But it’s more than getting our sexy back. We’re talking about our health, which in many cases can be a matter of life and death.
According to data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) collected from 2006 to 2008, non-Hispanic black women had the highest prevalence of obesity in the United States with 39.2 percent.
Dr. Rovenia Brock, an African-American nutritionist, says so many young black women are obese, and it’s not even an issue of being slightly overweight anymore. She adds obesity is the major health issue in our community, which relates to all the other health issues like diabetes and hypertension.
“We need to rethink our thinking of food and movement,” says Brock. “This notion of needing to ‘have a little meat on your bones’ has done a disservice to us historically, which is also a self-image issue.”
Brock says her family’s eating and lifestyle habits, including her Virginia-born mother, plagued the family with pre-existing illnesses. A form of stomach cancer took her mother’s life. This sparked her decision to choose nutrition to study and as a profession, where she has worked for over 20 years.
“I wanted to do something that contributed to my community, starting with my family,” comments Brock.
Like Brock, Celeste Bradley says the quality of life she was living was quite poor. The certified holistic health counselor and yoga teacher is a former dancer who suffered from a chronic illness, in addition to other habits that crippled her health.
“I used to over exercise; I did five to seven hours a day of strenuous exercise like an athlete, but I wasn’t feeding myself like an athlete,” admits Bradley. “I was walking and cycling six to eight miles a day, along with aerobics. I spent long periods of time on bed rest because of fatigue.”
The stress Bradley’s physical conditions placed on her body affected her mentally.
“I suffered from a great deal of stress, and we can have it [stress] despite our educational or financial backgrounds,” says Bradley. “It can really destroy the body.”
Over the last two years, Bradley has utilized what she’s learned about alternative medicine in her travels to other countries to manage her own illness and uses those practices on her family. She says now she exercises about 30 minutes a day for five to six days a week for consistency and to keep her energized throughout the day.
Shay Chase’s daily stretches first thing in the morning get her wound up for the day. She recently decided to change her eating habits in efforts to start a healthy lifestyle.
“I’ve come to realize the route I was going was not going to keep me around to be 85,” says the 32-year-old. “In the past, I didn’t take the time to eat healthy. I got too busy, let life take over and it isn’t supposed to be like that.”
“The notion of ‘we don’t have time’ is killing us,” says Brock. “Making time is a decision. We need to make some changes so we can experience life like we want to. The toughest job is to help women see and decide they’re really worth it to have the best life.”
Although she lost 25 pounds within the last few years, it was one morning a few weeks ago that alarmed Chase to change her eating habits.
“I woke up one morning, put on one of my favorite pair of jeans and couldn’t fit into them,” she admits. “That’s when I said, ‘This is not okay.’ But after losing all that weight, I realized I don’t have to be the ‘skinny girl.’ It made me feel better as a person and like the most beautiful person because I was healthier.”
Chase says she’s currently working on implementing a workout regimen into her schedule and is convicted every time she’s tempted to eat unhealthy.
“Every time I go to eat something unhealthy, I see a big black woman and that’s what stops me from doing it,” she admits.
Chase says she also hopes to use her own life as a model for her family members, who sometimes make jokes about her lifestyle change but still question her about it.
“Know what’s good for you and honor that, even if it means eating differently than your family,” says Bradley. “Obesity leads to the chronic diseases in high numbers throughout the country in our community, and the precursor to all of that is stress. If we don’t get the hugs and the serenity in our lives, we will find situations where we’re battling with these diseases in our bodies.”
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Photography by GMO Photo Editor Billy Montgomery
