Episode 219: Real Health Radio is back with another guest interview and Chris is chatting with Veronica Garnett. We cover various events and aspects of Veronica's childhood that had an impact on her relationship with her body and with food, her training as a dietician and how her real desire was to go to culinary school, Veronica's anxiety and the ways that she deals with it and the different businesses that Veronica runs – her own dietician practice, Diasporadical Kitchen and Black Adventuristas.
Veronica Garnett is a Health at Every Size, fat-positive, and culinary registered dietitian with over 16 years of experience in the food and nutrition field. She provides individual and group culinary, nutrition and dietetics services that are culturally sensitive, weight-inclusive, and grounded in social justice. She is the creator and host of the forthcoming online cooking show, Diasporadical Kitchen, which aims to dismantle fatphobia, diet culture, and other oppressive systems using liberating conversations and highlighting foods from the African Diaspora. Veronica received her bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences from Howard University, her master’s degree in nutrition education from Columbia University, and most recently, her associate’s degree in culinary arts from Hudson County Community College.
In addition to her work as a dietitian and culinarian, Veronica is a plus-sized and body positive model. She is also an avid adventurista. She is the founder of Black Adventuristas, LLC, an organization with a mission to support the well being of Black women by connecting them to one another and adventure experiences in their local communities and beyond!
When Veronica is not dietitian-ing, cooking delicious food, jumping out of planes, or walking the runway, she can be found spending quality time with her family, friends, and dogs, Chewy and Pepper.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 219 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at seven-health.com/219.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. Today on the show it is a guest interview, and my guest is Veronica Garnett.
Veronica is a Health at Every Size, fat positive and culinary registered dietitian with over 16 years of experience in the food and nutrition field. She provides individual and group culinary, nutrition, and dietetic services that are culturally sensitive, weight-inclusive, and grounded in social justice. She is the creator and host of the forthcoming online cooking show, Diasporadical Kitchen, which aims to dismantle fatphobia, diet culture, and other oppressive systems using liberating conversations and highlighting foods from the African Diaspora.
Veronica received her Bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences from Howard University, her Master’s degree in nutrition education from Columbia University, and most recently her Associate’s degree in culinary arts from Hudson County Community College. In addition to her work as a dietitian and culinarian, Veronica is a plus size and body positive model. She’s also an avid adventurista. She is the founder of Black Adventuristas, LLC, an organisation with the mission to support the wellbeing of Black women by connecting them to one another and adventure experiences in their local communities and beyond.
When Veronica is not dietitianing, cooking delicious food, jumping out of planes, or walking the runway, she can be found spending quality time with her family, friends, and dogs, Chewy and Pepper.
I became aware of Veronica after hearing her on a number of podcasts and enjoying her story and all about the different businesses she’s running and the work she’s doing. As part of this episode, we talk about Veronica’s childhood, originally growing up in New York. We cover some of the events and aspects had had an impact on her relationship with food and with body. We talk about her training as a dietitian and how her real desire was to be a cook and how she did eventually make it to culinary school; it just took a while to get there. We talk about anxiety and the ways that Veronica has dealt with it. And we cover the different jobs and businesses that Veronica runs – running her own dietitian practice, Diasporadical Kitchen, and Black Adventuristas. So let’s get on with the show. Here is my conversation with Veronica Garnett.
Hey, Veronica. Welcome to Real Health Radio. Thanks for joining me today.
Veronica Garnett: Thanks for having me.
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Chris Sandal: I’m really excited to have this conversation with you. I know you’ve got lots of different projects that you’re involved in that I want to be able to share with people, and I think you also have a really interesting backstory and your journey as being a dietitian. So there’s a lot that I want to cover. You grew up in New York? Is that correct?
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, I spent the first half of my childhood in New York City and then the second half in the suburbs of New Jersey.
Chris Sandal: I don’t know how old you are, but I have this idea in my mind of New York at one point being a fairly rough place and then becoming more cleaned up and gentrified and all of that. How was it for you when you were young? What kind of New York were you exposed to?
Veronica Garnett: I’m an ’80s baby. [laughs] In the late ’80s, early ’90s growing up, I was definitely in the pre-gentrified Harlem, where 125th Street was still 125th Street with all the street vendors. The neighbourhood where I grew up was mostly African-Americans, and I was on the edge of Washington Heights, so there were a lot of Dominicans, Dominican-Americans.
I had definitely a good experience growing up back then, even with the rough-around-the-edges aspects of New York. There was still a lot of soul and a lot of culture. I don’t live in New York anymore, but when I go back to visit and I go back to the neighbourhood, the house where I grew up – I grew up in a brownstone – it’s just not the same. It doesn’t have the same soul and energy, and it feels kind of sad.
But it was great, culturally. I was thinking about my school experiences being in New York City and going to all of the museums. Going on field trips was great because everything was right there in the city for you to experience. That was definitely not my experience in New Jersey, in the suburbs. It was totally different.
Chris Sandal: I can definitely imagine that. What was growing up in your household like?
Veronica Garnett: On paper, my experience was pretty great. My mother was a college professor, my father was a lawyer, and we had a solidly middle class existence or experience.
But I think when you pull back the veil, pull back the covers, it was kind of a volatile experience, at least when my parents were married. It was tough, and I’m kind of glad my parents divorced when I was nine and my mom and sister and I moved to Jersey. I think that was ultimately probably a good thing.
As far as food, I don’t remember too many hang ups about food. I remember there being a lot of pleasure and fun with food. Both of my parents were straight size folks, and I don’t remember any restrictions.
One thing that I talk about – my dad is from Kentucky, and I remember he’d eat some of the staples that he grew up with, like fried bologna sandwiches, or for snacks or for lunch, we’d have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but they were always toasted with butter first. [laughs] Or sometimes after a long day at work, my dad would not have a regular dinner, but just come home and have cereal, like Cheerios with peanut butter. My sister and I would hang on his side and take scoops of his cereal with peanut butter and milk and all of that. So I remember there being a lot of good fun experiences with food.
And then also being in New York City, where you have such a variety of food around, it was great. I didn’t maybe have a connection – since I was five, that’s the first time I realised that I was a fat kid or I was bigger than other kids. When I look back at pictures of myself when I was younger, I’m like, I was a pretty average, normal-looking child, at least to me. But I think what was considered, and maybe what is still considered, ‘normal’ or ‘average’ – I hate saying those words, but whatever is considered straight size was just so tight. That range of normal was so tight. But to me, I looked like a pretty average kid.
Chris Sandal: Which I think is really common with clients I work with and other guests I’ve spoken to who go on to have really difficult relationships with their body and getting into dieting. They comment on how they felt that from a really young age, and then with hindsight, when they look back on photos of when they were a kid, they’re like, “I don’t understand it. I look different to how I imagined I looked. I see myself very straight size now, but at the time that did not feel like that was the case when I was a kid.”
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, absolutely. This makes me think of my own privilege. I’m a small fat. When I look back on my childhood, I may have been in a larger body than some of the other kids, but then there were kids who were in even bigger bodies, and they’re adults now who are even in bigger bodies than me, and they have a completely different experience or a worse experience. The larger you are, the worse it is.
I just imagine how tough it was for me, and I know it’s even tougher for other folks, which makes me really upset about modern Western society, how we treat bodies and people in larger bodies. It’s upsetting.
Chris Sandal: Totally. Is there a moment or an event where there was that realisation of you as a child where you became aware of your body and aware that your body is bigger than others’? Or you thought it was bigger?
Veronica Garnett: I had a moment in kindergarten – and I remember this so vividly. I wonder if my teacher would remember. She was a very nice teacher; I really liked her. I think she’s still at the school where I went to elementary school. But it just sticks out and has stayed with me all these 30 years post-kindergarten.
It was a Monday morning or afternoon, and my classmates and I were all lined up to show our homework from the weekend to our teacher. When I got up there to show my homework, my teacher made a comment about like, “Oh, you ate too many crackers and peanut butter.” My favourite snack then was Ritz crackers with peanut butter – probably Jif peanut butter. I could have that probably every day as an after school snack, and if she knew about them, I must’ve brought it to school. She made a comment, and I swear she patted me on the belly and said that I’d eaten too much. Maybe that was the first time I ever made this connection between what I ate and my body, and also my belly and my body is bigger than the other kids’.
I don’t know how I responded; I’m sure I just absorbed it. I’m sure I didn’t tell my parents. I was stunned or shocked, looking back on it now. So I would say from then on, I was fat since I was five. But still, when I look back, I was a normal, average-looking kid, or at least an average-looking kid in Harlem, when I think of Black children –whatever, I just don’t think I necessarily stood out. When I look at my school pictures, it’s kind of crazy to me.
Maybe I should say – and there’s nothing wrong with not being average or being in a larger body or standing out even more. I just want to mention that. I don’t want to ostracize or make others feel bad. I hate using the terms ‘average’ and ‘normal’ and all of that, so forgive me for that.
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Chris Sandal: Sure. I know one of the aspects that you’ve got into now – and we’ll come to the more current part of it, but in terms of cooking and really being into the culinary side of nutrition or dietetics, what was going on when you were a kid in terms of when did that come into fruition?
Veronica Garnett: We can fast forward from kindergarten for a bit. Another pivotal moment or time period in my life was around the time I was 11-12 and hitting puberty. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I think I was still 11 and that summer I turned 12. My parents were divorced at this point, but my sister and I – even though my parents were divorced, my mom was very present, and we would spend a lot of time going back and forth between New York and New Jersey. We were there for his recovery. He had surgery. It was a brownstone; he couldn’t necessarily go up and down the steps and all that stuff. So we were there helping.
My parents divorced when I was nine, so once it was just me, my mom, and my sister, that’s when I started exploring and learning how to cook. Probably making spaghetti or scrambled eggs, basic stuff. I think 11 or 12, during my dad’s recovery, I helped with some of the food, helped with cooking and making stuff, and I think my dad became more aware of my eating habits or whatever, but he started saying really negative things about my body, about my size, about my eating habits, about my double chin.
I’m a Cancer. I’m pretty sensitive and watery. But I think anybody, no matter what your sign is or no matter what, you would feel some type of way. But I would feel so bad and lock myself in the bathroom to get away from him and the comments and stuff. So that was another pivotal moment where I was like, “My body is really wrong and I’m wrong, and I’m not worthy of this love and care and concern, or this fatherly love,” because it’s coming from my dad. So that’s another pivotal moment.
Chris Sandal: I can imagine that would cut very deep coming from someone who you’re hoping is going to be loving you unconditionally, and them making comments can definitely make you feel like that isn’t unconditional love.
Veronica Garnett: Absolutely. So if you fast forward even more, I still cooked, and at this time when I was a little bit older, a teenager, Emeril Lagasse was on the Food Network and “Bam!” and the Louisiana Creole food, his whole shtick, if you want to call it that, was really big and popular.
I used to watch Food Network pretty much every day when I’d come home from school. I think Emeril came on at 8:00 every night, so I’d watch Emeril. I’d print out the recipes and ask my mom to pick up the different ingredients from the recipes at the grocery store so I could try them at home. I really started to love cooking. I would be in the kitchen by myself and I would pretend that I was cooking in front of an audience and like I had my own show. So I started to really dream, like “I want to go to culinary school and become a chef and then have my own show on TV.”
Fast forward to maybe junior or senior year of high school, I ended up going in a different direction that was kind of frowned upon. As I mentioned, my parents had terminal degrees and they had white collar jobs, so to work in a kitchen doing blue collar manual labour – because it’s hard work being in a restaurant kitchen – my mom was like, “You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to stand on your feet and do all that.” It was frowned upon.
I come from a hyper-educated family outside of my parents. Particularly on my mom’s side of the family, people have degrees on top of degrees. So I ended up studying nutrition and I was like, “Okay, maybe this is close enough to culinary arts. It’s still related to food.” I came up with all these justifications in my head. In my family we have a family history of heart disease, hypertension and stroke, a few people have diabetes. So I was like, “I can learn more about nutrition and I can have information to help my family out and community.”
So it was close enough to culinary, but really deep down – which I didn’t probably vocalize then – it was like, “I could figure out what’s wrong with me, how I’m eating, and I can change that, and I can then fix what’s wrong with me and learn how to shrink myself.” Like with most nutrition and dietetics training, it’s conflated or collapsed into just weight management and weight loss and it’s fatphobic and all BMI and all of that. So I figured, “I can learn how to shrink my body,” and then I could get that unconditional love and acceptance that I was hoping for or looking for.
So I chose dietetics. During freshman orientation week at college, I met with the woman who would become my academic advisor. My mom and I, all three of us met, and she was talking about the different nutrition programs at the school. We had a pre-med, a pre-dental program, community nutrition, but then there was dietetics. My academic advisor was a dietitian, and she was explaining the benefits of having these letters after your name, having the R.D. status, being registered.
It was a coordinated program. For listeners who may not know, most dietitians do a four-year undergraduate program, and then you graduate and then you’re matched with an internship, and you have to do a certain number of supervised internship hours. But in a coordinated program, everything happens in the four years of undergrad. It’s pretty intense. I was taking 20 credits a semester, and pretty much every summer I was taking classes, and then my senior and junior year I was doing internship and classes and everything all at once.
But after those four years, as soon as I graduated, I would be eligible to sit for the registration exam and become an R.D. I went to school in Washington, D.C., so government jobs – that’s a big deal. Getting a good government job with benefits, health insurance, retirement plan, all that stuff is the goal, and that was a possibility.
Chris Sandal: And that was what your folks were pushing you towards or hoping you would do?
Veronica Garnett: As my mom said, “Yeah, that’s what you’re going to do.” [laughs] So that’s what I did. I went down the dietetics route. I would just say my mom, because as I got older – after my parents divorced and after that summer with all the stuff going on, my dad was less and less involved in my life. By the time I got to college, my dad didn’t come to my high school graduation, or actually any of my graduations. He’s not been very present. Pretty much it was my mom or my aunts. My maternal side of the family were steering me in that direction. But it wasn’t necessarily like “You have to get a government job,” but that was good that that was a possibility.
00:21:39
Chris Sandal: Going back to the cooking piece and you doing this, you’re watching the Food Network, you’re having your own imaginary cooking show each night – how did that then sit with your thoughts around your body and wanting to change your body? Was there guiding going on at that time?
Veronica Garnett: Not necessarily dieting. Maybe. If I backtrack to my family when all of us were still living in New York, I think the time I was around seven or eight, my mom got into a health kick. She stopped buying or cooking red meat, beef and pork, so we would just eat chicken and turkey, and I guess fish. That wasn’t as often, though. And maybe we switched from whole milk to skim milk or 1% milk. There were just a few changes. But there was no restriction.
I’ve never been a picky eater. I like ground turkey, I like chicken. It’s whatever to me. We would still go out to eat and I could still order whatever I wanted. There was a McDonald’s on the corner at the end of our block, and there was a soul food restaurant right across the street from that, and we could get whatever we wanted. So whatever changes were happening, it didn’t translate into dieting or restricting or anything like that.
But I do remember being about seven, so this is the early ’90s, and Jane Fonda – I don’t know if you –
Chris Sandal: Yeah, Jane Fonda is pretty universal.
Veronica Garnett: These were my mom’s workout videos, but I remember trying to work out to Jane Fonda’s videos. [laughs] But still never restricting or anything.
In middle school and high school, I feel like some things slipped through the cracks. My mom’s a single parent and she was a professor on the tenure track. In academia we know how tough it is for Black folks, Black women, Black people in general. My mom didn’t have any help from my dad, and we didn’t have family around for a long time. So there was a lot that fell on her shoulders. I think with food, some of that stuff slipped through the cracks.
