Q: I keep seeing this BMI thing everywhere, and I know that my girls aren’t overweight, but their doctors tell them they are and they need to lose weight. If they don’t look overweight, why does it matter if the BMI says they are?

If the question is whether or not the body mass index (or BMI) matters… the simple answer is that in reality, it doesn’t.

No, really.

But before you go writing off your physician’s advice, let me explain it a little clearer.

The BMI is merely a calculation based on your height in correlation to your weight. It is a ratio of what one’s frame is carrying in weight, and used as an estimation of one’s health. Not necessarily their health today, but their health tomorrow.

The idea is that there is a likely height-to-weight ratio that estimates just how much weight a particular frame can manage. Anything beneath that weight can imply that your organs aren’t being supported, you might be suffering an illness or you might be malnourished. Anything above that weight can imply that you have too much fat crowding your organs, you might be suffering an illness or you are “over-nourished,” so to speak.

Look at that paragraph – see all the uncertainty? “Likely,” “can imply,” “might,” “might”… c’mon.

The BMI was invented sometime between 1830 and 1850... before slaves were freed. Think about that.

The BMI wasn’t paid much attention until approximately the 1970s (over 100 years later… think about that, too) when a guy named Ancel (An-sill) Keys created a study titled “Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity” which used the BMI, gave it its “body mass index” name and popularized the simple ratio. Calling it an adequate measure of body fat percentage in the human body, and because it was a cheaper and quicker measure than what most researchers were using at the time, the BMI spread like wildfire. Flaws and all.

I already have a problem with Ancel Keys because he’s the reason why we swear that fat is the reason we’re fat, even though we’ve now suffered through two decades of “fat free/low fat” products and are fatter than we’ve ever been. The details of his Indices study are basically that he studied approximately 7,400 men in five countries. Women? Meh, y’all and your little bodily differences weren’t needed for such a study.

In the 1980s, when the National Institute of Health began advocating the BMI for regular use in treating patients, there were differing values for men and women.. and the marking number for being “overweight” rested somewhere around 27. Once the late ’90s hit, both men and women were now to share the same standard scale, and the marker for being “overweight” was moved down to 25.

Why, you ask? If you ask this guy, he’ll tell you the NIH and the CDC were in cahoots with one another so that they could create an obesity epidemic… thus resulting in more money being given to both entities. I’m a conspiracy theorist and all, but wowzers. The change in the threshold for obesity did result in something like 30million more Americans being classified as overweight.

If there are all these problems with it, why is it still in use? Because, quite frankly, while it’s often wrong… it’s also sometimes right. Though that “overweight” label might hurt some people’s feelings (why, I don’t know), its labels like “underweight” and “obese” that signify much more than the “overweight” category. (Although, I must admit, I doubt you need a scientific calculation to identify an individual as obese. Seems like a waste of time.)

Personally, I think it’s stupid. The body responds to its environment. Some athletes are extremely active, and the body will recognize that it may need to burn calories and lose weight to help accommodate that activity. Those athletes are, by definition, underweight. Some individuals have labor intensive jobs that require lots of heavy lifting, and the body will respond by packing on the muscle. Those individuals, by definition, are overweight. My bodybuilding friends? They’re shooting the BMI the finger because they’re obese.

If the body mass index is merely meant to measure the amount of mass a body should/could carry… and we know there’s a major difference between a body carrying fat and a body carrying muscle, for our doctors to use a measurement that doesn’t quantify muscle in comparison to fat is a medical fail. Seriously. Neither Keys nor the originator of the BMI intended for it to provide such blanket assumptions in such a specific fashion. “You must be like these other people because you share the same height and weight.” That’s what the BMI says. That’s why it’s so stupid.

I, personally, find the body fat percentage to be far more valuable in gauging my physical wellness. The body fat percentage estimates what percentage of your body appears to be purely fat. The “average American female’s” body fat percentage is somewhere around 32%, while the typical athlete is around 22%.

The bf% is a much more valuable number because it acknowledges that those in the overweight category may simply be muscular, and those on the thinner side may still be hiding some fat that needs to be addressed. There is no cheating or hiding behind “unfairness” with the body fat percentage. A caliper or a hydrostatic test is usually used to measure bf% – I use an electrical machine at my gym – but there’s also this quick and dirty calculator that I use to keep track, and it only requires a tape measure. You’ll get two numbers – take an average between the two numbers, and you’ll have a better and much more valuable estimate. If body fat is the issue (not muscle), then getting numbers that address specifically that definitely helps.

Lastly, if your body mass index still has you down… head on over here and see others who, apparently, are in your “weight group” and feel a little bit better about yourself. Lots of beautiful people over there, wondering how or why this arbitrary ratio matters so much. Just like the rest of us. (This one is my personal favorite.)

PS: Show a little love by voting for me in the Black Weblog Awards for Best Health or Wellness Blog category! That’s right – BGG2WL is a finalist thanks to you! Let’s do what we can to bring it home!

Q&A Wednesday: Why Does Body Mass Index (BMI) Matter? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: How Weight Clings To (And Falls Off) The Body
2. Q&A Wednesday: Is This The Size My Body Wants Me To Be?
3. Q&A Wednesday: Weight Changes, Body Awareness & The Creeper Effect

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ancel keys, bmi, body fat, body fat percentage, body mass index, CDC, fat head, government, NIH, normal weight, obese, obesity, overweight, underweight, what is normal weight, wtf is normal

Allow me to explain.

This morning, I happen to read about something called “The Dukan Diet,” which is being referred to as “The French Atkins.” It’s a high protein, low fat, low carb diet that promises “no hunger, no calorie counting, instant weight loss and lifelong weight maintenance.”

Okay.

Let’s look at the diet, as according to the article:

His own diet’s high-protein, low-fat approach is organized into four phases: attack, cruise, consolidation and stabilization. The first encourages dieters to eat as much as they want of nonfatty, protein rich foods, including oat bran (a key component) washed down with oceans of water. The second stage introduces vegetables, but no fruit; the third brings with it two slices of bread, a serving of cheese and fruit and two servings of carbohydrates a day, with two weekly “celebration” meals with wine and dessert (the diet is French, after all); and the final stage six days a week of “anything goes” and one day of reversion to strict protein-only stage one — for the rest of your life.

Okay. I’ve written about how this works, right?

A diet, in general terms, is simply the “list” of foods that you allow yourself to eat during the day. It’s the foods that you limit yourself to – if you were on the cabbage diet, your daily diet consists of boiled cabbage for breakfast and lunch with a regular dinner. Diets are generally named by the food that dominates your day – cereal diet, cookie diet, mashed potato diet. This all seems kind of “duh,” but we’re breaking it down to it’s very core, right? Gotta start somewhere.

Excerpted from The Anatomy of A Diet: Why They Work, and Why The Success Never Lasts | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

I’m also interested in this idea that The Dukan diet is “anti-calorie counting,” because – again, as I’ve already written:

Dieting works because it is an extremely mindless form of calorie counting. If I’ve only allowed myself to choose from this one low-calorie food to eat, I can’t possibly gain weight, right? You don’t have to think about the food you’re eating and whether or not it’ll cause you to gain weight – you KNOW this one food won’t cause you to put on any pounds, you know exactly what you’re going to do. It’s auto-pilot for weight loss.

However – because it usually involves something that you can only manage temporarily, you tend to come off of it – excited to beat the pounds – by celebrating with what? More food you have no business indulging in in the first place!

Excerpted from The Anatomy of A Diet: Why They Work, and Why The Success Never Lasts | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

So… let’s go back to what the diet consists of:

The first encourages dieters to eat as much as they want of nonfatty, protein rich foods, including oat bran (a key component) washed down with oceans of water. The second stage introduces vegetables, but no fruit; the third brings with it two slices of bread, a serving of cheese and fruit and two servings of carbohydrates a day, with two weekly “celebration” meals with wine and dessert (the diet is French, after all); and the final stage six days a week of “anything goes” and one day of reversion to strict protein-only stage one — for the rest of your life.

If you wind up resorting back to “anything goes” with just a touch of “restriction,” what’s going to happen? Oh, wait:

Chloe Château, a young researcher at a French Web site, decided to try Dukan after she came home heavier after spending more than a year in Britain. “When I got off the plane, the first thing my mother said was, ‘Oh, you’ve put on weight,’ ” Ms. Château said. “She didn’t even say ‘Hi’ or ‘I missed you.’ ”

Ms. Château said that she took off 14 pounds in less than three weeks, put some of it back on, and plans to try the diet again, even though she has a kidney ailment and migraines.

For the record, super-high protein diets can be rough on the kidneys for people who already have impaired kidney function… which makes it that much more crazy that she’s willing to go through this via this route just to lose weight.

And really, that brings me to my next statement. All of this talk about weight… what is there to say of health? I mean, a woman willing to further exacerbate her health condition just to lose weight in this trendy fashion? Seriously? It’s worth that much?

What is so alluring about weight loss that we’re willing to risk our health in order to obtain it in such a questionable fashion? What is there that lends credibility to this diet when…

Even before its American introduction, the diet is under attack. “This is just another one of those diets invented by a charismatic individual who makes a lot of promises and has loads of testimonials but is not based on any scientific data whatsoever,” said Frank Sacks, professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University’s School of Public Health and chairman of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee.

France’s governmental National Agency for Food, Environmental and Work Health Safety has identified it as one of 15 imbalanced and potentially risky diets. The British Dietetic Association, the country’s organization of professional dietitians, branded it one of the five worst diets of 2011. “We call it the ‘Do-can’t’ diet,” said Sian Porter, a dietitian and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association. “Even if you can survive it for the first few days, it’s hard to stick with it. It’s hard on your kidneys. And it’s expensive.”

You can’t simply follow a regimen that doesn’t take into account your own personal needs. You can’t risk your health for a diet that’s only going to slingshot you back into a cycle of yo-yo dieting. You can’t…

I’m just… I’m gonna move on.

I have no idea how a temporary restrictive diet with “stages” can be turned into “lifelong maintenance” when the final stage relies on an “anything goes” philosophy.

And even if “anything goes” does turn into a “mostly fruits and vegetables” mentality with the occasional indulgence… what part of what he’s teaching here would tell you to go to that and, even, stick to that? What does this diet teach you about the foods you could or should be eating during that “anything goes” period? What if you’re an emotional eater who resorts to problem solving in the form of delicately rich french pastries and you “black out” when you’re indulging… that “anything goes” period is going to be a struggle for you.

Why won’t this work? Like I’ve said before:

Because… wait for it… auto-pilot doesn’t work for weight loss! That’s right – you can’t do it. Why? Because waking up one day and deciding that you’re going to go auto-pilot eating nothing but grapefruit for breakfast and lunch can’t change the fact that your auto-pilot used to lead you to McDonalds or Krispy Kreme for breakfast every morning. Auto-pilot, unfortunately, does equate to mindlessness. It’s operating without thinking. “Not thinking” before led us to being unhealthy in the first place. It certainly won’t lead us to “healthy,” and if it does, it certainly wouldn’t do it overnight… or in two-six weeks like other diets.

Excerpted from The Anatomy of A Diet: Why They Work, and Why The Success Never Lasts | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

 

Let me see how I can put this. If you think a “successful diet” consists of simply “losing weight,” you’d be sadly mistaken.

Considering how a “diet” is “in general terms, is simply the “list” of foods that you allow yourself to eat during the day,” a “successful diet” is one that allows you to maintain your weight and nourish your body properly. If a diet consists of you going back to an “anything goes” mentality (oh, with one day of restriction each week), then guess what? You’re going to gain the weight back and – since you thought the Dukan diet, Atkins diet or goodness knows what other diet was “successful” – you’ll inadvertently go right back to that very same diet to start the same sad, silly cycle all over again.

The goal is to develop a balance that allows for indulgence and pleasure – because no element of our lives should be unpleasureable – while allowing for health and weight management. Not yoyo dieting or restrictive slurping of vegetable broth.

The reality is that you lose weight the same way you gain it: the choices you make regarding the food you put in your mouth. There’s no possible way to get around that and no speedy, trendy diet by a French dude is going to change that. He might be charming, but he’ll only say what you want to hear… and may very well not be around when you realize you were sold a pipe dream. Don’t buy into it. Trust me.

