The Black Girl's Diet guarantees that you can lose up to 21 lbs. in 30 days. Offering ground-breaking insight into what to eat and what to avoid, the Black Girl's Diet shows Black Women how to finally win the battle against weight loss. Offering revelational teaching and insight into how Black women may perceive themselves and their weight. The Black Girl's Diet teaches women of all ages and backgrounds, that with the tools of discipline, laughter, 30 days, and a lot of self-love, that losing weight and keeping it off is finally possible. The Black Girl's Diet guarantees that losing up to 21 lbs. in 30 days is actually a reality.
The first of its kind, this edited volume provides in-depth, culturally sensitive material intended for addressing the unique concerns of Black women with eating disorders in addition to comprehensive discussions and treatment guidelines for this population. The contributing authors—all of whom are Black professionals providing direct care to Black women—offer a range of perspectives to help readers understand the whole experience of their Black female clients. This includes not only discussion of their clients’ physical health but also of their emotional lives and the ways in which the stresses of racism, discrimination, trauma, and adverse childhood experiences can contribute to disordered eating. Through a wealth of diverse voices and stories, chapters boldly tackle issues such as stereotypes and acculturative stress. Clinicians of any race will gain new tools for assessing, diagnosing, and treating disordered eating in Black women and will be empowered to provide better care for their clients.
Describing her struggle as a black woman with an eating disorder that is consistently portrayed as a white woman's problem, this insightful and moving narrative traces the background and factors that caused her bulimia. Moving coast to coast, she tries to escape her self-hatred and obsession by never slowing down, unaware that she is caught in downward spiral emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Finally she can no longer deny that she will die if she doesn't get help, overcome her shame, and conquer her addiction. But seeking help only reinforces her negative self-image, and she discovers her race makes her an oddity in the all-white programs for eating disorders. This memoir of her experiences answers many questions about why black women often do not seek traditional therapy for emotional problems.
Combatting fatphobia and racism to reclaim a space for womxn at the intersection of fat and Black To be a womxn living in a body at the intersection of fat and Black is to be on the margins. From concern-trolling--"I just want you to be healthy"--to outright attacks, fat Black bodies that fall outside dominant constructs of beauty and wellness are subjected to healthism, racism, and misogynoir. The spaces carved out by third-wave feminism and the fat liberation movement fail at true inclusivity and intersectionality; fat Black womxn need to create their own safe spaces and community, instead of tirelessly laboring to educate and push back against dominant groups. Structured into three sections--"belonging," "resistance," and "acceptance"--and informed by personal history, community stories, and deep research, Fat Girls in Black Bodies breaks down the myths, stereotypes, tropes, and outright lies we've been sold about race, body size, belonging, and health. Dr. Joy Cox's razor-sharp cultural commentary exposes the racist roots of diet culture, healthism, and the ways we erroneously conflate body size with personal responsibility. She explores how to reclaim space and create belonging in a hostile world, pushing back against tired pressures of "going along just to get along," and dismantles the institutionally ingrained myths about race, size, gender, and worth that deny fat Black womxn their selfhood.
Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated. What is at stake is nothing less than whether Americans can learn to embrace nonracist understandings and practices in relation to food. Sustainable culture—what keeps a community alive and thriving—is essential to Black peoples' fight for access and equity, and food is central to this fight. Starkly exposing the rampant shaming and policing around how Black people eat, Williams-Forson contemplates food's role in cultural transmission, belonging, homemaking, and survival. Black people's relationships to food have historically been connected to extreme forms of control and scarcity—as well as to stunning creativity and ingenuity. In advancing dialogue about eating and race, this book urges us to think and talk about food in new ways in order to improve American society on both personal and structural levels.
Offering a new approach to weight loss tailored specifically to black women, this guide empowers women to develop skills for weight management and healthy living. Providing simple nutritional information and exercises, it addresses the common misconceptions of many so-called diets--almost all of which overlook or ignore the ethnicity component so essential to black women--and replaces them with a sound, culturally sensitive plan for black women to lose weight and stay healthy. An appendix of health-care resources includes advice on finding a physician, alternative health clinics, fitness centers, and public health facilities, and a glossary explains common medical and nutrition terms.
Teen-aged girls hate their bodies and diet obsessively, or so we hear. News stories and reports of survey research often claim that as many as three girls in five are on a diet at any given time, and they grimly suggest that many are “at risk” for eating disorders. But how much can we believe these frightening stories? What do teenagers mean when they say they are dieting? Anthropologist Mimi Nichter spent three years interviewing middle school and high school girls—lower-middle to middle class, white, black, and Latina—about their feelings concerning appearance, their eating habits, and dieting. In Fat Talk, she tells us what the girls told her, and explores the influence of peers, family, and the media on girls’ sense of self. Letting girls speak for themselves, she gives us the human side of survey statistics. Most of the white girls in her study disliked something about their bodies and knew all too well that they did not look like the envied, hated “perfect girl.” But they did not diet so much as talk about dieting. Nichter wryly argues—in fact some of the girls as much as tell her—that “fat talk” is a kind of social ritual among friends, a way of being, or creating solidarity. It allows the girls to show that they are concerned about their weight, but it lessens the urgency to do anything about it, other than diet from breakfast to lunch. Nichter concludes that if anything, girls are watching their weight and what they eat, as well as trying to get some exercise and eat “healthfully” in a way that sounds much less disturbing than stories about the epidemic of eating disorders among American girls. Black girls, Nichter learned, escape the weight obsession and the “fat talk” that is so pervasive among white girls. The African-American girls she talked with were much more satisfied with their bodies than were the white girls. For them, beauty was a matter of projecting attitude (“’tude”) and moving with confidence and style. Fat Talk takes the reader into the lives of girls as daughters, providing insights into how parents talk to their teenagers about their changing bodies. The black girls admired their mothers’ strength; the white girls described their mothers’ own “fat talk,” their fathers’ uncomfortable teasing, and the way they and their mothers sometimes dieted together to escape the family “curse”—flabby thighs, ample hips. Moving beyond negative stereotypes of mother–daughter relationships, Nichter sensitively examines the issues and struggles that mothers face in bringing up their daughters, particularly in relation to body image, and considers how they can help their daughters move beyond rigid and stereotyped images of ideal beauty.
Everyone wants a super-quick fix to lose weight, but here’s the secret: The only way to get the results you want is to love yourself and your life. Jennipher Walters and Erin Whitehead, founders of the uber-popular website Fit Bottomed Girls, have spent years helping hundreds of thousands of readers fall in love with a healthy lifestyle. Now, they are sharing their 10 principles that will help you lose weight, love your body, enjoy your workouts, and face every day with a positive attitude—all at the same time! Being a Fit Bottomed Girl is about more than just the size of your rear: It’s about feeling physically and mentally energized every day, no matter what is going on in your life. In this definitive guide to becoming an FBG, you will learn how to: *Ditch the diet drama and learn to follow your true hunger cues *Create your own workout schedule that feels more like more fun than "work" *Develop the inner confidence and self-love you need to go after your best life From the best way to enjoy a piece of chocolate (yes, eating chocolate is encouraged!) to designing a workout around your favorite guilty pleasure songs to easy ways to break free from the scale and build confidence, The Fit Bottomed Girls Anti-Diet is packed with the tools you need to design a healthy life you love. Come see for yourself what thousands of women have already discovered: being an FBG rocks!