We rarely ever had breakfast. When I was in elementary school we didn’t have breakfast, but we always had lunch, because no matter what, all the kids had lunch and snacks and all of that. Once we moved to Jersey it was different. In New York, some kids have to pay out of pocket or some children get subsidized meals or free meals, but they didn’t make a distinction, so none of the kids knew. But parents who could pay would pay. It was never a delineation or whatever. Everybody got to eat.
But once we got to Jersey it was different. It was very apparent if you had free or reduced meals or if your parents were paying or if you brought lunch with you. I think maybe in about fifth or sixth grade, the lunches didn’t always happen or we didn’t always bring lunch, my sister and I. We didn’t necessarily have money to buy lunch either, so sometimes we would go the whole day without eating. So it was like an unintentional restriction because I wasn’t trying to not eat, but that was one thing that slipped through the cracks.
But if I did have money for snacks or whatever, I’d get bagels and cream cheese, or sometimes I would have whatever meal was served. But that’s just one area that fell off.
Chris Sandal: Do you think that part of the pull towards the cooking, the Food Network, you’ve been just “I’m hungry”? I’m just thinking of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and all the men as part of that really getting into cookbooks and becoming more fascinated. I know with clients I work with with disordered eating and eating disorders, how much that can really pique their interest when they’re restricting, whether that’s intentionally or unintentionally. So I’m just wondering if part of that interest was being stoked from that.
Veronica Garnett: Wow, I’ve never thought about it like that, but mind blown experienced just now, you pointing that out. Maybe that was the case. I hadn’t thought about that, but it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense.
Chris Sandal: With some of the cooking in the evening as well – you mentioned your mum was a single mum, really busy, on tenure track – so was part of the cooking that if you’re not cooking, there’s either not going to be food or the food that’s there is going to be nowhere near to the standard that you’re going to be able to put something together? So it was an enjoyment of cooking, but it was also maybe part necessity and part “This is going to be a better meal than if anyone else does it”?
Veronica Garnett: I don’t know about it being better. [laughs] Once again, I’m not a picky eater, so I could eat Wendy’s or McDonald’s and be happy, I could go to a fancy restaurant and be happy. Maybe now my tastes have changed. With COVID, everyone’s at home and cooking, and I see people – at least in the States, the situation is not under control at the time of this recording.
Chris Sandal: It’s not under control over here. It’s not just you guys.
Veronica Garnett: Okay, because it’s a mess over here. But I see people going out to eat and I’m like, nope, there is no food at a restaurant – I’ve since gone to culinary school, I should mention. I guess we’ll get into that. But I graduated from culinary school last year, and I’m like, there’s no restaurant food that I would go out and risk getting COVID. There’s nothing that good that I can’t make at home. And I really do think whatever I make at home is better than whatever I would get out there. [laughs]
The only thing that I miss about eating out is not having that to do, because every single day you have to figure out the food three times a day, and it’s too much. [laughs] It’s too much at a certain point. So I miss having other folks cook for me, that part.
But anyway, back then I think it was maybe more so out of necessity. It was necessity, enjoyment that kind of became my chore. And I should say going all day without eating – I remember being in class and my stomach growling and whatnot, but as soon as I did get home, food would happen. I would eat. I don’t think I would ever binge or anything like that, but definitely I would snack. I’d take naps, wake up and eat some more. My body needed those nutrients.
Chris Sandal: When you studied as a dietitian, was the course as you imagined it was going to be? I know it wasn’t really your first choice, and it was more doing it because that was what your mum was recommending, but did it pan out in the way that “This is what I thought I would be focusing on”?
Veronica Garnett: I don’t think I had that many expectations going in because I had never heard of a dietitian before, and I didn’t really know what dietitians did. So I don’t know if I had many expectations, besides the basic nutrition science and stuff like that.
00:30:08
But I feel like I need to backtrack. When you were asking about dieting, I have to backtrack to the summer that I turned 14. My sister and I spent our summer with an aunt. I don’t think she’ll hear this, but this particular aunt has diabetes and also is in a larger body.
She was also a doctor, but she was retired at that point. But medicine is very fatphobic too, and they use BMI, lazy measurement, to determine folks’ health and all of that. I think she had conflated – and a lot of doctors say this, or endocrinologists, people who work with diabetics. They’re like, “If you lose weight, this will help control your diabetes.”
So that summer, we did – I guess it was sort of a diet, but not really a diet. I don’t know. But we had very limited – at breakfast we would only have maybe fruit smoothies, and lunch maybe would be turkey sandwiches. We were lucky we could go to Arby’s and get a turkey sandwich and some fries or something. And then dinner was always brown rice and black-eyed peas or great northern beans. It was very limited. Green beans. Very plant-based, and if we were lucky we’d have a piece of chicken with the rice and beans, or we’d have the turkey sandwich. But it was very limited what we ate.
I didn’t step on a scale or anything like that, but then when I did get home after that summer, I had lost weight. I think maybe since then, I did have periods of my weight fluctuating. That’s what happens with weight cycling. That started to happen after that summer.
Then the next summer, my sister and I spent that summer with our aunt again, and at this point Atkins was really big, and my aunt thought or learned that this might be helpful for managing her blood glucose. This is not my choice, but we were all following this Atkins plan, or we’d have just chicken with salad, but carbs were not happening. I remember being so miserable that summer. Bathroom issues, not being able to – when you’re not eating enough fibre, not enough carbohydrates, all of that, that was a mess.
So it’s interesting how there was that unintentional restriction when I was a little bit younger, and then this unintentional dieting before my sophomore and junior year of high school that had this influence.
Fast forward to college and we’re learning about BMI and the ‘healthy ranges’ of what it should be. My sophomore year, I moved to a dorm off campus, and I had unintentionally lost a lot of weight because the dorms were off campus and we had a shuttle that was pretty unreliable, so I ended up walking everywhere. I also didn’t have a meal plan since I was off campus. So I ate less, but also wasn’t trying to restrict or anything. It just happened.
But then I’d go home for the holidays and was eating – so the weight cycling was a big part of it. But once I realised that I had lost this amount of weight and that I’d gained some over winter break when I came back for my spring semester, that’s when stuff started to get kind of crazy. This is probably the most disordered my relationship with food has ever been.
First I became a vegetarian, and then I became vegan, or I’d be vegan 29 days out of the month and then one day I could have seafood. But then I started doing some restricting. Of course, the vegetarianism and veganism, restricting a bunch of products, but for some people it’s another way to diet and lose weight. That was my motivation of doing that. It wasn’t because I was saving animals. That wasn’t it. It was because I wanted to lose more weight.
I’m trying to think of some of the things I would do. Do y’all have Friday’s in the UK?
Chris Sandal: The restaurant TGI Friday’s? Is that what you’re referencing?
Veronica Garnett: Yeah.
Chris Sandal: We have it in the UK. I don’t know if I had it in Australia when I was growing up, but it’s definitely over here.
Veronica Garnett: Okay. So at Friday’s at the time when I was in college, you could get a three-course meal or something for $20. I think I would not eat all day and then eat till I was stuffed, drink whatever I wanted, have desserts, do all that, and then the next day, stay in my dorm room with the lights out and drink water and stay in bed and I wouldn’t eat.
Or I would eat once a day. It was kind of a mess. I remember having meltdowns at the time. My boyfriend at the time was a meat eater. I don’t think he had a disordered relationship with food, but he was also in a straight size or thin body. I feel like people who are straight size in thin bodies have more permission to eat whatever and it’s okay. No one comments or says anything.
But I remember going out to eat with him, going to Applebee’s, and then having a meltdown, crying at the table because there was nothing for me to eat, because they didn’t really have vegan options, and then whatever I did get, it wasn’t good. It was just a mess. [laughs]
Chris Sandal: It sounds like prior to you going off and studying dietetics, there had been some restriction, but it’d all been unintentional. And then it was more when this course happened and there became this bigger focus on food and BMI and weight and all of this, that then spurred some intentionality into making interventions around eating.