The Dukan Diet: A French Version of Atkins Debunked is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. On The French Paradox: “Stop Lying About How The French Live!”
2. “The French Are Getting Fatter, Too.”
3. What’s The Most Ridiculous Diet You’ve Ever Heard Of?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dieting, dukan diet, france, french paradox, trendy diets, yoyo dieting

People are lovin’ this thing! I mean, OD’ing on it! Seems like the only ones up in arms about it are deskchair critics like myself, thumping away on our laptops and writing angrily on our blogs. I have to admit. The thing is well received. So much so, that there was a slew of articles written about how “The Double Down Is Less Calories Than The Average Salad… So Let Us Eat Our Two Pieces Of Fried Chicken With Pork And Simulated Cheese In Between In Peace!”

Anyone else hear the record skip? I did.

It’s bull.

Those of us who are calorie counting… I get it. It’s only 540 calories… it’s tempting. But think about it – if you’re really calorie counting, then you know full well what you can get for 540 calories. You know that that’s over 10 cups of broccoli. (Not that you’d actually eat that, but it leads into a larger point.)

Since I brought up broccoli, can we address the primary issue, here? You’re spending 540 calories on two pieces of fried chicken, pork, and a slice of “processed cheese food.” A primary point of calorie counting is the fact that since you are working to limit your intake of food, you make the most out of each calorie you’re ingesting. FiveThirtyEight offers up a pretty good explanation of what I mean:

Here, the Double Down’s credentials are more impressive. Those 540 calories contain 145 milligrams of cholesterol (more than twice that of the Big Mac and about half of the USDA’s daily allowance) — along with 1,380 milligrams of sodium (the USDA recommends no more than 2,400 per day) and 32 grams of fat (65 will keep you slim, says the government). So, for getting only about one-quarter of the calories that you need in a day, you’re exhausting about half your budget of “bad stuff”. [source]

So, let’s keep it real. For those 540 calories, you’re getting nothing but salt, oil, fat, a pickle and a chemical conglomeration that comes out something similar to cheese.

Thus… we come to the REAL problem I have with the food discourse, right now. Why are we comparing a sandwich made of chicken and pork… to a salad? Certainly, we’re ignoring salads with fried toppings and creamy high fructose corn syrup dressings in this conversation… but a salad with actual nutrients to offer the eater is compared to a sandwich made of sadness and skinny chickens? It doesn’t matter where your calories come from as long as the total amount of calories is relatively small? A calorie is just a calorie anyway, right?

Let me make something clear. A calorie is not, in fact, just a calorie. It absolutely does matter whether your calories are coming from sugar, fat or protein. It matters because your body does very different things with each. And there are far too many people profiting off of continuing this perception that calories are just …calories.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

“If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn’t exist.”

Know who dropped that little tidbit of nutritional science?

PepsiCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Indra Nooyi. Yep.

It’s the eternal passing of the buck. It’s not that “people are eating too much of my product.” It’s not even “people need to exercise moderation.” The message is “if you exercised, you wouldn’t be fat.” The message is also “there is no reason to stop buying my products, because the problem is only that you don’t exercise!” Understand what that means – it completely absolves the company of their share of responsibility in the obesity epidemic. It says the problem is the fact that you don’t move enough, as if that is the only explanation for why people become overweight. It simply isn’t.

The food industry is great at this – guilting the public into feeling bad about exercise (since, let’s face it – many simply do not) and using that guilt to avoid accepting some of the blame. I start to feel like a conspiracy theorist sometimes when I talk about the marketing and trickery used in their language… but at least I’m not making stuff up or pulling it out of thin air.

Because I know this is confusing to many, understanding why a calorie isn’t simply “a calorie,” I intend to spend this week talking about this very subject. So now, the next time some genius tells you “my double down is better than your salad,” you can let them know exactly what they can – and will – do with that double down.

1. Comprehending Calories: The Basics
2. Comprehending Calories: The Role of Carbs In Your Diet
3. Comprehending Calories: How To Properly Read A Nutrition Label

Thoughts? Let’s hear ‘em!

KFC’s Double Down Reminds Us: All Calories Are Not Created Equal is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Double Leg Lifts
2. Weekend WTF: Would YOU Eat Lab-Created Meat?
3. How Many Calories Are You Drinking?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting, calories, dirty eating, double down, Fast Food, junk food, kfc, nutrition, pepsi, soda, soft drinks

About five years ago I did the [redacted] program which promotes waiting for a physical indicator of hunger such as your stomach growling, a hollow feeling in the stomach, etc., then eat half of what you normally would eat and no food is off limits. If you want to eat something before your next “growl” you are told to run to God instead of food. Exercise and eating healthy is discouraged because then you are accused of relying on something outside of God for your weight loss and want to do things your way. During that 12 week class I lost 29 lbs; the first week I lost 12 lbs but I “cheated” because I Just ate mostly veggies that week. I gained a good part of the weight back because 1. I got tired of waiting up to 12 hours before I could eat again and 2. I didn’t go to the advanced part of the class which involved a lot of fasting. I also didn’t want to pay another $120(?). Also there something kind of creepy about the founder of that program.

…and I won’t lie. My heart skipped a beat, and I’m actually a little emotional about this. (Perhaps I’m a little bit emotional about a lot of things. I’ll be that, dang it.) This literally snatched the breath out of my chest.

I wanted to publish my response to this because I want it on the record. The for-serious, 100% real deal record.

This right here is a scam. It’s not about God (whatever God applies, here.) It’s not about experiencing hunger. It is absolutely about control… and swindling people out of their money.

I’m going to break this down – piece by piece – so that you can understand what a scam genuinely looks like, and hopefully protect yourself in the future. It’s one thing to seek out a support system that’s providing guidance into nourishing yourself mentally, physically and spiritually… it’s another thing entirely to be scammed into group starvation.

About five years ago I did the [redacted] program which promotes waiting for a physical indicator of hunger such as your stomach growling, a hollow feeling in the stomach, etc., then eat half of what you normally would eat and no food is off limits.

The idea that a person who is experiencing hollowness in their stomachs… would be able to eat only half of what they’d normally eat, especially considering how the person likely had an issue with portion control in the beginning… is astounding to me. If the body is hungry, it means that it is in need of nourishment. The body is delivering a vital message – “I am in dire need of nourishment.” Trying to interfere with the body’s ability to obtain that nourishment when it’s right in front of you is a struggle that even I would have difficulty with.

Secondly, the idea that “no food is off limits” is so bizarre. Weight loss programs use this line – a LOT of them use this line – because it ALWAYS reels in the people who say things like “I want to lose weight, but I want to lose it by eating what I eat, not that rice cake crap you eat.” (As you all know, I don’t eat rice cakes. They taste like styrofoam and are too processed for my taste. Just wanted to put that out there.) You know, the people that don’t realize that the problem is “eating what they eat.” Not only does this program not promote proper nourishment of the body your God gave you, but it doesn’t even care about that. It cares about getting you skinny. It’s starvation for skinny’s sake.

If you want to eat something before your next “growl” you are told to run to God instead of food. Exercise and eating healthy is discouraged because then you are accused of relying on something outside of God for your weight loss and want to do things your way.

There are two elements to this – the first being that this is another draw. This is another way to entice you into thinking that you’ll experience simple weight loss that doesn’t require you to add any activity to your life or, really, change anything about what you eat and how you eat it.

The second is that if you exercise and eat healthily, you might realize that you don’t need to pay into a big program to teach you that this is the answer. Banning you from doing what you’re supposed to do forces you to rely solely on the program to lose… so when you come off the program and gain the weight back, you’ll go back to the program so that you can lose again! It’s forcing your success to depend upon them.. which guarantees that they’ll have your repeat business.

During that 12 week class I lost 29 lbs; the first week I lost 12 lbs but I “cheated” because I Just ate mostly veggies that week.

Approximately 30lbs in 3 months… approximately 10lbs each month, but lost 12lbs in the first week. Somewhere, the body realized that there was starvation play taking place, and decided to make it more difficult for you to burn energy. Somewhere along the line, your metabolism slowed down. Somewhere along the line… your body said “Enough! If she won’t feed me, I’ll minimize the amount of energy (read: calories) I can burn each day, so that I don’t dwindle away to nothing!”

As a side note, I love that she cheated and ate what she is supposed to eat. If you are someone who lives a mostly processed lifestyle, the conversion to clean eating will bring dramatic results… and depending upo how much weight you have to lose (I’m talkin’ upwards of 100lbs, here), you absolutely can lose 10lbs the first week. The fact that this was coupled with starvation makes me uneasy, but I love that there’s a realization of “I experienced this success because I ate the way I’m supposed to eat.”

I gained a good part of the weight back because 1. I got tired of waiting up to 12 hours before I could eat again

This is the problem with dieting. We take on temporary habits to lose the weight, only to find out that they’re unsustainable in the long run. Even if one could eat only every 12hrs, think about it – think of all the family functions, business functions and goodness knows what else you’d have to avoid knowing full well you’re hungry? Waiting 12 hours to nourish yourself sounds like a bunch of binging waiting to happen.

I didn’t go to the advanced part of the class which involved a lot of fasting.

Again, more unsustainable habits. Fasting for spiritual purposes… nutrition takes a back seat. I don’t love it, but I can respect it. Fasting for weight loss purposes? You’re walking backwards.

I also didn’t want to pay another $120(?). Also there something kind of creepy about the founder of that program.

So, each level of the class is $120? Word? I wonder how many repeat participants there are in a class that teaches unsustainable weight loss methods and creates co-dependency that prevents you from being able to live or function without it.

See, the thing that really took my breath away about this program is the fact that she said, “Exercise and eating healthy is discouraged because then you are accused of relying on something outside of God for your weight loss and want to do things your way.”

Depending upon your beliefs, the methods of exercise that we know of today are reflections of the ability that we were all given. Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be thy food.” Our system works that way because the food that is meant to nourish us is also meant to heal us. As someone who believes in a higher power, surely that cannot be a coincidence. If you believe everything of this Earth – not of man, like manufactured food – comes from a God, then a “weight loss ministry” that says anything different simply cannot be of your God. Period.

I mean, you have to do some mental backflips to come to a conclusion that says anything different.

Regardless of whether you believe in creationism (the belief that God created mankind) or evolutionism (the belief that we’ve evolved from lesser beings), you have to believe in the evolution of the society in which we live. We didn’t always have cars, and we didn’t always have processed food. Once upon a time, walking was vital. We don’t do much of that anymore. Once upon a time, cooking was vital. We don’t do much of that anymore, either. You have to believe that a society that evolved to make minimal activity possible… could result in weight gain.

That being said… this program completely abandons common sense and practical history for the sake of making money… and people are eating it up.

It’s one thing to desire a support system, rooted in spirituality to help each other through the struggle of learning how to live healthier. It’s another thing entirely to join a cult pushing harmful and unsustainable habits that cause you to jeopardize your health. I know that I say this all the time, but its absolutely important to always put our health first because of all of the bajillion ways we can lose weight, only a small handful can produce permanent results without risking our well-being. Use your better judgment: if it seems wrong, it probably is.

That being said.. I know that someone may know or be able to identify what group the comment is referring to… and I’d prefer to keep their name out of the comments. This isn’t the only “ministry” that pushes this ideology, and while I don’t want to slander any groups, I do want to encourage readers seeking spirituality in their journey to “eat with one eye open.”

Do you have any experience with these kinds of groups? What are your thoughts?

Identifying A Scam: Religion-Based Weight Loss Scams is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Normal Weight Obesity: Another Medical Scam?
2. A Very Big Piece of My Weight Loss Story
3. The Math Behind Weight Loss Plateaus

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 28 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: weight loss scams

On my most recent post regarding “The French,” I got this amazingly thorough comment from Axelle, which kinda rocked my socks:

I wanted to react sooner but was away for a while. Anyway, as a French person, here’s my two cents.

I’m afraid I read the news a few days ago so I don’t remember exactly all that was being said, I’d like to point out, though, that it made me both cringe and laugh at the same time. I remember reading the comments from the French doctor, utterly bewildered, to the point where I started wondering if this guy and I know, and live in, the same country.

