A Pudgy Belly Can Be a Strong Core

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

Today Virginia is chatting with Anna Maltby.

Anna is a health journalist, editor, content strategist, personal trainer, and author of the newsletter How to Move. Anna also created Pilates For Abortion Funds, a monthly online class that has raised about $30,000 for abortion funds since July 2022. She has been an ACE-certified personal trainer since 2015, and a certified mat pilates instructor since 2021. She’s also a certified prenatal and postpartum exercise specialist. Anna lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids, and two extremely cute cats.

Anna was previously a guest on one of Burnt Toast’s most popular ever episodes, The Myth of Visible Abs. What’s so great about Anna—and what makes her different from a lot of fitness writers and personal trainers out there—is that she’s so smart about bodies, she’s truly anti-diet and size neutral as a fitness professional…and, she’s been in the belly of the beast. Anna worked in women’s magazines with me long enough to know all the diet culture tricks. So she’s one of my favorite people to talk fitness with, because she can dissect what is marketing, what is diet culture, and what is actually maybe useful for your body.

Two content warnings for today:

1. We are going to talk about specific forms of exercise. This will always be through a weight neutral lens, but if you’re recovering from an eating disorder or just otherwise in a place where exercise is not serving you, please take care.

2. CW for Butter, because we ended up talking quite a lot about toilets! And while I feel it’s all incredibly practical information and you’re going to thank me for my great Butter recommendation this week, I do realize that toilet conversation is not for everyone. It’s usually not for me! So I get it! You’ve been warned.

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Disclaimer: You’re listening to this episode because you value my input as a journalist who reports on these issues and therefore has a lot of informed opinions. Neither my guest today nor I are healthcare providers, and this conversation is not meant to substitute for medical or therapeutic advice.

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CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. Follow Virginia on Instagram, Follow Corinne @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing and subscribe to Big Undies.

Our theme music is by Farideh.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe