Bye Bye Diets with Chef Fresh Roberson

to try to go for a walk. Not a walk for exercise, not a walk to burn some calories, not a walk to punish myself for something I felt guilty about eating, just a walk before I broke up with diet culture. I walked quickly because that helped burn calories. Trees were just my scenery that helped my daily jog feel less terrible. Basically, the beauty of the world was just a backdrop for punishment. But that morning, when I walked out my front gate, I saw the emerald of

the trees. I saw the sparkle of the sun. I heard the cars, the birds, the far off laughter of kids playing in Golden Gate Park. That morning, the omnipresent little voice up in my head, the same one that had told me for twenty long years that everything every step I took had to be about finally becoming thin. It shut up, It just stopped. I can't tell you how many times I had wished it away in those early days of my recovery and it had not listened.

But that day I got my wish. I could see the world again in all of its technicolor glory, like when Dorothy gets the Land of Oz. And maybe this sounds a little hard to believe, but it felt like I hadn't seen any of that since I was a kid, since before I learned to hate my body. This moment was my homecoming. I stepped out onto the sidewalk into a world I had remade for me, for my enjoyment, for my delight, for my pleasure, and let me tell you,

it was fucking awesome. Today, I want to introduce you to someone who works really hard to reclaim the world for themselves and their community, Chef Fresh Roberson. They are an activist, a chef, a healer, and a farmer. For Chef Fresh, the land and the food they grow on it is their inheritance. It's part of their homecoming. When

I asked what treat they wanted to share. While we talked, they said that they're not really into sweets, but except I love pecan pie, and that is there is something really funny about that because like most pecam pie is mostly sweet. I don't really know how to make sense to that, but I don't think I have to. Okay, all right, are you? Are you enjoying already? Yeah? I just took a bite. Oh my god. Oh and this one,

this one, mind is like a little different. I feel like I taste this in chocolate or something in mine. Oh what is what it like? The filling? You know, it's so shiny and it gets stuck on your fingers and it's such a you know what I mean. M I love it. I love that. I mean I remember I went to this like I was in New Orleans and they were giving a tutorial on how to say the camp. They were like, a peacan and is what happens during is what you need during Mardi Gras? And

then a pecan is a nut. Um. I don't know anyway, I'm just so happy. Oh I love that because I definitely say Peacan, but sometimes, but I love that description of it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So you don't you don't know why you just have this like I don't know, this like connection to peacan pie that you can't you can't explain that transcends words and reason. Okay, so I have a connection to pecan pie. I get part of it.

So there's like, growing up, there were certain things that I do not remember paying for, and pecans were one of those things. Growing up, Like my aunt would live next to feel that had a peacantry and you go, you pick them all up, you know, and you know, I would ride with my grand that out and I don't I don't know. I guess it was like some man that he worked for he had like a whole grove of pecan trees, and so I could go and I could pick as many as I want to fill

a bag. And then I came to college in Chicago and Evanston, and I wanted to make pecan pie. And so I went to the grocery store and it was a bag of peacans, a very small bag of peacans for nine dollars and ninety nine cents. And I was like, I'm I'm guess I'm not making pie twenty bucks like and that just felt so inaccessible to me, and I was and I think I hadn't thought about that before.

I hadn't thought about, like, you know, that this thing that was always abundant for me, we had peacans, that would be this thing that like I would be struggling to get at that point. And so I don't know, I just think like that was a big like shift and understanding for me. And so yeah, but I just love pecamp huh. Chef Fresh is a food activist in Chicago.

Their life's work is to make good food accessible to everyone. Recently, they founded a collaborative food project called Fresher Together, and they provide meals for programs that increase food access for unhoused people, street youth, and seniors. They're also a highly

trained chef. I've just always known that I didn't want to work in the kitchen of a restaurant I couldn't afford to eat in the dining room of And so a lot of the work I do is just like rooted in like food and connecting people and access and feeding people and taking care of folks. Yes, I kind of want to dive back in a little bit into your into your childhood, into your path. So what was your relationship to food? Like as a kid. Oh it was. It was interesting. I think I am the youngest um child,

so I'm the baby. And definitely I grew up in a household where when I was still very young and before my um sister moved out, it was like my sister and my mom, and my experience around them is that there was always a diet that happened, you know, and there was always this need to like shift your by our bodies. And I remember my sister like wrapping herself in plastic wrap and like I just didn't understand it, but it was just like very like normative and okay.

