Confessions of a Foodie: We Are Not What We Eat

Confessions of a Foodie:
We Are Not What We Eat

By: Gwen McKinney

When Team McKinney decided we’d dive into National Food Day by raising our voices in the blogosphere, I immediately proclaimed, “I’m in!”

As an evangelical member of the Weight Watchers (WW) Lifetime circle, I have forged a relationship with food that is a lifeline to good health, a relatively streamlined body and joy. Food, like weight management, is a journey. It requires a commitment first and foremost to self. You must honestly zero in on why you eat, how you eat and what you eat. The journey need not be punctuated with denial “diets” and punitive food plans that ebb and flow as the scales tilt north. You can eat well, eat often and eat deliciously even as you drop pounds.

The multisensory passion of good eating gives me something to look forward to from one meal to the next. The Wednesday Food Section of the Washington Post is among my “must reads.” New recipes are cherished treasures. I collect them like jewels. And as a frequent flyer on Epicurious.com, there are always more ways to prepare my favorite foods than I have time to create or eat. The extravaganza of planning, shopping and preparing for a dinner party is almost as fun as the guests. Food is my friend, my salvation and an adventure with each gastronomic foray!

But back to Weight Watchers. It works with unparallel success. This is not an ad for WW. National Poster Child Jennifer Hudson is doing that just fine without me. In fact, she recently opened a weight loss center in Chicago that is primarily targeted to African American women. That makes the point about our community’s need to reassess its relationship with food.

Since Weight Watchers rolled out its phenomenally successful ad campaign featuring the sleek, sexy and seventy-pounds-lighter Hudson, new legions of wannabe smaller Black women have been stepping up to WW scales. My weekly WW meetings have been transformed from sparsely attended motivational lectures into standing room only Amen sessions. Sadly, if the stats prove true, the vast majority of those new recruits will fall off the wagon, trading sustainability for the old and easy way out. Weight management is not just about the scales. The centerpiece is behavioral change. And that is a bitch.

Role model or marketing scheme?

Hudson’s phenomenal reach to African American women surfaces a swelling epidemic. African American women of all ages and economic groups suffer the highest rate of obesity compared to any other demographic. Four out of five of us are considered overweight or obese. With that distinction comes all the evil ills: heart disease, diabetes, cancer and premature death.

Overweight women raise overweight children. The challenge of childhood obesity has become a national state of emergency. Our client, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, embracing the issue as a health equity initiative, has targeted 2015 to reverse the epidemic.

The notion of being “big boned” or voluptuously healthy in line with our African roots have long served as a rationalization for the status quo. Culture, genetics and glandular conditions are not the culprits. Admittedly, as a forthright foodie who shed four dress sizes over a 14-month period, I will always struggle with weight management. Food and caloric intake are almost incidental to the challenge. At the core of a slender body is affirmation of me. I am not what I eat. I am what I am determined to be.

I end here with the verb to be. We are our own best solution if we affirm we can BE. Counsel for good health care? More appropriately, it is a clarion call for Self-Care. Drawing from a campaign that McKinney & Associates launched for the California Department of Public Health, I ask every African American woman to embrace food as a key to life. But command your body as your temple to BE Well.

BEcause we’re worth it.