My entire life I have battled my impulse of whether or not to eat a 6-piece fried hard or kale. It has been a long, drawn-out, depressing, aggressive, evil battle. Worse still, the war I’ve waged in my mind has only been amplified by those closest to me.

Phrases like, “Oh, you’ve put on a few pounds”, or “Be careful now, you know your mama’s side of the family all get big” have chased me in the endless loop of insecurity and low self-esteem. So much so that every health journey I’ve embarked on was plagued with binging and guilt. I never gave myself the opportunity to “trust the process”. How could I? I didn’t trust that my progress would ever be enough for those around me, so why even fight the inevitable?

Sadly, I sang the song of so many Black women who, for all their attempts to better their health and their appearance, were thrown off course by words spoken against them.

What is this obsession we have to use weight as a topic for casual conversation, as if determining the current size of a

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