Yeah, that’s kind of this processed food thing. And I know, in advance, that this is long. Frustratingly long, even. I’m breaking it up into bits, though, so don’t worry if you can’t take it all in at once.

What are processed foods? Allow me to shed some light.

A “processed food,” in general, is something that has had to endure a process to make it what it is before it is turned over to you. Almost everything that comes in a box… is processed. Almost everything that comes in a zip-sealed bag… is processed. Almost everything that comes from a big giant brand or huge corporation or massive factory plant somewhere… is processed. Almost everything that you purchase from a grocery store… is processed.

I mean, that includes a lot – that’s all the aisles in the grocery store! You’d have to scale the perimeter of the store to avoid that, right?

Let’s look at the history of food in this country over the past one hundred or so years.

Once upon a time, before food was big industry (meaning: before processed foods) and we were dealing with the fear of famine, people were much smaller. Being overweight was a rich person’s dilemma. Why? Because you have to ingest an AWFUL LOT of whole foods (as in, not processed) on a regular basis to develop and maintain an overweight physique in that day. So being overweight simply didn’t make financial sense. Things like bread, pies, cookies, cakes… they were rare – couldn’t always buy them at the store, so you had to make them at home. Highly unlikely that you could or would be able to bake sweets every single day for your pleasure.

Because they were concerned about famine, portions were rationed carefully. They didn’t want to be caught out there not being about to get food, and having little at the house. Sometimes, you’ll hear our elders talk about when whole grains were once rationed out to the masses because not only did they need to make sure they had it for the soldiers, they needed to make sure the supply could cover everyone in the event of emergency.

To sum it up, food wasn’t presumed to be plentiful, and it caused people to skimp, penny pinch, and exercise portion control.

Now, in comes the push toward larger food distributors – less focus on local, more focus on “getting big.” “Get big or get out,” I believe was the actual line. The US Gov’t honestly feared that they wouldn’t be able to feed everyone without food production going factory, and took every effort they could to try to get it there. With food production being taken to the factories, we were separated more from how our food was made. The further the process was taken from us, the less oversight we had in regards to what was in it. We used to have the milkman, right? You made arrangements with a local farm to have your milk delivered to your door, right? Now, if you drink milk, you’re buying a gallon that comes from a farm that you have no knowledge of. You’re buying from a brand.

I’m a small business owner, so while I could interject right here about what it does to our local communities to not be able to buy our food locally and keep our money in our communities… I won’t. Just know that I could.

As I said, the larger food manufacturing grew, the more we were distanced from it’s production, and the less oversight we were granted to it’s creation and ingredients. Because (in my opinion) the government wanted to simply do what it could to ensure that the US had a consistent food supply, lots of leeway was given to big food factories to help ease them along their way in supplying our supermarkets with food – glorious food! Want an example? The food industry was able to get the FDA to change the law – imitation foods that weren’t nutritionally deficient in comparison to their whole counterparts didn’t have to be clearly marked as “imitation.” (You can skip the below quote if you like because I’ve quoted it before, but it’s valuable enough to read twice.)

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Families who survived the rationing and the famine were happy about this! No more struggling, breaking their backs to stretch food. They could eat like the rich folks! They could also gain weight like ‘em, too. Alas, the way men and women were employed in this era, they weren’t granted the same amount of time for leisurely activity like the rich. In other words, we were eating “like the rich,” but not burning the weight off like ‘em. This part of the story, can be evidenced by Katharine Flegel’s study of weight gain from the sixties to the present. This New Yorker article summarizes it briefly:

In the early nineteen-nineties, a researcher at the C.D.C. named Katherine Flegal was reviewing the results of the survey then under way when she came across figures that seemed incredible. According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteen-sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight—roughly defined as having a body-mass index greater than twenty-seven. (The metrics are slightly different for men and women; by the study’s definition, a woman who is five feet tall would count as overweight if she was more than a hundred and forty pounds, and a man who is six feet tall if he weighed more than two hundred and four pounds.) By the time of the second survey, conducted in the early nineteen-seventies, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a per cent, to twenty-five per cent, and, by the third survey, in the late seventies, it had edged up to 25.4 per cent. The results that Flegal found so surprising came from the fourth survey. During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight. Flegal began asking around at professional meetings. Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines? They had not. This left her feeling even more perplexed. She knew that errors could have sneaked into the data in a variety of ways, so she and her colleagues checked and rechecked the figures. There was no problem that they could identify. Finally, in 1994, they published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In just ten years, they showed, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds. “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic,” another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

Food was becoming way more accessible to us. I do want to go back to the point about the FDA’s law about imitation substances, though. It does a lot more to the food industry than you think it does. Take a loaf of bread, for example. Bread has maybe five ingredients in it – flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast – but if you look on the label for the bread in your house right now? You see what – hyphenated chemicals. The food industry now has the ability to put anything in your food, so long as it is not deficient in the nutrients that science recognizes are valuable… in comparison to the food it imitates.  Remember this part. No, really – remember this part.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Well, how much credit do you give food science? The rule is simply that the foods cannot be deficient in nutrients that science recognizes as valuable. What about what science hasn’t spotted yet? What about all these hyphenated chemicals that science hasn’t identified (or is prevented from identifying) as harmful to our health?

And before you call me a conspiracy theorist, consider this: it took science decades to recognize that trans-fats – once a massive part of margarine and other major foods – were hazardous to our health. Believe it or not, the government still allows trans-fats in foods, and actually allows food manufacturers to lie about how much trans-fats are in their foods. (More on that later.)

What else, in these foods, is doing us in? Science doesn’t know yet. And really, since most of our food science studies are funded by the very industry they affect… do you genuinely expect science to find out? I’m not telling you that they’d intentionally fudge numbers to present favorable results – trying to remain unbiased, here – but I am telling you it’s easy to divert funds elsewhere… as in, another study. Maybe even… a study attempting to debunk something claiming their products are harmful.

That’s not the conspiracy theorist in me. That’s just smart business on their part… regardless of what it does to the consumer. Keep the consumer far enough away from the research, and they’ll never know the downfall of buying my product. It just happens that way.

So since this is all cyclical, let’s go back to that availability of food thing. Now, all this food (food, mind you, that seeks to NOT be nutritionally deficient although it admits that it is) is available to our families. We, knowing what it’s like to have to worry about food not being available, begin to indulge. Factories – and factory jobs – are springing up because industries are blossoming. Longer work hours, both adults in the household are now working, and all this super convenient food at hand. We’re eating what we can, when we can, and eating a lot of it… since we’re enjoying the ability to eat at our discretion, not at the discretion of a ration.

Keep in mind, also, at this time… a new generation of children are being born under this new understanding of food. Family tradition might lend to certain dishes being made a certain way, but lots of dishes are being replaced by the magic elixir in the box. Some of us have that Grandma who insists on cooking everything from scratch. We tend to write her off as crazy or paranoid because “Times have changed” and “No one has time for all that cooking,” or maybe because “This is the [insert decade]s, Nana, we don’t live in the kitchen the way you used to!” Things that are all true, but come with consequences.

I asked you, dear reader, to keep in mind the point I made earlier about hyphenated chemical ingredients in our food, right? I hope you did. The interesting loophole in the FDA’s policy about imitation foods is that there’s very little limit to what can now be put INTO food. That’s an important point.

You know how, if you leave food sitting out, it will attract flies? Why? Because flies and rodents are attracted to the same things that our bodies are attracted to in food – nutrients. Ever notice that with ALL the food in a supermarket, there’s rarely any ants or bugs in the aisles, but you have to swat them away from the tomatoes or kiwi in the produce area? That’s not because every area in the grocery store – except the produce – is sprayed down. I can only offer theory as to why that is. For starters, the processed foods have to be processed to maintain shelf life. They have to be able to handle being transported to the facility. They have to be able to withstand sitting on a shelf until purchased. They have to be able to withstand sitting in your cabinets until you cook them.

Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.

Here’s another question: What do you think they’re putting in these processed foods to ward off insects and rodents?

Last question: Do you think it’s a good idea to ingest the same chemicals that are put in food… food that flies don’t even want? The same chemicals that prevent flies from desiring our food, are the same chemicals we’re ingesting when we eat this stuff anyway. How healthy can that be? Nothing in the world can debunk what feels like logic to me.

Taking that one step further for those of us who DO indulge anyway, what about the fact that the average processed food contains more calories than it’s “real” counterpart? Remember my ranch dressing recipe that I shared? My recipe was 300 calories a cup. Kraft’s ranch dressing was easily 1400 calories. Let me tell you a secret I learned from working in restaurants. Foods that have to be reheated to be cooked are pumped with extra fat, because it helps maintain the flavor through the reheating process. Chemicals – like monosodium glutamate, found in processed foods with rich, thick, almost meaty tastes – help reheatables that have to be pumped with extra fat taste more pleasing to you. The convenience that the food offers may be a welcome benefit, but it comes at the cost of a massive excess in calories and unnecessary additives and preservatives.

So here we are, living in the new millennium. For breakfast, we’re eating cereal. For lunch, we give our kids lunchables. For dinner, we heat up a pot pie. (If you want a laugh, look at the ingredients list on the back of any of those.) For a drink, we have a capri sun or a coke. Instead of nutrient-filled calorie-light whole foods, we’re now indulging in calorie-heavy nutrient-light foods that’ve been mainly cooked FOR us. When we take in foods, our bodies are expecting a certain amount of nutrients and vitamins. If our body doesn’t get what it’s looking for fast enough, what happens? It compels you to eat more! Yes! Have you ever inhaled half a bag of wafers, only to be hungry again moments later? All that work your body put in to digest this vitamin-free food, only to find that there are no vitamins in it? Yes, it’s going to tell you to try again and eat something else.

The problem for many of us, is that because it’s so much easier and quicker to grab another processed food item instead of cooking.. we try to fix the problem with something that’d only make it worse. All the while scarfing down the calories, forgetting all the nutrients, and packing on the pounds while we’re at it. The convenience, the fact that very few of us know how some foods are cooked, let alone what the foods SHOULD consist of, has allowed us to eat much more with much less effort. Is that a bad thing? If you know how to moderate yourself, of course not. Many of us, apparently, don’t.

Having said all that (2600 words, and STILL not a record for me), I have to say this. I know we all lead busy lives. If you managed to read all of this in one sitting, I give you kudos – I couldn’t even write it all in one sitting. We have to scale back in a major way if we want to be healthy. In writing this, I’ve decided to break this up into a series, continuing it on with how I managed to wean my family off of processed foods and what it’s taught me about how my body interacts with food, and how it wants to interact with food. Big difference between the two.

So, keep your eyes peeled for the breakdown of this topic, and the continuation… that I’m opting to call Food 101. I look forward to your thoughts below!

Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food?
2. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part II: The Change In Food Manufacturing
3. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part IV: The Conclusion

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 | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, calorie counting, mentality, overeating, processed foods, saving money

I bought myself an iTouch. Just… because. I figured if I was going to throw myself into disappointment again, I’d at least do it with a new toy. Sure enough, I got hooked. Music? AND videos? AND apps? Wait… what are apps? After a little snooping around, I find out that I can keep up with news, play games, and do actual important stuff with these things. Neato.

So, I go lookin’, and lookin’, and lookin’… and I find an app called Lose It! that basically operates as a food journal. I once purchased a little black notebook where I’d write down everything I ate, but it quickly lost steam for me. LoseIt!, for some reason, was easier for me.

Using LoseIt!, I was able to input what I weighed at the start, what my goal weight was, and when I wanted to reach it. I added the foods I ate during the day – as honest as I could – and I added the amount of water and other drinks I drank.

