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  • Anyone Else Self-Conscious at the Gym?

    I’ll be off to the gym in a few minutes, and I want to try running on the treadmill, but I’m a little scared. I mean, when’s the last time you saw a 265-pound woman run anywhere? (I hear snickering.) For all my self-esteem work – and I’m going to need to dust off my…

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  • Confessions of a Scale Slave: 9 Volts of Anguish

    My scale’s on the fritz and I am freaking out. It uses a 9-volt battery, and there aren’t any in the house, so I went to the corner store, and there weren’t any on the big battery thingie. WHY? How many people need 9-volt batteries? Those are for, like, Ice Age devices. I don’t know…

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  • Declaring Independence from Negative Stats

    This has been one downer of a week for overweight African-American women. We’re the heaviest group in the nation. We’re leading the pack in heart disease and all it related crises. Our kids are the fattest and nearly half of us don’t exercise because we don’t want to mess up our hair. And the hits…

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  • Is your hairstyle keeping you overweight?

    Here I am, all ready with my coffee and facts, getting ready to write a bit about the headlined topic, when my email dinged, announcing six new ones. I clicked over to Outlook, and among them was a Google alert featuring this story: “Must black women choose between beauty and health?” I don’t believe in…

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  • Part 3: What's Eating African-American Women?

    (Last of three parts.) The children of Generation X are being called “Generation Triple XL,” as in an XXXL shirt size. Where to place the blame? Some say it’s all the hormones, chemicals and additives in our food, from baby formula to Thanksgiving turkeys. Others, all the high-fructose corn syrup in the American diet. Then…

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  • Part 2: What's Eating African-American Women?

    (Second of three parts.) Black women and weight. Could there possibly be a thornier subject? We are a sensitive bunch when it comes to confronting our obese reality. There’s embarrassment and shame, sadness and fear, and a great deal of anger. But there’s an elephant in the room, and no it’s not your Aunt Boo:…

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  • Part 1: What's Eating African-American Women?

    (First of three parts.) The stats are embarrassing: African-American women are the most overweight people in the United States. Here are the numbers: 78 percent of us weigh too much, and 51 percent of that group is obese. That means four out of five us are overweight – meaning a body mass index (BMI) of…

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  • Fourth of July Sales Great for Motivation

    I’m trying to remember the last article of clothing I bought for myself that wasn’t gym-related. The only thing that comes to mind is a white blouse, and that was several months ago. Other than that, I’m wearing the same pieces I wore this time last year. Folks, I just can’t stand the thought of…

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  • When Was the Last Time You Jumped Rope?

    For me, it was early last year, during one of my many attempts to lose weight. I had joined a gym called Box-2B-Fit, and attended their early morning “boot camp” class. It was an intense workout bordering on brutal, and got increasingly harder. I was almost always the biggest one in the class, of course,…

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  • Sometimes No News is Good News During a Workout

    When I woke up this morning, I decided against turning on the news, which is what I usually do. It was a nice, quiet morning, I’d had a good night’s sleep, and I had also remembered that the whole mess with General McChrystal would be all over the news, and I didn’t feel like exposing…

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