Let me get this clear: yes, we do have regular eating patterns, or at least fairly regular. Yes, I believe junk food is (or maybe was?) less available, and, for instance, when I was a child (I’m now 29), soft drinks were unheard of on the table, the choice drink for children being water (this may have changed with the younger generations, though).

On the other hand, I grew up with McDonald (though my brother and I were fortunate enough to have parents who never took us there. Consequently, my brother never ate there and I went only twice in my teens) and pasta, rice and instant mash potato meals with a slice of ham where all the rage around my friends as their parents didn’t bother to cook most of the time (again, we were fortunate that my mother loved to).

So healthy “gourmet” meals…? Sorry, but once again, no. The majority of French people never see a vegetable in their normal eating day (fruit and veggies are deemed as too pricey, but as people prefer buying and eating crap, no wonder…), unless it is the tomato paste or sauce they pour on their pasta/ pasta usually laden with cream or grated cheese too. Same for rice.
Meat is ever present (otherwise it’s not a meal…).

The French may be proud of their gourmet, well-balanced meals but I wonder who actually get those. Well I definitely understand not getting the gourmet, but the well-balanced? Unless you count eating tons of refined carbs, meat and dairy, and as little fruit or veggies as possible, as well-balanced, well…

The upper middle class is perhaps getting those well-balanced dream meals this doctor is talking about, but that only shows that he is totally disconnected from reality.

As for lunch break lasting for 2 hours, who is kidding who? Perhaps some are still getting those, but believe me, that’s not the majority. For most it’s 1 hour or even just 20 mn, and this time is allotted to finding, purchasing and eating a sandwich (white-flour baguette with a filling of ham and butter being the national favorite, it seems) in most cases (or going to the restaurant in some cases, that’s true too).

I don’ know where the idealistic images of young children having veggies and leg of lamb for lunch is coming from either but don’t get me started on it. I ate for 15 years in a cafeteria and I still shudder at the thought. Most of the time, the food is inedible, so bad it is cooked. I concede this may have changed, but certainly not to the point described in the original article/ study. Or, once again, perhaps the most privileged children are getting this kind of meals but it is certainly not widespread. I’d like also to add that giving a fancy name to a meal doesn’t’ make it tasty.

Lastly, someone commented on French bakeries and farmers’ markets.

Our bakeries are full of refined carbs. Our breads are mostly made from white flour, sourdough wholemeal bread (the only kind of healthy bread) being a thing of the long dead past for most of us (you can still get your hands on some, but as any quality food these days, it’s pricey and not everyone can afford it). I suggest some do research on “viennoiseries”, “pain au chocolat”, “croissant”, “pain aux raisins” and other kinds of pastries, to find out what our bakeries are full of.

As for the farmers’ markets, we may have more than in the USA, I don’t know, but for the most part, they are overrated. Especially since the quality of the produce has been on a downward slope these last 10 years. And let’s not forget that most people get their food from the supermarket anyway (where they buy tons of crappy food such as frozen meals, cold-cuts, ready-made pudding full of dairy, etc).

Now to the last point, why French are still slimmer. Well, I won’t deny that our food is still of better quality than in the rest of the world (lots of regulation does seem to help, after all); our eating habits still hold and probably help too, our portions are smaller too, from what I’ve heard BUT some things have been grossly overlooked in everything you may have read about French people. I don’ really know about the men but French women tend to be professional dieters. There’s tremendous pressure out there for us to be slim, no matter what and believe me, most of the time, it works, but at what cost? (hint: eating disorders , body issues and depression among other things)

The French, overall, may be the slimmest but they are not the happiest. We are the leading nation when it comes to drug intake per capita, and these drug include a not-so-healthy dose of antidepressant.

Sorry for this very long post; I must admit that I was incensed when I read about this on the web as, in my opinion, most of what is described as the French way of life (or former way of life, it seems) is outward lies and is akin to the airbrushed pictures you see everywhere: presenting as real and reachable something with isn’t and can’t be reached for most of us.

So, sorry again for ranting on your blog, Erika, but I really thought truth had to be told.

Also, in all fairness, I would like to say that I’m a slightly overweight vegan French woman who “flees” her country whenever she can, so perhaps I’m a little biased (and not in their favour) when it comes to speaking of my fellow citizens.

If anything, Axelle’s comment reminds me that no country is a monolith; no culture is monolithic, either. Just like all Americans don’t ascribe to the fast-food-thirteen-times-a-week lifestyle we see in the news all the time, all of France isn’t sitting around eating coq au vin and drinking red wine at every meal… and while we marvel at another culture’s ability to “escape” what we’ve succumbed to, we should also remember that we don’t benefit from romanticizing it.

Seriously… serving leg of lamb at a day care? Even I gave that the side eye of eternity.

On The French Paradox: “Stop Lying About How The French Live!” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. 400 Pounds Lost? No Surgery? Stop Lying!
2. “The French Are Getting Fatter, Too.”
3. The Dukan Diet: A French Version of Atkins Debunked

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Why?

There are a few reasons. But first, I think it might be important to explain the process that the grain must go through (because rice starts out as a much larger grain) in order to become the white rices and pastas that we enjoy so much.

This diagram, from The Today Show, diagrams the grain when it’s first harvested. It goes through a rice husker to have the outermost shell removed, and you’re left wit brown rice. Ta-da! The bran part of the grain is where all the rich and chewy fiber is located. The germ is where the nutrient-rich portion of the grain is found. The endosperm is, well… we’ll get to that.

Take it a step further. To get white rice, the outer husk and bran (the fiber-packed part?) are stripped from the grain, as is the nutrient-filled germ. This, obviously, leaves only the starchy endosperm. From here, the endosperm is polished in sugars and/or powders to not only aid in taste, but reshape the grain. Sounds like all of the good stuff is stripped from the grain, right?

Well, that’s because it is.

This is where that “enriched” part comes in. Processing plants will “add” vitamin D and whatever else into the endosperm so that total nutritional value isn’t lost, but it pales in comparison to what originally was in the rice in the first place. As in, what it grew from the ground carrying. Riboflavin and thiamin (which helps your body in metabolizing fats), potassium (which helps your body balance out high sodium intake), vitamin e (a skin care essential that aids in anti-aging)? All are lost when rice makes the transition from brown to white.

I won’t go on my typical trademark rant, but I will say this: rice in it’s least processed form is three times as filling as enriched white rice.

Since you can see that white rice is brown rice with all the valuable stuff stripped of it with some other stuff injected in to “enrich” the endosperm, you can see why it’s so easy to cook white rice… or why it’s so difficult to cook brown rice. What would I suggest? Honestly, ditch the minute/microwaveable rices, and opt for something else.

What else is there?

I’m a big basmati and jasmine rice eater, as well as brown rice. Basmati rice might be a bit pricier – there’s no $0.99 bag of it available anywhere – but for those who love to eat enriched white rice, both are viable options. I eat brown rice, but because I was always so used to white rice, it was a hard switch for me. What do I do instead? After I cook my brown rice (for about 45 minutes – yes, that extra nutrition-y goodness means it takes much longer to cook), I use it in stir fry type dishes or I create a sauce with the leftover juices from cooking the other parts of my dish. A little lemon juice, orange peel, or even an oregano/sage/cranberry blend can go a long way.

In short, there is a benefit to taking the leap away from enriched white rice. Are you taking the leap? Have you already lept? Let me hear about it!

What’s Wrong With White Rice? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Are Brown Eggs Really Better Than White?
2. Pleasure and The Puritans: Why “If It Tastes Good, It MUST Be Bad” Is Wrong
3. The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong

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Post tags: processed foods

How often do you snack?

It’s not how often you snack, it’s what you’re snacking on. You have to truly think about your day, and what you’re eating (and if you’re writing in a food diary, are you even including the little candies and cookies you snack on in your diary?) throughout the day. Every time you stick something in your mouth, you’re snacking. Is it candy? Is it office cookies? Are they empty calories – calories with neither nutrients nor real food (like cookies, cakes, candies)?

Consider how much time goes between your meals. Do you leave for work at 6am, with no lunch break until 1pm? Chances are, you might overeat at your 1pm meal because it’s been at least 7 hours since the last time you ate! We can’t have that!

If you know you’re goin to have a long day… plan! Prepare in advance. How?

Tools of the Trade

Let me tell you how I snack.

First of all, I keep food everywhere that I know I’d have a hard time convincing myself to not seek out a quicker, cheaper, less healthy option. Like… the car. Or… my desk. Perhaps, even, my kitchen. Yes.. the kitchen. If the name of the game is to avoid overeating, you head yourself off at the pass by providing little things that can quickly satiate an immediate hunger, and give you enough time to make sound decisions about what you want to eat. So for me, snacking helps curb that “hungry” feeling – if I avoid eating at the last minute (which is what causes that “hungry” feeling) and eat a little bit each time on a set schedule, I will never encounter that hungry feeling (or if I do, it’ll be rare) and I’ll never have a reason to overeat. I’ll never encounter that “Ohhh, I’m starving” feeling that usually propels me to overindulge.

What am I snacking on?

I keep a bag of grapes in the freezer. Why? Because they’re healthy, low-calorie, they take a while to eat and actually make me stop and think about whether or not I’m really hungry. I just grab a couple of frozen grapes, bite and chew them slowly (I’m quick to get brain freeze, so I’m careful and chew slowly) and before too long, I can assess just how hungry I am. Will I need only a few more grapes? Should I consider cooking? I get time to think about these things while I chew my grapes – slowly and carefully so as to avoid brain freeze! – and enjoy myself.

I keep a ziploc bag with half a cup (which is, essentially, two servings) of sunflower seeds in the bottom of my purse. Sunflower seeds are high in protein and fiber, so it doesn’t take a lot of ‘em to get you where you need to be. They won’t satisfy me if I’m having that “Grrr, I’m starving” feeling, but if I’m eating on my proper schedule, I should never encounter that feeling, right?

I keep a bag of freeze dried banana chips in the car. This is usually for both myself and my daughter, just in case I’m stuck in traffic. They’re naturally sweet, very nutritious, and very satisfying to me. I just eat them one at a time – even if it means I eat the entire little ziploc bag of ‘em.. I eat them one at a time. Remember, if I’m eating on my proper schedule, I should not have that ravenous “eat-six-at-a-time” feeling, right?

I keep cocoa powder in the house. Mix a little cocoa powder with water and confectioner’s sugar, and I’ve got chocolate sauce. Grab my strawberries, and ta-da! A nice light little strawberry and chocolate snack. Clearly, that’s a weekend thing. Not everyone has the time or means to make their own chocolate sauce during the week or after a long day!

The grocery sells sliced cantaloupe, so I keep some in the fridge. A slice or two usually tides me over for the next hour or two. In fact, if you don’t have time to tend to fruit yourself, those grocery store fruit salads might work pretty well altogether. A small one should help out pretty well!

What works for you?

These are a few things that, over time, have proven to work for me. I had to look at my routine. I had to check out my diary and see where I was the most vulnerable, and that’s when the answers started pouring out. Where do you find that you’re most vulnerable? What snacks tend to tide you over until your next meal?

The Ancient Art of Snack-Fu is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Post tags: snacking

That would, also, be the case when I read the following article from The Root, published earlier this year, on Black women with bulimia.

“The biggest misconception is that this is only about being thin,” says Armstrong, noting that most people with bulimia are either a normal weight or slightly overweight. “I don’t believe that’s the first reason. It comes from some kind of trauma and a need for control — you don’t just wake up one day and decide to throw up.”

In Armstrong’s case, the trigger was being raped by an uncle when she was 12. Having grown up in a fatherless Brooklyn, N.Y., household, she says that being assaulted by her single male role model left her feeling worthless. “I had no other men in my life who loved me to help me see, ‘This person is messed up.’ For me it became, ‘I’m messed up.’ ” Studies show that roughly 60 percent of people with bulimia have suffered sexual abuse.