I think that is so common with people when they study dietetics or study as a nutritionist. I think that kind of course attracts people anyway who have not the greatest relationship with food. But even someone like myself, I’ve never dieted – and that’s partly because I was always battling the opposite issue; I was always trying to gain weight and trying to do everything I could to get bigger because I’d always feel small. Just going through and studying nutrition really messes with your thoughts around food because you’re putting things up on a pedestal. You’re learning all of this information, and often this information that is so devoid of context.
I remember so many points of me studying where I’m like, “I’m not eating these things and I’m having more of those things,” and then you read some other book and that changes it to some other way. But yeah, it definitely creates, at least for some length of time, a real hyper-focus on food and then hyperawareness of how other people in your course may be eating or what they’re doing with their food. I don’t think that’s a healthy thing, but it’s really rampant.
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, it’s like a breeding ground for at least orthorexia. But definitely I think there are a lot of dieticians or nutrition students who do have eating disorders or disordered eating, orthorexia at the minimum. But it does that to you, that course of study.
00:39:14
Chris Sandal: Yeah, definitely. I’ve heard you on another podcast talking about studying dietetics and that you went to either an all Black school or it was mostly Black in terms of the classmates. Did that have an impact at all in terms of your course? Just knowing where you’ve gone onto in terms of the Diasporadical Kitchen and seeing food through that different lens, I’m just wondering – and we’ll get on to this in more detail, but was any of that started there because of that experience?
Veronica Garnett: I went to a historically Black university, HBCU. I think on some levels it maybe provided more protection than if I had gone to a PWI (predominantly white institution) for nutrition and dietetics. I think I got a little bit of protection because most of my professors and my classmates were Black or people of colour. It wasn’t all Black, though. Maybe 20% of students are not Black. Or at least at the time. I think the numbers could be even larger now.
But it is more socially acceptable to be in a larger body, so I had professors who were in larger bodies, I had classmates who – maybe they were straight size, but then I had plus size – it was just a diversity of bodies. But still, I think most of nutrition and dietetics, the training is oppressive and we’re using research that doesn’t necessarily include Black people, people of colour. There are standards that don’t take into consideration culture and cultural foods and things like that.
So some of it is just inherently oppressive and exclusive, but yeah, parts of it weren’t as troubling as when I went to grad school. I think there might be some protection, like it’s okay to be in a larger body, but still within Black culture, there is a standard of an acceptable larger body. If you have a small waist, big butt, wide hips, big breasts. Breasts could be small or whatever, but definitely a small waist, the hourglass or curvy shape or pear shape. There are definitely standards.
So I think I probably still struggled with that. I think there’s a threshold. When you’re too large, that’s not acceptable. And if your body’s not a particular shape, then that’s not acceptable either. So there were still some struggles with body image.
Chris Sandal: When you went to grad school, you moved into an area where it was more white or it was more hyper-focused on looking a certain way to be a dietitian?
Veronica Garnett: I went to an Ivy League for grad school, and it was like a reverse culture shock, sort of, because I went from being surrounded by mostly Black folks and people of colour to then being surrounded by mostly white folks. So I stood out in that way. There were very few Black students. Maybe one or two – it was very few Black students, and very few people in larger bodies. So I think I was more aware of how I stood out.
And I always have to lead with my privileges. Like I said before, I’m a small fat. I know it would’ve been even harder if I were larger. And I am a Black woman, but I am light skinned, and I know that in a lot of ways I have skin colour privilege. I know that if I were darker skinned, I feel like my experience would’ve been different and even harder than it was. I just have to acknowledge that I have quite a bit of privilege.
Privilege doesn’t necessarily protect you, but if you don’t have these privileges, it’s even harder. So I’m fortunate.
00:44:05
Chris Sandal: What year did you qualify as a dietitian? Part of the reason I’m asking is because I’m remembering with myself it was around 2008, and that’s not a great economic time. I’m doing the math and thinking you were in a kind of similar boat?
Veronica Garnett: Yes, 2008 is when I sat for my registration exam. I graduated from college in ’07 and took several months – I didn’t study for the exam, but I just took all this time before I finally went ahead and took the registration exam. This was right on the cusp or right at the time of the Great Recession, 2008. So it wasn’t a great economic time.
But in 2008, a few months after I sat for the exam, that summer after I finished my first year of grad school – I went straight to grad school after undergrad, but then after my first year I started working full time. That definitely set the tone for my career. Throughout most of my career, I’ve worked in the non-profit sector, so there’s been a lot of economic and career instability.
With that first job, for instance, I was let go from that job. They no longer had the funds for a full-time dietitian, so they could only have a part-time person. Then I worked as a consultant after that, only working a few hours a week. The position that I had taken on used to be a full-time position, but then they changed it to a consultant with only a few hours. I was only there at this consultant gig for a year because then I guess they lost their funding or the contract ended or whatever, so I no longer was working there.
Then my next job, I was there for two years but then they had some budget issues, so at the two-year mark I was given the option: I could stay on as a consultant maybe two days a week, but they could no longer have a full-time dietitian with benefits. So it’s definitely been a lot of instability with that. Working in not-for-profit is special. [laughs] I worked at HIV for about 10 years – I was an HIV nutrition specialist.
Chris Sandal: When you were finishing up your internship or with your dietetics, had you earmarked “I really want to work in this not-for-profit area. I really like the idea of HIV nutrition” and that was where you specifically were aiming towards? Or it was more where your first job happened to be and then it went from there?
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, I just kind of fell into it. My senior year in college, I trained for a marathon. There was this organisation called the National AIDS Marathon Training Program. They raise funds around different major cities. They were in D.C., I think New York, Chicago, and LA. They raised money for different AIDS service organisations or HIV service organisations throughout the country.
You would train. It was a six-month training program, so you trained to run a marathon, and then at the same time you had to raise money for these organisations. I was raising money for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in D.C., the largest provider of HIV services in the D.C. area. Of course, my motivation to do that wasn’t so altruistic; I was trying to lose weight. [laughs]
At that point I had stopped doing the vegetarian/vegan thing, so I was eating more normally but still kind of weird with my eating and stuff. But this was another way to try to shrink myself. And of course, with the weight cycling that happened throughout my college experience.
But then I became more passionate about the fundraising and the work I was doing. I was able to use that experience and put that on my resume, and I saw that this job was in HIV, so I just fell into it. And then in some ways I felt pigeonholed in that area; because I didn’t go and work in a hospital and do clinical, it was hard to get into clinical after being out of it and being in community for a while.
But also, I should say when I was doing my dietetic internship, I did not like clinical. I did not like being in the hospital. I didn’t like being in nursing. I still don’t like those environments. With food service management, I didn’t really like that either, so I felt like all that left was community. So I looked for community jobs. I felt like with community jobs, I could be more creative and I could be more hands on with food.
Because in clinical and food service, you’re not really hands on with food. You’re not really focusing on education. If you’re in a hospital, it’s a lot of “Here, give the client a handout before they’re discharged” or whatever, but I feel like you don’t really make an impact on people’s lived lives outside of those settings. So I didn’t really like those areas.
I would say overall, there wasn’t much intention behind “I’m going for this. This is what I really want to do.” It was just I fell into it, more so.
Chris Sandal: When did you discover Health at Every Size? Is this a more recent thing, or this happened shortly after you finished studying?
Veronica Garnett: It took me five years to complete my Master’s program because life happened. I’m happy to share that experience too, but I went through a quarter-life crisis.
Chris Sandal: Yeah, let’s put a pin in the Health at Every Size and let’s go to you having your quarter-life crisis.
00:50:55
Veronica Garnett: So I had this quarter-life crisis, but also – I’m trying to remember the timeline. Between 2008 and 2010, I experienced a lot of loss and grief. My relationship with my college sweetheart ended. We were together four and a half years. My first job was really toxic. I’ve worked in some toxic places, but it was really toxic. I was working at a soul-sucking, soul-crushing job.
Then my aunt passed away. This was the 200 election where Barack Obama won, so there was some excitement at least with that, but this happened right before the election, and my aunt passed away. Also, my grandmother passed away. I just messed up the order, but it was in a year and a half long period, so it wasn’t exactly in that order with those events, but they all did happen.
