“I’m a plus sized girl, but I didn’t have any plus sized friends.”
When CeCe Olisa moved from the west coast to New York City to pursue her music career, she had to learn to deal with an industry where image is considered almost as important as talent.
“There was a lot of stuff I was working through in regards to my body image, specifically when it came to dating, that I just didn’t feel like I could really talk about,” she told theGrio. This realization is what led her to start The Big Girl Blog.
“Sometimes you have to talk things out to kind of purge them and find out how you really feel about them,” Olisa said about her website. “I wasn’t really writing for anyone but myself, but writing the blog was my way of purging it.”
She described the experience as “nerve-wracking” when she first began. She wasn’t accustomed to publicly sharing personal feelings for just anyone to read. In fact, she initially wrote anonymously and avoided including any photos of herself in posts.
“It was a lost easier to be completely raw and honest when there was a little bit of separation,” she said.
Gradually, her small, private space on the web began to grow in readership and Olisa began to realize there were other women who related with her story.
“I think there’s something powerful when you think you’re the only one going through something and then you see someone else say it or you see someone else do it and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought it was just me!'”
It isn’t just her. Olisa’s struggle with her weight isn’t one that’s unfamiliar in the African-American community. In fact, the U.S. Office of Minority Health has said that in 2011, four out of five African-American women were either overweight or obese.
These numbers are alarming by anyone’s standards, but new research shows weight may not be as much of a health hazard as previously considered. The New York Times published an article last month suggesting we may all be focusing on the wrong thing when it comes to personal health.
The Obesity Paradox: is being overweight healthier?
The New York Times article reports on what health experts call the “obesity paradox” – that is, the idea that overweight and moderately obese people with certain chronic illnesses have a higher chance of recovering than their average-weight counterparts. The supporting evidence debunks the widely-held belief that there is a strict association between body fat and disease.
The idea isn’t new, but the mounting evidence from recent studies is gaining attention among physicians and health experts.
The Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed several studies earlier this year and found that adult diabetes patients of normal weight were more than twice as likely to die compared to overweight or obese patients.
“Our findings are consistent with other studies of people with hypertension, end-stage renal disease, and congestive heart failure: those with these conditions have higher death rates if they are normal weight,” wrote Dr. Mercedes R. Carnethon of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
These findings aren’t meant to suggest those who are overweight or obese shouldn’t slim down, but rather that factors other than whether a person is obese or not should be taken into consideration when treating illnesses. Body mass index, or BMI — the calculation that determines when someone is obese — doesn’t take into account body fat, muscle mass and other aspects of physical health.
The New York Times article suggests it may be time for physicians and researchers to stop framing health issues in terms of obesity and, rather, to look into other potential causes of disease.
“Maintaining fitness is good and maintaining low weight is good,” Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute, told the newspaper. “But if you had to go off one, it looks like it’s more important to maintain your fitness than your leanness.”
“Even if weight contributes to health problems, attacking weight as the problem is not going to be a good way to do it,” Dr. Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco and author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, told theGrio.
Bacon writes in her book that the Health At Every Size movement “acknowledges that good health can best be realized independent from consideration of size. It supports people – of all sizes – in addressing health directly by adopting healthy behaviors.”
The movement believes that rather than focus on weight control, people should aim to improve their overall well-being.
“Let’s pay attention to the things that we know are important, that we know we can change,” Bacon told theGrio. “And let’s be open minded and see what happens with the weight.”
She suggests it’s more important to make sure communities have access to nutritious food and exercise opportunities because those factors are valuable regardless of its impact on weight.
Spreading the word
This is the message many bloggers like Olisa are sharing with readers. In the last few years, dozens of black women’s health sites have cropped up on the web and many emphasize embracing curves along with a healthy lifestyle.
“My readership consists of women who are tired of being told they’re not perfect because they’re not thin,” said Erica Nicole Kendall, the blogger behind Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss.
She said the women who read her site are “not attached to the idea that being healthy means they have to be rail thin.”
“But they’re not going to fool themselves on where they stand with their health right now,” she added.
The discussion around African-American women’s bodies and their sizes is a controversial one with many conflicting opinions. Some say black women are fat because they want to be.
To this, Kendall, who has shed over 150 pounds and shares health tips on her blog, responded, “That’s just not accurate and it’s also not fair.”
“There are lots of reasons why over 60 percent of this country is overweight. There are lots of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with ‘well, this is the size I want to be.’ There’s every kind of issue from stress to food availability to the kind of desk job you work.”
theGrio: Author responds to ‘Black women and fat’
But a more important discussion is whether black women can be considered healthy, even when it doesn’t always translate in their outer appearance.
Taylor Townsend, 16, is considered the number one junior women’s tennis player in the world. She is the reigning junior Australian Open singles champion and the junior Wimbledon doubles champion, but despite all of her accomplishments, the U.S. Tennis Association isn’t happy with the way she looks.
The USTA refused to finance anymore of her tournament appearances this summer until she slimmed down and got in better shape.
The 5’6″, 170 pound tennis player was understandably hurt. World tennis champion Serena Williams, whose body has also received a fair share of criticism, weighed in.
“For a female, particularly, in the United States, in particular, and African-American, to have to deal with that is unnecessary,” she told the Associated Press. “Women athletes come in all different sizes and shapes and colors and everything. I think you can see that more than anywhere on the tennis tour.”
Olisa shared the same thought. “I think each one of us is unique in a million ways and our weight should be one of those things.”
“People think that they can look at you and tell you what your health history is, and that’s just not the case,” she told theGrio. “There are token overweight health problems … I know I don’t have those issues, but I work out and I eat well so that I don’t. I know weight is definitely a factor, but I don’t believe that we’re all meant to be a size 2.”
And while it’s important for others to understand that, African-American women may have to learn how to disassociate health and weight as well.
Kendall noted that one misconception black women have about themselves is that if they work out too much, they’ll lose their prized curves.
“Having fat on your body is not the only way to be curvy. It’s just not,” she said. “No, you can have a great booty and it doesn’t have to just come from choosing not to work out.”
She explains her point in a post for the The Washington Post, “It’s not about what you look like, it’s about what your body can do for you because that’s what your body is for. It’s not to be cute, it’s to perform. Can that body perform? And if not, then you need to reconsider if being thick is really worth it.”
So the consensus seems to be that black women should shift their focus from losing weight to maintaining better health, instead of focusing on what dress size they wear.
Diane Williams, a former plus-size model, a personal fitness trainer and the creator behind Curvy Goddess Lounge, emphasizes the importance of black women getting up and getting their move on.
When Williams first decided to get in shape, she said she noticed she started feeling differently about herself and her body.
“It’s almost like my personality had changed,” she told us. “I was confident. I felt capable in my life. And from those changes, it made me believe I could change other things in my life.”
She added that going from being unfit and depressed to feeling confident about her body’s physical capabilities was an amazing experience.
“You feel like you’ve opened up a different world,” she said.
It’s the same advice Kendall gives her readers.
“Whatever your goals are, achieve them with your health and wellness in mind,” she said. “Don’t do anything that sacrifices or sabotages your daily energy levels. Don’t do anything that sacrifices your mood, your sanity, your health, the health of people around you.”
“This is an act of love,” she says about getting in shape. “It is an act of self-care.”
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