Armstrong turned to bingeing and purging as a coping mechanism for her anxiety and low self-esteem after getting the idea from a magazine article intended as a cautionary tale for teens. Laxative abuse and excessive exercise soon followed. “At the height of it, I was throwing up eight to 10 times a day. Afterward, there would be this calm,” says Armstrong, now in her 40s. “I could not control the external circumstances of my life, but I could control my relationship to food.”

Meanwhile, her family and friends never connected the dots. Watching her inhale large quantities of food, they just marveled at her ability to stay skinny. “It was like they were envious, which only fueled a feeling of superiority,” she said. After living with her secret for seven years — so obsessed, depressed and suicidal that she could barely function — she finally sought help and checked into a 12-step program. “I was desperate around food, and at a certain point I just couldn’t live like that anymore.”

The article, to me, was a typical, run-of-the-mill portrait of Black women with eating disorders, but there was something different about this one. It wasn’t in the article. It was in the comments.

The article didn’t move me as much as the outcries of “Black women are too fat to be bulimic! This is not a Black girl problem! You made this up! You, dear author, have clearly lost credibility on this one!”

I call this type of foolishness “PR work,” because it’s not saying “Wow, I’ve never known anyone who was bulimic before.” It’s saying “THIS DOESN’T EXIST. STOP LOOKING HERE,” just like a public relations rep doing damage control. It’s the same way the Black community treats any number of issues within it – hell it’s the same way all communities treat its less-than-pretty issues.  It’s heartbreaking – what do you tell the victims? It’s easier to sweep their issues under the rug because no one knows what to do to help them?

“Doctors tend to not recognize it in African-American women, so they don’t make appropriate referrals for treatment,” Brooks says, adding that studies have shown that it takes longer for black girls to be diagnosed with eating disorders than it does white girls who have the same symptoms.

You know why? Because Black girls are out here still overweight and bulimic.. and nothing is more insulting than the idea that “Black women are too fat to be bulimic.” Why? Because it insinuates that a) bulimia is successful in producing thin women and b) the only way a person could clearly be visibly bulimic is if they were, in fact, skinny. This type of thinking is so end-oriented that it forgets that there’s a road that has to be traveled – a person whose bulimia takes them from 295 to 200 too quickly is still a bulimic even though they don’t weigh only 110lbs. And, dare I say it, but it might be even harder to “cure” the bulimic whose lost 95lbs as a bulimic than one whose lost 15lbs, because it has been reinforced for them that “this is a successful way to lose weight” in a much stronger fashion.

You know what else happens? Since they think they’re getting away with it – bingeing and not gaining weight – it gets worse. They never get called out on it, they never get help with how to cope, they never get help with whatever issue drove them to need such control. Never.

I’m also always amazed by the “I’ve never known a Black bulimic” line of thinking, too. Do you think they’re going to wear a t-shirt proclaiming their “bulimic pride?” Are there pro-bulimic alliances out there they’re supposed to chair? Considering how closed-minded some of us are to issues like this, and considering how closed-minded some of us are to therapy, don’t you think you can see why none of your potentially-bulimic friends have come out to you? Or, maybe they’re not ready to come out yet? Maybe they’re perfectly happy hiding in shame (or feel no shame at all, but merely righteous indignation) and wouldn’t be saved by anything other than an intervention… an intervention that might never come because you’re too busy proclaiming that Black bulimics don’t exist.

This desire to adamantly protect the idea that Black women can never have a problem or need help or struggle with something has to stop. It’s the same mentality that keeps our problems behind closed doors instead of front and center where they belong – everyone needs some kind of help and we all have the ability to help each other. A Black woman who suffers with bulimia has a personal [issue] that is just as political as every other issue that we swear needs attention (like, say, whether or not marriage is only for white people, also known as “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard of in my life”), and pretending she doesn’t exist does nothing to help that collective that we swear we care so much about.

Is bulimia a “Black girl problem?” Bulimia is an all-person problem. It respects neither gender nor race, and we should all try with all our might to not marginalize those who suffer from it, or we’ll wind up with loved ones who may never get help. All I want from us is to stop saying these issues don’t exist among us. Stop talking so much, and start listening more. Start reading and looking for insight, and stop being so closed-minded. Black women are not a monolith – we are not bred to be emotionless workhorses that have no thoughts, feelings or problems. We are individuals, and our problems are unique. Give us the space to be who we are, and if we are “broken,” then let us exist as “broken” so that those who love us can help “fix” us. It’s all we can ask of you.

“Black Women Are Too Fat To Have Eating Disorders!” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Update: “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”
2. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Eating Disorders When Dieting Wasn’t Enuf
3. Black Women, Body Image And Our Relationship To The Life-Sized Barbie

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, Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss will be explaining calorie counting, and ways to win the war. This is post 3 of the series – post 1, Defining The Basics of Calorie Counting, can be found here. Comments are always welcomed, and questions will always be answered to the best of my ability.

Keeping in mind those constants that I listed in the first installment, head over to this page and enter your information. It’ll tell you your estimated Body Mass Index (or BMI) – I know, cringeworthy, right? – as well as an estimated value for how many calories your body burns in a 24 hour time period. Then head over to this page, and do the same. Compare the two values for your daily calorie expenses, and take the lower of the values. Hold on to that number. Now, do a food journal for one day. Don’t try to eat “better” than you usually do.. just write down a day’s worth of what you’re eating. No calorie values yet.. just merely what you’re eating. During the next day (’cause doing it the same day just might depress you), sit down and google the caloric values of the foods you’re eating. Make sure you’re sitting in a leveled chair when you do… because you might just tip over.

Compare the number of calories your body burns in a 24 hour period to the amount of calories you took in during a 24 hour period. Think about the days you’ve eaten more than you did the day you wrote everything down. Think about the foods you might’ve intentionally left off the list as a means of cushioning your ego. Think about how often you eat more than what you wrote down. Is it pretty darn often? Think about the days where you eat nothing but fast food. Is your calorie count up near the 3,000s? Is it IN the 3,000s?

Setting the goal

Going back to that calorie count… take a look at that number you came up with. Weight loss is about creating a deficit – more calories burned than taken in. If you’re maintaining the weight you’ve put on, it’s because this deficit doesn’t exist. You’re either nor burning enough calories, or you’re eating too many calories. Having said that, if you create a deficit of 500 calories a day (meaning, if you eat 500 calories less than you “usually” do), you will lose 1lb a week. Create a deficit of 1000 calories a day, you will lose 2lbs (1000 calories multiplied by 7 days a week: 1000 x 7 = 7000 divided by 3500 calories in one pound equals 2lbs.) If you create a deficit of 1000 calories, and burn 500 a day walking/running, you will lose 3lbs per week (1500 x 7 divided by 3500). I’m suuure you get my drift, right? The better you plan, the better you prepare, the more likely you are to succeed.

Be honest with yourself

I’ve read several books about scientific studies in relation to obesity and they tend to say, in short: “In efforts to attempt to track the eating habits of overweight and obese individuals, we gave them a journal to document their daily intake of food. Considering the number of methods used to monitor intake, it was easy to determine that overweight people were more likely to lie about not only what they’d eaten, but how much of it they’d eaten.”

I don’t mention that as a put down – I mention that because I know I did it, and didn’t even know it. It’s another method of consciousness. It’s also another reason to make SURE you’re being honest with yourself. It’s vital to know what you’re putting in your body, so that you know what kind of dragon you need to slay. Lying to yourself might save your ego, but it does nothing for the rest of you, especially your weight.

It’s ok to admit you have very little control over your eating habits – it’s ok to admit that your discipline might be lacking. There is an industry that makes billions off of your inability to control yourself, and they have millions invested in ensuring that you never get it. It’s ok to admit that this beast is on your back. This, here, will help you gain control… and it starts with being honest with yourself.

Looking for other posts in the Understanding Calorie Counting series? Check the links below!

• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Basics
• Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
• Understanding Calorie Counting: A Final Word

Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
2. Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
3. Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?

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Post tags: calorie counting, overeating

NASA Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day

I know this is a pretty idealistic concept, and we all might like to give lip service to living eco-friendly lives… but who has time for all that? It’s hard enough for most-if-not-all of us to get this healthy eating thing down pat. Now, we’ve got to protect the Earth, too?

It doesn’t take much effort. In fact, being eco-friendly and clean eating go hand in hand and both can be managed by the busy lifestyler. Here are a few ways to live a little cleaner, a little greener, without costing you a ton of time each day.

"Processed cheese product"... in a jar. How.. innovative?

Ditching the Processed Products

Obviously, this is the largest factor in clean eating. Pardon me for getting a little preachy, but I see it like this – our connection to the Earth is symbiotic. We cultivate the Earth with our activity, and in return it promotes the growth of humanity. So… we have to be mindful of what we put out there. Ditching the boxed and canned foods, essentially, means less trash… going to less landfills… less air and land pollution.

But if I give up foods, how do I replace them?

Buy fresh veggies. Only buy what you believe you will cook that week. This way, you not only spend much less, but you don’t leave anything sitting and risk your food rotting. You can learn to cook the same veggie three different ways, and get more creative with your cooking style. You also don’t run into the problem of additional preservatives or salts used to preserve the shelf life of your food.

I buy things like onions and peppers knowing that I don’t want red peppers or onions every day… so I’ll take them, chop them up in the ways that I know I usually eat them, and freeze them that way. So I’ll have a bag of onions chopped in rings, a bag diced in squares and a bag cut in strips. I’ll have a bag of red peppers chopped in strips and another bag diced in chunks. I do the same with mushrooms, cucumbers, celery, carrots, spinach (the spinach I use to cook, not the ones I use for salad) and bean sprouts. I cannot tell you how much time this saves me, and it takes me a half hour. Tops.

My carrots, squash, broccoli and corn/okra/pepper blend, preparing for the freezer.

Buy frozen. Generic store-brand frozen veggies are a dollar a bag (rarely more than $2.50) and can last forever. Carrots, broccoli, string beans, onions, peppers, different veggie blends (I bought a 5lb bag of carrot/broccoli/cauliflower for $3… lasted forever) all at your fingertips, and only requiring a little steaming, baking, boiling or sauteeing.

I keep a combination of both in my fridge. I keep fresh broccoli in the fridge for salads, and frozen in the freezer for cooking.. and I never intermingle the two. I don’t cook with my fresh, and I don’t thaw my frozen for salads.

Try to find a local butcher. No plastic-wrapped chicken, no pre-packaged beef patties. You get an awesome guy (or girl) with a vast knowledge of meat, who can offer you suggestions and steps on how to prepare and preserve your meats. A wonderful butcher will never be reluctant to offer you suggestions. He wants your business.

Make your own junk food. That’s right – no matter how many green velvet cupcakes you make, I promise you the calorie count wouldn’t scrape the surface of what it is when you buy boxed cupcake mix. Seriously.

Practicing what I preach... there's my wild rice, right there!

Make your freezer your best friend. Things like wild rice, brown rice… stuff that takes forever to cook? I cook it all in one giant pot, divvy it up into individual servings, put them in ziploc bags (which I reuse), and freeze them. That way, I have my own microwaveable rice bags without all the extra salt and preservatives… and I’m saving money.

Get Your Sugar From The Earth

Meaning.. if you need sugar, go for a fruit - something that came directly from the Earth. Skip the soft drinks, fruit juices and candies. I write enough about this for folks to know how I feel about these, since all three contain high fructose corn syrup. Aside from the fact that the stuff expands your waistline like nobody’s business, it’s a direct factor in causing and inflaming type 2 diabetes. If you drink a soda, there is nothing in that but sugar, salt and carbonation. Fruits have vitamins, minerals – the stuff of life – and, well, sugar. You can’t eat fruits, in their sugary splendor, in abundance because those nutrients in them will fill you up faster than a coke can. You’re not taking in empty calories. Even though you should be moderate in your fruit consumption, you’d do better to have an orange than a coke.

It’s cheaper, too.

Drink water.

And no, I don’t mean Fiji, Aquafina, or whatever. Get yourself a nice, attractive reusable container to carry with you throughout the day, and keep refilling it. Skip the water bottles that go… in a landfill, buried where trees – or people – could live, instead. If you’re having a hard time with the taste of water, squeeze a lemon/lime/orange/strawberry or whatever in it. Freeze some grapes, use ‘em as ice cubes at home. Buy some frozen blueberries, use those. Slice up a cucumber, drop it in there. I mean, outside of being super cute and attractive looking at a table, the stuff actually adds a nice little refreshing taste to water.