I didn’t have a moment to really breathe or grieve because I was working full time, going to school, and then dealing with all of this loss. At a certain point, I started having panic attacks. My anxiety was through the roof. I didn’t necessarily even have the language for that, but I started going to therapy and was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. Fast forward a few years, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder.
At a certain point I sat out from school for one year. Then I came back for a semester, sat out for another semester. I definitely took my time to get through that program. Also, in the midst of all this happening, one day I went along with – it was a Sunday. I was going to school. I would take a day off from work in the week to go to school, and then I’d work on Saturday. So Monday through Saturday, I’m in school, working, commuting from New Jersey to New York, and then on Sunday was my one day off.
One day – I don’t know if it was my mom and my sister, or one of them came into my room – because after college I moved back in with my mom while I was in grad school. Anyway, one of them came to my room or both of them, I can’t remember now, and said, “We’re going to go to Weightwatchers.” I was resistant to it, but I just went along with it.
When I look at my younger self, I just went along with a lot of things instead of moving with intention and doing what I really wanted to do. I feel like I fell into a lot of things. I was a good girl. I was an obedient child for the most – well, I don’t know. I think I was pretty obedient. So I was just following directives or orders or suggestions made by the authority figures in my life. So I went along with it.
God, that was a miserable, miserable time being on Weightwatchers. That was maybe only 10 weeks. I don’t know if psychosis is the right word, but it was definitely a crazy time. I remember weighing myself six times a day. It brought up that same kind of – is it neuroses? What is the word I’m looking for? – around weight and body and food and intake and all that stuff when I was vegetarian and vegan and trying to lose weight while a dietetic student. It brought up all that stuff.
I was working at a women’s health centre for women with HIV. Women, or people in general, have decided to focus on weight loss and dieting. That is just such a common thing, such a common conversation to have. My clients, even though they were living with HIV, there was still this pressure for them to lose weight. In the beginning, in the ’80s and ’90s, losing weight was not seen as a desirable thing for someone with HIV.
Chris Sandal: No, it was like “How do we keep the weight on?”, having a disease like that. It’s crazy to think that that’s changed.
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, it’s crazy. But there was a shift in obesity and weight loss. I got praised by clients who noticed the weight loss. But yeah, that was a miserable time period. After that I was like, “I can never intentionally try to lose weight ever again. Ever, ever again.”
Chris Sandal: You said you had a pretty bad year and a half with the relatives who passed away and everything that was going on with work – and I imagine there was probably stuff from your childhood that was still coming up. You talked about living in a volatile environment and your parents then getting divorced. If it was then at that later stage hat you first went into therapy, I’m imagining there was probably a lot of trauma and stuff that happened as a child that was still undealt with.
Veronica Garnett: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve spent about the last 11 years, not straight, but I’ve been in therapy and I’ve done psychoanalysis where you lay on the couch and the therapist is out of sight. I’ve done cognitive behavioural therapy. I’ve done all these things to try to unpack all that stuff, to heal all those wounds.
Therapy is hard. Or facing those memories, facing the trauma, the abandonment, neglect, all that stuff. It’s definitely been a journey.
00:57:15
Chris Sandal: What has helped with your anxiety? Are there things you either do on a regular basis or bigger events that have actually really helped that for you?
Veronica Garnett: Now would be a good time to talk about Black Adventuristas. After that year and a half long period of the loss and grief and having panic attacks and all that, this was now the spring and summer of 2010. When I look back on it, now I know that that was a major depressive episode, but at the time I didn’t know. That spring and summer, I cried every day for several hours a day, two months straight. That was when I finally had a moment to sit down and breathe and actually be in my body and experience the grief. It all came back to me at that moment.
But after two months of that, I’m like, “I can’t keep living like this.” At the time I was going to therapy, but when I said “I can’t keep living like this,” I decided before my 25th birthday that I was going to start doing stuff – I had just moved back to Brooklyn the previous fall, and I was like, “I want to start exploring the city.” I started getting into adventure activities, long story short.
My logic behind that was I had a fear of falling and dying, a fear of heights, and I was like, if I can conquer this fear of something that makes me really anxious, then I can deal with the little, or not so little, anxieties that I experience in my day to day.
So for my 25th birthday, I signed up for a flying trapeze class. That’s where you’re like 23 feet off the ground. I had to climb up this rickety ladder to this platform 23 feet off the ground and then swing down. There’s a net; you’re safe, but I didn’t experience that. I had a meltdown. I was so anxious. I was so afraid to go the first time, and I thought, “I can’t do this. I’ve got to climb back down.”
The instructor was like, “The best way to get down is to swing down.” So I finally built up the courage to swing and then found it be exhilarating, and then I ended up swinging four times during that course. From then, I was hooked. During my 25th year, I went to Portugal and then Cape Verde. It was semi-solo. I met up with a friend in Cape Verde, but I had a long layover in Portugal. I don’t speak Portuguese. I was so afraid.
But I had to work with my therapist about leaving the airport and going to explore Lisbon for that day. But I went and did it. Then when I was in Cape Verde, I went volcano trekking for the first time. When I was back at home, I went ice skating for the first time. I did waterfall canyoneering, white-water rafting, and then I went bungee jumping. I did all this stuff in my 25th year, and 26th and beyond. So now I’m not afraid of heights.
But for me, then it was like a self-care tool and one of the many ways to help manage the anxiety. What I noticed when I was out there doing the wilderness stuff, doing the outdoor activities, there would be very few Black people. I’d be the only one. I was like, there has to be more of us out here who are interested in these kinds of things. I didn’t see the community that I wanted, so I ended up creating it.
So I built this adventure community for Black women, and I’ve hosted different adventure events. The mission of that platform is to support the wellbeing of Black women by first connecting us to each other, but then adventure experiences in our local communities and beyond. But that all started because of my mental health crises and mental health journey.
I should say with the anxiety, that was just one tool. Of course there was therapy, there was medication. The first thing I wanted to say when you asked what I do – Prozac has been great. I was on Zoloft before. The medications have been helpful. I went to spiritual centres. I did everything that I could possibly do to get better. When it comes to mental illness and depression, anxiety, it’s never just one thing, like one and done. I’m like, I’m going to have as many tools in my arsenal as possible to get better because I don’t want to be suffering and struggling like this.
But it’s definitely been an up and down journey. I think that journey has been so helpful in the work that I do with my clients because I’ve had this experience and I’ve done a lot of the internal work. I know I’m not a mental health therapist; I don’t pretend like I am. But I can definitely hold space for people in a way that I might not have been able to if I hadn’t gone through these experiences myself.
Chris Sandal: I can say categorically you are the first guest on the show to recommend bungee jumping for self-care. But as you were listing all those events that you did, that sounds very much up my street and I would love to be doing them. I think it’s a really great thing. How long after that 25th and 26th year was it that you set up Black Adventuristas? Was it a pretty immediate thing?
Veronica Garnett: I came up with the idea in 2012. I think I misspoke; I said I went bungee jumping, but I meant skydiving in my 25th year. But I did go bungee jumping. I went to New Zealand for my 31st birthday, a solo trip by myself, got a good flight deal, and I was like “If I go all the way to New Zealand, I’m going to go bungee jumping.” So I did do that. [laughs] So it was skydiving, sorry, in my 25th year.
01:04:33
It was 2012 when I came up with the idea for Black Adventuristas, and at first it was called Chocolate Chip and Raisin. I can tell you the story behind that. That name is near and dear to my heart, but I’m glad that I changed it because people thought that I had a cookie or baking company because I was a dietitian.
But really the story behind the name is I was talking to my supervisor at one of my jobs. I was about to go waterfall canyoneering, like rappelling, and I was explaining how a lot of times when I go and do these outdoors things, I’m the only Black person, the only Black women, or one of a few. My supervisor was like, “So you’re the only chocolate chip in the cookie.” Then I was telling another friend about being the only chocolate chip, and she’s like, “I’ve been called the only raisin in the bowl of milk.”