And I also learned that like movement and exercise was also specific to like weight loss, you know. So um, you know, my mom would like, oh, oh I need to lose some pounds, like I'm gonna go walking around the lake. It was just like very much this piece that I saw, it's like this bonding mechanism around like, um, you know, my mom and the and the people she talked about at work. It was just like they were like going to the lake to walk around together because

they were in some kind of competition. And so like then when I look back now, I have a hard time remembering whether like I was put on diets, like I was just like expected to be a part of this diet, or whether that was like a mean of

me feeling connected to my mom. You know, I'm fascinated by this because what I've found is that generally speaking, as horrible and life sucking as weight restriction and food restriction dieting are, we have been socialized to use it as a way to create intimacy, especially if you're socialized feminine. There's just something so deep about that. I first met Chef Fresh at No Lose, a really rad conference for

fat queer people and allies. At the time. No Loose for a national organization of lesbians of size, and I was like, what, there's a group of like fat dikes that get together, like have a conference. What is that about. No Lose was the first time I saw a big group of fat babes just living their best lives without any sense of shame. It was like, I could imagine how amazing a world without fat phobia could be, complete with pool parties, fashion shows, and a killer snack table.

There would be these like lounges where they would turn like a hotel room into like just a place where you could like chill and there was like every snack you could think of, you know, and so there would be like bowls of beautiful eminems and cookies and chips and and like carrots and hummus and like just a variety of things. You know, that image you get where you're just laying out and you being fit. Grapes there

were always tripes too, you know. Yes, No, And I think it's that it's that idea of being welcomed into luxury. I don't know, it's just it's interesting, right, because food, for me has long been a big part of asserting that I am this human who deserves to have these really pleasurable experiences. And do you remember, like I'm just thinking about like how I felt like as a fat person, I was only allowed to eat like steam, vegetables and

chicken breast. Yeah. I think that was just making me think about like having space to kind of freely eat

however it is that you want to eat. Yeah, And I think sometimes like I remember like this thing around being a good fatty and when you're out in public, you know, like you eat a salad, or you eat this, or you eat that, and then I remember like having this shift and also like then being like, well, out in public, I'm gonna eat a big sloppy burger because fuck you diet culture, you know, yes, but also it's

exhausting because sometimes I do want to sell it, you know. Yeah, just always appreciate it that like you can have whatever you want. If you want some carrots and hummage, you can have carrots and hummage. And if you want some donuts and oreos, you can have those two. And like there's no shame and not one is not right and wrong and one is not better, and like you know,

you have what you need and what your body wants. Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that, Like, I love that you brought that up because I've been thinking so much about that kind of this. I don't know what you call it. And maybe it's like a double bind or something. It's sort of like, you know, on the one hand, we are living in these marginalized bodies and navigating the world and navigating food and navigating how people are treating us

or imagining how they're experiencing us. And then you know, sometimes in the empowerment space, it does become about rebelling actively, which is another form of labor, which is another form of of you know, performing the work of being marginalized.

Like I have to like, not only do I have to navigate all this stuff, I have to control how you're experiencing me um and whether you're doing it like by you know, being quote unquote a good fatty and like you know, uh like eating salads and doing all the things in publicum or you're like, you know, I'm going to eat the sloppy burger. Um. They're they're sort of like opposite sides of the same coin. And I

feel it is really interesting. It is something that I've been thinking so much about, you know, because a lot of people ask me, I mean, on my Instagram, I do not like posting pictures of me eating the carrots and the hummus and the salad, even though that's a part of a part of my life. Right everyone needs food from the ground, right, Um, it's like medicine. But I do feel this kind of obligation. If I'm going to be photographing myself and curating an image, it's going

to about rebellion. It's going to be about destigmatizing the foods that I as a fat person, I was quote unquote not allowed to have. And I do think about how sometimes this creates a box for me that I don't feel like I can navigate with full humanity, Like like, I don't know, I feel like the longer I've been in fat activism, the more I'm like, Okay, how do I create texture around what feels good, what I like?

