Comic Fortune Feimster Joined The Swim Team For The Fun Dip

"I've always been a fan of food," comedian Fortune Feimster says in her 2020 stand up special, Sweet and Salty. She joined the swim team in grade school just for the snacks. As a chubby kid who became a chubby adult, she often played her body for laughs.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:42Dan Pashman?

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• 1:27Dan Pashman?

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• 1:34Dan Pashman?

  Please note, this episode contains discussion of body image and weight loss, including specific quantities of weight lost.

• 1:42Dan Pashman?

  There is this cake that Tom Cruise is known to send to people he works with. Like, even the lighting guy in one of his movies gets this white chocolate coconut cake from a bakery in LA called Don's.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  So, I sort of jokingly posted on Instagram, like, that this was on my vision board to try.

• 2:02Dan Pashman?

  This is comedian Fortune Feimster. A friend of hers did a thing with Tom Cruise, and he got the coconut cake. Fortune saw a photo of it and became obsessed. She had to get one for herself.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Preferably, I wanted it sent from Tom Cruise.

• 2:15Dan Pashman?

  Well, of course, yeah.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  This food delivery service, Goldbelly, sent me one of them.

• 2:21Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  And then I did the Kelly Clarkson Show, and she also surprised me with one.

• 2:25Dan Pashman?

  Well, so in preparation to speak with you, Fortune, because I'm a consummate journalist.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:31Dan Pashman?

  With a modest expense account, I ordered the cake.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  You did?

• 2:35Dan Pashman?

  Yes.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:36Dan Pashman?

  It was delivered to my house yesterday.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:39Dan Pashman?

  I don't think I've ever been so excited to receive a package. Like, they sent me the UPS tracking. I kept going out to my front step all afternoon, opening up the front door to see if it was on the stoop or not.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 2:51Dan Pashman?

  If UPS was delivering a suitcase full of cash, I would not have been checking the front door as often.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  That, I love that.

• 2:58Dan Pashman?

  But so, I, I, I want to know, after the buildup, what did you think of the actual cake?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  It, it was so good that I froze part of it. I, I'm not a person that freezes food. I'm always like, it's never gonna be as good.

• 3:15Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  And I broke it out a couple of days ago, and I popped it into the microwave for like 20 seconds. Still is delicious.

• 3:22Dan Pashman?

  Really?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I really thought it lived up to the hype. Like, it's not nuts, but there's like something in there, like, maybe like white chocolate chips.

• 3:29Dan Pashman?

  Yes, which adds crunchy bits.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a delightful cake.

• 3:33Dan Pashman?

  Oh, my god. This might have been my favorite coconut cake of all time.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:37Dan Pashman?

  Well, what I loved, first of all, it's a bunt cake.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:40Dan Pashman?

  Which means, which means that, you know, a typical, a classic coconut cake is just your multiple layers, frosting on the outside, and then a frosting layer on the inside.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47Dan Pashman?

  The bunt cake has no interior frosting layer, but it has, because it has the hole in the center, you have a lot more exterior frosting.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Dan Pashman?

  And I don't know about you, Fortune, but I think that exterior frosting is way better than interior frosting.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, interior frosting doesn't, doesn't satisfy you as much for some reason, because it's such a tiny layer.

• 4:08Dan Pashman?

  Well, and when the outside frosting gets exposed to the air, it also kind of like starts to harden just ever so slightly, so you get that little bit of like crispy crustiness.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:18Dan Pashman?

  My major takeaways were that all cakes with frosting should be bunt cakes, and also, I now have a lot more respect for Tom Cruise.

• 4:28Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sportful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. In 2020, Fortune Feimster released her stand-up special, Sweet and Salty. It was taped in Charlotte, North Carolina, about a half hour from Belmont, where she grew up.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Now, I grew up Methodist, which is considered Christian Lite. And all that we cared about was that the preacher was done with the sermon by noon so that we could beat the Baptists to the Chili's.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  It'd be 11:55, and if the preacher was still yammering on, you could hear the choir slowly start singing, "Baby back ribs, how sweet the sauce."

• 5:26Speaker 01

  We're like, "Preacher, wrap it up!"