Then I was like, chocolate chip and raisin, we’re coming together, those of us who are used to being the only Black person in a white space. Let’s come together and go on these adventures. But that was a really confusing name. [laughs]
Anyway, that was the spring or summer of 2012, and then I worked with a design team to build my website from scratch and do logo development. That took I think a total of a year or year and a half. I officially launched in the beginning of 2014, and after six months of going to networking events and trying to promote Chocolate Chip and Raisin, I realised that name was not going to work. In the summer of 2014, I changed the name and the platform.
Things picked up. Right at that same time, there was this whole Black travel movement on social media that was happening. Black folks have been traveling internationally since before then, but on social media and on Instagram it was a really big thing, so my brand got swept up in that movement. I got a lot of followers. I’d post different adventure meetups, horseback riding and wine tasting and kayaking.
We’d have different foodie adventures. I’ve had grasshopper tacos and lamb testicles. [laughs] I went to this restaurant in Staten Island where the nonas of the world, grandmas of the world, would come and cook their local cuisine. I think the day that I went, there was a Greek grandma who made lamb testicles, and I was like, I’m going to try this. Seems strange or weird, but it was all right. So I posted those types of meetups and events.
To fast forward and explain what’s going on with Black Adventuristas, when I launched it, I was laid off from one of the jobs I mentioned – the one that I could stay on as a consultant or I could take my severance package and leave. I took my severance package from the job and unemployment insurance, and I ended up not working as a dietitian for I think two years. I was working solely on Black Adventuristas during that time.
But it wasn’t financially viable. At a certain point, I need a job and I need some money while I’m building this. So I did go back to work as a dietitian. This was now 2016. I started working full time, and then I got a consultant job, and then I got a per diem job at a hospital. I was working three jobs, so Black Adventuristas went on the back burner. It’s been on the back burner – once a year I’ll have a meetup or an event. It’s very sporadic. But I just haven’t had the bandwidth.
And now with COVID, it’s definitely on the back burner. But I’m hoping when we’re on the other side of this pandemic to revitalise the brand and grow the community and get it to the place I had envisioned back then. But life happens, and I give myself a lot of grace.
Chris Sandal: It’s a great name, and it’s also a really great idea. I think just from your experience, how beneficial that was for anxiety – but I imagine bigger picture than that, it was really helpful. So to be able to offer that and be part of that and create a movement from it, that’s really, really cool.
Veronica Garnett: I’ve also struggled a little bit with what to do moving forward because I feel like I’m in a better place mentally and emotionally, so I don’t need to jump out of a plane or jump off of a platform or whatever. I don’t feel like I need that tool as much now.
Also, another thing I’m so much more aware of now is that in the adventure world, a lot of it is – I think it’s unintentional, but it is fatphobic, or it’s definitely not weight inclusive. A lot of these activities have weight limits. I think now I probably wouldn’t meet the weight requirements to go skydiving, bungee jumping. There are definitely weight limits, and I remember even struggling when I was in a smaller-smaller fat body, having the right gear and equipment. Harnesses were so uncomfortable. Bodysuits and things like that, I was pretty much the biggest size they had available. It’s inaccessible to people who are in larger bodies.
So whenever I do focus on Black Adventuristas again, I want to definitely address that inclusivity. The activities are racially exclusive, but it’s exclusive in so many more ways. For people who have different physical disabilities, it’s a challenge. So now that I have more awareness about those things, there’s some rethinking I have to do with my brand. But that was just an aside.
Chris Sandal: Yeah, but it sounds like the brand then becomes something bigger than what you originally envisaged. Before it was part of helping you with the anxiety, and now it’s served that purpose and it can go on to serve a bigger purpose where you’re looking outwards instead of internally.
Veronica Garnett: Right.
01:12:00
Chris Sandal: Let’s come back to the question of Health at Every Size. How and when did you become exposed to that?
Veronica Garnett: I learned about Health at Every Size in 2011. I was a dietitian for three years at that point. This was after I quit Weightwatchers and when I made the decision, “I am never going to intentionally try to lose weight again.” I should mention, one of my jobs, the one where I was laid off, I think the last time I ever intentionally tried to lose weight or went along with something was at that job, they had a Biggest Loser challenge. Intentional weight loss has never been a good experience for me, mentally and emotionally.
So after all those experiences, and after I had sat out of school, came back, sat out, came back, I took a course in 2011 about women and weight and body image issues, and that opened my mind to different ways of thinking about bodies and weight. I think in the fall, that’s when I learned about Health at Every Size, and I got the book by Lindo Bacon. It was a life-changer for me.
Ever since then, I took it and ran with it. So that was in the fall, and then that spring semester, I had to do my Master’s thesis, and I based it off of Health at Every Size. I created a nutrition education program for Black women or African descended women using Health at Every Size as the framework. Ever since then, I’m a Health at Every Size practitioner.
I’ve not always been able to operate as a HAES provider because I worked for other organisations and they have their rules and guidelines and funding and blah, blah, blah, but I would try to incorporate my principles and values into my work. It’s just been a life-changer.
On a personal level, it’s helped with my own journey towards body acceptance and healing my relationship with food, healing my relationship with my body.
I guess I can fill in some gaps with the storyline. I was working those three jobs. I started culinary school. When I turned 32, I was like, “I’m going to do everything I said I wanted to do and haven’t done because I was following someone else’s playbook or rules for my life, or for life in general or whatever.” So I enrolled in culinary school.
I’m a Cancer – I already mentioned that before, but I’m watery. I remember getting so emotional my first day of class in culinary school. I was like, “I’m just happy to be here.” People were asking, “What’s the dream? What are your goals for coming to this program?” I was like, “The dream was just to be here.” So I got really emotional on my first day. I had some other revelations in that first month. I’m like, this is where I’m meant to be.
I was miserable there at my job, so I quite my job and then I ended up – my consultant gig, my contract ended, and then I eventually left my per diem hospital job. I just focused on culinary school. That was one of the best educational experiences I’ve ever had. Talk about intention; that was something that was like, I’m finally going after what it really is I want to go after.
It was a two-year program. The spring of 2019 was my final semester, and in order to graduate, you have to complete an externship, a certain number of hours. I said, “I want to go to Senegal. I want to make this happen.” Maybe a year before, I was like “I want to go to Senegal,” and I thought I would go there for a graduation gift to myself. It would just be a trip afterwards. But Senegal was still on my mind, and then I realised that last semester that I had a six-week period where I didn’t have any classes in person on campus because the classes went in five week cycles. My second cycle, I didn’t have any classes on campus. I was like, what if I did my externship there?
So I ended up doing a fundraiser and rallying my community. So many people supported me and helped me reach my fundraising goal so I got to go to Senegal for six weeks for my culinary externship.
Chris Sandal: Why Senegal? What is it about Senegal that was calling you?
Veronica Garnett: When I was living in Brooklyn, I went to this restaurant which I thought was Senegalese. The owner was Senegalese and definitely had some Senegalese dishes, but now that I look back on it after my time in Senegal, his food was definitely modern fusion Senegalese food. But it was some of the best food that I’ve ever eaten. And I’ve gone to other Senegalese restaurants, and I thought Senegalese food was so good.
I knew I wanted to go to West Africa or some African country because in most modern Western culinary schools, you learn classical French cuisine and culinary techniques, and that was the case with my culinary school. It was very Eurocentric. I had an international cooking class, but each lesson was just a different European country. Most of my classmates were Black and Latinx, but there was no focus on African food, Caribbean food, South American food.
So I really wanted to explore foods from the African Diaspora. The dream for me, at least when I went to Senegal, or after I graduated, the dream was I would love to go country hopping throughout Africa and learn all about the food. The same thing that I did in Senegal, I want to do in every other country. I’ve only been to two countries in Africa. There’s 52 more that I want to go to and just explore the culinary traditions and the current culinary scene. I would absolutely love to do that. But that was not the focus in my culinary studies, so I just went after that myself because that was something I was interested in.
