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African American Weight Loss

A new book due to be released in May called Food, Choice and Obesity in Black America: An Anthropologist Offers a New Cultural Diet focuses on the needs of African-Americans and weight loss in America. The interesting thing about Eric Bailey’s book is that it addresses the cultural and psychological needs of the African-American with a specific focus on body image, food, dieting and physical fitness in African-American culture.

Medically speaking, African-Americans are facing their own health challenges and becoming more obese than ever before just like other Americans. The consequences include:

  • Strokes
  • Heart Attacks
  • Type II Diabetes
  • Hypertension

These are critical health issues facing a large number of Americans, Bailey addresses a way that African-Americans can work together collectively to establish a lifestyle strategy and ‘cultural’ diet that will be both manageable and effective.

There are views from African American celebrities who have also fought their own battles against weight. There are reviews of soul food cookbooks. There is also a history of the African American cuisine. The book also critiques the lack of marketing from corporate American addressing the needs of the African American community when it comes to fitness, weight loss and diet programs.

Overall, the book focuses on building a better body image that is culturally based and present s research into culture, diet and fitness options for African Americans. There are some federally funded diet and fitness programs for African Americans that have demonstrated success and Bailey addresses those in his book as well.

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About Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago. They have a beautiful daughter who just turned five years old. She is learning to read and preparing for kindergarten in the fall. An author of more than 300 articles and 500+ web copy pieces, Heather has also written three books as a ghostwriter. Empty Canoe Publishing accepted a novel of her own. A former horse breeder, Heather used to get most of her exercise outside. In late 2004, early 2005 Heather started studying fitness full time in order to get herself back into shape. Heather worked with a personal trainer for six months and works out regularly. She enjoys shaking up her routine and checking out new exercises. Her current favorites are the treadmill (she walks up to 90 minutes daily) and doing yoga for stretching. She also performs strength training two to three times a week. Her goals include performing in a marathon such as the Walk for Breast Cancer Awareness or Team in Training for Lymphoma research. She enjoys sharing her knowledge and experience through the fitness and marriage blogs.