When I tell you this was the most powerful thing I could’ve done for myself… believe it!

Now, mind you. I’m not necessarily advocating you go out and get the LoseIt! app (although, as of this writing, it is free and anyone who has an iTouch or iPhone really should look into it) because not everyone has or uses the iPhone/iTouch. The downside to the app, for me, is that it doesn’t allow you to input the time at which you ate. The LoseIt! app also, supposedly, mines data from our inputs as well, and some people might not be thrilled with that. (Yes, I AM usually the conspiracy theorist here, but the benefit outweighed the data collecting, to me.)

What I AM advocating, is the use of a food diary. My food diary showed me exactly where my problems were. I was eating too much of… well, everything. I had no portion control. I was partaking in a giant amount of fat and sugar. My carb meters were off the charts. I simply wasn’t doing what I knew in my heart I needed to do. Taking in over 2100 calories a day wasn’t going to help me lose weight. In fact, the only reason I didn’t gain astronomical amounts of weight was because of the 7-10 hours a week I was spending in the gym. After 6 months and only losing 20 lbs, something needed to really change.

The first two weeks of using my food diary were painful. I was able to track my carb, fat, sodium, fiber, protein, cholesterol and caloric intake. I spent lots of time researching what I was putting in my body in terms of fast food and restaurants, and the nutritional values for those meals. Seeing the numbers in front of me was painful. Painful! I used to LOVE tearing into a Checkers/Rally’s Fried Chicken Sandwich with large fries and a banana shake… until I started looking for their nutritional information.

That’s when it started hitting me like a ton of bricks:

An order of large fries from Checkers? 590 Calories, 38g of fat (20g of saturated fat, 2g of trans fat), 40mg of cholesterol, 1410mg of sodium, 7g of protein, 57g of carbohydrates.

The chicken sandwich? 740 calories, 41g of fat (13g saturated), 70mg of cholesterol, 2190mg sodium, 60g of carbohydrates (13g sugars), and 34g of protein.

And lastly, but certainly not least? The banana shake: 650 calories, 18g of fat (14g saturated), 75mg of cholesterol, 300mg sodium, 105g of carbohydrates (81g sugars), and 16g of protein.

What was I doing to myself? Don’t you know, I had to break out a calculator to tabulate how much I was putting into my body in ONE MEAL? 1,980 calories – almost the value of what’s recommended to take in over the course of one day. 3900mg of sodium. 222g of carbohydrates, about 40% of it being sugar. Seriously… what was I doing to myself? And why did it take me actually writing it down and committing myself to researching it for me to truly see it? Why didn’t I KNOW what I was doing to myself? (That’s another post entirely, but we won’t talk about that today.)

Slowly, I began to wean myself off of things that were doing me in. I no longer ate fast food. Sure enough, I lost almost 8 lbs immediately. Strange, huh?

A food diary highlights the weaknesses in your diet. It shows you patterns in your eating habits that you might not’ve noticed. Do you eat a lot of fried foods? How about a lot of bread? Do you have one heck-uv-a-sweet tooth? Maybe you eat a lot of foods that require TONS of seasoning? Variety, literally, is the spice of life.. and a food diary is the best way to show you where you could inject a little bit of just that – variety.

Make it a healthy day!

Considered Keeping a Food Diary? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend WTF: Have You Considered Trying The Poop Burger?
2. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Eating Disorders When Dieting Wasn’t Enuf
3. Food Diaries: A New Approach To Food Journaling

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, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, Fast Food, overeating, restaurants

Q: Hi… I am the reader that was going to have the weight loss surgery, but decided against it.

I have been looking at your website, and I want to lose the weight naturally, but I am confused as to where to start–using your website as my guide.

I am 31, 5’5, and 301 lbs as of this morning. My goal weight as I have read it is 145. I reached that goal in college (1999) and kept it off …until I had to have calf surgery on both legs which kept me from running track. I became gradually very sedentary and with the birth of my son (2004) I reached my highest weight 280 lbs. Over the next 6 years I have yo-yo’d and eventually ended up here at 301.