While I was in Senegal, it was time for my registration status. I knew before I left that if I didn’t pay whatever money, my registration status was going to lapse. I actually let my registration status lapse. I remember crying – again, because I’m a crier – crying tears of relief because I was like, “Thank God I don’t have to do this anymore. I don’t want to do it.” It’s been a hard journey.
I know I haven’t gone into too much detail, but being a dietitian – the study of nutrition and dietetics is kind of oppressive and fatphobic, but being out in the world as a dietitian in a larger body, most people’s vision, when they think of a dietitian, they think of a thin white woman. I’ve never been that, never will be that. So it’s just been challenging.
We have to recertify every five years, and each one of those times when it’s been at the five-year mark for me, I’m like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I’ve wanted to quit so many times. And I can say the times where I didn’t work as a dietitian, like that two-year period where I was just focusing on Black Adventuristas, and the time I was in culinary school and not working, those were some of the best times for my own – talk about body image and relationship with food. Being away, having distance from the field was a good thing for me.
01:21:14
Chris Sandal: Do you think some of that is because you worked for other people as well? If you were running your own business as a dietitian, you can brand yourself in a certain way so that being in a larger body isn’t – I mean, yes, in society it can be seen as a detriment, but it can then become part of your brand, and then you’re able to put Health at Every Size at the forefront in a way that you can’t when you’re working for someone else. If that had been the way you’d gone, it may have been somewhat easier?
Veronica Garnett: Yes, absolutely. I guess I was eventually going to get there with my long-winded story. [laughs] I was eventually going to get to that.
After I graduated, I followed Christy Harrison. I still follow dietitians who are at the forefront of the Health at Every Size movement, Intuitive Eating, anti-diet culture movement. What I noticed is that the people who are driving this conversation are still relatively privileged, thin, white, cisgender, able-bodied women. I’m like, who better to talk about Health at Every Size than me?
Also, that same summer after graduating, I noticed myself giving gentle nutrition advice to friends. I’m like, oh my God, I try to get out of the field and you pull me back in. [laughs] So at a certain point I paid to be reinstated as a dietitian. It was retroactive, so the time period where my registration status lapsed is like it didn’t happen. At least on the books.
But I did decide to get back into the field, and I was like, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to do it my own way. Actually, I had a conversation with Christy Harrison, and I ended up on her podcast, but we spoke before then, talking about the podcast and things. She had asked if I’d ever thought about private practice. I think the day before, a friend of mine had asked me the same thing, like, “Yeah, what about a private practice?”
I was like, okay, this is a sign that multiple people are asking me about this. If you fast forward to today, since the pandemic, I started my virtual private practice. Now I get to work as a Health at Every Size clinician. I get to operate the way that I want to.
I haven’t posted that much on my @VeronicaTheDietitian Instagram page, but my last post was Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, and I posted “fuck Columbus” on my Instagram page. I would never have thought about doing that while I was working for someone else, but I get to be more of my authentic self and to bring my social justice leanings or values to my work. It’s been an actual joy working with my clients. All my clients now are plus-sized, larger body, or fat – whatever words they prefer to use. I personally use the word fat. Folks have reclaimed that word, so I don’t have a problem with it, but I know not everyone is there. I use any one of those descriptors, but everybody is plus sized.
I feel like my clients are looking for someone like me. I work with a lot of people of colour, I work with a lot of queer and trans folks. People with marginalised identities, and they’re looking for someone who gets it. All of my experiences up until this point have definitely helped me be able to do the work. It’s such a joy and a pleasure. All of my clients are amazing and smart and intuitive and perceptive and amazing human beings. I’ve told some of them, but I was like, “I really want you to see yourself the way I see you.”
With the body image stuff, I see how wonderful my clients are, but just because you’re in a larger body, that takes away from the totality of your being? It makes me angry. It makes me angry that society does this to people. We have these terrible standards that cause so much harm. So now I’m really enjoying the work that I do.
Chris Sandal: It sounds like you found a really good match for your lived experience, your skillset, and then people who can really benefit from that. As you were saying, if the people who are at the top and pushing this movement don’t necessarily match up with the clients that you’re seeing, it means that you’re able to carry on that Health at Every Size message for people who may otherwise not find it.
Veronica Garnett: Right.
Chris Sandal: What about Intuitive Eating? (A) How did you come across that, and (B) how does that work with the people that you’re serving? Because I do know that Intuitive Eating has its limitations, and it’s not always appropriate in all situations. I just wanted to get a sense for you, how you feel that that matches up with what you’re doing.
Veronica Garnett: Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size, they both have their – what was the word that you just used?
Chris Sandal: Limitations?
Veronica Garnett: Yeah, they both have their limitations. I think of it kind of like in mental health where there’s multiple treatment modalities, but we’re all trying to get to the same goal of mental wellness. You have the CBT, PBT and blah, blah, blah. Or with religious spirituality, we’re all trying to get to this one truth and spiritual enlightenment, but there’s Christianity and Islam. I think it’s sort of the same thing with Health at Every Size or Intuitive Eating. Maybe these aren’t the frameworks that work for everyone, but it works for some folks, and we’re all getting towards the same truth or having that healed relationship with food and the body.
But with Intuitive Eating, I think I first heard about it probably around the same time that I heard about Health at Every Size, but I definitely say that I’m a Health at Every Size practitioner. That’s just what I gravitated towards more. I didn’t read Intuitive Eating until last summer, so I didn’t connect to it as much. But I understand the principles and connect to them in some ways, and I do use some of those exercises that are in the Intuitive Eating workbook in the work that I do with clients.
But I’m definitely not an Intuitive Eating counsellor. I’m not certified or anything like that. I use parts of it, if it’s appropriate or if it works.
Chris Sandal: Yeah. I interrupted you a while ago, back when you were talking about the culinary side of things and where that was heading. So finish off talking about what happened after you came back from Senegal and how you embarked with the culinary stuff.
01:29:30
Veronica Garnett: I should backtrack a little bit. In 2018, Momentum Education is this personal growth and development program/community, whatever you want to call it. It’s like coaching and group healing. It’s not therapy, it’s not religion or anything. It’s another area. I don’t know what to call it. But yeah, coaching and personal growth and development. So I went through their whole curriculum in 2018. In the spring, I did their leadership training program.
One of the results that I said I wanted to create then was I wanted to produce a few episodes of my own cooking show. That was the dream when I was a teenager. So I worked with two of my teammates; we produced three episodes. Actually, it was four, but we lost footage for one. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. [laughs] We produced three episodes of a cooking show. You can go on my YouTube channel now and it’s just three less than 10-minute videos. I’m standing in front of the camera and I made three different dishes.
But I only did those three, and then fast forward, now I’ve done my internship, I’ve graduated, and I’m like, I want to do something different with the show. I said that I wanted to have these liberating conversations and I want to talk about fatphobia and dismantling these systems of oppressing and diet culture and racism, anti-Blackness, all of that, to have these conversations while focusing on foods from the African Diaspora.
So it would be a cooking show kind of like The Two. I don’t know if The Two came on outside of the United States, but it was a talk show where they cooked and made cocktails and did crafts and things like that.
Chris Sandal: I don’t watch a lot of cooking, so it may have and I just didn’t see it, or it hasn’t. I can’t say.
Veronica Garnett: Okay. It was sort of like that, where I wanted to have guests come on. The first videos I made the year before, it was just me standing in front of the camera. But I’m like, I want to have guests and I want to talk and have these conversations and cook food.
Then I was driving around on a Saturday night and I had an epiphany. I was like, what about Diasporadical Kitchen? Diaspora because my culinary point of view is the African Diaspora, and then radical, Diasporadical, radical because we were having these radical liberatory conversations. And then kitchen because of course it’s a cooking show.
I came up with the idea last summer and I reached out to some folks who were ready and gung-ho to join. I’ve done some modelling for this brand called Smart Glamour, which is an all-inclusive brand, inclusive of gender and size and race and ability, all of that stuff. One of my favourite brands. I did some modelling with Smart Glamour, and I reached out to some of the models I had met on that part of my journey. I reached out to some friends. I’m like, “Let’s do this.”
