Christina Chaey: It took a global pandemic for me to realize that compulsion within me that was saying like "cook, cook, cook must cook." It was not actually the part of my brain that was like, "let's turn off and relax." It was the part of my brain that was like, "let's not deal with our scary thoughts." But you know, it turns out my inner mechanism has a hell of a marketing team.

Amanda Shapiro: All right, so here I am. I'm in my basement right now. My basement is usually where my living companion DJ's, but today I'm here with full podcast set up to launch the _Healthyish_ podcast episode number one. I'm Amanda Shapiro, the Editorial Director at _Bon Appétit_ and the founding editor of _Healthyish._ But, before we dive in, I want to take a look back. When _Healthyish_ launched in 2017, we talked a lot about loving delicious food and how to bring a note of health into that without it feeling prescriptive, or buying into this idea of diet culture that's so pervasive. And I've been really proud of the content that we've put out and the conversations we've had on the site, but obviously as time passes, the conversations change and evolve. And I can say for me, personally, wellness has felt really challenging in the last year and a half. Knowing that we're alive and healthy and being so grateful for those things, while at the same time, just really having a hard time negotiating the landscape of food and bodies amid a global pandemic. It's had a big effect on a lot of things: what I'm cooking in the kitchen, what I'm not cooking because I'm so tired of cooking. But for the first episode of the _Healthyish_ podcast, I do kind of want to talk about how the last year has affected us and how we've been thinking about our health on the whole. So we have two really incredible guests joining me today to give us their perspective on redefining health, the no nonsense dietitian and diehard Jersey girl, Vanessa Rissetto who's going to drop some knowledge about diet culture. You might've caught her in the Healthyish issue of _Bon Appétit_ back in February, sharing her POV is one of the few black nutritionists in the field. Through her practice, Culina Health, she's helped hundreds of people develop a better relationship with food, meeting everyone where they are on their health journeys. She's also currently working on her first book. Here's a little preview straight from Vanessa. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Really like telling people like, this is my nutritionist complex. These are fad diets. This is what all the studies show, navigate how you want. So it'll just be like a fun nutrition book with like some F-bombs thrown in cause, you know, that's how I talk. 

Amanda Shapiro: But before we get to Vanessa, I want to bring in a close friend and colleague whose journey with cooking and health is one that I think a lot of us can relate to. I know I definitely can. _Bon Appétit's_ very own, Christina Chaey, and she's known by a lot of us, and by me as Chaey. She's a senior editor at _Bon Appétit_, and she also writes a newsletter for Healthyish called "What's Chaey Cooking," which is always a delight. It's not to play favorites, but it's one of my favorite things about _Bon Appétit_ and about _Healthyish_. Hi, Chaey. Welcome to the podcast.

Christina Chaey: Hey Amanda. Thanks for having me. 

Amanda Shapiro: Tell me where you're zooming in from. 

Christina Chaey: Live from a closet, not even my closet. It's my roommate's closet. 

Amanda Shapiro: I have this memory that just came back to me of talking to you while you were in this closet in a earlier iteration of the, of the podcast, right during like the beginning of the pandemic. 

Christina Chaey: I know, dude, that is, um, that's the last time I was in here, it's like, oh, one year ago. 

Amanda Shapiro: It feels like a really nice bookend to the, to the horrible year that we've all had. I want to talk about a lot of things, but first, I want to talk about the newsletter that you wrote for _Healthyish _and just hear from you about what prompted you to write it. 

Christina Chaey: Yeah, I mean, it's funny I think that Julia Turshen, who wrote this cookbook that came out a few months ago called, "Simply Julia" and she has an essay in there that really helped me coalesce a lot of my own thoughts around the ways in which we learn what health is, the ways in which we learn to perceive our bodies. There was a line that really stuck with me, and it was one of those essays, you know, where I was reading it and I was like highlighting every other line. But one of the lines that I felt most compelled by goes, "For so long, whenever I felt fat or what I deemed fat, it was almost always a way to describe anything other than happy. Not only had I equated fat with anything other than happy, I had set up a tiny, miserable binary for all of my feelings to fit in to." And of course, that's sort of the thought that led me to kind of explore the ways in which I struggled with my own, my own binary. And one thing that I feel kind of grateful for coming out of the pandemic is that there does seem to be this like shift in the discourse that's happened in terms of the way people talk about like, what's really going on with us. 

Amanda Shapiro: Say more about that. What do you mean by the discourse? 

Christina Chaey: Even in even day-to-day interactions with friends and stuff where I kind of delight in the idea of normalizing responding to how are you with like, "not great," um, or like, "are you okay?" And being like, "no." Um, but is anybody? And, um, I don't know. I feel like there's just more of a sense of honesty that comes out of just having time, I think, to examine and assess what's going on with you when someone asks, like, how are you doing. How are you feeling? Like what's going on with you? At least in my experience, I've never before, in my working life, kind of had the luxury of time to step back a bit and make a true assessment of what maybe I needed. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, I was going to ask, do you think you would have read that essay a year ago and been able to think about the ways that you related to it and be able to express that in such a vulnerable and eloquent way, you know, had you not had that time?

Christina Chaey: Oh no, no, no, no. And, and a large part of that is because I wouldn't have been able to get here if I hadn't had a few months of therapy under my belt. No, and I think without therapy, without making space for that in my life, which I was very fortunately able to do, I wouldn't have been able to take a step back and look at the ways in which cooking was sort of like this activity that was meant to kind of mask or quell anxiety, but not really in a healthy way.

Amanda Shapiro: Let's step back a little, cause I want to talk about your relationship to cooking and how it relates to your relationship with your body and food. But I want to also talk about what your life was like before the pandemic and how that changed radically. I knew you pre pandemic, of course and you knew me and our lives were, you know, they were what they were. They were very, um- 

Christina Chaey: Right, I mean, look, honestly, sometimes I'm amazed looking back at the pace at which I was living my life. And I feel like I look back and I'm just like, how much longer do I think that could have gone on before I just kuplatzed you know? Um, like just totally lost it. I think for me, what that looked like was just, I've always kind of been a yes woman. I think that's just how I am naturally inclined to live my life. It's like, I want to go to work and then I want to go to spin class and then I want to go out to dinner and then I want to come back home and cook my own lunch so that I can take it to work the next day. And then I'm going to bike to work. I'm going to do it all over again. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah you have this huge appetite for life. 

Christina Chaey: Yeah. 

Amanda Shapiro: You were like the queen of the like 11:00 PM cooking projects. 

Christina Chaey: Right. Right. And it's funny because I remember kind of reveling in what I thought that was doing for me. I was so into the idea that these 10:30 PM, like, after everyone had gone to bed, like cooking sessions where I was alone in the kitchen, like my roommates had gone upstairs, whatever. I was so into the idea of it being like my meditatives end zone, I was like, this is how I'm relaxing. And it's like, no, you're not. You're being psycho.. Um, and I wasn't meditating. I wasn't relaxing. I was filling my mind with the minutia of "what do I need to prep? What do I need to wash? What do I need to slice," so that my brain could not contain a single other thought from my terrifying little brain. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And we talked about this I remember like, I mean, the reason we have hobbies in large part is to help us deal with the stresses of our lives. 

Christina Chaey: Right. And what's funny is like, you know, that, that whole, that whole way of living, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that it was all primarily motivated by the pursuit of health. You know, like I was using cooking as this activity, um, that I marketed to myself as a way of relaxing and de-stressing, and I would often tell people that cooking was my therapy. And it's funny because it's not like I would cook and then feel relaxed after that, you know? I would feel like totally chaotic and kind of stressed out and- 

Amanda Shapiro: yeah. And that feeling can become its own kind of addiction and cycle of like, "I'm, I can only go to bed if I feel totally exhausted and stressed out, because that means like I did all the things I did it right. If I'm, if I'm this tired." 

Christina Chaey: Yeah, and it took a global pandemic for me to realize that, that compulsion within me, that was saying like "cook, cook, cook, must cook," was, you know, it was not actually the part of my brain that was like, "let's turn off and relax." It was the part of my brain that was like, "let's not deal with our scary thoughts." um, but you know, it turns out my inner mechanism has a hell of a marketing team. 

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. Let's just take a beat and hop over to Vanessa for her hot take on COVID cooking. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Nobody is out here crushing it. Nobody's making six course meals every night. 

Amanda Shapiro: I do think that's like the life lesson of the last year is literally nobody is out there crushing it.

Vanessa Rissetto: No. 

Amanda Shapiro: I'm sure some people are and like great for them, but nobody I know.

Vanessa Rissetto: My cousin actually went to culinary school and graduated first in her class. She makes pasta with butter every night. She has like a full chef kitchen. She's like, her kids are like older. One is in college. One is like in high school. So it's not like she's chasing after people all day. She's like- I'm like, "what'd you eat today, Michelle?" She's like, "pasta and butter." 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh my God, what a flex. 

Vanessa Rissetto: She's like, "I don't care." 

Amanda Shapiro: And what do you say to her? 

Vanessa Rissetto: I'm like "good for you sis," she like owns it. She's like, "I don't want to eat. I don't want to eat vegetables. I don't want to julienne a carrot. I don't want to touch a knife. Leave me alone. Like how many vegetables can you roast?" How much- it's just a lot. That is the truth. And so everyone's coming to me and they're just like, "I'm so bored. I have no inspiration. I don't know what to do." 

Amanda Shapiro: I'm so bored. I have no inspiration. I don't know what to do. These are all things that have come out of my mouth in the last year and it's where a lot of us are at the tail end of this pandemic. And you know what? That's okay. After the break we'll get back to Christina Chaey who wrote a great newsletter earlier this year about something we don't often talk about at _Bon Appétit, _cooking less.

So you wrote the newsletter about cooking less and you've been... you wrote this one recently about redefining health for yourself. How did the two connect for you? Like how does cooking or cooking less relate to how you're feeling about, and in your own body? 

Christina Chaey: A good question. I guess, you know, if I'm cooking for myself, I am probably trying to be conscientious of cooking a lot of vegetables and whole grains and like, you know, but sometimes I'm just really tired and that's like, not what I want to do. And I think it's kind of important to honor that part too. And so sometimes, on some days, healthy means not cooking. And when I'm not cooking, frankly, I'm like, I don't know. I'm, I'm ordering takeout because I want it. And if you need something else, I can't think of a better way of honoring your own health then by honoring your needs, you know?

Amanda Shapiro: So this is where things get interesting. What Chaey is talking about is something nutritionists, call intuitive eating, and the concept behind intuitive eating sounds basic, but it can be hard to do for a lot of us. Here's Vanessa for more. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Yeah. It's just to say that you will eat what you want, when you want, in cycles, right? And there's no labels on it on food. All food is good food and you know, definitely you should have fruits and vegetables, but if the snacks for today are all cookies, that's okay too. It's it's not a problem. And I don't necessarily agree with it. And so... and that's okay, right? For me, I, I don't think that people should just eat whenever they want whatever they want all the time. It doesn't really feel good to me because, listen, intuitivity, maybe it works for you. It's fine. This is your relationship with food, I'm down. Good for you. Just like get off the gram and stop telling her, "this is the only way." Cause it's not. It's just not. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. I mean, intuition is a tricky thing, right? If you have struggled with an eating disorder and your intuition is to restrict, eating intuitively is I think a lot harder than it sounds for a lot of people. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Correct, correct. It's really complex. It's hard to see. And I just think that it's the language that's out there all the time, but it, it almost like dumbs us down. Of course, I don't tell you to count calories. Of course I'm not into fad diets. Of course, if you have, there are triggers that make you restrict then we're going to work around that. 