The totality of how I exist without acquiescing to anybody's expectations except what I need and what I want, which I think is really I don't know, it's really challenging. And I think this is like the trap of the marginalized person. You know, Yeah, it's totally a trap. The next thing I'm going to tell you feels really vulnerable. I've never spoken about this publicly before. For a long time, that trap, the trap of the marginalized person that Fresh

and I are talking about, was enough for me. It worked for me. I was mad as hell at diet culture and fat phobia, so I was content dedicating my life to showing what a farce it all was by any means necessary. You tell me not to show off my body, Well, now all I'm gonna do is where the tightest clothes I can find? You say fact girls are sad, Well, I'm gonna wear the biggest grin all the time. You tell me I'm not desirable, I'm going to find the most socially desirable people I can and

sleep with all of them. You tell me I'm only supposed to eat salad, I'm going to eat all the chili cheese fries in public loudly. Take that fat phobia. I can't say it wasn't fun. It was. It was definitely a necessary part of my particular path to healing. I have no judgments or regrets. The truth was though sometimes it was also painful and lonely. Sometimes I just wanted to wear sweatpants. Sometimes I didn't want to smile. Sometimes I didn't like those people I slept with. Sometimes

I actually did want the salad. Do not get me wrong, I still like tight clothes and sacks and eating chili cheese fries in public. But what I'm saying is this, one of the biggest things that fat phobia and diet culture take from us. Isn't just the right to access a few things. It takes from us the sense that there is so much more. There's a whole wide world that we deserve access to. So the central question of my recovery has shifted from how do I say fuck

you the loudest diet culture? To what do I want for me? More on that after the break, we're back. When we free ourselves from diet culture, we get to honor who we are and what we want, and we can finally start poking holes in the oppressive systems that keep us feeling trapped, the systems that built diet culture in the first place. Chef Fresh thinks about this stuff too.

I ask them how they understand the connection. I think about how all food and our relationship to food has just been so complicated and has shifted so much, especially from looking back, and I think about, like, what did my ancestors eat, what did people eat? And what was it like before you know that that long ride over here, and what was what was this land like? And what does this land grow? And what and what was all of that light before? Um, you know, white folks came

and definitely destroyed and shifted um um things quite a bit. Yeah, how do you see the connection between our cultural relationship to food and these very old entities like colonialism, racism, the history of this culture. Wow? I think, um, I think around like colonization and white folks coming and destroying crops and bringing in the things they were experienced with growing, and how that shifted these culturally relevant foods that were

important to us. And then like even now thinking about like how that impacts what foods are like good foods to eat now or bad foods to eat and often in the bad category falls these culturally significant foods for me.

That like, I like that my parents and grandparents and ancestors have grown up eating and brought over and how colonization and all of that has like ripped that apart, so like ripping that food away, but then also like giving you this like image and body to aspire to and like don't eat these foods that are culturally significant for you. Yes, I mean I want to get into that that good food bad food binary right like you

were already talking about the good fatty bad fatty. I feel like it's so connected, right, um, But like this idea that all the things that are associated with your family and your lineage, that these things are things that when you're a person of color you need to push away. And it's part of this, It's part of a big system of assimilation. And I think a lot of it has to do with like literally disconnecting and unmooring a person from who they are and where they come from.

You know, growing up, I was raised in an immigrant household by my grandparents who are from Mexico, and my grandparents really encouraged me to become, you know, an American, and they didn't teach me Spanish, and there was a lot of incentive for me to you know, become educated, which I think was this sort of code for assimilating as well as I could into the expectations of the

culture that we were now a part of. And I remember the tension would show up in all these weird moments, Like so the story that I was thinking of was, you know, remembering these moments where I would go to the grocery store with my grandmother and I would feel really frustrated with her, and I would just you know, I would be like, how do you not know that some of this food is bad and some of the food is good? How do you not know that you're

not supposed to like we're not supposed to eat hot dogs? Right, Like everybody knows these things are bad. And then as an adult, going back and thinking about that moment and realizing that in my grandmother's mind, she could not fathom a world in which somebody would intentionally put food with no nutrition into a store where you're supposed to be able to feed your family. And so she axiomatically was like,

that doesn't make any sense, girl. And I'm coming from the place of like, I've already accepted this particular system of food and being in hierarchy as fact, and I am now treating her as someone who is intellectually inferior because I've accepted that, you know what It's like, It's just this kind of really I feel like that that story speaks to that tension so much. That story reminded me a lot of like I grew up, you know, in the South and eastern North Carolina, and I remember

like all of the animal gets used up. You know. My my grandfather farmed, and so my mom was like a part of like a certain type of culture and a certain type of way, and it was just like you use everything, and so you know, she used to have these phrases like everything's chicken, but the bill and that's chicken still, which makes you eat all the chicken, you know, you eat the you eat everything pretty much except the beak. And I'm sure we can find a

purpose for the beach too, you know. And the same it's definitely true of hogs, like we would use the whole pig, like I don't even know if there's a part of the pig that does not get used. You use all of it, like you use the skin and the fact you make larm. My mom would crisp up the skin. There would be like a whole pig on the you know, on the grill, like all of these things.

And I remember very clearly, like growing up, you know, when I was in my like advanced courses with all of these white people, there were certain things that like they did not eat. You know. It's like, oh, you know, a lack of education, you don't eat that part having this like snotty, disrespectful energy, or like probably my mom or my family around like oh well they just don't

know or wherever, you know. And I think it's like very much like rooted in like diet culture and like what we frame it is like nutrition in this way of like yeah, well eat the chicken breast, but don't eat the chicken thigh, you know, like you can eat the chicken breast, but you have to take the skin off, or like you know, in these ways that it's just not very conducive to what it was, or like indigenous people for like you know, Black folks for like you know,

Mexican folks to like really utilize and not have any waste. And so it's so interesting, like how all these things are so interconnected. When Jeff Fresh was a kid, they saw how white people look down on the way their family used whole chickens or whole pigs. But then in recent years, using the whole animal has become trendy, and just as quickly it could go out of vogue. Again. It's so arbitrary, and if you think about it, food

trends tend to exploit the traditions of marginalized people. What I'm talking about here is racism, of course, but I want to get deeper into something I like to call racisms creepy Grandpa colonialism. First, a history lesson colonialism goes back a long way. When we're talking about the context here in the US, we're talking about a period that started in the late fourteen hundreds when imperial powers like Spain and Britain violently claimed entire regions without regard for

the indigenous populations, autonomy, or humanity. Colonizers saw non European beliefs as inferior. Speaking broadly, indigenous people, like many cultures all over the world, tended to believe the mind, body, spirit, and land were all interconnected, dependent on each other. Europeans largely believed in mind over matter and human domination over the natural world. I see this same worldview living on

in diet culture. Let me explain, under diet culture, people of all sizes and abilities aren't unique beings who are inherently valuable. They are unit that we can quantify through metrics such as weight and body mass index, for instance. It blew my mind when I learned that there are people right now in cultures outside the West who have never even seen a scale. Under diet culture, food isn't something that connects us to the land and to each other.

It is something we categorize as good or bad and quantify through concept like the number of calories, grahams of fat and carbs. Diet culture is itself a series of traumatic events occurring over and over, each time shaving away the humanity of its practitioner a little more so, how do we begin to recover? For Chef Fresh, part of the healing came from farming, reclaiming a relationship to the land. I asked them, what is it like for Chef when they're farming? What does it do for them? What does

that healing look like? For me? It feels like, Um, I also like puzzles, so like you know, puzzles are like very soothing, Like I put pieces together. I have like little mini celebrations when things fit and things and then you know, like I feel like then I get to the end and it's like I'm missing a piece or maybe I'm missing two pieces that are missing, like you know, a few pieces and so like to me, like when I get to be in the dirt, it feels like I like found a piece. To me, I

think what it is. It's like there's something in the earth. There's something in the earth that is like very healing, that is connecting, that is a lesson to learn, and I think it feels like very much a connection to like ancestors, and there's something there I think that is

around it. As to why, it just feels good to me, and I feels like powerful right, Like it feels like, you know, like I have this thing often and I think people talk about it sometimes it's like, you know, zombie apocalypse or like I also always frame it it's like you know zombie apocalypse, aka when white folks start acting a fool, you know, like what am I gonna have?

How am I gonna be prepared? And I think, like when I think about things like that, like that ability around growing things that I need to eat, being able to like you know, feed myself, feed my community, growing like herbs, growing like these things that like provide flavor and seasoning and like all of these things, but then also like medicine that have medicinal qualities that like I can grow things that I need that like take care of my body and make it feel better, or that

heals things that I need healed. Like there's something there in that experiences to that just feels nourishing to me. It makes me feel helled. Yes, I love that. I

love that metaphor so much. I mean I think that when as I think about the long journey to recovering my relationship to food, I was struggling a lot, you know, like thinking about, you know, what do I want my relationship to foods like vegetables that used to like really like vegetables are weaponizing against fat people on like a really big way, and so it is really it is really a challenge, I think for me to recuperate that that experience and make the experience of like eating all

kinds of food like something that feels really right and integrated and not triggering for me. And I think a lot of people don't realize it, right, for a lot of people. You know, what some people might think of as like, oh, it's just simply a thing. It's just simply a carrot, it's just simply a salad, just simply whatever, something that like something that grew in the earth, right, and how twisted it is, I think for for somebody like me who that food was used to hurt me.