Looking for where to start? Here's a good place.

Walking is the easiest and cheapest form of exercise for me–as I am on disability and can’t afford a gym. But I get so discouraged at the amount of walking I am “told” to do to lose weight.

Can you give me the brief step by step that you started with?

First and foremost, it is true – 3500 calories worth of burned energy equals one pound. That’s why it is especially important to manage your food intake and be active on a regular basis. Don’t focus on that, though.

When I first started, I worked out in a gym. Still ate like crap, eating crap in boxes and microwaveables, and didn’t lose much considering how hard I was working.

It wasn’t until I fixed my eating habits that I realized I needed to place a priority on eating as cleanly as possible. The weight just started to fall off. The more I lost, the more difficult it became to lose. Why is that? Because as your body shrinks, it burns less calories. I had to keep changing my habits and understand that I couldn’t possibly eat as much as I used to.

From there, I began walking. I’d just take my two year old and we’d go walking for a half an hour every day. It was how I’d relax and destress. The weight began falling off again.

From here, I began trying out yoga. A few minutes of yoga each day with walking and clean eating had me on a healthy path. After that, I added some strength training using things I had around the house. I couldn’t really go to a gym, because I had no regular sitter for my little one.

Now, I run. A lot. I eat very cleanly and I am a stickler about my activity levels. I made sure that I lost the weight in a way that I could maintain forever, and working out at home and using the legs that I was born with would always be with me.. money or not.

This is the problem that I have with the fitness industry. They only way they can ensure that they continue to make money is to convince you that you have to spend money in order to develop and maintain your fitness. They don’t even tell you to put your health before your appearance, because they know that goading us about our appearance is what’ll drain us of our money first. I have a gym membership now, but that’s only because for my very specific goals right now, the equipment at the gym makes life easier while I slowly invest in building a gym at home for myself. The way I was doing things before would work just fine for me.

The reality is that exercise is meant to preserve your quality of life and ability to function properly. It is not meant to be used as a way to negate your bad eating habits. It can to an extent, but realize this – you WILL be struggling if you develop this kind of mentality. This is why I focus on eating habits so much.. just because I know I’m not the only person who didn’t know anything about why some foods just are not… well, food.

Because I know I kind of gave a quick and dirty answer to this question, and because I know I’ve written more detailed accounts of my experiences elsewhere on this site… the following links should be considered good reading for someone who wants to follow how I did what I did, and get a better idea of how they can do it too:

• A Very Big Piece of My Weight Loss Story
• 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
• Give Peace A Chance: Try Yoga
• Three Great Ways To Exercise At Home
• Presenting: The 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge!
• All posts tagged with the phrase “clean eating“
• Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods
• 5 Reasons Why You Won’t Lose Weight
• Q&A Wednesday: Fiber, Because Everyone Poops

Best of luck to you!

Do you think there are any other BGG2WL posts belong on this list?

Q&A Wednesday: Where Do I Begin? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. San Francisco: The Soda Bans Begin
2. Stop Defeating Your Weight Loss Efforts Before You Begin
3. Q&A Wednesday: Is Calorie Counting The Only Way To Lose Weight?

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, 2011. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, clean eating

I’ll be spending the weekend and the upcoming week updating and modifying the site, as well as making some much needed changes to the comments system and moderating process, here. The Clean Eating Boot Camp – which is still taking place – will convert to an e-mail system where you can sign up and receive one post each day that’ll provide tools and tips for converting to clean eating, so that you can follow along from the start instead of trying to jump in in the middle.

Y’all have built an amazing community, here. Between those who comment here, the facebookers and those who interact with me on twitter, there are thousands of people who support this site and the purpose… and I think it’s time that I start honoring and respecting that by giving y’all what you want!