Amanda Shapiro: In reality, intuitive, eating goes a lot deeper than this. It's different from emotional eating, which is reactionary, something we do in response to often stress from the outside world. Intuitive eating is really about tuning into your body's wants and its needs when it comes to food. And it can be an amazing tool for people to break free of diet cycles and to stop obsessing over a number on a scale.

Vanessa, when you're working with patients, how do you talk to them about the difference between health and weight, for example, knowing that emotions are always going to be involved. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Yeah, so like for all of the practitioners out there, right? This is what we talk about. This is why there are disparities, all these health disparities among different races. You have to leave the judgment to the side. But I think for very long, Amanda, that dieticians are rich, white, and thin. So like if I'm black, LGBTQ, 300 pounds, poor, how am I gonna come and talk to you? Not seeing anyone that looks like you in a space doesn't make you think that that is for you, right? Like if you live in a housing project and you go to a nutritionist that's telling you to buy a $50 collagen powder, like how's that going to work? Or I was on a panel last night with a dietician and they were asking, "what should you avoid?" And so like, these girls were like, "high fructose corn syrup, and gums..." and I'm like, okay, but if you live in a food desert and you, you got to grab a Yoplait and all it has is high-fructose corn syrup, are you going to tell that person not to have it? So my message is always like, you can't say "do this or do that. Don't do this, or don't do that." It's not going to work because you don't, you have to meet the person literally where they are and understand who they are as an individual so that you can effectively help them. I'm not going to strip you of food or anything, but I'm going to teach you how to make better choices. Who am I to say that you need to lose weight? That's not what you called me for. What did you call me for? You called me for the fact that your triglycerides are elevated. Okay. So let me give you the language around elevated triglycerides and then the weight will likely be a by-product, but it's really about checking my bias and saying, "it's not about me, it's about you and what you want to do." And all of you don't slide into my DMS tomorrow cause I don't, I'm, I don't care. 

Amanda Shapiro: They definitely... I'm sure they will, but... 

Vanessa Rissetto: They will. They will.

Amanda Shapiro: What has the last year been like for you cooking and food wise. I'm curious how you've been feeding your family and keeping yourself motivated. 

Vanessa Rissetto: You know we're, we're very lucky. My mom cooks so we go to my parents' house on Sundays and like pick up food. 

Amanda Shapiro: Bless that mom of yours. Let's get her on the podcast. 

Vanessa Rissetto: Yeah. It's not for her. It's not for me. It's for the children, you know, like, like Rocco, my son will be like, they call her Ya-ya. "Ya-ya, mommy, doesn't make the rice like you make it!" She's like, "OK." 

Amanda Shapiro: That's the way to grandma's heart. "Only you can do it." What do you make for yourself when you don't have to cook for anyone else? 

Vanessa Rissetto: Okay. So I make a lot of like Ratatouille. It's so easy and it really heats up really well. Right? So you got like the eggplant and the, you know, the tomatoes or whatever, and they'll do goat cheese and a little balsamic glaze, it is good. And now I started putting lentils in it. It's like, it's legit. 

Amanda Shapiro: And you just have it plain, but just the Ratatouille and the lentils altogether and then the goat cheese on top after you cook it.

Vanessa Rissetto: Yup. Yup. It's good stuff. It's really good. 

Amanda Shapiro: And how about you Chaey? What are you cooking? 

Christina Chaey: Oh, I'm actually like on a weird off eggs thing right now. I just, I ate so many eggs uh, like two weeks ago and now I just can't look at them. 

Amanda Shapiro: I know you're waiting impatiently for asparagus to show up in New York. 

Christina Chaey: I know I have a secret. I bought it anyway. And you know what? It was good. 

Amanda Shapiro: I've been eating asparagus for months, just don't tell anyone. 

Christina Chaey: Um, but what have I been making recently? Well, in one of my more recent newsletters, I was talking about how I've started getting into sourdough a little bit. Which is actually, which is funny. So I got, I got some starter from our friend, Claire Savitz and, um...

Amanda Shapiro: Tell everyone, what you named it.

Christina Chaey: Oh yes. I've named my starter Claire Too, t o o which is very specific reference to our other friend, Amiel Stanek's dog whose name is Chunky Too, also t o o, inspired by the original t o o Limited Too. Yes. So Claire Too and I are just like going through some, some, some adventures right now. 

Amanda Shapiro: I have to rib you for getting into sourdough at the end of the pandemic after like most of America discovered sourdough. 

Christina Chaey: I know, look, you know what? It's, it's completely on trend with everything else I've ever gotten into in my life. 

Amanda Shapiro: So like what's your back pocket food that you know is always going to make you feel both mentally and physically calm. 

Christina Chaey: Good question. Mentally and physically calm is definitely just something in the soup realm. So I've been making some dashi again, kind of got off that track for a little bit, but I ordered some really nice, some really nice seaweed. And so that kind of inspired me to get back into that groove. And so it's nice to have some sort of clear broth option around that's not super hard to make, um, for, you know, for whatever that might be. You know, boil some soba noodles and cut up some broccoli, some scallions or something. Um, and then you have a nice little bowl of noodles. So it's either that, or probably something in the like red lentil soup category, where it's just, you know, dumping some lentils and water into a pot with some sauteed onions and garlic, and kind of letting that all stew down.

Amanda Shapiro: Are you a year round soup person?

Christina Chaey: I'm like a three-quarters soup person. Like I'm, won't really mess with soup in the summer. Too sweaty for that. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, no. 

Christina Chaey: What about you?

Amanda Shapiro: I've, I've recently finally started craving salads again as it's gotten nicer out and, uh, the let-

Christina Chaey: Me too. 

Amanda Shapiro: The lettuces have been looking quite good. Yeah. I've been, I've been doing really simple, simple meals, I think similar to you, for me, it's like, I get this attachment to following recipes. And then I realized that I actually can cook pretty well without recipes at this point, which really also took the pandemic for me to, to realize that and to like be working with more limited ingredients and kind of have to adapt things. And, and also that, like, it's often just me and my partner and he's not the toughest critic, so, you know? The other thing I want to ask you is, we are on a lot of zooms together and you always seem to have a delicious snack on hand. So I want to know what are your go-to snacks, whether that's store bought something you always have around, what are you munching?

Christina Chaey: Wow. It's true. Well, it's funny because I'm often not eating a snack during those meetings. I'm just eating like whatever the vaguely appropriate meal of the day to be eating is. But that being said, my favorite snack these days is, um, these really delicious, like salty, thin, crispy Norwegian, like flatbread crackers called Knekkebrød, which I may not be pronouncing correctly at all. There's a lot of silent... 

Amanda Shapiro: Highly recommend. 

Christina Chaey: There's a lot of silent Ks in there. Um, but so I've been eating those kind of slathered with maybe some hummus or a mashed avocado, lemon. Um, so those are very good. And also, um, guess what I totally destroyed yesterday with my roommate. 

Amanda Shapiro: Um, wait, can I guess? Give me a cat- give me a category.

Christina Chaey: Um, things that you've given me recently. 

Amanda Shapiro: Honey Mama's chocolate. 

Christina Chaey: Yeah. That's the only thing you've given me recently. 

Amanda Shapiro: That's true. It was an easy, easy hint. Oh my God this chocolate is so good. 

Christina Chaey: I was expecting a chocolate bar and not so much kind of the hippy brownie vibe that it actually was and it was just truly so delicious. 

Amanda Shapiro: Honey Mama's, made out of Portland, Oregon by just lovely hippies. It's like whipped coconut oil and honey as the base. No, like refined sugar, I think, and it's just, the texture is like a truffle in a chocolate bar form. 

Christina Chaey: So good. I had like a cherry and hazelnut one, and it was really salty too. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yes. Yes. Perfect amount of salt in those. 

Christina Chaey: So that's a peak in my snack life right now. Um, I will be back at your apartment for more of those imminently.