And so I have to do a lot of work to just get It's not like I'm starting at zero. It's like I'm starting at negative five hundred with this thing and then trying to build a road back to it, right, um, And I kind of and I kind of realized, like for me, when I think back, like one of the most powerful teaching experiences I've had was working with um.

It was two indigenous women and they were it was like sort of a It was a focus on like meditation and healing and understanding the earth and our connection to the earth as as part of recuperation UM. And they talked about the stones, like the stones and the plants being some of our oldest ancestors, and how they hold all this wisdom and how they hold all this medicine.

And and for me that became the road right where I was like, oh my god, right, this this this lettuce and I'm going to how or this carrot or this celery or this whatever, Like this thing is coming from the wisest, oldest thing that we have access to on this planet, which is the Earth, you know. And like this is not about some arbitrary version of like health, which is so connected to thinness and so connected to whiteness,

and so it connected to able bodiedness. Right, this is my path to connecting to everything, right, everything that lives, everything that has lived, everything that will live. You know. It's something that I want people to be able to have access to and get and like, you know, experience, even if it's briefly like what healing, what connection they get if they get to like be even around plants, or like be connected to the earth or put their

hands in the dirt or whatever it is. I feel like it's definitely something that I want to be able to share with others. And I think about it in this way of like how do I make it accessible?

I had someone recently come out, like it's the day before Thanksgiving and I was like harvesting the last little bits of stuff and someone I met at No Lose came out and helped me harvest like the last of my sage and helped me harvest like the last of my things and sat in a chair and did that ship right, like we moved it along, like we made it work, and like you know, people sat down and like you know, pick sage, cut things, you know, did

what they need to do. And I'm like, yes, this is like exactly what it is, you know, like everybody can do it like no, you know, And so I think about I think about that a lot, and it just feels like this piece is missing, you know, and that and I found it and I was able to fit it in there, and you know, so yes, thank you so so so so much for eating peek on pie with me. And deconstructing colonialism with me and talking

about food. Yeah, thank you. I love the image of Chef Fresh out there harvesting sage and using it to season the dishes they make for their community. That's what food is really about. It's not about calories and control. It's about pleasure, loving our bodies, healing our bloodline, and nourishing our relationships to each other, the planet, and the people whose bodies have been through a lot. After talking with Fresh, I kept thinking about puzzle pieces and that

human drive for wholeness that we all possess. I went back to that story I told you about leaving my apartment and seeing the trees, the grass, the birds, and technicolor, and I realized that was one of the most significant decolonizing moments of my life. The puzzle came together that day. I could finally see this beautiful, incredible planet and my place within it. It was perfect, and if it was perfect, then I had to be perfect too, because we were

connected completely. For today's journal prompt, write a breakup letter to diet culture. Maybe you're not ready to send it quite yet, but don't forget to list the reasons you can't keep letting this freeloading dirt bag, take up precious

real estate in your mind, body, and spirit. If you want to write down your thoughts, you can sent it to us at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com or leave us a voicemail at eight six two two three one five three eight six and your story could make it onto the show eight six two three one five three eight six. When you're done, don't forget to give yourself the merit badge you earned, the bye Bye

Diets badge. You can print it out on our website, Rebel Eatersclub dot com and show us what you're eating. Tag us on social with hashtag Rebel Eaters Club or at Transmitter Pods. Next week, we're talking to model Shay Neary about how food is a witness to our experiences. We have foods that bring us in eate comfort because there they were with us in times of struggle or times of positivity. And sometimes it can bring us great pleasure, and sometimes it can remind us of things we've been through.

Rebel Eaters Clubs an original podcast from Transmitter Media, the podcast company that's like the shiniest, chubbiest cherry tomato from your garden. I'm Virgie Tovar. The show is produced by Lacy Roberts and Jordan Bailey. We had help this week from Alex Jean Laughlin show Hi Shmulevitz. Our editor is Sarah Knicks. Greta Cohen is our executive producer. Like what you hear on the show and want to sponsor us, Send us a note at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail

dot com and let us know. And please head to your favorite podcast app and give us a review. See you next week.