So… tell me! What do you want to see here at BGG2WL? What topics do you want to see covered? What features do you want to see? What do you want to hear about? What do you want to know? Let me know what I can do to help make this site awesome, and I’ve got you covered!

In the mean time, I’ve got a few posts that I think may tide you over for today:

Q&A Wednesday: Where Do I Begin?

Q&A Wednesday: Creating Your Own Strength Training Routine

What Is Sugar Addiction?

Q&A Wednesday: When Should I Start Lifting Weights

A BGG2WL Update 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. Happy First Birthday, BGG2WL!
3. Q&A Thursday: How Can We Support BGG2WL?

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, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss

Mmm... birthday pizza! (Yes, the recipe is coming!)

That’s right – this weekend marked the one year birthday of A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss!

Break out the birthday ca– er…. granola?

A year makes such a big difference. I cannot measure how helpful this site has been to others, but I know how beneficial it has been for me to write for this site. In a year, my understanding of my relationship with food has changed so drastically. In a year, I lost over a hundred pounds. In a year, I’ve done more conversing about health than I’d really like on any given day… but in a year, every single conversation has made a difference in my life.

In a year, I’ve been able to understand the pathos that keeps women like me from understanding their bodies. I’ve learned that it’s not even about keeping me from understanding…. it’s simply about having access to the resources that help one understand. And even though, for some, its as simple as owning a laptop and hitting up your local free wi-fi spot… there are many of us who can’t even do that.

In a year, I’ve been able to learn about women like me, and the problem with our typical relationship to food. I’ve learned what circumstances can cause the kind of unhealthy relationship that causes health problems and the very diseases that cause our weight gain. And even though we “should know” and we “should notice,” its evident that we do not. Not only do we not “notice,” but we live in an environment where we’re offended if our friends “notice” and actually “speak on it.” Having said that, I’ve learned that instead of chiding people for not “knowing,” the time is better spent doing what we can to make sure that we all learn.

Needless to say, all this talking about health and wellness – as someone who merely does a lot of reading and researching and living – has helped me build a site that has grown by leaps and bounds in only its first year… and I can assure you, it’s going to get better. There are people who have supported #bgg2wl since day ONE, and I feel like I’ve truly bonded with many of you even though we’ve never met. There are the people who occasionally pop up with a question or two about food, and I do my best to answer (or find an answer for you) as best as I can, in hopes that I can help one more person.  There are my friends who read the site in secret – you may not want to tell me you read it, but I hear you quoting things from this site when you talk about food, man! I don’t need to call you out on it then and there, because it’s not about me at all, any more… it’s just about the knowledge people can glean from it.

Really, the site isn’t about me anymore. It’s so much more about what the site can do for our community, and I recognize that. That’s why I have both a doctor and a psychologist coming on board, writing columns on specific issues in our community and how we can tackle them together. How we can rebuild ourselves and, in turn, rebuild our communities. How we can help each other. And I’m doing everything I can to keep the information on this site available for free.

The site is getting a comprehensive make-over with lots more amazing additions, so keep your eyes peeled. If you come here regularly, thank you for your support and helping us (because this is your site, too) grow by one more person in one year’s time. If you’ve just recently discovered #bgg2wl, then by all means welcome! Get acquainted with that contact form, and send over any questions you have!

As I’ve written before, a lot can happen in a year. Look at this site – look at me as testament to that. And to think, it all started with a crazy idea one day. Cheers to you, and here’s hoping we can spend another year together healthy and happy!

…and I’ve got a 30-day clean eating challenge coming up – complete with two weeks of preparation and every trick in the book to make it happen, and LOTS of giveaways in the process! Get ready! If you thought year 1 was awesome? Year two is going to be the most amazing ride you’ve ever experienced! Tell a friend, tell a loved one… tell somebody, tell everyone! Happy birthday, BGG2WL!

Let’s hear it!

PS: To those of you who keep e-mailing and asking how you can donate to the site, feel free to use the button below.