This past spring I was hoping to go into production. It was just going to be at my house and I would have people over, and we’d cook and eat a meal, but then we’d record it and all that stuff. But then COVID happened. [laughs] So it’s had to sit on the back burner. I haven’t seen my friends in how many months now? But I’m hoping once we’re in a post-COVID world, I’m also able to get back into that, because I was really excited about that. I think that was a good medium to bring together all of these experiences that I’ve had and all the skillsets I’ve developed. It would all come to fruition there with Diasporadical Kitchen.
01:33:42
Chris Sandal: When I heard about it, I was like, this is such a lovely idea. I think you did a talk for a conference on multicultural competent nutrition care, and I think it’s just such an important idea of really meeting people where they’re at in terms of the kinds of foods that they have grown up with or the kinds of foods that are part of their heritage.
I think back when I was growing up in Australia, in high school and at university; my best friend was Lebanese, and he was born in Australia but his parents had grown up in Lebanon and then moved out to Australia, and every time I would go round to their house, they would have the most amazing Lebanese food. I to this day miss going to his house on a regular basis. It was just wonderful.
I think if they had had to go to a dietitian, for example, and they’re then being recommended this food that is completely disconnected from all that, I think it makes it so difficult. They’re not going to follow through. So to be able to be looking at someone’s background, what they know, what they actually enjoy, and starting from that place – if I’m thinking from an Intuitive Eating perspective, maybe one of the things that you do regularly work with or take from that is the idea of satisfaction and being able to help people find that satisfaction in the way that they eat. And a lot of that is going to be based on what they’re used to from a cultural perspective and from a growing up perspective.
Veronica Garnett: Absolutely. I think there’s this notion that what we think of as healthy or nutritious food is very Eurocentric. In my opinion, that is not the only way to be – and also, Black food or soul food or Caribbean food or African food is looked at as if it’s inferior. With soul food, for instance, people call it slave food, which I think is an insult to the ancestors, if you ask my ancestors. People were using ingenuity to nourish and feed themselves, but it’s frowned upon.
But our cultural and culinary traditions are so important, and they can be healthy and nutritious and nourishing and satisfying, all of those things. When you were speaking, it made me think about – I’ve created meal plans for clients. And I don’t do meal plans in a traditional sense in that I don’t put portion sizes or exchanges or anything like that. Most of my clients, no one has an active eating disorder; they’re in a good place with recovery or they just have disordered eating and never had a diagnosis. So I can do that, and we’re working on Intuitive Eating, so it’s Intuitive Eating coaching or getting them attuned to their hunger and satiety cues and all of that.
But I like to give a plan to show “This is what a day of eating could look like,” and then I make sure to include all the food groups and all that kind of stuff. But then I work with clients to help them get attuned to – I can’t tell you what portion size is appropriate for you. You have to pay attention to your body, and all of that.
Anyway, I made these meal plans, and I had one client who was Haitian-American, and I made sure to include griot and – what are some of the other – I just made sure to include traditional Haitian dishes. I won’t even alter some of the foods. If you have fried plantains with something or you have fried meat or whatever, that stays exactly the same. And maybe for snacks, we make sure we get a vegetable or fruit in or some yogurt or calcium-rich food or whatever. But I don’t change the actual foods necessarily. Or if you want to add some more nutrition by adding some more vegetables to this, sure, go ahead. But het heart of the meal and the dish is still the same.
I have another client who is indigenous Native American and Samoan, so I made sure to include both Samoan food and Native American food, and this variety. My clients were vocal about being so appreciative that I created that plan for them and included that. It’s just so important. It’s so important for me to be able to do that, and I think it’s so important and valuable for clients to have a clinician who understands.
I mean, I might have to do some research; I don’t know all the foods all over the world. [laughs] But yeah, it makes a difference when you put in that effort to learn about your clients. Of course their cultural foods, but also their cultural values and their worldview that influences the therapeutic relationship.
Chris Sandal: Yeah. Bigger picture, it’s meeting someone where they’re at and respecting where they want to go with it. We had an experience recently where when we bought the house that we live in, the previous owner was a gardener for the National Trust. The National Trust is this heritage foundation where they have lots of lovely homes and lots of lovely gardens and all of this that is looked after by the National Trust. She was a gardener at one of those places.
So as part of this house, we have this beautiful garden that is this lovely cottage-y garden, but both myself and my wife have no ideas about gardens. We don’t really know how to manage it ourselves, so we’re trying to get in a new gardener to help out. She basically just came in and wanted to do everything her way. There was no conversation around “What aspects of this do you really like? What are the things you don’t want in here? Do you have an idea of how you would like this to be?” It was just her coming in and telling us all of her point of view and why we should get rid of this thing and put in this thing.
There was just this complete disconnect, and in the end we didn’t end up going with her because it was like, at no point was there any conversation around what we would like and how we would want to go ahead with this. I think that’s really important, and what you’re doing when you were talking about meeting people with the foods they are more accustomed to and that they’re going to like is doing that.
I also reflect on if I go away – I remember going to Thailand and having the most amazing holiday, and I love Thai food. I can never get enough of it when I’m over here. But after a number of days of eating Thai food for every meal of the day, I’m kind of craving what I’m more used to. I’m trying to find things that are part of my more regular diet. I think that’s going to be the same. If you’re recommending something different to people, maybe for the first week they’ll follow it if possible, but after a while they’re like, “No, I want to get back to the things that I’m used to or feel more commonplace for me.”
So yeah, I think what you’re doing in that area is really wonderful.
Veronica Garnett: Yeah. That also makes me think – I guess with traditional dietetics, people do give a plan and give answers and give solutions, and I think maybe initially it’s kind of weird for clients because I say pretty much, “These are your sessions. This is your life. I am not the expert on your life and what will work for you.” I ask a lot of questions during my sessions to get people to think, but I’m like, “I’m not here to tell you what to do or to mandate. If I give homework, it’s a suggestion.”
I think people have everything within them to achieve whatever goals it is that they want. I think we have that internal wisdom and knowledge, and I’m just here to help gently guide and support, but I’m not here to tell anybody what to do. Of course, that shows up with whatever food recommendations I make, too. This is still your life, and this stuff has to be relevant and familiar and all those things.
Chris Sandal: I agree. I know when I’m working with clients, there are areas I have expertise in and that I am the person who is more knowledgeable on that just by the fact that I’ve done the study on it and I’ve done the research on it, but there are a majority of areas where it is much more either a collaboration or it’s much more they’re going to be telling me all the things because they’re the one with the lived experience. They’re the one living in that body.
So yeah, I think definitely from my experience of doing this for the last decade or more, it has definitely been much more of a shift going from “I’m the expert; I’m going to tell you what to do” through to “This is a collaborative effort, and I know that there are some areas where I know more, and then there’s lots of areas where it’s not the case.”
Veronica Garnett: Yeah.
01:44:15
Chris Sandal: This has been a really lovely conversation. I’m really glad that you came on the show. Where can people be finding out more information about you?
Veronica Garnett: How do I want to do this? [laughs] I have a bunch of Instagram handles and several email addresses and websites. But a good place to start is just Veronica Garnett across the board. My website is veronicagarnett.com. At the time of this recording, I’m revamping my website. It’s kind of like my online resume, so you’ll be able to click on all the different projects I’m working on.
If you’re interested in just the nutrition piece and my nutrition practice, that’s veronicathedietitian.com, and @veronicathedietitian on Instagram and Facebook, and @VeronicaRD on Twitter. But Veronica Garnett is probably a good place to start, and then you can find information about Diasporadical Kitchen, about Black Adventuristas, and whatever other projects I’m working on.
Chris Sandal: I will put the links to all of this in the show notes. Thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed this.
Veronica Garnett: Thank you so much for having me.
Chris Sandal: That was my conversation with Veronica Garnett. I’m so glad that she has made her way into being a dietitian for herself rather than for other people, because it is just so much of a better fit for her.
That is it for this week’s show. I’ll be back with another episode next week, so stay safe and I will catch you soon.
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