• 5:30Dan Pashman?

  In 2003, after college, Fortune moved to LA. She was a writer and performer on Chelsea Lately and a fan favorite on The Mindy Project, where she played the nurse Colette. Sweet and Salty was Fortune's first full hour of stand-up. And I want to play a longer clip for you to really give you a sense of what that special was, because it was some of the most personal work she'd ever done to that point, and it included a lot of stories from her childhood.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I've always been a fan of food, my whole life. And you know, some people, if they were a fat kid, they will look back on it and be very bitter about it. Not me. I love being a fat kid. You know why? No one ever tried to snatch me.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  I love food, and I never exercised. They wanted me to join the swim team in my hometown. And so I was like, "I don't know." They said, "Just go check out a meet, see what you think." So I went to a swim meet, and I noticed that all of the swimmers were eating Fun Dip before their races. You guys remember Fun Dip?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  It's just a packet of sugar and a piece of chalk.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  So they would eat this Fun Dip before they raced because they thought that the sugar would help spike their energy up and help them swim faster. I'm like, "I'm not here to question the science, but I would like to join the swim team."

• 6:49Speaker 01

  So I joined the team for the Fun Dip. And they proceeded to feed me Fun Dip and nachos the entire swimming. They just kept going back and forth. I just kept eating it back and forth. Sweet and salty, sweet and salty.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  And I was so consumed with the Fun Dip and nachos that I ended up missing every single heat.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  And nobody realized it until the very last heat, which was the hardest stroke. It was the butterfly. And this mom volunteer comes running up in a panic. She goes, "Fortune, your hat and swam."

• 7:35Speaker 01

  And I go, "Ugh."

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Because I was in a diabetic coma.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  She goes, "Fortune, you gotta go swim. If you don't swim, the whole team gets disqualified. And if we get disqualified, we don't get a free pizza party at the end of the summer." I'm like, "Pizza party? Why didn't you lead with that?"

• 7:59Dan Pashman?

  Fortune, I have a special surprise for you.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Whoa, Fun Dip!

• 8:03Dan Pashman?

  I hereby present you with some Fun Dip. Will you indulge with me here and have a little taste?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure. I gotta take a picture of this before I dip into it.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Fun Dip. Yum.

• 8:19Dan Pashman?

  So which flavor are you going with?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I'm going Raz Apple Magic Dip. It's blue.

• 8:25Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, it's funny that the raspberries are blue, but I think that's an indication that it's like the perfect kind of artificial...

• 8:31Speaker 01

  You gotta lick the stick.

• 8:33Dan Pashman?

  So I was gonna ask about your technique. So you want to lick the stick first so that you can pick up the...

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Pick up the sugar.

• 8:38Dan Pashman?

  And do it too, yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  You know, I have not actually had this since my swim team days. Mmm. Now, are you a, it's good. I mean, it's all sugar.

• 8:49Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  It does feel like we're drinking Kool-Aid mix.

• 8:54Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. Who needs the water?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Do you eat the stick? Are you a, do you eat this?

• 9:00Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  You do? I never ate the stick.

• 9:02Dan Pashman?

  Really?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  To me, it's just a way to get the sugar from the packet to your mouth. It's a vessel.

• 9:11Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. I can respect that.

• 9:15Dan Pashman?

  But I, I, I like the crunch of the stick. And I like that it's a little bit tart. It's like a sweet tart.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  It's very sour.

• 9:20Dan Pashman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I shouldn't be eating this on a regular basis, but it's a real nice treat. It really does make me think of the swim team.

• 9:30Dan Pashman?

  Are you now experiencing a mysterious craving for nachos?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I do feel like there needs something salty to come in. It just kind of cuts the sweet taste a bit.

• 9:45Dan Pashman?

  Growing up, Fortune says she never really felt like she fit in, but she didn't really know why. In elementary school, she was very shy. But when she got to middle school, she started watching SNL. She'd come into school and reenact the sketches. That was the first time she realized she could make people laugh. Do you remember the first time that you played your body or your appearance for laughs?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  I do, actually. Uh, it was eighth grade and I was running for treasurer of the student government. And we had to do this, um, like, assembly in the auditorium where you, it's so embarrassing. I can't believe that I even did it. Like a, like a 14-year-old has any control over anything. I'm gonna use this money to buy everybody, you know? No, you're not.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  My older brother was like, oh, you gotta play Pink Floyd's Money. And I, you know, I'm, I'm like, who's Pink Floyd? I don't even know. And so I gave them the, you know, CD or whatever, or probably tape at that point. And, uh, before I even started my speech, it was supposed to play. And, um, it didn't play. So I was standing there up on the stage, waiting for this music to play. Finally, it started playing and then it wouldn't stop.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  And so I'm like waiting for it. I'm like standing there. I haven't said anything and I've been up there like five minutes already. It wouldn't stop. So I started like doing like body rolls and like moving my body and and people started dying laughing because I was using my body for the first time to to dance with this song and they thought it was hysterical. And I just remember like being like, whoa, that was like, I can't believe I turned, was able to turn such a weird moment into something really funny. And like, people were talking about it for like the next week.

• 11:47Dan Pashman?

  And how did that affect the way you thought about your own, about your weight?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it, there was something inside of me that thought, okay, well, it doesn't, being a chubby kid doesn't have to always be bad. But I also grew up in the time of Chris Farley, you know, and he was, he was making people laugh all the time and he was so physical that I, I started to see using that to your advantage as being a positive thing. And I never ate a salad again.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  What if I was like, and that made me stop eating vegetables?

• 12:30Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  No, I just, you have to, I mean, I've always been big and my family's big, like it's just kind of, we have the world's worst metabolism. Part of it's what I eat, part of it's genetics and it, and I've certainly tried to be healthier because you want to live longer and, and, and lose weight. But you know, at some point you kind of are like, I'm always going to be a big, a bigger version of a, of a person, whatever weight that looks like. And at some point you do have to just like, you can't hate yourself constantly. You have to be like, okay, this is who I am. I'm going to try to be better. I'm going to try to make better choices and be healthy, but also I'm not going to hate myself. I'm going to take what I have and make it work for me.

• 13:17Dan Pashman?

  Was there a period where you did hate yourself for your weight?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sure it was, uh, it affected my self-esteem, but it was a combo of things. You know, I was not only a bigger kid, but I was in the closet. I didn't know that I was gay. And so I was never the object of, of any guy's affection. And I, I've found that to be true for a lot of gay people that I know who didn't learn till later. You never quite understand why when you meet a guy, you know, when you're 15, 16, and there's no, um, there's no thing there. You're like high-fiving each other immediately.

• 13:58Dan Pashman?

  Like, why isn't it going the way it goes in the movies?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, why don't we have that chemistry? And, uh, and you just assume it's your fault. So there's a combo of things, you know, when, when you don't know you're gay and you're overweight, uh, where you do start to be like, God, am I ever gonna, am I ever gonna be the, the person that someone, you know, likes and wants to call? And, and I was always friends with everybody, but I didn't really date much. And so, you know, that has to affect your self-esteem to, to an extent where you're really down on yourself. But I was really lucky in that I, my grandmother was a huge influence on me. And I spent a lot of time with her because my parents worked a lot.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And she just sort of instilled this like unconditional love, this like, she was so proud and, and it instilled a self-esteem in me, uh, that I've been able to carry with me to this day. And I'm really grateful that I had someone like that. Cause I think it takes, it really takes one person to just be like, I believe in you. You're great. I love who you are and, and who you are is enough.

• 15:19Dan Pashman?

  In comedy today, there are different views on self-deprecating jokes. In 2014, she told the website Vulture, quote, "My sense of humor is definitely self-deprecating, which some people are into and some people are not. Let's face it, I look different, I sound different. I'm a bigger girl, I'm a lesbian. I'm coming to the table already with a lot of differences. So I'd rather be the first one to play it out. For me, it's like taking that power of, I'm gonna say it before you can think it. And then, it's okay for some reason. I've been this person my entire life, and the way I was able to fit in, growing up, and not get made fun of, is that I was able to make people laugh."