Happy First Birthday, BGG2WL! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. A BGG2WL Update
2. Cleaning Up The Happy Meal: Do Toys Advertise Unhealthy Foods To Kids?
3. Q&A Thursday: How Can We Support BGG2WL?

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, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss

If you’ve got an appearance you’d like me to make, don’t hesitate to drop me a line!

My Appearance On LoveTALK Radio is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Listen In: My Appearance On The Michael Baisden Show
2. Did You Miss Me On Afrobella Radio? Check It Out Here!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Erika! I’m a young twenty-something single parent, and I have a weight problem. I stand at six feet tall, and once upon a time, I weighed in at somewhere around 328 lbs. Needless to say, I’ve neglected myself and my health because I put everything else before me. School? Before me. Work? Before me. Outside organizations? Before me. My child? Before me. It just made sense. I put myself on the back burner because I believed that giving my all to everything with which I was involved was the best thing I could do.

I put this website together (yes, this is ALL my design work) for a few reasons, but mostly because I realized how prevalent that line of thinking is… and even worse, how harmful it can be to us as human beings.

But if it’s a harmful line of thinking for human beings, why is this site a Black girl’s guide to weight loss?

That’s not meant to be offensive to anyone, and I hope you’re able to see that. You see, I can explain it like this.

As I mentioned before, I live in Miami. A city that I love – first – for it’s cultural diversity. I love the Caribbean, I love Latin America, I love America. I just.. do. It’s everywhere – the groceries, the malls, in little subsections of the city, and apparently.. the gym. One night, as my daughter and I were at our workout center, a gentleman was there working his tail off at one of the weight training stations. A couple of other Latinas were there, kind of just staring at him. I noticed and kind of just LOL’d because I figured they were just checking him out, right? Not at all. They asked him – in Spanish – if he was a trainer (he was,) and if he had any tips for them. He began speaking – in Spanish – to respond to them, until he looked up and noticed that I was paying attention as well. He smiled at me, and began speaking in English.

I appreciated this, because the conversation was SO informative. He discussed workout techniques, tips in execution, and then… there were more cultural references than a little bit. He discussed foods in their culture that were cooked in a fashion that would only set them up for failure in terms of losing weight. (For a fear of seeming or sounding insensitive, I’m not going to go into detail.)  He discussed the cultural relationship with food, and how he really was failing himself at not keeping it in check. He then turned to me and said, “I’m certain that you have foods in your culture that, if you thought about it, could be cooked differently or scrapped completely to help you reach your goal, right?”

I couldn’t help but agree with him.

I went home that night, and couldn’t stop thinking about the effect our culture has on our relationships with food and exercise. How many of us grew up in households where our parents put everything before themselves? How many of us look at that and wonder how our parents did so, and still remained fit? Do we ever stop and think about what the variables might be in that situation? Like… say, maybe… the food we’re eating?

So for me, this had to be A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss, because while this site discusses very general concepts that affect us all as people, as Americans and as consumers… there are issues and elements that are very cultural in origin that need to be addressed.. from the perspective of… ta-da! A Black girl.

With any luck, this blog will expose us to different ways of caring for ourselves. With any luck, this blog will show us things that we accept because they’re tradition, and unfortunately are harming us and prohibiting us from being our healthy selves. With any luck this blog will benefit you, the reader, as much as writing it may benefit me.

Be aware: I don’t make mention of my being Black at the exclusion of any other group of people. I mention my being Black because it’s what I am. I mention it because, quite frankly, I can. If that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, not only is this NOT the site for you, but this community – consisting of all races and all genders – will make you loudly aware of that fact. Just tellin’ you in advance.

But… what makes you so qualified to write something like this?

Oh… I took some time to myself, and worked my tail off. I’ve done (and still do) the reading. I’ve done the studying. I’ve done the living. Sure enough, I lost 110 lbs in one year. That a good enough answer?

Welcome to A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. Q&A Wednesday: A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight GAIN?
3. Teen Girls, Weight Loss Surgery, Body Image and Class Distinctions

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, 2009. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss