Living Large - African American women health concerns - Brief Article

Ebony, April, 2000 by Laura Randolph Lancaster

Dear Sisters:

Things are out of control.

I don't want to sound alarmist, but, the truth is, modern Black women are in lethal danger.

This is not idle speculation. This is not exaggeration nor is it based on unfounded information. This is real. This is serious. This is something all of us--homegirls, housewives, teenagers, church ladies--need to face and deal with before it hurts or kills us. "This," Sisters, is our weight problem.

In order to deal with it, however, we have to know the facts. But let me warn you; they are not pretty. Not only are Black women twice as likely as White women to be heavy, more than half--52 percent--of African-American women are overweight, reports the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When you do the math, that means approximately 9 million Sisters in America are obese.

Since, for years, health experts have been warning us that obesity not only contributes to all kinds of health problems but can lead to early death and disease, I had to wonder: Why is the weight albatross around so many Black women's necks? Why, when it comes to size, are so many Sisters living large?

There are two main reasons, experts believe. One is biological (a recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that African-American women have slower metabolisms, burning about 100 fewer calories per day than White women). But the main, most important reason, say experts, is cultural.

"Black women simply view issues of weight differently from the way White women do ...," explain the authors of the enlightening new book, Slim Down Sister: The African-American Woman's Guide to Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss. "Chances are, when we look in the mirror, we like what we see. Several studies ... confirm that we don't view `a little meat on our hones' as a bad thing, hut White women do."

In one particularly eye-opening study, Dr. Shiriki Kumanyika, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the University of Illinois in Chicago, discovered that almost half--approximately 40 percent--of overweight Black women considered their bodies attractive. The fact that Black women aren't obsessed with weight the way White women are, that we don't allow the media to rule our consciousness and don't need to be told that Barbie is a doll, not a goal, is so exhilarating it makes me want to stand up and cheer. A positive self-image is one of the best, most important attributes a woman can have. But, at least on the weight issue, it can be taken too far.

"As much as this high self-esteem is a good thing, it is in many ways, a drawback that can compromise our future health," explains the Slim Down Sister authors, who also share insight into why weight loss is more difficult for African-American women and share tips on how to take the best parts of Sisterhood (soul food, our positive self-image) and make them work for us, not against us. "We may be conscious of our weight--thinking somewhere in the back of our minds that we could stand to drop a few pounds. But as long as we've `got it going on' ... we really don't feel much pressure to start or stick with a get-fit plan."

Of course, getting fit is exactly what we Sisters need to do. Not because we can't live happily without being a size 6, but because we can't live healthily without being fit. What we Sisters need to understand is that obesity isn't a cosmetic problem; it's a health hazard. A serious one. Controlling our weight is not about us trying to pound our bodies into some ideal shape that exists only in 17-year-olds or with a lot of photographic retouching. It isn't about how we look; it's about how well--and in many cases how long--we will live.

Because so many of us are obese and obesity is directly linked to all kinds of serious health problems--high blood pressure, stroke, adult-onset diabetes (about 80 percent of people with this disorder are obese), osteoarthritis, cancer, heart disease--far too many Black women are not only suffering from, but dying of, these illnesses every year.

That's the bad news. The good news is that we don't have to. We can stop the frightening effects of obesity right now. We can get a handle on our weight any time we choose to, as Gladys Knight recently proved. "I was out of control," Knight says of her eating habits before she committed to taking charge of her health and her life and shed 50 pounds. Now, Knight has made healthy eating habits and exercise a crucial part of her daily life.

Like Knight, when it comes to food, we Sisters have to start placing health concerns first. We have to give up the high-fat, high-sugar diets that are making us sick in far greater numbers than our White counterparts. We have to declare ownership of our own health, our own lives.

I'm not saying it will be easy. It won't. But the task of saving our lives falls on nobody else's shoulders but our own. And we can do it if we follow the advice a ninetysomething Black woman gave me a long time ago when I asked her the secret to her long and healthy life: "Eat to live," she said, "don't live to eat."