• 16:00Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Fortune tells me what rules of etiquette she remembers from her brief stint as a debutante. And she shares the story of the meatball slider that almost made her and her fiance break up. Stick around.

• 16:22Speaker 02

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• 17:59Dan Pashman?

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• 18:42Dan Pashman?

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• 19:25Dan Pashman?

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• 19:40Dan Pashman?

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• 20:25Dan Pashman?

  Now, back to my conversation with Fortune Feimster. And just a heads up that there is some explicit language in this half of the show. As Fortune goes through high school, she still has this feeling that she doesn't know quite where she belongs. But one place where she's pretty sure she doesn't belong? In debutante class, learning to be a proper lady. In spite of that...

• 20:46Speaker 01

  My senior of high school is when you get invited to be a debutante. Usually, your mother was one. It's kind of an old tradition. And my mom had been one and she goes, "You've been invited." I go, "I don't want to do it." And she's like, "You're doing it."

• 21:02Speaker 01

  It's a lot of parties. You just go to like a lot of luncheons. And it's a lot of ladies, like eating tiny sandwiches, drinking iced tea, and just, I don't even remember what we talked about, but there were some classes on etiquette. You learn how to do a place setting at a table.

• 21:19Dan Pashman?

  Oh, that's well, so let's get into that a little. How much of that do you remember? Like if I gave you like 17 forks and spoons and knives, could you set a proper place setting?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I would, I could, maybe, I think so. Hopefully, it's like riding a bike.

• 21:33Dan Pashman?

  Where does the fish knife go, Fortune? Where does the fish knife go?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  The top? I don't know. Maybe I would fail miserably. I know, I used to, my grandmother was big on it where I would learn how to place everything and the saucer goes here and the, I probably, I might have forgotten it.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  I kind of am a beast when I eat. I love food so much that I, all etiquette goes out the window. And my partner is pretty, she's pretty, um, a neat freak. And we were out to eat and I did the whole cutting, cutting the thing and, and I ate it. And then I licked my knife and she almost broke up with me.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  She goes, I, no, no, no. Nope, nope, nope.

• 22:19Dan Pashman?

  She's like, I thought I was engaged to a debutante.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, she thought I was a lady.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And she goes, no, I will not be with someone who's licking their knife in public. And I'm like, what? What? The sauce is so good. So I've clearly, none of this debutante stuff stuck.

• 22:43Dan Pashman?

  Is there anything you learned in debutante class that you still practice today?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Um, I do enjoy a nice cucumber sandwich to this day.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  From, from that time of my life. You know what I really enjoy, and this is a surprise to me. I really enjoy an afternoon tea. You know, where you go and they give you the, the, the levels of treats.

• 23:08Dan Pashman?

  Like an English tea type deal?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  An English tea situation, yeah. You got the sandwiches on the bottom and some scones and a couple little desserts and your tea. I have learned, I really love that.

• 23:21Dan Pashman?

  What do you love about it?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  You, you're getting so many, because I like a variety.

• 23:26Dan Pashman?

  Do you, do you eat from bottom to the top or do you ping back and forth?

• 23:30Speaker 01

  I go bottom to top, yeah.

• 23:31Dan Pashman?

  So you don't do sweet salty, sweet salty?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  No, I go sandwiches, scone, I do the order, sandwiches, scones, and then the treat.

• 23:40Dan Pashman?

  Did you learn nothing with the fun dip and the nachos?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 23:44Dan Pashman?

  Come on.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  I know, I, I'm not adhering to my own sweet and saltiness.

• 23:51Dan Pashman?

  In this next story, Fortune tells in her special, she's in her mid 20s. She comes home from work one day, and she starts watching the Lifetime channel.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  I clearly still did not have a good handle on who I was. You know, there was just something missing. It was a movie called "The Truth About Jane", and I don't want to bore you straights with the plot of this movie, but basically, a young girl in high school realizes that she is a lesbian, and her mom, she's like, "Boo!" And then,

• 24:27Speaker 01

  by the end of the movie, her mom is like, "Yay!" And that's the movie.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting there, and all of this hits me like a ton of bricks. I'm like, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." And I say out loud, for the first time in my entire life, I go, "Oh, my God, I'm gay."