Amanda Shapiro: I have, I have a stash. Thanks to Honey Mama's. Okay. Last question. If you could say anything to your early March 2020 pre pandemic self. What do you think it would be? 

Christina Chaey: I feel you've become like my guidance counselor now. 

Amanda Shapiro: Me? Let me just set the scene. We're sitting in my old apartment, my March 2020 apartment, in what we call We Work, which is just like the very short-lived, uh, coworking experiment before we realized that the pandemic meant that we actually couldn't do that anymore. We had no idea what the year would hold for ourselves, you know, cooking, health wise, or otherwise. What do you, what do you wish that someone would have told you then?

Christina Chaey: Well, number one, we called it Us Work. 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh, my God, right. 

Christina Chaey: We're not a We Work. 

Amanda Shapiro: You gotta delete me saying we work cause that's copyrighted. 

Christina Chaey: Um, yes, our, our short-lived experiment and Us Work, which lasted one, one whole day. I wish that I had told myself that, that like, it would be really great to make going out on a little walk as important a daily habit as like brushing your teeth or having coffee. Um, it's also, I think, like related to that, that it didn't, it doesn't have to be a one hour walk. It doesn't have to be at 10,000 steps a day walk, you know? A turn around the block is fine, is great. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, my tip for that is, yeah, give yourself like a coffee shop, a destination. Like a latte treat at the end of the walk.

Christina Chaey: Well, I have one now that Daughter, that wonderful little coffee shop in our neighborhood is finally open. 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh are they open? Nice, nice. 

Christina Chaey: So that's a, yeah, like have a treat walk. 

Amanda Shapiro: Right? 

Christina Chaey: It's so it's just so important for just feeling a little bit more okay. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. 

Christina Chaey: I don't feel like I have great words of wisdom. It's like, what could I have told her?

Amanda Shapiro: I feel you, that's a hard question, but also that's like, I think a really great answer and really speaks to everything we've been talking about, which is like, but it, for me, not that you asked, but I having conversa-

Christina Chaey: I would love to know.

Amanda Shapiro: It's cheesy, but it's... I would've told myself to have more conversations, like this, with people I love who are important to me, because I think the isolation was something that really got to me, but this conversation has made me feel really good and really great about, I think, the people that we've become in the last year and the sort of journeys that we've begun. And, um, I'm just so excited to keep reading your writing and keep continue working with you on these, on these health and food journeys. We're on. 

Christina Chaey: Aw well thanks, Amanda. It's like, um, you know, it's the best thing we do. It's truly the thing, it's the best part of my every two weeks. That I get to write that newsletter. 

Amanda Shapiro: Well, it's such a pleasure to have it and a pleasure to talk to you, so thank you for thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for having me. And that's a wrap on the first episode of the _Healthyish_ podcast. I hope that this episode brought you some comfort knowing that you're not alone in navigating health and food. Healthy eating looks different for everyone and depends so much on the state of your mind, your body, and the world. I hope you got some inspiration to hop back into the kitchen too. Thank you to our guests Christina Chaey and Vanessa Rissetto for joining the show today. You can follow Christina on Instagram @cchaey though she's admittedly hardly on there. And you can find Vanessa on Instagram @vanessarisettord or learn more about her practice Culina Health at culinahealth.com. 

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps us keep putting out the good vibes. For the recipes and stories mentioned in this episode, you can follow _Healthyish_ on all social platforms @healthy_ish or just visit our website for more. The _Healthyish_ podcast is produced by _Bon Appétit_ in partnership with Pod People. Vishnu Vallabhaneni is our Senior Producer and Morgane Fouse is our Associate Producer. This episode was engineered by Trae Budde and our theme song is by Particle House. A huge thank you to the Pod People production team of Matt Sav, and Madison Lusby. From _Bon Appétit_, June Kim and myself provided editorial direction for the episode. Special thanks to Julie Shen, Ginny Bloom, and Nico Steele. I'm your host, Amanda Shapiro. I'll see you next week.