Since I was eight years old, I wanted to be skinny. What was “skinny” to me? Beyoncé skinny, Christina Aguilera Skinny, Aaliyah skinny, Britney Spears skinny. I desired to be as skinny as nearly every female contemporary artist of the early 2000s. Skinny was the standard of the music industry and of my mind.

I was never a skinny girl growing up. I was the only girl daughter to my parents, with an older brother as my only sibling. My mom was always a petite woman, slim with a little curvature. Mom valued fitness since I could remember. She was the healthiest person in the house, although she did enjoy her sweets occasionally: Mom loved eating Almond Joy, turtle shortbread cookies from our local McKenzie’s around the corner, and like me, she loved chocolate (especially, with mint).

I was round growing up: a round face, a round belly, and a round . . . yes you know what the culture celebrates today—a round bottom with a curve. I had internalized the skinny physique of the female music artists that I loved listening to in the early 2000s. I even envied my slimmer female classmates in school. They were—in my mind—the “pretty girls.”

Growing up in New Orleans, many of the students with whom I attended school from kindergarten to the beginning of eighth grade were Black girls of various melanated hues, many with naturally long and straight or wavy hair. I can identify girls in my school who resembled a kid-sized version of Destiny’s Child: Beyoncé , Kelly, and Michelle era. A lot of these girls were nice, but more popular and prettier than I.

I was eight years old the first time that my body was ever fetishized. I was walking with my mom around her former college alma mater—The University of New Orleans—near our home, when a man’s voice yelled from the passenger side of a dark blue sedan, “You better go somewhere with that a**.” Mom and I both looked up as we briefly caught a glimpse of the man’s face as the sedan swiftly sped down the street. Thinking of that incident now, that man was a true definition of a “scrub” by TLC’s standards.

While I do not recall what my mom said, I do remember that she did not like the comment, and that was the first time that I was ever catcalled. I do not know if the man was addressing both of us. Mom had a nice shape, but it did not matter. Twenty-five years later, I attribute my self-consciousness of my derriere to that first catcall.

I can recall three other times being called “fat” in my youth: one was by a young man on a bike—whom I did not know—and the other two separate times was in elementary school by two female classmates. Although I did not cry after receiving those comments, I internalized those comments throughout my life as I experienced puberty much earlier than many other female classmates and battled my weight throughout my teenage years and into my early twenties.

At age 26, I finally became “skinny”: Asia skinny as I called it. It was 2019, and less than a month after my first breakup, I joined TITLE Boxing Club. This was not a sudden decision. Two years prior during my spring break from graduate school, I attended my first boxing class, and immediately after that class, I said to myself, “This is the workout that will finally help me lose the weight I have been trying to lose for years.”

Prior to joining TITLE, I had dieted a few times (mainly cutting out added sugar) combined with working out multiple times at the gym to lose weight (e.g., I took HIIT, cycling, and cardio kickboxing classes, and ran occasionally). It worked but was not sustainable as my emotional triggers—due to high stress situations that I would painfully learn about its roots in my late twenties—reproduced poor eating patterns (we’re talking lots of chocolate with sugar and fried foods on these emotionally high-stressful days).

Fast forward to 2019, I had a fierce determination like never before to lose this extra weight for good. I started the year reading two health and fitness books by Jillian Michaels (Master Your Metabolism: The 3 Diet Secrets to Naturally Balancing Your Hormones for a Hot and Healthy Body and Winning by Losing: Drop the Weight, Change Your Life) before joining TITLE to prepare my mind to lose this weight.

Three weeks after taking my first official boxing class, I embarked on a 40-day sugar cleanse from added sugars: no bread, no fried foods, no processed foods, and no chocolate.

Ironically, the same month that I started my 40-day fast in March 2019, it was Employee Appreciation Month at my new job. For the first week, we were served breakfast from all my favorite places: Chick-Fil-A, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, you name it. I said “No” to ALL of it. I did not feel remorseful saying “No” to my favorite foods. It was a matter of willpower.

I was determined to lose this weight.

Between February 2019 and July 2019, my weight dropped from 135 lbs. to 120.8 lbs. For the first time, I was able to purchase clothing in a size small. When I went to bed, I felt lighter, and when I walked, I felt that my posture was straighter. My mom even noticed and remarked: “You’re skinny, A.”

In fact, during those months of weight loss, “skinny” was the term that each of my friends who had not seen me in months or years first described when seeing me. “Wow. You’re slim!” Or I would receive a quick body scan whenever I reunited with friends for baby showers, birthday parties, and bridal showers. I had not even told most of them that I was on a weight loss journey, but seeing their reactions let me know that my results were visible. For the first time in all those years of trying to become slim, I was slim this time.

Slim Asia would only last until January 2020.

On the heels of another breakup, I felt that my corporate job had turned up the heat on me, as my responsibilities as a project manager seemed to triple overnight—to my disadvantage—and my lack of boundaries caused me to exhaust myself behind my limits, constantly playing catch up to open projects that required frequent communication with sales partners from around the world.

I continued boxing at least five times a week; however, I was eating at least twice as much as I normally would, frequently visiting the company vending machine for quick sugar spikes (and emotional support) to finish my work for that day.

From the beginning of January 2020 until May 2020, my disciplined eating dramatically declined as a new coffee addiction and an excessive amount of processed foods replaced my formally healthy diet.  During this time, I began working from home because of the spread of COVID-19 across the States. During pre-COVID, I could return home and wash off a stressful workday; however, during COVID, my stressful workdays lived with me. Because of the nature of my job, I was often working through the evening, sometimes through midnight—with a short break in between—to catch up on my projects.

Catching up on projects meant being on conference calls with my project management team to following up with international sales partners who often were six to ten hours ahead of me. To stay awake, I drank caffeinated coffee—often with sugary creamer—or made snacks in the kitchen—often protein pancakes. I am aware that none of this was healthy. I have learned that my lack of boundaries at that time contributed to my dysfunctional coping mechanism of overeating.

Prior to my coffee addiction, I had never desired the smell or the taste of coffee. However, coffee was so commonplace in my job that nearly every team and department on my floor had a coffee station. So, prior to becoming a remote worker during the early months of COVID, I had already developed a coffee addiction in the office (looking back, I am aware that the sugary creamers that I frequently used in my coffee made it addictive).

So, how did I ever get on track to a healthier lifestyle? I asked for help. While working from home, I reached out to a senior colleague who had one of the best client track records on our team. While I barely spoke to her in the office, she became the most helpful colleague on my team during our remaining work-from-home COVID period (which lasted another year and a half before I resigned from my position in fall 2021).

Simultaneously, my then-dietitian who I had been working with since May 2019 was a constant voice of encouragement and refocusing to help me rebuild and stay consistent with healthy eating patterns. It was only twice that year in 2020 that I regained my disciplined eating habits of 2019 and managed to stay within the 120 lb.-125 lb. range.

However, in 2021, I would face the largest and my most painful battle of my life: the sickness and death of my mom in July. Earlier that year, I was recovering from totaling my car as my mom was recovering from an all-day surgery that occurred on the same day during the holidays. 2021 started off shaky, and so my emotional eating patterns and subsequent added weight returned, which put my weight closer to 140 lbs.

Fat became my unwelcomed companion again.

That leads me to today. Since my mom passed away in July 2021, I have experienced two injuries—(1) a back injury, which took me out of my boxing workouts for nearly half a year, and (2) a knee injury, which was sustained, ironically, nearly one month after I had briefly discontinued boxing to shift to lower impact workouts.

Today, I am boxing, not as frequently as I initially did in 2019 (mainly due to financial costs and longer recovery time between sessions). If I ever return to the fitness and confidence level that I briefly had when I was Asia skinny, I hope to sustain it more long term, now that I am more aware of my emotional triggers that have continually led to unhealthy eating patterns.

I have been told a few times over the past few years (about varying concerns in life) to give grace to myself. I hope that you also can give yourself grace in whatever internal battles you are facing.  I cannot end without sharing that God said in His Word that the battle is not yours; it’s His.

Also, echoing my dietitian, who I miss working with dearly, no matter the struggles that you face along your weight loss journey, always remember that “consistency is key.”

Consistency + grace is key. 😊