• 25:01Speaker 01

  And I came to that conclusion from watching a Lifetime movie.

• 25:13Dan Pashman?

  So Fortune decides to tell her family, starting with her brothers.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I'm so nervous. I'm like, "Guys, I gotta tell you something. Okay.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I'm gay." And my brothers go, "Duh."

• 25:38Speaker 01

  "Cool, cool, cool. Well, thanks for telling me that." And I said, "Well, just out of curiosity, like, what made you think I was gay this whole time?" And one of my brothers goes, "Well, once when you were seven, you got hit with a soccer ball, and you yelled, 'Ow, my dick.'"

• 26:03Dan Pashman?

  The way the story is told in the, in the special sort of feels like, oh, this light bulb went off. I realized I'm gay. I came out to my family. They were basically all cool with it. Was it as sort of smooth as it comes across?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I think if I'd come out at like 18, it would have been a problem. My partner came out at 15 and that's hard, you know, because your parents are like, what? And it wasn't as prevalent back then and they think there's something wrong, that they did something. Once you're 25 though, when you're, I'm living 3,000 miles away. It's almost like, well, she's already out there with all those Californians. Of course she's gay, you know?

• 26:46Dan Pashman?

  So you and Jax get together.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:49Dan Pashman?

  And you, you know, early in your dating, you're going out to eat a lot. You're gaining a lot of weight.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Dan Pashman?

  Uh, kind of without realizing it. I loved, I listened to your podcast where you guys talked about how part of the issue was that Jax is very competitive.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:03Dan Pashman?

  So I, I really related to this. This idea that like every time an appetizer came, even if she didn't really want it, she felt like she, she was entitled to 50%. So she would.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:13Dan Pashman?

  Eat 50%.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we would. We like never fight and, and we would have some fights because she would be like, that's mine. That, no, you had three and I'm having three. Like she, she really did get competitive because I'll, I'll eat all day long. I'll be like, if you, if you let me have five of those, I'm eating five of them. And, uh, and she just, part of it was that she was trying to make me not eat as much as I usually do. So she was like, well, if I take it, she won't eat it.

• 27:43Dan Pashman?

  She, she's trying to help you. She's taking one for the team.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  She was, but then she ended up gaining like 30 pounds.

• 27:52Dan Pashman?

  Is there one specific food related fight you remember from that period?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, very much so. Uh, we were long distance for a year. She was, I met her in Chicago. And after a year, we finally made that big leap that she was gonna move to LA. And we stopped in Oklahoma because we drove her car across country. And I, there was, I ordered like a chicken, like a chicken dinner. We stopped into this restaurant. I mean, it was like a giant thing of fried chicken, like mashed potatoes, cornbread, banana pudding. And she ordered meatball sliders and that's it. But I thought in my head that we were sharing, that we were like, oh, you'll eat some of mine. I'll eat some of yours.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  So my giant platter comes out, her like tiny meatball sub appetizer comes out. And I reached for one of hers and she's like, no, these are mine. And I go, wow, I know we were sharing. And I got like really, really upset. And it led to this huge fight where I legit thought we were about to break up. She was saying, I ordered this, this is my food. You have an entire, like you have almost an entire chicken fried over there. That's not enough? You gotta eat this too? Really? And, and her, she was like, uh, thought, oh God, what if I've like committed my life to some beast of a person that has no self-control?

• 29:18Dan Pashman?

  Right. And what were you saying?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And I thought, what a bitch. What a bitch. We were like yelling in the street about meatball subs. But then what we really realized was that the fight was about, we were both scared that she was moving cross-country, giving up her whole life and what if it doesn't work out?

• 29:48Dan Pashman?

  Today, Fortune and Jax are married. When they first got engaged, they did one of those engagement photo shoots. But when they got the pictures back, they were horrified. As Fortune said, they'd been having so much fun together, eating so much great food. They both gained a lot of weight in a short time without really realizing it, until they saw the photos.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  So I began this health journey and I became a person. I didn't even recognize. All of a sudden, I was going to Whole Foods for like four hours. And $500 later, I had meals for two days.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I was eating like the alternative, healthier versions of things like spaghetti squash. Just eating it all resentful, just like, "You ain't spaghetti."

