, I'm going
Speaker 1: to find the most socially desirable people I can and
Speaker 1: sleep with all of them. You tell me I'm only
Speaker 1: supposed to eat salad, I'm going to eat all the
Speaker 1: chili cheese fries in public loudly. Take that fat phobia.
Speaker 1: I can't say it wasn't fun. It was. It was
Speaker 1: definitely a necessary part of my particular path to healing.
Speaker 1: I have no judgments or regrets. The truth was though
Speaker 1: sometimes it was also painful and lonely. Sometimes I just
Speaker 1: wanted to wear sweatpants. Sometimes I didn't want to smile.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I didn't like those people I slept with. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I actually did want the salad. Do not get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I still like tight clothes and sacks and eating chili
Speaker 1: cheese fries in public. But what I'm saying is this,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that fat phobia and diet
Speaker 1: culture take from us. Isn't just the right to access
Speaker 1: a few things. It takes from us the sense that
Speaker 1: there is so much more. There's a whole wide world
Speaker 1: that we deserve access to. So the central question of
Speaker 1: my recovery has shifted from how do I say fuck
Speaker 1: you the loudest diet culture? To what do I want
Speaker 1: for me? More on that after the break, we're back.
Speaker 1: When we free ourselves from diet culture, we get to
Speaker 1: honor who we are and what we want, and we
Speaker 1: can finally start poking holes in the oppressive systems that
Speaker 1: keep us feeling trapped, the systems that built diet culture
Speaker 1: in the first place. Chef Fresh thinks about this stuff too.
Speaker 1: I ask them how they understand the connection. I think
Speaker 1: about how all food and our relationship to food has
Speaker 1: just been so complicated and has shifted so much, especially
Speaker 1: from looking back, and I think about, like, what did
Speaker 1: my ancestors eat, what did people eat? And what was
Speaker 1: it like before you know that that long ride over here,
Speaker 1: and what was what was this land like? And what
Speaker 1: does this land grow? And what and what was all
Speaker 1: of that light before? Um, you know, white folks came
Speaker 1: and definitely destroyed and shifted um um things quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you see the connection between our cultural relationship
Speaker 1: to food and these very old entities like colonialism, racism,
Speaker 1: the history of this culture. Wow? I think, um, I
Speaker 1: think around like colonization and white folks coming and destroying
Speaker 1: crops and bringing in the things they were experienced with growing,
Speaker 1: and how that shifted these culturally relevant foods that were
Speaker 1: important to us. And then like even now thinking about
Speaker 1: like how that impacts what foods are like good foods
Speaker 1: to eat now or bad foods to eat and often
Speaker 1: in the bad category falls these culturally significant foods for me.
Speaker 1: That like, I like that my parents and grandparents and
Speaker 1: ancestors have grown up eating and brought over and how
Speaker 1: colonization and all of that has like ripped that apart,
Speaker 1: so like ripping that food away, but then also like
Speaker 1: giving you this like image and body to aspire to
Speaker 1: and like don't eat these foods that are culturally significant
Speaker 1: for you. Yes, I mean I want to get into
Speaker 1: that that good food bad food binary right like you
Speaker 1: were already talking about the good fatty bad fatty. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's so connected, right, um, But like this
Speaker 1: idea that all the things that are associated with your
Speaker 1: family and your lineage, that these things are things that
Speaker 1: when you're a person of color you need to push away.
Speaker 1: And it's part of this, It's part of a big
Speaker 1: system of assimilation. And I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with like literally disconnecting and unmooring a
Speaker 1: person from who they are and where they come from.
Speaker 1: You know, growing up, I was raised in an immigrant
Speaker 1: household by my grandparents who are from Mexico, and my
Speaker 1: grandparents really encouraged me to become, you know, an American,
Speaker 1: and they didn't teach me Spanish, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of incentive for me to you know, become educated,
Speaker 1: which I think was this sort of code for assimilating
Speaker 1: as well as I could into the expectations of the
Speaker 1: culture that we were now a part of. And I
Speaker 1: remember the tension would show up in all these weird moments,
Speaker 1: Like so the story that I was thinking of was,
Speaker 1: you know, remembering these moments where I would go to
Speaker 1: the grocery store with my grandmother and I would feel
Speaker 1: really frustrated with her, and I would just you know,
Speaker 1: I would be like, how do you not know that
Speaker 1: some of this food is bad and some of the
Speaker 1: food is good? How do you not know that you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to like we're not supposed to eat hot dogs? Right,
Speaker 1: Like everybody knows these things are bad. And then as
Speaker 1: an adult, going back and thinking about that moment and
Speaker 1: realizing that in my grandmother's mind, she could not fathom
Speaker 1: a world in which somebody would intentionally put food with
Speaker 1: no nutrition into a store where you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to feed your family. And so she axiomatically was like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense, girl. And I'm coming from
Speaker 1: the place of like, I've already accepted this particular system
Speaker 1: of food and being in hierarchy as fact, and I
Speaker 1: am now treating her as someone who is intellectually inferior
Speaker 1: because I've accepted that, you know what It's like, It's
Speaker 1: just this kind of really I feel like that that
Speaker 1: story speaks to that tension so much. That story reminded
Speaker 1: me a lot of like I grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: in the South and eastern North Carolina, and I remember
Speaker 1: like all of the animal gets used up. You know.
Speaker 1: My my grandfather farmed, and so my mom was like
Speaker 1: a part of like a certain type of culture and
Speaker 1: a certain type of way, and it was just like
Speaker 1: you use everything, and so you know, she used to
Speaker 1: have these phrases like everything's chicken, but the bill and
Speaker 1: that's chicken still, which makes you eat all the chicken,
Speaker 1: you know, you eat the you eat everything pretty much
Speaker 1: except the beak. And I'm sure we can find a
Speaker 1: purpose for the beach too, you know. And the same
Speaker 1: it's definitely true of hogs, like we would use the
Speaker 1: whole pig, like I don't even know if there's a
Speaker 1: part of the pig that does not get used. You
Speaker 1: use all of it, like you use the skin and
Speaker 1: the fact you make larm. My mom would crisp up
Speaker 1: the skin. There would be like a whole pig on
Speaker 1: the you know, on the grill, like all of these things.
Speaker 1: And I remember very clearly, like growing up, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was in my like advanced courses with all
Speaker 1: of these white people, there were certain things that like
Speaker 1: they did not eat. You know. It's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: a lack of education, you don't eat that part having
Speaker 1: this like snotty, disrespectful energy, or like probably my mom
Speaker 1: or my family around like oh well they just don't
Speaker 1: know or wherever, you know. And I think it's like
Speaker 1: very much like rooted in like diet culture and like
Speaker 1: what we frame it is like nutrition in this way
Speaker 1: of like yeah, well eat the chicken breast, but don't
Speaker 1: eat the chicken thigh, you know, like you can eat
Speaker 1: the chicken breast, but you have to take the skin off,
Speaker 1: or like you know, in these ways that it's just
Speaker 1: not very conducive to what it was, or like indigenous
Speaker 1: people for like you know, Black folks for like you know,
Speaker 1: Mexican folks to like really utilize and not have any waste.
Speaker 1: And so it's so interesting, like how all these things
Speaker 1: are so interconnected. When Jeff Fresh was a kid, they
Speaker 1: saw how white people look down on the way their
Speaker 1: family used whole chickens or whole pigs. But then in
Speaker 1: recent years, using the whole animal has become trendy, and
Speaker 1: just as quickly it could go out of vogue. Again.
Speaker 1: It's so arbitrary, and if you think about it, food
Speaker 1: trends tend to exploit the traditions of marginalized people. What
Speaker 1: I'm talking about here is racism, of course, but I
Speaker 1: want to get deeper into something I like to call
Speaker 1: racisms creepy Grandpa colonialism. First, a history lesson colonialism goes
Speaker 1: back a long way. When we're talking about the context
Speaker 1: here in the US, we're talking about a period that
Speaker 1: started in the late fourteen hundreds when imperial powers like
Speaker 1: Spain and Britain violently claimed entire regions without regard for
Speaker 1: the indigenous populations, autonomy, or humanity. Colonizers saw non European
Speaker 1: beliefs as inferior. Speaking broadly, indigenous people, like many cultures
Speaker 1: all over the world, tended to believe the mind, body, spirit,
Speaker 1: and land were all interconnected, dependent on each other. Europeans
Speaker 1: largely believed in mind over matter and human domination over
Speaker 1: the natural world. I see this same worldview living on
Speaker 1: in diet culture. Let me explain, under diet culture, people
Speaker 1: of all sizes and abilities aren't unique beings who are
Speaker 1: inherently valuable. They are unit that we can quantify through
Speaker 1: metrics such as weight and body mass index, for instance.
Speaker 1: It blew my mind when I learned that there are
Speaker 1: people right now in cultures outside the West who have
Speaker 1: never even seen a scale. Under diet culture, food isn't
Speaker 1: something that connects us to the land and to each other.
Speaker 1: It is something we categorize as good or bad and
Speaker 1: quantify through concept like the number of calories, grahams of
Speaker 1: fat and carbs. Diet culture is itself a series of
Speaker 1: traumatic events occurring over and over, each time shaving away
Speaker 1: the humanity of its practitioner a little more so, how
Speaker 1: do we begin to recover? For Chef Fresh, part of
Speaker 1: the healing came from farming, reclaiming a relationship to the land.
Speaker 1: I asked them, what is it like for Chef when
Speaker 1: they're farming? What does it do for them? What does
Speaker 1: that healing look like? For me? It feels like, Um,
Speaker 1: I also like puzzles, so like you know, puzzles are
Speaker 1: like very soothing, Like I put pieces together. I have
Speaker 1: like little mini celebrations when things fit and things and
Speaker 1: then you know, like I feel like then I get
Speaker 1: to the end and it's like I'm missing a piece
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm missing two pieces that are missing, like
Speaker 1: you know, a few pieces and so like to me,
Speaker 1: like when I get to be in the dirt, it
Speaker 1: feels like I like found a piece. To me, I
Speaker 1: think what it is. It's like there's something in the earth.
Speaker 1: There's something in the earth that is like very healing,
Speaker 1: that is connecting, that is a lesson to learn, and
Speaker 1: I think it feels like very much a connection to
Speaker 1: like ancestors, and there's something there I think that is
Speaker 1: around it. As to why, it just feels good to me,
Speaker 1: and I feels like powerful right, Like it feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, like I have this thing often and I
Speaker 1: think people talk about it sometimes it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse or like I also always frame it it's
Speaker 1: like you know zombie apocalypse, aka when white folks start
Speaker 1: acting a fool, you know, like what am I gonna have?
Speaker 1: How am I gonna be prepared? And I think, like
Speaker 1: when I think about things like that, like that ability
Speaker 1: around growing things that I need to eat, being able
Speaker 1: to like you know, feed myself, feed my community, growing
Speaker 1: like herbs, growing like these things that like provide flavor
Speaker 1: and seasoning and like all of these things, but then
Speaker 1: also like medicine that have medicinal qualities that like I
Speaker 1: can grow things that I need that like take care
Speaker 1: of my body and make it feel better, or that
Speaker 1: heals things that I need healed. Like there's something there
Speaker 1: in that experiences to that just feels nourishing to me.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel helled. Yes, I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that metaphor so much. I mean I think that
Speaker 1: when as I think about the long journey to recovering
Speaker 1: my relationship to food, I was struggling a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: like thinking about, you know, what do I want my
Speaker 1: relationship to foods like vegetables that used to like really
Speaker 1: like vegetables are weaponizing against fat people on like a
Speaker 1: really big way, and so it is really it is
Speaker 1: really a challenge, I think for me to recuperate that
Speaker 1: that experience and make the experience of like eating all
Speaker 1: kinds of food like something that feels really right and
Speaker 1: integrated and not triggering for me. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize it, right, for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. You know, what some people might think of
Speaker 1: as like, oh, it's just simply a thing. It's just
Speaker 1: simply a carrot, it's just simply a salad, just simply whatever,
Speaker 1: something that like something that grew in the earth, right,
Speaker 1: and how twisted it is, I think for for somebody
Speaker 1: like me who that food was used to hurt me.
Speaker 1: And so I have to do a lot of work
Speaker 1: to just get It's not like I'm starting at zero.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm starting at negative five hundred with this
Speaker 1: thing and then trying to build a road back to it, right, um,
Speaker 1: And I kind of and I kind of realized, like
Speaker 1: for me, when I think back, like one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful teaching experiences I've had was working with um.
Speaker 1: It was two indigenous women and they were it was
Speaker 1: like sort of a It was a focus on like
Speaker 1: meditation and healing and understanding the earth and our connection
Speaker 1: to the earth as as part of recuperation UM. And
Speaker 1: they talked about the stones, like the stones and the
Speaker 1: plants being some of our oldest ancestors, and how they
Speaker 1: hold all this wisdom and how they hold all this medicine.
Speaker 1: And and for me that became the road right where
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, right, this this this
Speaker 1: lettuce and I'm going to how or this carrot or
Speaker 1: this celery or this whatever, Like this thing is coming
Speaker 1: from the wisest, oldest thing that we have access to
Speaker 1: on this planet, which is the Earth, you know. And
Speaker 1: like this is not about some arbitrary version of like health,
Speaker 1: which is so connected to thinness and so connected to whiteness,
Speaker 1: and so it connected to able bodiedness. Right, this is
Speaker 1: my path to connecting to everything, right, everything that lives,
Speaker 1: everything that has lived, everything that will live. You know.
Speaker 1: It's something that I want people to be able to
Speaker 1: have access to and get and like, you know, experience,
Speaker 1: even if it's briefly like what healing, what connection they
Speaker 1: get if they get to like be even around plants,
Speaker 1: or like be connected to the earth or put their
Speaker 1: hands in the dirt or whatever it is. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's definitely something that I want to be able
Speaker 1: to share with others. And I think about it in
Speaker 1: this way of like how do I make it accessible?
Speaker 1: I had someone recently come out, like it's the day
Speaker 1: before Thanksgiving and I was like harvesting the last little
Speaker 1: bits of stuff and someone I met at No Lose
Speaker 1: came out and helped me harvest like the last of
Speaker 1: my sage and helped me harvest like the last of
Speaker 1: my things and sat in a chair and did that
Speaker 1: ship right, like we moved it along, like we made
Speaker 1: it work, and like you know, people sat down and
Speaker 1: like you know, pick sage, cut things, you know, did
Speaker 1: what they need to do. And I'm like, yes, this
Speaker 1: is like exactly what it is, you know, like everybody
Speaker 1: can do it like no, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: think about I think about that a lot, and it
Speaker 1: just feels like this piece is missing, you know, and
Speaker 1: that and I found it and I was able to
Speaker 1: fit it in there, and you know, so yes, thank
Speaker 1: you so so so so much for eating peek on
Speaker 1: pie with me. And deconstructing colonialism with me and talking
Speaker 1: about food. Yeah, thank you. I love the image of
Speaker 1: Chef Fresh out there harvesting sage and using it to
Speaker 1: season the dishes they make for their community. That's what
Speaker 1: food is really about. It's not about calories and control.
Speaker 1: It's about pleasure, loving our bodies, healing our bloodline, and
Speaker 1: nourishing our relationships to each other, the planet, and the
Speaker 1: people whose bodies have been through a lot. After talking
Speaker 1: with Fresh, I kept thinking about puzzle pieces and that
Speaker 1: human drive for wholeness that we all possess. I went
Speaker 1: back to that story I told you about leaving my
Speaker 1: apartment and seeing the trees, the grass, the birds, and technicolor,
Speaker 1: and I realized that was one of the most significant
Speaker 1: decolonizing moments of my life. The puzzle came together that day.
Speaker 1: I could finally see this beautiful, incredible planet and my
Speaker 1: place within it. It was perfect, and if it was perfect,
Speaker 1: then I had to be perfect too, because we were
Speaker 1: connected completely. For today's journal prompt, write a breakup letter
Speaker 1: to diet culture. Maybe you're not ready to send it
Speaker 1: quite yet, but don't forget to list the reasons you
Speaker 1: can't keep letting this freeloading dirt bag, take up precious
Speaker 1: real estate in your mind, body, and spirit. If you
Speaker 1: want to write down your thoughts, you can sent it
Speaker 1: to us at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: or leave us a voicemail at eight six two two
Speaker 1: three one five three eight six and your story could
Speaker 1: make it onto the show eight six two three one
Speaker 1: five three eight six. When you're done, don't forget to
Speaker 1: give yourself the merit badge you earned, the bye Bye
Speaker 1: Diets badge. You can print it out on our website,
Speaker 1: Rebel Eatersclub dot com and show us what you're eating.
Speaker 1: Tag us on social with hashtag Rebel Eaters Club or
Speaker 1: at Transmitter Pods. Next week, we're talking to model Shay
Speaker 1: Neary about how food is a witness to our experiences.
Speaker 1: We have foods that bring us in eate comfort because
Speaker 1: there they were with us in times of struggle or
Speaker 1: times of positivity. And sometimes it can bring us great pleasure,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it can remind us of things we've been through.
Speaker 1: Rebel Eaters Clubs an original podcast from Transmitter Media, the
Speaker 1: podcast company that's like the shiniest, chubbiest cherry tomato from
Speaker 1: your garden. I'm Virgie Tovar. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: Lacy Roberts and Jordan Bailey. We had help this week
Speaker 1: from Alex Jean Laughlin show Hi Shmulevitz. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Sarah Knicks. Greta Cohen is our executive producer. Like what
Speaker 1: you hear on the show and want to sponsor us,
Speaker 1: Send us a note at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com and let us know. And please head to
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast app and give us a review. See
Speaker 1: you next week.