The Invisible Black Woman

Full disclosure: I’m more than a tad behind schedule this week. I was halfway through this post when I realized this ain’t the usual Saturday post, this is my “during the week” post. So Imma ask for forgiveness ahead of time and make it up to y’all with some bonus episodes next week. This being the first of the month and all, I couldn’t well let this day pass without posting. So please pretend today is a weekday when you’re reading this and just give me some grace for today. Thank ya!

---

Before my week devolved into one wallowed in self-pity, I actually had a damn good health visit. I alluded to it a bit in the episode before last, …hard. Before things went sideways with my knee, I made an appointment to see a nutritionist because I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and I wanted off this damn hamster wheel of yo-yo dieting, falling on and off the wagon food wise, and just plain aggravation of not being where I wanted to be in the health and looks department, if I’m being totally honest. I dabbled a time or two with health coaching and apps and similar things, but this was the first time I was going to see a bonafide nutritionist.

After scouring online for some options, I landed on a practice that took a holistic approach to your weight loss. It wasn’t just about putting you on the latest trend or craze, but coming up with a custom plan based on your challenges and where you were on your weight loss journey. Sold.

When I arrived, the office was pretty nice and inviting. I checked in at the front desk and was handed a stack of papers to fill out. One of these days, someone’s gonna have to explain to me the entire point of checking in online and filling out a bunch of paperwork ahead of time only to fill out more of the same paperwork.

A little after I turned in my paperwork, I was called to the back. Amy first took my vitals—blood pressure, temp, etc—then it was time to get on the scale. I was dreading that part the most. This scale was a bit different though. I think it’s called an InBody scale. You have to get on it barefoot, place your heels on these metallic pads. Then there are handles on either side you have to grab onto so it scans your body. I watched it as it slowly filled out the outline of a body on the screen and was dreading what I would see on the screen.

The verdict in terms of pounds wasn’t at all surprising. What was surprising and made me do a serious double take to the point I didn’t believe it until Amy read it aloud, was the pounds of muscle the machine said I had: it was nearly double the pounds of fat. I almost did a praise dance right there on the spot. Seeing the breakdown of which pounds were muscle versus fat versus water was super eye opening. It’s the difference between making all sorts of wild assumptions and understanding just what you were dealing with.

I came in there really dreading things a lot. From wondering what level of treatment I would receive because of my size and the color of my skin to finding out that I was a lot further behind the 8 ball on my weight loss journey. Seeing that number and hearing it out loud really put a pep in my step. I fully expected that it would be nothing but bad news from start to finish, but hearing that result actually made me feel like it wasn’t utterly and completely hopeless.

In the middle of me being on cloud nine, Amy interrupted my internal happy dance to tell me she had to measure my waist. Frankly, that just felt hella mean and uncalled for, given how I was feeling at that moment. I obliged her, had my waist measured, then she escorted me back toward the waiting area for my next station: meeting with the nurse practitioner.

May came out to the lobby to get me and escorted me to her office. After the initial pleasantries, she dove right on in.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your weight loss, weight gain journey?”

“I feel like I’ve tried everything honestly. Like everything and anything in between. Intermittent fasting, latest diets. All of the things.”

She nodded for me to continue as she wrote down some notes.

 “I started putting on weight. Somewhere around like 2000. I’ve had a lot of surgeries that led to chronic pain issues and all of this stuff. A few years after I got married, things started kind of going in the wrong direction in terms of my weight. Because of the chronic pain issues, there was a lot of starting and stopping with my weight loss attempts. I do believe the long-term medication use over time affected my weight.”

“Okay, I see. Tell me a little more about that.”

“It’s just been really difficult, and I feel like I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t understand my body well enough to know what it is that I do that sets me back. I’ll start doing really good with my eating and exercise, and I’ll make some progress. I’ll lose like five or ten pounds, then it plateaus, then nothing. And I get frustrated, and the cycle begins all over again. I’ve had my thyroid tested because I thought maybe there’s something going on there, but nothing came back.”

“And what about your current eating habits?”

“I’m usually good with eating, but stress triggers me to eat like crap, or when I shouldn’t, or when I just want mindless eating. It’s hard, you know?”

“That makes sense,” she said. “We need to look at mindful activities that we can do to manage that stress. For right now, it’s almost like we need to estimate how much you’re consuming right now and work on reducing from that. It’s not just about eliminating foods, but reducing portions.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”

Can I let y’all in on a secret? I didn’t go to this place because I thought they had a magic bullet. I knew good and doggone well that they didn’t have a weight loss pill or some special formula that was going to help the pounds melt off. I went there to get the one thing I knew I was missing at home: accountability.

And we all know that accountability from strangers looks and hits different than accountability from loved ones. No, just me? Okay, then I’ll correct that and say that for me, accountability from someone who’s not kin is a whole lot more effective for me. So I went to that place not to hear something knew, but to be held accountable for the stuff I was trying to do on my own. Plus one visit in and I’d already learned that I was more than halfway there. I planned to ride that momentum to the other side of fit and fabulous.

My decision to make the appointment was so I could stop doing the same thing and expect different results. The literal definition of insanity, ain’t it?

Wish I’d taken that same damn approach when it came to my work life.