• 30:30Speaker 01

  It took me forever to order at restaurants because you have to know how everything's prepared. Even my voice changed. I was like, "How do you guys prepare your vegetables? Do you guys use butter or olive oil? Do you have any ghee? It's butter without dairy." They're like, "Ma'am, this is Hooters."

• 30:52Speaker 01

  But I felt good. I'm like, you know what? I'm not that chubby little kid running through the pool anymore. I finally pulled it together. So I called my dad. I'm like, "Dad, you're never gonna believe this. I am currently gluten-free." And my dad goes, "Gluten-free? Pussy, I understood that, but gluten-free?"

• 31:22Speaker 01

  "Girl, you're from the South. You better eat a goddamn biscuit."

• 31:31Speaker 01

  I ended up losing 40 pounds. I think I put on like 10 back. But the hope is that I don't ever get so out of control again. It's always gonna be a struggle for me. Because I'm always gonna wanna enjoy food. I'm never gonna be the person that's like, "Nope, not for me." You know, but it's like, just learning the moderation.

• 31:54Dan Pashman?

  There's a line in the special where you say, "I became a person I didn't even recognize." Which I know in the special is a line that you play for laughs.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:02Dan Pashman?

  But I wonder if there's part of that that actually really is how you felt.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Well, it did feel weird because like it becomes your whole life where and you can't stop talking about it. So like all of a sudden, my Instagram was like full of like, I'm at Whole Foods, you know, I'm eating kale. And it's like, I was always the person that was like, I love chicken wings, give me chilies. And so it did feel weird to like suddenly be this person that was like, what about a nice almond milk? It just wasn't what I was used to.

• 32:36Dan Pashman?

  Right. Were, were you ever worried that like if you lost too much weight, that you wouldn't be you?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I never thought like I would have some drastic thing where like all of a sudden I didn't look like myself. But yeah, I mean, I maybe thought in the back of my head, like people would get annoyed with me talking about health things. And also, you don't want to be that person that talks about it so much. And then all of a sudden you gain 30 pounds and you're like, well, I guess that happened. So I wanted to at least acknowledge like, yeah, I'm, I'm being better right now, but life is crazy. Who knows?

• 33:15Dan Pashman?

  Fortune has come a long way from that kid running for treasurer, gyrating on stage to the Pink Floyd song. She still uses her love of food and her body to get laughs. But that's not so much the point of the joke now. It's a through line that gets her to the more personal parts of her story. Family, relationships, coming into her own. She says that change in her approach on stage is a sign that she's gotten better at stand up.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  I think it's easy in the beginning to just be like, I'm fat. And, you know, here's a joke about being fat. You're forced to, as you do it longer, to like, well, what else? What else? You can't just keep hitting this same note. And, and, and as I was working on this set, it, the personal stories started coming to light, the childhood stories in it. And it sort of took shape in this autobiographical way that I never intended to happen. And so the stories there were more than just being a big kid. There were more than just being a chubby adult. There was a lot more in between. So it helped me sort of naturally fill out the world more and not just lean on that.

• 34:29Dan Pashman?

  That's comedian Fortune Feimster. She's got a new comedy special premiering on Netflix on December 3rd called Crushing It. Make sure you check that one out and listen to her podcast with Tig Notaro and May Martin. It's called Handsome. It's very, very funny. Next week on the show, I talk with mixologist L.P. O'Brien about how non-alcoholic cocktails have been gaining traction all over the country and how to make a great one for your next holiday party. That's next week. While I wait for that one, check out last week's show about how one person went on a low-salt diet to try to address a health issue and found that it had an unexpected impact on her relationship with food. That one's up now. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by

• 35:10Dan Pashman?

  genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was originally produced by me along with Emma Morgenstern with editing by Tracy Samuelson and mixing by Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful team now includes Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, Jared O'Connell, and Julia Leo. Our executive producers are Colin Anderson and Nora Ritchie. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  And this is Leigh Ritchie from Atlanta, Georgia, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 35:58Speaker 04

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• 36:29Speaker 04

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• 37:14Speaker 04

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