Our Black community has been disproportionately affected with lifestyle diseases such as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes for far too long. In fact, being African-American is even listed as a risk factor for such diseases.I disagree with the notion of race being a risk factor.
Instead, I believe that our Black community has to increase our knowledge on what really matters for health and weight loss, and then ACT on that knowledge. The truth is, if we do not believe the right things to be successful at living healthily and losing weight, we won’t do the right things.
I’ve noticed from several of my experiences as a personal trainer, as well as from simply living, that there are several beliefs that we tend to have that consistently hold us. Some of the beliefs come from our own misconceptions of health and fitness, while other beliefs, unfortunately, are perpetuated by the ever growing, $61 billion health and fitness industry.
In my book, 13 Things to Stop Believing to Become Healthy and Lose Weight, I’ve outlined 13 different beliefs that I’ve found hold so many of our people back from living healthy lives. Here, I’ve shared the top three that I feel might be our biggest hindrances:
1. I have to weigh myself several times a day – Many believe that if you weigh yourself several times each day, you can effectively manage your weight and keep yourself from gaining any extra pounds. In truth, however, repeated weighing each day can become a sort of bondage.
Our bodies are incredibly complex, which makes it almost impossible for the pounds you’ve gained between breakfast and dinner to be fat. More than likely, the weight is either water weight, or waste that you have yet to get rid of. The better approach is to weigh yourself once every week or two, because the trend of your bodyweight is what is most important, and that trend cannot be noticed over a matter of hours.
2. If it says “low fat”, “no fat”, “reduced fat”, “sugar-free”, etc., it’s healthy – The biggest problem with this belief is not so much that products with these claims aren’t healthy, but rather, that the healthiest food you can eat will never be found in a package. If you want the best health, the foundation of your diet must be vegetables and fruits. Natural foods, which don’t come from factories, are the best foods for your natural body. To add, many packaged foods may have little or no fat, sugar and salt, but companies often must add replacement chemicals to those foods so that they can still satisfy consumers with the same tastes, and often those chemicals are hazardous to our health.
3. (Fill in the blank) runs in my family, so I’m gonna get it, too – We commonly believe that if a disease runs in our families, like diabetes or heart disease, we’re bound to get the disease ourselves. It is true that we can have genetic predisposition toward certain diseases, but it is also true that we can sometimes determine whether or not those bad genes express themselves by how we live. In other words, instead of worrying about things you can’t control, like genes, focus on the factors that you can control. Were your parents diabetic? If so, there’s no excuse for you to overeat and indulge in sweets. Does hypertension run in your family? That’s more reason for you to work hard at cutting out extra weight, extra salt, and stress from your life.
At the end of the day, we are all responsible for your own wellbeing. Let’s do ourselves a big favor and make sure that we believe the right things about living healthily so that we can really be in control, and so that the health of the Black community can experience a turnaround.
Shawn McClendon is an ACE-Certified Personal Trainer, health and fitness blogger, columnist, and author of 13 Things to Stop Believing to Become Healthy and Lose Weight. He works by day as an electronics engineer, but has a passion for empowering others to live healthy lives through personal training, writing and speaking. Follow him on his website (YourHealthAtTheCrossroads.com) and on Twitter (@ShawnB2BFitness).
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