Introducing the Almost Sated Chat!

Plus, let's talk about uncomfortable conversations, whether you speak up or remain silent.

Hello my friends, and happy Thanksgiving to those of you here in the U.S.! I am coming to you from a cozy little eco-cabin in a remote area near Florissant, Colorado, where one of my daughters lives. Thanks to the time difference, I’ve caught the sunrise two days in a row—epic pink streaks against a backdrop of blue sky and snow-capped mountains in the distance. If we’re lucky, we’ll have snow today. We’ll most definitely feast, because the daughter we’re visiting is a chef by training, and she’s already done most of the prep work for the traditional Thanksgiving meal. 

Today’s post is short and sweet, but I wanted to announce a brand new addition to Almost Sated: the subscriber chat!

This is a conversation space in the Substack app exclusively for my subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion. To join the chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android.

👉 Drop me a line in the chat and introduce yourself!

👉 I would also love to know: Do you speak up when someone engages in diet talk or another uncomfortable conversation? What tactics have you found to be most helpful in shutting down unwanted discussions? And last but not least, what support do you need today?

The Almost Sated chat is your space, so feel free to pose your own questions and ask for support if you need it!

As many of you know, I introduced my first accountability challenge last week. The call—should you accept it—is to opt out of diet talk for the remainder of this year. In my kickoff post for No Diet Talk December, I laid out a bunch of reasons why this kind of talk is destructive, whether you’re actively still dieting or not, and posed the question of whether you should confront someone engaging in diet talk.

The decision to speak up when someone is bringing up a harmful conversation often depends on time and circumstance. When my children were in the height of their eating disorders, it was crucial that we eliminated as much talk about food and bodies as we could, and I often was called upon to bring conversations back to neutral ground. But even now when it comes up among friends, I often simply ignore it and don’t engage. 

The New York Times this week sparked quite a bit of debate this week with an opinion piece titled “Speak up at Thanksgiving. Your health depends on it.” Sunita Sah, the organizational psychologist who wrote it posits that the act of choosing to stay silent may be damaging our emotional and physical wellbeing. She also explains that the reason many of us remain silent is because of something called “insinuation anxiety,” the fear of insinuating distrust or disapproval of another person.  

“While not every comment warrants a response and not every setting is appropriate for debate, when something strikes at the heart of your values, it’s worth considering the dynamic that may be preventing you from speaking. There’s value in voicing our thoughts and concerns, even if they might be met with opposition.”

Let me know your take, here in comments or in the chat thread.

My story, told two ways

Over the last two weeks, I’ve shared some of my story in two different podcast interviews. I learned this week, thanks to

Ellie Kime

, a concept called the red thread, which is how each of our multi-disparate parts tie together to make us uniquely us. In my interview with

Hannah Ashe

at Chez Hanny, I delve into my red thread—that is the twists and turns my career has taken as a journalist, marketer, and writer—and how the experience of helping two of my three children recover from anorexia helped reshape my purpose.

In the other, with non-diet nutritionist

Linn Thorstensson

of Joyful + Nourishment, I share more about how my children’s battles with anorexia became a catalyst for me to examine my own long-held beliefs and rules about what I “should” be eating and how my body “should” look, and ultimately led me to start this Substack.

By the way, Linn will be co-hosting a workshop with me to kick off No Diet Talk December on Thursday, Nov. 30, 12 p.m. CST (10 a.m. PT). We’ll be sharing tips for tackling diet talk and other food challenges during the holidays. Registration is open, and we’d love to see you there!