Purchase a 2.5gal jug – if you must – from your local grocery. Way less plastic than the 24pk of bottles, much less trash than the regular gallon jugs, and can fit in your fridge and last a while. I drink a little over a gallon of water a day (which means yes, I don’t drink much else besides water and my evening tea) because it keeps my skin looking a lovely healthy shade of chocolatey brown.

Reduce Your Portion Sizes

Measuring cups may not be so necessary after all!

Slow down. This means that you can’t eat standing up anymore. No, you can’t eat out of the pan anymore. No, you can’t eat in front of the TV. No, you can’t sit all the food on the table and you just pass around the pans. Relax. Take the time to enjoy your dinner companions, be they friends, family, whomever. Don’t put food in between you. Leave the food in the kitchen. Eat slower. Talk to one another. You’ll find that you not only eat less and still feel full, but you will have actually enjoyed your time together at the table. That is what it means to enjoy food. Not the feeling you get from the food, but from the company you’ve kept while you ate.

Pack your lunch. Not only do you save money… not only do you create less waste… but you save calories as well. Buy yourself an attractive (I keep wanting to say cute, but I know several fellas who are taking the challenge, too) lunch pail and stock it with your favorite snacks. Your body will thank you for it.

These things all help you save time as well as money, and benefit the Earth. The goal is to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible, and each of these tips gets us one step closer. It takes planning and preparation, but that’s why we’re discussing the challenge the week before we begin! Spend a little time today – Earth Day – and take at least one of these suggestions to heart. Every single step and every little effort counts. I promise!

Have any additional ideas? Let’s hear ‘em!

Fitting Clean Eating Into A Busy Life is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
2. Q&A Wednesday Clean Eating Style
3. Now That I’m Clean Eating, What Can I Cook?

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Post tags: clean eating, earth day, ecofriendly, grocery shopping, high fructose corn syrup, portion control, processed foods, saving money, vegetables, water

My thoughts were, of course you can be fit and “fat.” And considering how “fat” in America is anything over a size 4 – depending upon who you talk to – MANY of us are “fat” in someone else’s eyes… clearly that doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the stuff that keeps us alive. That stuff is filed under that “fit” label.

Those who I’ve dialogued with outside of the site know how I feel about this “fat” thing. As I’ve said before, my primary goal was just being a healthy weight. The vanity aspect of it came when I could afford to be vain and think about looks.. which, basically, was when I had my health situated.

There’s a point in that clip that disturbed me, though – the thinner woman said, “Because I am thin, because I’ve never been sick,” she never thought that her system could be in such bad shape because her body wasn’t in bad shape. I think that the American understanding that our “outer” is a direct reflection of our “inner” is what’s making it so hard for us to have these conversations about health.

What do I mean? I mean that we keep connecting a person’s size to their ability to be healthy. It shortchanges the people on both ends of the spectrum. If being obese is the epitome of poor health, then if I’m superskinny I should be good, right? I should be able to avoid all of that, right? Ever heard of metabolic syndrome?

Metabolic syndrome is a series of diseases that appear in the body in conjunction with one another as a result of a poor diet yet doesn’t always result in obesity. It creeps up on people because, since they believe their small frames alleviate them of the responsibility of caring for their systems, they tend to not only ignore any warning signs that their habits might be unhealthy but this also results in them continuing in said damaging behavior!

I guess I wanted to share this because I want us to stop thinking this skinny/fat thing is so linear. Good health manifests itself within ourselves mentally as well as physically. It extends itself far beyond a nice body. Taking care of ourselves means inside as WELL as outside. Don’t let yourselves get caught up in BEING skinny or shooting for skinny. Aim for better health first and foremost, and I can assure you everything else will become MUCH simpler!

Can You Be Fit AND “Fat?” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: health, mentality, myths

However, a commenter noted how much the pair were paying for a dozen eggs, as the two were buying a dozen brown eggs.

It completely slipped my mind, but let’s debunk this (and a few other myths along the way.) We’ll start with the transcript of a lovely interview from NPR’s All Things Considered:

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Debbie Elliott. This is the week of the egg. Passover has begun, where a roasted egg sits on the Seder plate as a symbol of the cycle of life or of mourning, depending on who you ask. And of course tomorrow is Easter where eggs, dyed or chocolate, celebrate the Resurrection.

We thought it was as good a week as any to find out the answer to a question that’s been nagging us. Why are some eggs white and some eggs brown? And who better to pose that question to than Marie Simmons, author of cookbook The Good Egg. Ms. Simmons, chime right in.

Ms. MARIE SIMMONS (Author, The Good Egg): Well, brown eggs come from chickens who have brown feathers. It’s as simple as that, and white eggs come from chickens that have white feathers. Brown eggs are totally equal in nutritional value. It’s just a matter of regional preferences.

ELLIOTT: So once you open the egg…

Ms. SIMMONS: They’re all the same in the inside. Of course, there are beautiful blue and pale green and tan-shelled eggs, and they come from a rare breed called the Araucana, but those are a mostly what we would maybe call boutique chickens, and they’re not the kind of eggs you’re going to find everywhere, but…

ELLIOTT: So you don’t necessarily have to dye your eggs to get those pretty colors. You just have to find a rare chicken.

Ms. SIMMONS: That’s right.

ELLIOTT: So why is it that white eggs are the ones that we tend to think of and see in the grocery store most often?

Ms. SIMMONS: Our supermarkets have both. We have white and brown eggs, but I think it’s the consumer demand for the white egg, or the preference, that is the reason that we are supplied most likely in supermarkets with white eggs.

Let’s follow that up with this from The Straight Dope:

According to the Egg Nutrition Board (and who should know better?), “White shelled eggs are produced by hens with white feathers and ear lobes. Brown shelled eggs are produced by hens with red feathers and red ear lobes. There is no difference in taste or nutrition between white and brown eggs.” The people at Crisco (who may know even more than the egg nutritionists) go further to say, “They simply come from two different breeds of chickens. Brown eggs, however, are more expensive because the chickens that lay them eat more than those that lay white eggs.” Among the breeds that lay brown eggs are the Rhode Island Red, the New Hampshire and the Plymouth Rock–all larger birds that require more food.But Bill Finch of the Mobile Register suggests that brown eggs may have tasted better at one time. He says, “For years, the chickens preferred by commercial growers happened to lay white eggs. A few smart cooks sought out brown eggs because most of the home-reared American flocks, which had access to flavor-enhancing weeds and bugs, happened to lay brown eggs. Commercial egg producers eventually got wise to this. They started raising chickens that laid brown eggs, and charged a premium for them at the store.

“But because the white AND brown grocery-store eggs are the result of the same bland commercial diet, their eggs taste exactly the same. Many people still apparently don’t realize they’ve been duped at their own game.”

Another:

• In general, consumers in the Northeast of the US prefer brown eggs, so most hens there are Rhode Island Reds, which produce brown eggs. Consumers in other parts of the country prefer white eggs, so most hens used elsewhere are White Leghorns, which produce white eggs.

• Brown eggs generally are more expensive because the Rhode Island Reds are bigger birds and eat more, which means it is more expensive to maintain them.

• Free-range eggs are produced by hens that are not kept in cages but live on an open floor, and not necessarily outside. These eggs are produced on a seasonal basis.

• The overall size and weight of an egg is an indicator of the health, breed, and maturity of the hen that laid it. Healthier, larger, and older hens produce larger eggs. Poor nutrition, stress, heat, and overcrowding can make hens produce smaller eggs.

• Similarly, the thickness of the egg’s shell is determined by the age of the hen and the hen’s nutrition. The healthier the hen, the thicker the shell. At the same time, older hens produce larger eggs. Larger eggs have a thinner shell, just because there’s more area to cover. If a larger egg has a thinner shell, that may have more to do with the age of the hen rather than its health.

• So if the eggshell is thicker, it’s not because it’s a brown egg. It’s most likely because the hen is healthier, or older, or living under better conditions. [source]

Annnnnnd another:

Eggshell color does not affect an egg’s nutritional value, quality, flavor, cooking characteristics, or shell thickness, says Emily Cooper, media spokesperson for the American Egg Board.

The difference is that they are more expensive. At CHOW’s local Safeway, one dozen Grade AA, extra-large white eggs from Lucerne sell for $3.19. Their brown counterparts, same size and grade, go for $3.98 per dozen. So why the higher price?

Hens that produce brown eggs are larger than white-egg-producing hens, and require more feed and care; that extra expense is passed on to the consumer. Although it might be cheaper to raise white-egg-producing hens, brown eggs continue to sell well, so they’re still a smart business choice for farmers. [source]

Can we now lay the brown egg vs white egg game to rest? And furthermore, can we stop spnding all of our hard earned pennies on an unnecessary expense?

Are Brown Eggs Really Better Than White? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. What’s Wrong With White Rice?
2. Q&A Wednesday: Salmonella, 500 Million Eggs, The FDA, & You
3. The Secret To Scrambled Eggs

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: brown eggs, cage-free eggs, white eggs

Hoppin' John, the Black New Year's staple of black eyed peas and veggies (yes, veggies...)

A couple of years ago, John McWhorter wrote the most ridiculous thing I’d read in a long time for The Root, attempting to refute both basic Capitalism and common sense by implying that “food deserts don’t exist and, therefore, are not the reason why Blacks in America are fat” because, basically, “Blacks don’t want healthy food, y’know, since they’ve always eaten fried chicken and fritos since they’ve been free in this country.”

And, no, I’m not overexaggerating:

Culture, too, creates a palate — and to point that out is not to find “fault.” Example: Slavery and sharecropping didn’t make healthy eating easy for black people back in the day. Salt and grease were what they had, and Southern blacks brought their culinary tastes North (Zora Neale Hurston used to bless her friend Langston Hughes with fried-chicken dinners). Fried food, such as fried chicken, was also easy to transport for blacks traveling in the days of Jim Crow, when bringing your own food on the road was a wise decision.

But that did help create what has lived on as a palate even after the circumstances that created it have changed.

Excerpted from The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

And ever since I wrote my post in response to that, this has been on my mind. Where does this idea that all soul food has ever consisted of was fried food, cheap food and garbage? Why is it so easy for us to assume that obesity is “so prevalent” (I use those quotation marks for a reason) in the Black community because of something inherently wrong with Black culinary culture? Why is it so easy for us to believe that the flaw was, immediately, us and not, say, food manufacturing in this country? It was us – our fault, the fault of our culture – for why we are, collectively, fat. Nothing else is even worth considering?

McWhorter says, “Culture, too, creates a palate – and to point that out is not to find ‘fault.’” No, it’s not to “find fault,” it is to “lay responsibility at the foot of culture,” or to “place blame” in said culture’s lap. To try to head me off at the pass by saying that blaming culture is “not to find fault” doesn’t make it so.

“Salt and grease were what they had,” “Fried food, such as fried chicken, was also easy to transport for Blacks traveling in the days of Jim Crow, [because, since you knew that no restaurant would be willing to accept your little colored money,]“… statements like these both astounded and intrigued me.

When I think back to my almost 100 year old great grandmother and her garden in Selma, Alabama, I don’t remember all-fried everything. I don’t remember “salt” and “grease.” I don’t remember “fried chicken,” and am pretty sure she’s never cooked it for me. I got that from my Mother, arguably 50 years younger than Aunt Sissy.

Then, I listen to what my peers are saying around me. Such denigration for what they’ve identified as stereotypical “soul food,” a culture rich in flavor, skill and – yes – nutrition. After reading approximately 9 books on African, Caribbean and diasporic African foodways as I healed from an annoying leg injury last year, I can straight up and down say that most of these people have no freaking idea what they’re talking about.

How do you go from gumbo, crab cakes, deviled eggs, and roasted pork (possum?) to “soul food wasn’t nothin’ but salt and grease?” How do you go from a plant-based diet (yes, our ancestors, despite the drop ins of pork and other meats, ate a plant-based diet) rich in fruits and vegetables, light on meat (because, hey hey, they couldn’t afford it), and supplemented with unprocessed grain as a filler, to having some man in an Ivory Tower tell you that the reason your people don’t eat healthy food is because they have a hereditary slave palate that determines whether or not they are healthy eaters?

Let’s get something clear. Black Americans aren’t the only ones overweight in this country. Black Americans bought into the same swindle that the rest of the country bought into and were hurt even more because, while the rest of the country had enough money to pull itself out of the rabbit hole of processed food and obesity, Black Americans by and large did not. Two thirds of Black America may be fat, but guess what? Two thirds of America is fat, too.

Soul food is not to blame for our nutritional woes. A willingness to blame soul food for Black America’s current ailments resulted in complaints about “vegetables being boiled to death” replacing what used to be excitement for receiving a plate of braised string beans with corn bread. Why corn bread? Simple: the corn bread was used to sop up the “pot liquor” from the string beans. (“Pot liquor” is what’s left in the pot after vegetables have been treated. Studies – studies, mind you, that were done long after our ancestors were doing this – show that vegetables that are boiled actually have the vitamins and minerals boiled out of them, resulting in a vitamin-rich broth left in the pot after all the servings.

Hell, the corn bread of today isn’t even the corn bread of yesterday – is your corn meal organic? Your ancestors’ corn meal was. Is your corn meal from genetically modified, hyper-processed corn kernels? Your ancestors’ corn was not. Do you have a propensity for “sweet corn bread?” That’s neither a “North” nor a “South” thing – that’s a processed food thing. You can thank “Jiffy” for the popularity of sweet corn bread.

You can also thank processed food for the increase in saltiness in soul food, too. Sure, soul food always used cured pork, but it was used so sparingly (very rare was the occasion that a Black family had access to the “better” parts of the pig and, therefore, were reluctant to squander what they had access to by eating whole parts at a time.) that it would’ve never had the same effects it had today. (And, while there are studies out regarding hypertension in the early 1900s, there are far more mitigating factors in blood pressure than simply “salt” and “smoking.” Think “factory conditions,” for starters.)

You know what else you can thank processed food for? Your “fat” tooth. Fried chicken was fried, not deep fried nor triple battered. It also wasn’t fried in genetically modified oils, replete with omega-6 and considered to be deleterious to one’s health. We didn’t stick solely to the “fat parts” of the animal. Hog jowls, pig’s feet, sweet breads, pig intestines? All low in fat and incredibly high in protein. And before anyone brings up “macaroni and cheese” to me, let me make life easier on you: macaroni and cheese, though it is a soul food staple now, did not originate with African Americans.

Who is cooking soul food seven days a week, three times a day? No one, that’s who. For all of you people who consistently advocate for “cheat meals,” isn’t your “cheat meal” that Sunday dinner when Big Mama throws down for the whole family? Isn’t that Sunday dinner the only meal you’re eating that big throw down? And, furthermore, aren’t you eating Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, Whoppers, Lean Cuisines and goodness knows what else during the week? The height of processed food? But it’s Big Mama’s “cheat meal” every Sunday that you want to blame. The rest of America isn’t sitting at Big Mama’s table, but they’re certainly in line at the drive thru… and they’re just as overweight as the rest of us. Mexicans that come to America and eat their traditional dishes using American ingredients? They’re gaining weight, too.

Neither our pies nor our cobblers had two crusts – again, processed food. (I am totally guilty of this.) Manufacturers were eager to sell us the idea of a two-crusted dessert because it’d require us to use up our butters and flours faster, thereby needing to purchase more at a faster rate. Our banana pudding wasn’t made up lazily of “nilla wafers.” It was pound cake, with arguably less sugar. We didn’t use white sugar – couldn’t afford it – we used molasses, far easier on the blood sugar levels and still could be reduced to be made sweeter. The sugar we did use, was purified with ox blood, lime, egg whites and a blanket. Not dimethylhexachloroferodextrol. (I completely made that up, but damn if it doesn’t sound an awful lot like what’s in the food now.) Our rices were, by default, brown and wild – there was no hulling of rice grain, thereby making it “white,” until around 1902. Processed food, processed food, processed food.

The willingness of the Black community to assume that the reasons why we are experiencing unfortunate circumstances is because of something inherently wrong with ourselves and our culture, instead of acknowledging that those same unfortunate circumstances have befallen everyone in society… as cliche as it is to say “that’s self hate,” I don’t know what other way to put it.

I started the month off with the lead in from “The Problem With Processed Food” because, quite frankly, there is a lot of road to hoe, here. Just last week, I attended a seminar for personal trainers [insert innocent face here], and one of the only other Black women in attendance approached me and, after lengthy conversation, said “Man, it’s that soul food. It’s killing us.” All I could do is smile and say, “I don’t know, but whatever it is, we’ve got to do something.”

I just… I wanted to hug that woman. Hug her and tell her, our culture didn’t do this to us. The disparaties in income did this to us. The availability of fresh produce, or lack thereof, did this to us. The trust we placed in food processing and manufacture did this to us. The same things that did this to the rest of our country, are the same things that did this to us, and it’s time that we stop pretending otherwise. Stop buying into a mentality that says Blacks are inherently bad and wrong, and any problems that affect us specifically (regardless of whether or not they affect others) are our fault as Blacks and not as Americans or even as human beings. I’m over it, and I hope you are, too.

Neither Soul Food, Nor “Slave Food,” Made You Fat is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Video Vault: Are You A Soul Food Junkie? New Doc Explores Food And Health
2. Lies In Your Food: Made With REAL Blueberries? But I Thought…
3. Refuse To Be A Slave To The Scale

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: african americans, blackness, crab cakes, culture, gumbo, john mcwhorter, macaroni and cheese, slave food, soul food, the root

For our first series ever, Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss will be explaining calorie counting, and ways to win the war. This is post 2 of the series – post 1, Defining The Basics of Calorie Counting, can be found here. Comments are always welcomed, and questions will always be answered to the best of my ability.

Calorie counting is comprised of two elements:

• A) Gauging approximately how many calories you burn in a given day, and
• B) Setting a total calorie maximum for how many calories you will take in during a 24 hour time frame.

This is a very controlled method for managing caloric input – not eating anything unless you know how many calories it will add to your daily total. That means… if you’re planning to visit a restaurant? You’d better google those nutritional values for their dishes, and pick a dish that will keep you under your caloric intake.

Conscious eating, and the power of “No”

This also requires a LOT of consciousness. It forces you to consider the things you eat every day – every… day – without thinking. Do you leave the house in search of the nearest Starbucks to get your morning Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino? Well, if you’re calorie counting, you’d have to consider that your morning drink (not even food!) costs you 750 calories, 120grams of sugars, and 15grams of fat. Say you don’t hit Starbucks in the morning. Instead, you give yourself an extra 20 minutes and hit up McDonalds for a Deluxe Breakfast. Calorie counting? You’d need to know – in advance – that this entire meal just cost you 1,370 calories, 161grams of carbohydrates, and 64.5grams of fat (consider that, on average, MY fat intake value for a person 6′ fall at ~200lbs is no more than 80grams… that’d leave me 15.5 grams to enjoy the rest of the day!) without even mentioning the 2,335mg of sodium. McDonalds’ would’ve screwed up your whole calorie day! You would’ve been inhaling kool-aid packets all day for sustenance!

Calorie counting requires a LOT of what I refer to when I say conscious consumerism. It means taking 10 seconds to think about what you’re preparing to do before you do it. Did a co-worker come over to your desk and ask you to dip out with her and dine at Macaroni Grill after work? Is your favorite dish the Parmesan Crusted Sole? Well how, exactly, does 2,190 calories, 141grams of fat, and 145grams of carbohydrates fit into your total caloric intake? Do you think you can go without ordering your favorite dish out of habit? You spot that the Pollo Magro is only 320 calories.. could you commit yourself to ordering that instead? Can you be honest with yourself and say “No” if you really can’t do it? Do you have the wherewithal to tell your co-worker “No” if you know the temptation is too great?

Trust me, it takes about ten seconds to run this scenario through your mind one good time, if you’re being honest with yourself. And I’ll admit it – in the beginning of MY experience with calorie counting, I had to learn the QUICK way how to simply say “No.” It might even make you feel like you’re talking to yourself… and then you might feel awkward because you actually respond, but it’s for the better. That “No” is important, because it is FAR easier than “Let me get an Egg McMuffin (300 calories, 12g fat, 30g carbohydrates – less fat than that Starbucks drink that I mentioned up there) instead of that big giant dish of pancakes… mmm, with that syrup… oh, and that hash brown? Hmm…” Please believe, in 2 seconds flat, it turns into “Actually, let me just get the Deluxe Breakfast instead.” You must be at the ready. No auto-pilot. You must always be conscious.

Calorie counting requires that you take a long…hard…look at the foods you’re eating at home. Lots of microwaveables? Calorie counting demands that you take a hard look at each item. Could you make this better at home? If not – and that’s OK if you can’t – would you be better off with another dish, instead? Look long and hard and the caloric values on that nutrition label. Does it say 1 serving is equal to 400 calories? If so, does it say that there are actually TWO servings in the entire dish? You know, the dish packaged like it’s made for only one person? You have to be conscious!

Looking for other posts in the Understanding Calorie Counting series? Check the links below!

• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Basics
• Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
• Understanding Calorie Counting: A Final Word

Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
2. Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
3. Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting, overeating

The other night, on twitter, I was asked about different pieces of my story. I guess that means… more about my struggle? How I came to a point where I was comfortable with my efforts and my ability to continue on to where I want to be?

Okay.. here goes.

Once upon a time, I lived in Denton, TX. A student at UNorth Texas, I had a close friend who I’ve mentioned on this site before, named Alyse. She’d hit the campus gym (which was absolutely stunning and seriously state of the art.. floating track and all that) at nights, and started inviting me. Me, at 300+lbs and with a 8month old beauty on my hands, I figured it couldn’t hurt, right? I mean, if nothing else, I could get a good walk with minimal exposure to outdoor elements with my daughter. If only I could commit to it.

Needless to say, I didn’t. I fizzled out quickly and, although I wish she did, Alyse didn’t push me on this. She did stick by me, though.

Fast forward about another 8 months, and I’ve moved back home to prepare to start my own business. In the time of being at home, I’d put on a good 30 lbs. I wouldn’t admit it, but it felt like someone was pumping air into my spare tire. Being home was stressful… my mother – as much as I love and value her role in my life – is a stressor. Living under someone else’s roof… is a stressor. Single parenthood… is a stressor. Starting your own business… definite stressor. I’d turn to food, simply because it shuts up, gives me what I need, and makes me feel good. Was the high temporary? Of course… but that was all the more reason to eat some more.

It wasn’t my house, so I kinda sorta couldn’t really cook in it. I would dip to the grocery store and buy little quick microwaveables – things that’d allow me to heat, eat, and retreat back out of my mom’s sight. It was her house, I didn’t want her to feel burdened in her own home. Needless to say, the weight just came piling on.

By about May, I had finally received my articles of incorporation, and was feeling accomplished. Feeling like I could really just get up and take off… and my mother mentioned the brand new fitness center that opened up around the corner. I rolled my eyes… beyond normal eye-rolling, even. But I was so high off of getting incorporated that I said, “Screw it. Let’s go.”

The gym, an Anytime Fitness, was gorgeous. Mirrors everywhere (mind you, I didn’t look in ANY), beautiful shiny machines, and TVs! Hallelujah! TVs! The owner gave me a personal tour. Told me what some machines did, showed me the importance of certain exercises, and really drove a hard sale on getting me to join. Now, I work in marketing – I know when I’m being pitched to and when someone’s genuine. He was clearly a combination of both – he had to be in his mid to late 50s and was on some Jack LaLanne fitness type mess, but at the same time he needed memberships. So I accepted, and let myself sink into his sales pitch. I NEEDED to be compelled to do this.

Once his pitch became unbearable, I excused myself to the bathroom. Inside, it was this beautiful rusty color. Nice lil’ shower curtains. Clean bathroom complete with sprays and magazines.

And a scale.

I jumped on that scale. I won’t tell you exactly what it said, but once it soared past 300, I ’bout had a HEART ATTACK. I just sobbed my little heart out. After remembering that I had to eventually leave the bathroom, I collected myself and stepped outside… only to start sobbing again.

The owner (who was also a trainer) consoled me, assured me that I COULD – in fact – do this thing, and offered me the standard two training sessions that came free with my membership. Help me become knowledgeable about the equipment, how different machines help different parts of the body, and help me figure out the best course of action for my own body. I took him up on his offer.

To speed up the story a bit, about six months went by with my membership, and I had lost about 28 lbs. In theory, about a pound a week. To clarify, I was going to the gym 28 days a month (yes, that Erika K. over there is me!), and was regularly number 1 for most gym visits in a month. I spent at least an hour in there every night that I went. I didn’t know that there were reasons for such minimal results on a regular basis. Honestly, I didn’t care. I knew there was something much more important for me to address, and getting over myself and getting used to investing in myself regularly was more important than seeing the scale move. Learning to accept that I had to ruin my hair, on occasion, and sweat a little was more important than seeing the scale move. For now, that is.

After those six months, I packed up and moved my daughter and I to Miami. No gym membership here, although there is a little gym in the apartment complex. I never visited that bad boy, though.

After three months in Miami, I gained about 14lbs. Talk about a shocker! I was beyond confused! What part of the game was THAT? I knew I needed to start back up, but I didn’t understand how I could gain so much weight so quickly. I didn’t understand how I was shortchanging myself.

Two months more passed by, and after changing my eating habits a bit, the weight gain slowed down. I had three relatively traumatic events occur back to back, and I even remember the night the straw broke the camel’s back. I was baking a tin of muffins (you read that right – some box muffins, no less) and when the word came around, I walked in the kitchen, yanked the muffins  – half done – out of the oven. I just… stared at them. I just so happened to be so nauseated, that I couldn’t eat. I stuck the half done muffins in the fridge. I thought I might have an appetite, and eat them later.

I didn’t.

In fact, I only had a desire to eat raw vegetables, because they were light, less greasy, and wouldn’t turn my stomach. I won’t tell you how much weight I lost within the time frame that I did only eat raw veggies, but it was enough to make me realize that my eating habits were a problem. I just didn’t know how to address that problem.

A Sorority sister of mine with relatively healthy eating habits visited the grocery store with us one day. She knew about the changes in my weight, knew that I wanted to keep up the momentum, and knew that I was serious about changing my life. So.. we literally fought in the grocery store. If I reached for something I had no business buying, she slapped my hand. I think, at one point, I actually started throwin’ stuff at her.

“You don’t have to eat like this, Erika,” were her words. Hell, I didn’t know there were other options. Later that day, I remember saying to her “Gosh, I’m starving. Let’s go to Checkers right quick.” She told me, “No. You’ve got food at home.” That was actually the last time I ever even asked for fast food. I got her point.

Time passed, and I was losing weight without even working out. My mentality then became, “If I worked out, I could probably lose even faster!” And with that statement, I started walking. Grabbed my iPod, and hit the trail with my daughter. From there, natural progression has taken me from the walking, to the elliptical at the gym, to running outside. I spent a lot of time learning about calisthenics and with the right resources, I learned the benefits of working out at home.

To date of writing this post, I’ve lost 134lbs. If you want to include the 10lbs I actually wound up gaining back, it’s been 144lbs. I don’t like to give myself that satisfaction, though. To break it down, from the moment that I started changing my eating habits, I’ve lost about 80lbs. It’s October 31st today, right? I changed my eating habits in April. 80lbs in six months changing my eating habits vs. 28lbs in 6 months working out? Maybe now you see why I’m such a proponent for better eating habits.

In short (even though this is FAR from short, sorry), everyone has their “come to fitness” moment. Some even choose to never come to it. But if you can read my struggle and identify what the catalysts for change were for me, then maybe you’ll be better prepared when yours arrive. Maybe you’ll use them as starting points. Maybe you will use mine to start yourself up. If you use them at all, by all means, share in the comments!

A Very Big Piece of My Weight Loss Story is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Stop Defeating Your Weight Loss Efforts Before You Begin
2. Weight Loss… and Your Libido
3. “Weight Loss Is For People With Low Self-Esteem”

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Post tags: extreme weight loss

Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss will be explaining calorie counting, and ways to win the war. This is post 4 of the series – post 1, Defining The Basics of Calorie Counting, can be found here. Comments are always welcomed, and questions will always be answered to the best of my ability.

What do you get from calorie counting, you may ask? Let me tell you what it did for me (really, that’s all I can do at this point, LOL.)

Calorie counting reinforced my ability to be a conscious consumer. Meaning, I am much more able, now, to really take a good hard look at what I’m eating and gauge exactly how much I’m putting into my mouth. I no longer have the insane portion distortion from which I used to suffer.

Calorie counting gave me the ability to say “No.” Checkers? “No.” Big greasy 2,000 calorie lo mein platter from PF Chang? “No.” Eating half a box of fried taquitos in one sitting? “No.” Firecracker Stuffed [with cheese and everything else under the kitchen sink and fried] Jalapenos wiiiiiiiiiiiiith the entire thing of Chili Con Queso (1,950 calories, 134g of fat, and 6,540 milligrams of sodium) from On the Border? “Hell No.” I haven’t even BEEN to Checkers in 7 months. I’m starting to think I’d like to keep it that way. My newly developed self control allows me to follow through on that thought.

Calorie counting taught me how to gauge what’s in what I’m eating, thanks to all the looking up I did. (Note: Mind you, I OD’d on the looking up, thanks to that Lose It! app for the iPhone/iTouch, of foods just because I could.. no one has to be that obsessive with it to be successful. Looking it up the night after is just as effective.) I can now gauge how many calories is in that alfredo dish at Olive Garden. I can guess how many calories are in that KFC macaroni salad. I now know to avoid most dishes with a creamy consistency because of the potential fat levels, and that’s without even looking it up. I now know to avoid most salads at restaurants without telling them “cheese, avocado, dressing, and any other fattening mess on the side, please.”

Calorie counting taught me how to be more aware of what I was feeding my family. Please believe that it’s made me a more watchful cook for the people who eat from my kitchen. This has resulted in us all becoming healthier.

Calorie counting has helped me to understand my limits. I can’t control myself when it comes to goldfish crackers. I can control myself if I have ginger snaps in the house. My daughter might despise me for not keeping goldfish in the house anymore, but she’s happy with how I doll up her ginger snaps. Less sodium for her, too.

Calorie counting made me aware of the empty calories I was eating or specifically for me… the empty calories I was drinking. I eventually gave up sodas, except for mixing them with my alcohol… but then I eventually gave up alcohol. I occasionally had pop when I had an ice cream float, but then I stopped eating so much ice cream! It just became less of an indulgence for me. If my favorite soda was 200 calories in each time I drank it, and I’m only allowed 400 calories for lunch… what on Earth am I supposed to eat with it? Two pieces of cardboard? Pfft!

As I think of more benefits, I’ll probably edit this and add more.

Looking for other posts in the Understanding Calorie Counting series? Check the links below!

• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Basics
• Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
• Understanding Calorie Counting: A Final Word

Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
2. Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
3. Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting, fat loss, overeating

For our first series ever, Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss will be explaining calorie counting, and ways to win the war. This is post 6 of the series – post 1, Defining The Basics of Calorie Counting, can be found here. Comments are always welcomed, and questions will always be answered to the best of my ability.

Believe me, I know just how exhaustive this guide is. I know how daunting this task is. I KNOW how easy it is to talk yourself out of bothering with this mess – “I’m already sexy, I already have a man… what do I need to put myself through this for?” or even “I’m skinny now.. I don’t need to lose weight… why do I need to know this?” I know. I KNOW how much of a struggle this can be for the woman who is used to having everything she wants… food included. I know! But for me, the breaking point was my desire to be healthier (and – I won’t lie – skinnier) became larger than my desire to eat a whole Bloomin’ Onion at Outback (2,310 calories, 134g of fat, 241g of carbs; thanks chowbaby) for dinner instead of an actual dish.

Becoming healthier is about a commitment to self. It’s about committing the same to ourselves as we commit to others. Are we not worth it? As much as I love my daughter, and as much as I give up for her (giving her my last ginger snap? now, that is love) I had to realize that taking time to work out wasn’t about selfishness… it’s about her just as much as it is me. It’s about being around to watch her walk down the aisle. To be there for her when she and her hubby give me grandchildren… 30 years from now. It’s about making sure that I’m in optimal health when I’m in my 50s, so that I’m not bedridden and 600lbs overweight because I wanted to overdo it on the Oreo Shakes from Baskin Robbins (2600 calories, 135g fat, 263g sugars, 1700mg sodium – yes… all of that in a shake.)

I’m not trying to live that life. Once it hit me that every little step I take makes a difference, that each little step built upon the last? I was on it. Before I knew it, my snowflake was a snowball… and was causing an avalanche. So no, my adventure in calorie counting didn’t last a couple of weeks, with me starting by going cold turkey and stopping with a vengeance. It lasted months, with lots of failures. In some ways, it’s still going on… it’s simply evolved along with my journey and my goals.

This isn’t simple. As evidenced by the mass number of women who tell me allllll the time, “I know what to do, I just don’t know how to do it.” If it were that easy, all of these women who know WHAT to do, wouldn’t be lost on how to begin. Start slow. Take your time. Accept your failures and use them to make yourself stronger. Admit that you can’t drive down a certain road. Admit that you can’t visit a certain restaurant. You may even need to admit that you need a friend to go with you to the grocery. That is perfectly okay. It’s intention is to make you healthier. Use it to get you there, and I have every faith in the world that you will, indeed, get there.

Be healthy!

Looking for other posts in the Understanding Calorie Counting series? Check the links below!

• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Basics
• Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
• Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
• Understanding Calorie Counting: Preparing Yourself For Success
• Understanding Calorie Counting: A Final Word

Understanding Calorie Counting: A Final Word is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined
2. Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
3. Understanding Calorie Counting: The Payoff – Why Am I Doing This To Myself?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting

And logically, what company is going to pay millions of dollars for a little ad that will turn people off from purchasing their product?

Just like the commercials for “high fructose corn syrup” a few years back (and the accompanying websites) trying to educate the public on what the concoction doesn’t do to you. Give the people a reason to be comfortable with the way of life they have now (one full of products laden with an allegedly harmful chemical), and they won’t raise hell. I work in marketing. I get it.

Milk is the same way. Tell the elderly that they need milk to help them prevent osteoporosis (essentially, your bones breaking into a few pieces.) Start telling women who, on average, are at least 4 inches wider than they were several decades ago that milk will help them develop and maintain a slimmer figure, and they’ll jump to snatch the stuff off the shelves. Give people a reason to feel good about something that’s already in their lives, and they’ll keep doing it. Give ‘em a reason to feel pressure about doing it more – and make it easy – and they’ll keep at it. Easy peasy.

Even though I know this, I was surprised by the faith I have in milk… and how shaken I was by this article discussing how, apparently, 60% of adults cannot digest milk properly. What?

From USA Today:

Instead, people who are lactose intolerant can’t digest the main sugar —lactose— found in milk. In normal humans, the enzyme that does so —lactase— stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.

If you’re American or European it’s hard to realize this, but being able to digest milk as an adult is one weird genetic adaptation.

It’s not normal. Somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world’s highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.

Being able to digest milk is so strange that scientists say we shouldn’t really call lactose intolerance a disease, because that presumes it’s abnormal. Instead, they call it lactase persistence, indicating what’s really weird is the ability to continue to drink milk.

So, what does that mean? It means a few things, really. I’ll at least tell you what came in my head after reading this article.

1. Firstly, if a majority of adults cannot digest milk, how many of us are drinking milk anyway and not being mindful of any digestive problems?
2. Secondly, how many of us are allowing the marketing to rule our lives? How many of us are well aware of the digestive issues that we experience due to milk and ignore those messages because “milk is so good for you, is so vital to your well-being, and everyone is drinking it?” In other words, how many of us just assume blindly that since everyone else is drinking milk and they don’t seem to be thwarted by whatever these pains are, that it’s just “normal?”
3. Lastly, how accurate are the studies that the dairy industry has been using to validate their claims? If anything, I know that scientists can put together a perfect study complete with damaging results. I also know how easy it is to turn that data and spin it on behalf of my company. Taking it a step further, I ALSO know that I can get pretty bold with my “spin” because the average person doesn’t go checking behind commercials or reading the fine print.

So, really… I can’t help but wonder. Did I get duped by phenomenal marketing? Because although I switched over to rice milk a long time ago, I still keep dairy in my diet because its healthy (more like, it’s because I’m in love with sharp cheddar, but that’s beside the point.) But if I can let it go, I’m on it.

Exactly How Does Milk Do A Body Good? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Cows Genetically Modified To Produce Human Milk?
2. Good Mornings
3. ‘Cause Your Good Hair Is More Important Than Your Health?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dairy, high fructose corn syrup, milk, veganism

I’m not gonna lie – this is more for me than it is for you, dear reader, because I have a bad habit of running back to foods that are laden with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and usually don’t realize what I’m doing to myself until I’m halfway through the package. As if my mind says “Nooooo! Don’t look at the ingredients li– aww, damn.”

Conventional wisdom (and your brain) tells you, “if it feels good, do it.” Well, you know how sometimes, things feel a little too good? Like, so good, it’s downright sinful? Rest assured, you probably have no business doing it. My favorite piece of cheesecake? Sinful. My favorite Tira Mi Su? Sinful. The BBQ sauce I just tossed out the other day because I was clenching the bottle trying to understand why common sense wouldn’t let me put it down? Sinful! (By the way, all three of them contain HFCS.)

Having said all that, let me introduce you to HFCS. Actually, I’ll let the Corn Refiners Association do it:

Now… I laugh, only because I work in marketing. Ads like this serve one purpose: damage control. So when I see something like this, my first thought is “what happened to make the corn farmers toss money at the small screen?” They’re essentially mocking the very people they’re targeting — those who know it’s bad for them, but aren’t able to quickly express why — and still expecting to win them over. Or… is this a stealthy method of giving “comebacks” to HFCS fans to use when those hoity toity picky eaters get on their soapbox about Cheetos and Capri Suns? Who goes to those kinds of lengths when everything is ok? …when the accusations are baseless?

So… digging, I go.

First, let’s look at that ad up there. “My hair dresser says that sugar is healthier than high fructose corn syrup.” Follow that up with the witty retort of, “Wow! You get your hair done by a doctor?” [insert laughter]

You and I BOTH know that it doesn’t require an MD to be able to study and understand a pros and cons list. If I show you a list that says “fattening,” and another list that says “leaves you prone to diabetes, inflates your appetite, and apparently can be linked to high blood pressure,” you’re going to be able to easily identify which one is going to leave you worse off, right?

Do you need to explain to someone that High Fructose Corn Syrup fiddles with leptin, a hormone in the human body that aids in regulating the appetite, in a way that prevents you from being able to control your hunger? Do you need to be able to explain to someone that HFCS screws with your body’s ability to process insulin? (Just in case you’re wondering, that works like this: since HFCS is metabolized as fat quicker than regular sugar once it hits your liver, this process triggers something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This process leads to insulin resistance and type II diabetes.) It isn’t enough that you know something makes you uncomfortable and you don’t want to partake in it. You have to be a doctor now to speak ill of it?

Well, let me tell y’all somethin’ – I’m no doctor, and I’ll still be damned if someone tells me that my own bad feelings aren’t enough to justify not wanting a chemistry experiment nourishing my body I was given. Period. You might get the mental judo chop for that one.

Let’s also talk about this moderation thing, here. Of course, HFCS is safe in moderation. At the same time, so are Doritos. The difference between the two is, well… do you know how many foods you eat each day contain HFCS? Let me put it to you like this: Soda? High Fructose Corn Syrup. “Processed Cheese Food?” HFCS. Jam, jelly, ketchup, BBQ sauce , “fruit juices,” Wonder bread (most breads, actually), eggos, pop tarts, cough syrup, and mayo? High Fructose Corn Syrup.Yes. Apparently, you have a better chance of escaping Doritos than you do HFCS.

I think I’ve named at least ONE thing that we all eat throughout the day. If not, then think about this: I’m sure you’ve had a McDonalds menu meal, right? The same corn that makes your HFCS feeds the cows that turn into your burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients in the Chicken McNuggets.  Now, think about “moderation.” How can you effectively moderate something that is everywhere and in everything? You can’t… and they know it. Your ability to gauge what “moderate use” is becomes swayed by the fact that it’s been in everything you ate that day. For those of you who use these foods regular and often, “HFCS in moderation” is pretty much… a joke.

Why is that, though? Why is it that you can’t escape this substance? In as few words as possible, here’s why.

Once upon a time, our government approved a plan that pretty much pays farmers to overproduce corn in America. Considering the basic principle of supply and demand (the more rare, the more expensive; the more common, the more cheap), that drives the price of corn down. Since they have this item in such abundance and so cheap, they come up with multiple ways to use it… hence HFCS. You, a food exec, have an extremely cheap item in your hands that makes food taste (or, at least appear to taste) better. Why not use this to your advantage? Stick some extra fat in certain foods to stretch out our supply… and when the taste is altered? Stick a little HFCS in there. Want to create a cheap juice? Find a “strawberry” flavor, some high fructose corn syrup, and water. Pow. Cost $0.50 to make, but watch me sell a giant jug of it for $2.50. I’m in there like swimwear. It’s just smart, business-wise.

Nutrition-wise, it’s doing nothing for you, the consumer. It’s empty calories. That means for all that you’re ingesting, there is no vitamin or nutritional value for any of it. At all. You should seek for all of your food to provide you a liiiiiiittle somethin’ in the end. Besides a gut, that is.

There’s one more point I want to bring up before I wrap this up… and that’s the point about rewards, gratification, and habit. HFCS tends to trigger a sort of… Pavlov’s dog syndrome, if you will.

To summarize briefly, a Russian scientist named Ivan Pavlov studied conditioned responses in dogs. In short, if you get in the habit of doing something and the SAME reward happens each time you do it, you begin to expect (or, in other words, you become conditioned) the reward before you’ve even done the action that brings the reward. In other words, if you know you love that BBQ sauce… if you see it, your body starts to experience the pleasure you get from it long before you taste it.. thus causing you to indulge. You want that good feeling again. It’s that simple.

Feels like I’m sticking you with a burden, right? That’s not my intention. I would love it if you could resolve a few things within yourself.

First, resolve that you’ll begin to phase out some of the unnecessary HFCS-filled foods in your life. If you overdo the mountain dew, consider packing it away… for good. If you love the ketchup or pancake syrups, look for something a little more natural. If you can’t afford the healthier option, shoot for a less expensive option. (In the case of the syrups, the healthier alternate that my grocery had cost an extra $4. So instead, I top my pancakes and french toast with a little confectioners sugar, $0.99, and fruit slices, $1.29. In the case of the ketchup, I simply stopped eating hot dogs… the one thing I couldn’t eat without ketchup.)

Then resolve that you’ve made the best decision for you, and no corny commercial or insulting advertisement will make you feel less comfortable with the decision you’ve made for yourself. Just like you don’t owe anyone any expanation for why you want to lose weight and eat healthier, you for damn sure don’t owe anyone any explanations for why you choose to phase High Fructose Corn Syrup out of your diet.

Lastly, like I’ve written before, resolve that this is a difficult lifestyle change — a lifetime lifestyle change and it will be bumpy at first. That’s perfectly okay. As long as you’re taking and following steps each day, you’ll be able to bet that you’re moving in the direction in which you need to go.

Be happy, be healthy!

High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun At High Fructose Corn Syrup
2. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fast Food, food labels, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, overeating, restaurants

How easy would it be for YOU to say no?

I’m always intrigued by people who presume that my weight loss is attributed solely to will power… or that the [at least] two thirds of Americans simply… lack will power, and that’s why they’re overweight. There’s this all-or-nothingness that hangs over the concept.

No, really – you just need to tell yourself “No,” and then you’ll be better able to handle your diet.

Think about that: the only reason why two thirds of Americans are overweight is the fact that they don’t have this uncanny ability to say “No” that the other third of Americans appear to have. How silly does that sound? If anything, with looking at those numbers, you’d think actually having will power is the anomaly… right? Or does it just make more sense to keep minimizing how difficult it is to lose weight and mock people for not being able to do it?

I think of my own personal experiences with food, and I’ve got to tell you…the first, at least, 100lbs that I lost had nothing to do with having will power. It wasn’t about some ability to “just say no.” It wasn’t even about portion control at first. It certainly wasn’t about some silly diet. It was 100% about what I was purchasing at the grocery. It was about what I allowed myself to have around me. Period.

And some might say, “Well, that’s about self-discipline, isn’t it?” I’d have to say yes, but then again it’s easy to realize what you need to purchase, and go to the grocery to act on that list and make the appropriate purchases. You go in with a plan and you come out a winner. It is another thing entirely when hunger attacks, and you have to fight the urge to get up and leave the house for fast food.

And again, you might say, “well surely that part is about self-discipline, yes?” Again, I’d have to say yes.  If you’re experiencing hunger pangs, you absolutely do have to fight against yourself to make the better, safer, healthier decision. You do have to fight and tell yourself “no, don’t get in that car!” You do have to tell yourself, once you’re already in the car, “Nooooooooo, don’t hit that drive thru!” and let’s face it: If you’re already in the drive-thru, you might’ve already lost the war.

But if so much about weight loss is will power… where is the myth?

The myth is that will power is the key. It’s not. If you’re not used to telling yourself no… where are you going to develop that herculean strength? If you’re not used to turning down treats and ignoring cravings, where and how do you start? How can we ensure success? You learn self-discipline… you don’t just all-of-a-sudden find this giant mass of it within you. It’s a growth process. That stupid “all or nothing” mentality doesn’t apply.

If I’m in a household full of processed foods – foods studied, tested and engineered for “maximum flavor intensity” and “you-can’t-eat-just-one-ability” and “oh-my-gosh-this-is-so-good-I-can’t-stop-eating-ity” – it’s supposed to make sense that I can easily say no? That’s why I believe the first step starts at the grocery store. That’s where I first developed my ability to say “No.” That’s where I first realized that I needed to be able to use the two feet I was born with, and walk away from certain aisles… and each time I was successful, I felt a little freer. Just a little… but a little was enough.

Before long, I was learning about food and improving my ability to say no, simply because I was realizing what was in everything. It certainly wasn’t food, and I wanted to develop a better relationship with food – not chemicals – so I spent a fair amount of time casting the chemicals out. I’m still developing my relationship with food – I don’t know that this is a process with a finite ending to it – but I can tell you one thing: I’m intuitive enough that I can dine outside of my home and, within two bites, turn down a dish that I think isn’t homemade or is simply poorly made. I’m not going to be hoodwinked into redeveloping bad habits because someone used chemicals in their food. I’ll pass.

If a company spends $30 million on studies for creating the “perfect spaghetti sauce,” and spends years on taste testing for the perfect balance… then guess what – they’re investing all of that money and doing all of that taste testing to find out which sauce will please the majority of the public. (Note: This will almost always be a sauce full of sugar and salt. The sugar makes it pleasing on the tongue and in the brain. The salt makes you want to use more of it.) It makes sense, then, that the majority of the public would be able to say no to the sauce? I’m confused.

The myth of will power is simply that we give it far too much credit. Self-discipline, in my mind, can only be achieved when the playing field is leveled – that means, no chemical interference – and if you never take those steps to make that happen, you are going to struggle. Does that mean that it’s smooth sailing after that? Of course not. There are lots of bumps in the road but for me, the real progress in developing my self-discipline began there.

What about you? What struggles do you face with developing self-discipline? How did you develop yours? Let’s hear it!

The Myth of Will Power is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Power of A Twenty Dollar Bill
2. Is The Idea of Motivation Merely A Myth?
3. The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chemicals, clean eating, Healthy Eating, mentality, myths, overeating, processed foods, self-discipline, society, struggles, will power